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No. 146 
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THE 
HUMBOLDT 
LI BRARY5CIENCE 
SOCIAL DISEASES 
AND 
WORSE REMEDIES i> ■. >»> 
by! 
T. H. HUXLEY 
NEW YORK 
THE HUMBOLDT PUBLISHING COMPANY 
64 FIFTH -AVENUE 
ENTERED AT THE NEW YORK POST OFFICE AS SECOND CLASS MATTER. 100,000 SOLD, 
HYPNOTISfl: 
Its History and Present Dovolopmont. 
By FREDRIK BJORNSTROM, M. D., 
Head Physician of the Stockholm Hospital, Professor of Psychiatry, Late Royal Swed- 
ish Medical Counselor. 
Authorized Translation from the Second Swedish Edition. 
BY BARON NILES POSEE. M. G., 
Director of the Boston School of Gymnastics. 
Paper Cover (No. ii3of The Humboldt Library), - - 30 Cents 
Cloth, Extra, “ “ “ . . 75 Cents 
PRESS NOTICES. 
The learned Swedish physician, BjSrnstrom.—Churchman. 
It is a strange and mysterious subject, this hypnotism.— The Sun. 
Perhaps as concise as any work we have.—S. California Practitioner. 
We have found this book exceedingly interesting.—California Homcefath. 
A concise, thorough, and scientific examination of a little-understood subject.—Episco- 
pal Recorder. 
Few of the new books have more interest for scientist and layman alike.—Sunday 
Times (Boston). 
The study of hypnotism is in fashion again. It is a fascinating and dangerous study.— 
Toledo Bee. 
It is well written, being concise, which is a difficult point to master in all translations.— 
Medical Bulletin (Philadelphia). 
The subject will be fascinating to many, and it receives a cautious yet sympathetic 
treatment in this book.—Evangelist. 
One of the most timely works of the hour. No physician who would keep up with the 
times can afford to be without this work.—Quarterly Journal of Inebriety. 
Its aim has been to give all the information that may be said under the present state of 
•ur knowledge. Every physician should read this volume.—American Medical Journal 
(St. Louis). 
It is a contribution of decided value to a much-disussed and but little-analyzed subject 
by an eminent Swedish alienist known to American students of European psychiatry.— 
Medical Standard (Chicago). 
This is a highly interesting and instructive uook. Hypnotism is on the onward march 
to the front as a scientific subject for serious thought and investigation.— The Medical Free 
Press (Indianapolis). 
Many of tne mysteries of mesmerism, and all that class of manifestation, are here 
treated at'length, and explained as far as they can be with our present knowledge of psy- 
chology.— New \ orh*Journal of Commerce. 
The marvels of hypiyotic phenomena increase with investigation. Dr. Bjflrnstrdm, in 
this clear and well-written essay, has given about all that modern science has been able to 
developa({hese phenomena.—Medical Visitor (Chicago). 
It nil become & matter of scientific research, and engages the attention of some of the 
foremost men of the day, like Charcot, of Paris. It is interesting reading, outside of any 
usefulness, and may take the place of a novel on the office table.—Eclectic Medical Jour- 
nal (Cincinnati). 
This interesting book contains a scholarly account of the history, development, and 
scientific aspect of hypnotism. As a whole, the book is of great interest and very instruc- 
tive. It is worthy of careful perusal by all physicians, and contains nothing unfit to be read 
by the laity.—Medical and Surgical Reporter (Philadelphia). 
Todehnethe real nature of hypnotism is as difficult as to explain the philosophy of toxic 
c therapeutic action of medicine—more so, indeed. None the less, however, does it be- 
hoove the practitioner to understand what it does, even if he cannot tell just what it is, or 
how it operates. Dr. Bjornstrdm’s book aims to give a general review of the entire subject. 
—Medical Record. SOCIAL DISEASES 
AND 
WORSE REMEDIES. 
LETTERS TO THE “ TIMES " ON MR. BOOTH'S SCHEME, 
W ITH A 
PREFACE AND INTRODUCTORY ESSAY. 
BY 
T. H. HUXLEY, F. R. S. 
M Sixpenny worth of goon and a shilling's worth of harm" 
NEW YORK: 
THE HUMBOLDT PUBLISHING CO., 
28 LAFAYETTE PLACE. CONTENTS. 
PAG B 
Preface . . . 5 
The Struggle for Existence in Human Society 9 
In Darkest England 30 
Articles of War 60 
Form of Application 62 
Presents and Testimonials .66 
The Doctrine of the Salvation Army 66 
Declaration .... 67 
Notice to Candidates .... 67 PREFACE. 
The letters which are here collected together were published in the 
Times in the course of the months of December, 1890, and January, 
1891. 
The circumstances which led me to write the first letter are suf- 
ficiently set forth in its opening sentences ; and the materials on 
which I based my criticisms of Mr. Booth's scheme, in this and in 
the second letter, were wholly derived from Mr. Booth’s book. I 
had some reason to know, however, that when anybody allows his 
sense of duty so far to prevail over his sense of the blessedness of 
peace as to write a letter to the Times, on any subject of public inter- 
est, his reflections, before he has done with the business, will be very 
like those of Johnny Gilpin, “ who little thought, when he set out, of 
running such a rig.” Such undoubtedly are mine when I contemplate 
these ten documents, and call to mind the distinct addition to the 
revenue of the Post Office which must have accrued from the mass of 
letters and pamphlets which have been delivered at my door ; to say 
nothing of the unexpected light upon my character, motives and doc- 
trines, which has been thrown by some of the Times' correspondents, 
and by no end of comments elsewhere. 
If self-knowledge is the highest aim of man, I ought by this time 
to have little to learn. And yet, if I am awake, some of my teachers 
—unable, perhaps, to control the divine fire of the poetic imagination 
which is so closely akin to, if not a part of, the mythopoeic faculty— 
have surely dreamed dreams. So far as my humbler and essentially 
prosaic faculties of observation and comparison go, plain facts are 
against them. But, as I may be mistaken, I have thought it well to 
prefix to the letters (by way of “Prolegomena”) an essay which ap- 
peared in the Nineteenth Century for January, 1888, in which the prin- 
ciples that, to my mind, lie at the bottom of the “ social question ” 
are stated. So far as Individualism and Regimental Socialism are 
concerned, this paper simply emphasizes and expands the opinions 
expressed in an address to the members of the Midland Institute, de- 
livered seventeen years earlier, and still more fully developed in 
" veral essays published in the Nineteenth Century in 1889, which [ 
1 ipe. before long, to republish. P REE ACE. 
The fundamental proposition which runs through the writings, 
which thus extend over a period of twenty years, is, that the common 
a priori doctrines and methods of reasoning about political and social 
questions are essentially vicious ; and that argumentation on tins 
basis leads, with equal logical force, to two contradictory and ex- 
tremely mischievous systems, the one that of Anarchic Individualism, 
the other that of despotic or Regimental Socialism. Whether I am 
right or wrong, I am at least consistent in opposing both to the best 
of my ability. Mr. Booth’s system appears to me, and, as I have 
shown, is regarded by socialists themselves, to be mere autocratic 
'Socialism, masked by its theological exterior. That the “ fantastic ” 
religious skin will wear away, and the socialistic reality it covers will 
show its real nature, is the expressed hope of one candid Socialist, 
and may be fairly conceived to be the unexpressed belief of the des- 
potic leader of the new Trades Union, who has shown his zeal, if not 
his discretion, in championing Mr. Booth’s projects. 
Vet another word to commentators upon my letters. There are 
some who rather chuckle, and some who sneer, at what they seem to 
consider the dexterity of an “old controversial hand,” exhibited by 
the contrast which I have drawn between the methods of conversion 
depicted in the New Testament and those pursued by fanatics of the 
Salvationist type, whether they be such as are now exploited by Mr. 
Booth, or such as those who, from the time of the Anabaptists, to go 
no further back, have worked upon similar lines. 
Whether such observations were intended to be flattering or sarcas- 
tic, I must respectfully decline to accept the compliment or to apply 
the sarcasm to myself. I object to obliquity of procedure and am- 
biguity of speech in all shapes. And I confess that I find it difficult 
to understand the state of mind which leads any one to suppose, that 
deep respect for single-minded devotion to high aims is incompatible 
with the unhesitating conviction that those aims include the propaga- 
tion of doctrines which are devoid of foundation—perhaps even mis- 
chievous. 
The most degrading feature of the narrower forms of Christianity 
(of which that professed by Mr. Booth is a notable example) is their 
insistence that the noblest virtues, if displayed by those who reject 
their pitiable formula;, are, as their pet phrase goes, “ splendid sins.” 
But there is, perhaps, one step lower ; and that is that men, who pro- 
fess freedom of thought, should fail to see and appreciate that large 
soul of goodness which often animates even the fanatical adherents of 
such tenets. I am sorry for any man who can read the Kpisties to the 
Galatians and the Corinthians without yielding a large meed of admi- 
ration to the fervent humanity of Raul of Tarsus; who can study the 
lives of Francis of Assisi, or of Catherine of Siena, without wishing 
that, for the furtherance of his own ideals, he might be even a.v they ; PREFACE. 
7 
or who can contemplate unmoved the steadfast veracity and true 
heroism which loom through the fogs of mystical utterance in George 
Fox. In all these great men and women there lay the root of the 
matter—a burning desire to amend the condition of their fellow-men, 
and to put aside all other things for that end. If, in spite of all the 
dogmatic helps or hindrances in which they were entangled, these 
people are not to be held in high honor, who are ? 
I have never expressed a doubt—for I have none — that when 
Mr. Booth left the Methodist connection and started that organiza- 
tion of the Salvation army upon which, comparatively recently, such 
ambitious schemes of social reform have been grafted, he may have 
deserved some share of such honor. I do not say that, so far as his 
personal desires and intentions go, he may not still deserve it. 
But the correlate of despotic authority is unlimited responsibility. 
If Mr. Booth is to take credit for any good that the Army system 
has effected, he must be prepared to bear blame for its inherent evils. 
As it seems to me that has happened to him which sooner or later 
happens to all despots—he has become the slave of his own creation; 
the prosperity and glory of the soul-saving machine have become the 
end, instead of a means, of soul-saving ; and to maintain these at 
the proper pitch, the “General” is led to do things which the Mr. 
Booth of twenty years ago would probably have scorned. 
And those who desire, as I most emphatically desire, to be just to 
Mr. Booth, however badly they may think of the working of the 
organization he has founded, will bear in mind that some astute back- 
ers of his probably care little enough for Salvationist religion ; and 
are perhaps not very keen about many of Mr. Booth’s projects. I 
have referred to the rubbing of the hands of the Socialists over Mr. 
Booth’s success ;1 but, unless I err greatly, there are politicians of a 
certain school to whom it affords still greater satisfaction. Consider 
what electioneering agents the captains of the Salvation Army, scat- 
tered through all our towns, and directed from a political “ bureau ” 
in London, would make ! Think how political adversaries could be 
harassed by our local attorney—“ tribune of the people ” I mean 
—and how a troublesome man, on the other side, could be “ hunted 
down ” upon any convenient charge, whether true or false, brought by 
our Vigilance familiar !a 
I entirely acquit Mr. Booth of any complicity in far-reaching 
schemes of this kind ; but I did not write idly when, in my first letter, 
I gave no vague warning of what might grow out of the organized 
force, drilled in the habit of unhesitating obedience, which he has 
created. rp j 
1 See p. 54. 
*See pp. 37. SOCIAL DISEASES 
AND WORSE REMEDIES 
THE STRUGGLE FOR EXISTENCE IN HUMAN 
SOCIETY. 
THE vast and varied procession of events, which we call Nature, 
affords a sublime spectacle and an inexhaustible wealth of 
attractive problems to the speculative observer. If we confine our 
attention to that aspect which engages the attention of the intellect, 
Nature appears a beautiful and harmonious whole, the incarnation of 
a faultless logical process, from certain premises in the past to. an 
inevitable conclusion in the future. But if it be regarded from a less 
elevated, though more human, point of view ; if our moral sympa- 
thies are allowed to influence our judgment, and we permit ourselves 
to criticize our great mother as we criticize one another;—then our 
verdict, at least so far as sentient Nature is concerned, can hardiy be 
so favorable. 
In sober truth, to those who have made a study of the phenomena 
of life as they are exhibited by the higher forms of the animal world, 
the optimistic dogma, that this is the best of all possible worlds, will 
seem little better than a libel upon possibility. It is really only 
another instance to be added to the many extant, of the audacity of 
a priori speculators who, having created God in their own image, find 
no difficulty in assuming that the Almighty must have been actuated 
by the same motives as themselves. They are quite sure that, had 
any other course been practicable, He would no more have made 
infinite suffering a necessary ingredient of His handiwork than a 
respectable philosopher would have done the like. 
But even the modified optimism of the time-honored thesis of 
physico-theology, that the sentient world is, on the whole, regulated SOCIAL DISEASES 
by principles of benevolence, does but ill stand the test of impartial 
confrontation with the facts of the case. No doubt it is quite true 
that sentient Nature affords hosts of examples of subtle contrivances 
directed towards the production of pleasure or the avoidance of pain ; 
and it may be proper to say that these are evidences of benevolence. 
But if so, why is it not equally proper to say of the equally numerous 
arrangements, the no less necessary result of which is*the production 
of pain, that they are evidences of malevolence ? 
If a vast amount of that which, in a piece of human workmanship, 
we should call skill, is visible in those parts of. the organization of a 
deer to which it owes its ability to escape from beasts of pre(p, there is 
at least equal skill displayed in that bodily mechanism of the wolf 
which enables him to track, and sooner or later to bring down, the 
deer. Viewed under the dry light of science, deer and wolf are alike 
admirable ; and if both were non-sentient automata, there would be 
i • II I ' 
rtoth'ihg to qualify our admiration of the action of th£ one on tne 
other. But the fact that the deer suffers, while the wolf inflicts 
suffering, engages our moral sympathies. We should call men like 
the deer innocent and good, men such as the wolf malignant and 
bad; we should call those who defended the deer and aided him to 
Escape brave and compassionate, and those who helped the wolf in 
his bloody work base and cruel. Surely, if we transfer these judg- 
ments to Nature outside the world of man at all, we must do so 
impartially. In that case, the goodness of the right hand which 
helps the deer, and the wickedness of the left hand which eggs on 
the wolf, will neutralize one another; and the course of Nature will 
appear to be neither moral nor immoral, but non-moral. 
This conclusion is thrust upon us by analogous facts in every 
part of the sentient world; yet, inasmuch as it not only jars upon 
prevalent prejudices, but arouses the natural dislike to that which is 
painful, much ingenuity has been exercised in devising an escape 
from it. 
• From the theological side we are told that this is a state of proba- 
tion, and that the seeming injustices and immoralities of Nature will 
be compensated by and by. But how this compensation is to be 
effected, in the case of the great majority of sentient things, is not- 
clear. I apprehend that no one is seriously prepared to maintain 
that the ghosts of all the myriads of generations of herbiyorous 
animals which lived during the millions of years of the earth's dura- 
tion, before the appearance of man, and which have all that time 
been tormented and devoured by carnivores, are to be compensated 
by a perennial existence in clover; while the ghosts of carnivores 
are to go to some kennel where there is neither a p&n of water nor a 
bone with any meat on it. Beside, from the point of view of 
morality, the last state of things would be worse than the first. For AND WORSE REMEDIES. 
the carnivores, however brutal and sanguinary, have only done- that 
which, if there is any evidence of contrivance in the world,'they 
were expressly constructed to do. Moreover, carnivores and herbi- 
vores alike have been subject to all the miseries incidental to old age, 
disease, and over-multiplication, and both might well put in a claim 
for “compensation ” on this score. 
On the evolutionist side, on the other hand, we are told to take 
comfort from the reflection that the terrible struggle for existence 
tends to final good, and that the suffering of the ancestor is paid for 
by the increased perfection of the progeny. There would be some- 
thing in this argument if, in Chinese fashion, the present generation 
could pay its debts to its ancestors; otherwise it is not clear what 
compensation the Eohippus gets for his sorrows in the fact that, some 
millions of years afterwards, one of his descendants wins the Derby. 
And, again, it is an error to imagine that Evolution signifies a Constant 
tendency to increased perfection. That process undoubtedly involves 
a constant re-modeling of the organism in adaptation to new condi- 
tions ; but it depends on the nature of those conditions whether the 
direction of the modifications effected shall be upward or downward. 
Retrogressive is as practicable as progressive metamorphosis. If 
what the physical philosophers tell us, that our globe has been in a 
state of fusion, and, like the sun, is gradually cooling down, is true; 
then the time must come when Evolution will mean adaptation to a 
universal winter, and all forms of life will die out, except such low 
and simple organisms as the Diatom of the arctic and antarctic ice 
and the Protococcus of the red snow. If our globe is proceeding 
from a condition in which it was too hot to support any but the 
lowest living thing to a condition in which it will be too cold to per- 
mit of the existence of any others, the course of life upon its surface 
must describe a trajectory like that of a ball fired from a mortar; 
and the sinking half of that course is-as much a part of the general 
process* of Evolution as the rising.. 
From the point of view of the moralist the animal world is on 
about the same level as a gladiator’s show. The creatures are fairly 
well treated, and set to fight —whereby the strongest, the swiftest and 
the cunningest live to fight another day. The spectator has no need 
to turn his thumbs down, as no quarter is given. He must admit that 
the skill and training displayed are wonderful. But he must shut his 
eyes if he would not see that more or less enduring suffering is the 
meed of both vanquished and victor. And since the great game is 
going qn in every corner of the world, thousands of times a minute ; 
since,, were our ears sharp enough, we need not descend to the gates 
q£ hell- to hear— 
sospiri, pianti, ,ed alti guai. 
Voci alte e fioche, e suon di man con elle. SOCIAL DISEASES 
It seems to follow that, if this world is governed by benevolence, 
it most be a different sort of benevolence from that of John Howard. 
But the old Babylonians wisely symbolized Nature by their great 
goddess Istar. who combined the attributes of Aphrodite with those 
of Ares. Her terrible aspect is not to be ignored or covered tip with 
shams ; but it is not the only one. If the optimism oi I.eibmtz is a 
foolish though pleasant dream, the pessimism of Schopenhauer is a 
nightmare, the more foolish because of its hideousness. Error which 
is not pleasant is surely the worst form of wrong. 
This may not be the best of all possible worlds, but to say that it 
is the worst is mere petulant nonsense. A worn-out voluptuary may 
find nothing good under the sun, or a vain and inexperienced youth, 
who cannot get the moon he cries for, may vent his irritation in pessi- 
mistic moanings ; but there can be no doubt in the mind of any rea- 
sonable person that mankind could, would, and in fact do, get on 
fairly well with vastly less happiness anti far more misery than find 
their way into the lives of nine people out of ten. If each ami all of 
us had l>een visited by an attack of neuralgia, or of extreme mental 
depression, for one hour in every twenty-four—a supposition which 
many tolerably vigorous people know, to their cost, is not extrava- 
gant—the burden of life would have been immensely increased with- 
out much practical hindrance to its general course. Men with any 
manhood in them find life quite worth living under worse conditions 
than these. 
There is another sufficiently obvious fact, which renders the 
hypothesis that the course of sentient Nature is dictated by malevo- 
lence quite untenable. A vast multitude of pleasures, and these 
among the purest and the best, are superfluities, bits of good which 
are to all appearance unnecessary as inducements to live, ami are, so 
to speak, thrown into the bargain of life. To those who experience 
them, few delights can be more entrancing than such as are afforded 
by natural beauty or by the arts, ami especially by music ; but they 
are products of, rather than factors in, Evolution, and it is probable 
that they are known, in any considerable degree, to but a very small 
proportion of mankind. 
The conclusion of the whole matter seems to be that, if Ormuzd 
has not had his way in this world, neither has Ahriman. Pessimism 
is as little consonant with the facts of sentient existence as optimism. 
If we desire to represent the course of Nature in terms of human 
thought, and assume that it was intended to be that which it is. we 
must say that its governing principle is intellectual and not moral; 
that it it; a materialized logical process accompanied by pleasures and 
pain:*, the incidence of which, in the majority of cases, has not the 
slightest reference to moral desert. That the rain falls alike upon 
the just and the unjust, and that those upon whom the tower of AND WORSE REMEDIES. 
Vsiloam fell were no worse than their neighbors, seem to be Oriental 
modes of expressing the same conclusion. 
In the strict sense of the word “Nature,” it denotes the sum of 
the phenomenal world, of that which has been and is, and will be ; 
and society, like art, is therefore a part of Nature. But it is conve- 
nient to distinguish those parts of Nature in which man plays the 
part of immediate cause, as something apart ; and, therefore, society, 
like art, is usefully to be considered as distinct from Nature. It is 
the more desirable, and even necessary, to make this distinction, since 
society differs from Nature in having a definite moral object ; whence 
it comes about that the course shaped by the ethical man—the mem- 
ber of society or citizen—necessarily runs counter to that which the 
non-ethical man—the primitive savage, or man as a mere member of 
the animal kingdom—tends to adopt. The latter fights out the 
struggle for existence to the bitter end, like any other animal ; the 
former devotes his best energies to the object of setting limits to the 
struggle. 
In the cycle of phenomena presented by the life of man, the 
animal, no more moral end is discernible than in that presented by 
the lives of the wolf and of the deer. However imperfect the relics 
of prehistoric men may be, the evidence which they afford clearly 
tends to the conclusion that, f. »r thousands and thousands of years, 
before the origin of the oldest known civilizations, men were savages 
of a very low type. They strove with their enemies and their com- 
petitors ; they preyed upon things weaker or less cunning than them- 
selves ; they were born, multiplied without stint, and died, for thou- 
sands of generations alongside the mammoth, the urus, the lion, and 
the hyena, whose lives were spent in the same way ; and they were 
no more to be praised or blamed, on moral grounds, than their less 
erect and more hairy compatriots. 
As among these, so among primitive men, the weakest and stupid- 
est went to the wall, while the toughest and shrewdest, those who 
were best fitted to -cope with their circumstances, but not the best in 
any other sense, survived. Life was a continual free fight, and be- 
yond the limited and temporary relations of the family, the Hob- 
besian war of each against all was the normal state of existence. The 
human species, like others, plashed and floundered amid the genera* 
stream of Evolution, keeping its head above water as it best might, 
and thinking neither of whence nor whither. 
The history of civilization—that is of society—on the other hand, 
is the record of the attempts which the human race has made to 
escape from this position. The first men who substituted the State 
of mutual peace for that of mutual war, whatever the motive which 
impelled them to take that step, created society. But, in establishing 
peace, they obviously put a limit upon the struggle for existence. SOCIAL DISEASES 
Between the members of that society, at any rate, it was not to be 
pursued a outranct. And of all the successive shapes which society 
has taken, that most nearly approaches perfection in which the war 
of individual against individual is most strictly limited. The primi- 
tive savage, tutored by Istar, appropriated whatever took his fancy, 
and killed whomsoever opposed him, if he could. On the contrary, 
the ideal of the ethical man is to limit his freedom of action to a 
sphere in which he does not interfere with the freedom of others ; he 
seeks the common weal as much as his own ; and, indeed, as an 
essential part of his own welfare. Peace is both end and means with 
him ; and he founds his life on a more or less complete self-restraint, 
which is the negation of the unlimited struggle for existence. He 
tries to escape from his place in the animal kingdom, founded on the 
free development of the principle of non-moral Evolutioo, and to 
establish a kingdom of Man, governed upon the principle of moral 
Evolution. Kor society not only has a moral end, but in its perfec- 
tion, social life, is embodied morality. 
But the effort of ethical man to work toward a moral end, by no 
means abolished, perhaps, has hardly modified the deep-seated or- 
ganic impulses which impel the natural man to follow his non-moral 
course. One of the most essential conditions, if not the chief cause, 
of the struggle for existence, is the tendency to multiply without 
limit, which man shares with all living things. It is notable that 
“ increase and multiply ” is a commandment traditionally much older 
than the ten ; and that it is, perhaps, the only one which has been 
spontaneously and ex animo obeyed by the great majority of the 
human race. But, in civilized society, the inevitable result of such 
obedience is the re-establishment, in all its intensity, of that struggle 
for existence—the war of each against all—the mitigation or aboli- 
tion of which was the chief end of social organization. 
It is conceivable that, at some period in the history of the fabled 
Atlantis, the production of food should have been exactly sufficient 
to meet the wants of the population, that the makers of the commod- 
ities of the artificer should have amounted to just the number sup- 
portable by the surplus food of the agriculturists. And. as there is 
no harm in adding another monstrous supposition to the foregoing, 
let it be imagined that every man, woman, and child was perfectly 
virtuous, and aimed at the good of all as the highest personal good. 
In that happy land the natural man would have been put 
down by the ethical man. There would have been no competition, 
but the industry of each would have been serviceable to all ; nobody 
being vain and nobody avaricious, there would have l*-cn no rival, 
ries ; the struggle for existence would have been abolished, and the 
millennium would have finally set in. But it is obviou* that this 
state of things could have been permanent only with a stationary AND WORSE REMEDIES. 
population. Add ten fresh mouths ; and as, by the supposition, 
there was only exactly enough before, somebody must go on short 
rations. The Atlantis society might have been a heaven upon earth, 
the whole nation might have consisted of just men, needing no 
repentance, and yet somebody must starve. Reckless istar, non- 
moral Nature, would have riven the ethical fabric. 1 was once talk- 
ng with a very eminent physician' about the vis medicatrix naturce. 
“Stuff!” said he ; “nine times out of ten Nature does not want to 
cure the man ; she wants to put him in his coffin.” And Istar-Nature 
appears to have equally little sympathy with the ends of society. 
“Stuff! she wants nothing but a fair field and free play for her.dar- 
ling—the strongest.” 
Our Atlantis may be an impossible figment, but the antagonistic 
tendencies which the fable adumbrates have existed in every society 
which was ever established, and, to all appearance, must strive for 
the victory in all that will be. Historians point to the greed and 
ambition of rulers, to the reckless turbulence of the ruled, to the 
debasing effects of wealth and luxury, and to the devastating wars 
which have formed a great part of the occupation of mankind, as the 
causes of the decay of states and the foundering of old civilizations, 
and thereby, point their story with a moral. No doubt immoral mo- 
tives of all sorts have figured largely among the minor causes of 
these events. But, beneath all this superficial turmoil, lay the deep- 
seated impulse given by unlimited multiplication. In the swarms of 
colonies thrown out by Phoenicia and by old Greece ; in the ver 
sacrum of the Latin races ; in the floods of Gauls and of Teutons 
which burst over the frontiers of the old civilization of Europe ; in 
the swaying to and fro of the vast Mongolian hordes in late times, 
the population problem comes to the front in a very visible shape. 
Nor is it less plainly manifest in the everlasting agrarian questions of 
ancient Rome than in the Arreoi societies of the Polynesian Islands. 
In the ancient world and in a large part of that in which we now 
live, the practice of infanticide was or is a regular and legal custom ; 
the steady recurrence of famine, pestilence and war were and are 
normal factors in the struggle for existence, and have served, in a 
gross and brutal fashion, to mitigate the intensity of the effects of its 
chief cause. 
But, in the more advanced civilizations, the progress of private and 
public morality has steadily tended to remove all these checks. 
We declare infanticide murder, and punish it as such ; we decree, 
not quite successfully, that no one shall die of hunger; we regard 
death from preventable causes of other kinds as a sort of construc- 
tive murder, and eliminate pestilence to the best of our ability ; we 
declaim against the curse of war, and the wickedness of the military 
1 The late Sir W. Gull. 16 
SOCIAL DISEASES 
spirit, and we are never weary of dilating on the blessedness of |>ca< e 
and the innocent beneficence of industry. In their moments of ex- 
pansion, even statesmen and men of business go thus far. The finer 
spirits look to an ideal civitas Dei: a state when every man, having 
reached the point of absolute self-negation, and having nothing but 
moral perfection to strive after, peace will truly reign, not merely 
among nations, but among men, and the struggle for existence will 
be at an end. 
Whether human nature is competent, under any circumstances, to 
reach, or even seriously advance toward this ideal condition, is a 
question which need not be discussed. It will be admitted that man- 
kind has not yet reached this stage by a very long way, and my busi- 
ness is with the present. And that which I wish to point out is that, 
so long as the natural man increases and multiplies without restraint, 
so long will peace and industry not only permit, but they will neces- 
sitate a struggle for existence as sharp as any that ever went on 
under the regime of war. If Istar is to reign on the one hand, she 
will demand her human sacrifices on the other. 
Let us look at home. For seventy years, peace and industry have 
had their way among us with less interruption and under more favor- 
able conditions than in any other country on the face of the earth. 
The wealth, of Croesus was nothing to that which we have accumu- 
lated, and our prosperity has filled the world with envy. But Neme- 
sis did not forget Croesus ; has she forgotten us ? 
I think not. There are now 36,000,000 of people in our island, 
and every year considerably more than 300,000 are added to our 
numbers.' That is to say, about every hundred seconds, or *0, a 
new claimant to a share in the common stock of maintenance pre- 
sents him or herself among us. At the present time, the produce of 
the soil does not suffice to feed half its population. The other moiety 
has to be supplied with food which must be bought from the people 
of food-producing countries. That is to say, we have to offer them 
the things which they want in exchange for the things we want. 
And the things they want and which we can produce better than they 
can are mainly manufactures—industrial products. 
The insolent reproach of the first Napoleon had a very solid foun- 
dation. We not only are, but, under penalty of starvation, we are 
bound to be, a nation of shopkec|>ers. But other nations also lie 
under the same necessity of keeping shop, and some of them deal in 
the same goods as ourselves. Our customers naturally seek to get 
the nruist and the best in exchange for their produce. If our goods 
1 These numbers are only approximately accurate In 1881 our population 
amounted to 35,241.482, exceeding the number In 1871 by 3,396,103. The average 
annual increase In the decennial period 1871-1881 U therefore 339.610. The num- 
ber of minutes in a calendar year » 525,600. AND WORSE REMEDIES. 
are inferior to those of our competitors, there is no ground, com- 
patible with the sanity of the buyers, which can be alleged why they 
should not prefer the latter. And, if that result should ever take 
place on a large and general scale, five or six millions of us would 
soon have nothing to eat. We know what the cotton famine was ; 
and we can therefore form some notion of what a dearth of cus- 
tomers would be. 
Judged by an ethical standard, nothing can be less satisfactory 
than the position in which we find ourselves. In a real, though in- 
complete degree, we have attained the condition of peace which is 
the main object of social organization ; and it may, for argument’s 
sake, be assumed that we desire nothing but that which is in itself 
innocent and praiseworthy—namely, the enjoyment of the fruits of 
honest industry. And lo ! in spite of ourselves, we are in reality en- 
gaged in an internecine struggle for existence with our presumably 
no less peaceful and well-meaning neighbors. We seek peace and 
we do not ensue it. The mo/al nature in us asks for no more than is 
compatible with the general good ; the non-moral nature proclaims 
and acts upon that fine old Scottish family motto: “ Thou shalt 
starve ere I want.” Let us be under no illusions, then. So long as 
unlimited multiplication goes on, no social organization which has 
ever been devised, or is likely to be devised ; no fiddle-faddling with 
the distribution of wealth, will deliver society from the tendency to 
be destroyed by the reproduction within itself, in its intensest form, 
of that struggle for existence, the limitation of which is the object of 
society. And however shocking to the moral sense this eternal com- 
petition of man against man and of nation against nation may be ; 
however revolting may be the accumulation of misery at the negative 
pole of society, in contrast with that of monstrous wealth at the posi- 
tive pole ; this state of things must abide, and grow continually 
worse, so long as Istar holds her way unchecked. It is the true riddle 
of the Sphinx ; and every nation which does not solve it will sooner 
or later be devoured by the monster itself has generated. 
The practical and pressing question for us, just now, seems to me 
to be how to gain time. “ Time brings counsel,” as the Teutonic pro- 
verb has it ; and wiser folk among our posterity may see their way 
out of that which at present looks like an impasse. 
It would be folly to entertain any ill-feeling toward those neighbors 
and rivals who, like ourselves, are slaves of Istar ; but, if somebody 
is to be starved, the modern world has no Oracle of Delphi to which 
the nations can appeal for an indication of the victim. It is open to 
us to try our fortune ; and if we avoid impending fate, there will be a 
certain ground for believing that we are the right people to escape. 
Securus judicat orbis. 
To this end, it is well to look into the necessary conditions of our 18 
SOCIAL DISEASES 
salvation by works. They are two, one plain to all the world and 
hardly needing insistence ; the other seemingly not so plain, since too 
often it has been theoretically and practically left out of sight. The 
obvious condition is that our produce shall be better than that of 
others. There is only one reason why our goods should be preferred 
to those of our rivals—our customers must find them better at the 
price. That means that we must use more knowledge, skill, and in- 
dustry in producing them, without a proportionate increase in the cost 
of production ; and, as the price of labor constitutes a large element 
in that cost, the rate of wages must be restricted within certain limits. 
It is perfectly true that cheap production and cheap labor are by no 
means synonymous; but it is also true that wages cannot increase 
beyond a certain proportion without destroying cheapness. Cheap- 
ness, then, with, as part and parcel of cheapness, a moderate price of 
labor, is essential to our success as competitors in the markets of the 
world. 
The second condition is really quite as plainly indispensable as the 
first, if one thinks seriously about the matter. It is social stability. 
Society is stable when the wants of its members obtain as much satisfac- 
tion as, life being what it is, common sense and experience show may 
be reasonably expected. Mankind, in general, care very little for forms 
of government or ideal considerations of any sort; and nothing really 
stirs the great multitude to break with custom and incur the manifest 
perils of revolt except the belief that misery in this world or damna- 
tion in the next, or both, are threatened by the continuance of me 
state of things in which they have been brought up. Hut when they 
do attain that conviction, society becomes as unstable as a package 
of dynamite, and a very small matter will produce the explosion which 
sends it back to the chaos of savagery. 
It needs no argument to prove that when the price of labor sinks 
below a certain point, the worker infallibly falls into that condition 
which the French emphatically call la mislre—a word for which I do 
not think there is any exact English equivalent. It is a condition in 
which the food, warmth and clothing which are necessary for the 
mere maintenance of the functions of the body in their normal state 
cannot be obtained ; in which men, women and children are forced to 
crowd into dens wherein decency is abolished and the most ordinary 
conditions of healthful existence are impossible of attainment; in 
which the pleasures within reach are reduced to bestiality and 
drunkenness; in which the pains accumulate at compound interest, 
in the shape of starvation, disease, stunted development and moral 
degradation; in which the prospect of even steady and honest indus- 
try’ is a life of unsuccessful battling with hunger, rounded by a 
pauper’s grave. 
That a certain proportion of• the members of every great aggrega- AND WORSE REMEDIES. 
19 
tion of mankind should constantly tend to establish and populate 
such a Slough of Despond as this is inevitable, so long as some 
people are by nature idle and vicious, while others are disabled by 
sickness or accident, or thrown upon the world by the death of their 
bread-winners. So long as that proportion is restricted within toler- 
able limits, it can be dealt with ; and, so* far as it arises only from 
such causes, its existence may and must be patiently borne. But, 
when the organization of society, instead of mitigating this tendency, 
tends to continue and intensify it; when a given social order plainly 
makes for evil and not for good, men naturally enough begin to 
think it high time to try a fresh experiment. The animal man, find- 
ing that the ethical man has landed him in a such a slough, resumes 
his ancient sovereignty and preaches anarchy ; which is,substantially, 
a proposal to reduce the social cosmos to chaos and begin the brute 
struggle for existence once again. 
Any one who is acquainted with the state of the population of all 
great industrial centres, whether in this or other countries, is aware 
that, amid a large and increasing body of that population, la mistre 
reigns supreme. I have no pretensions to the character of a philan- 
thropist and I have a special horror of all sorts of sentimental rhetoric; 
I am merely trying to deal with facts, to some extent within my own 
knowledge, and further evidenced by abundant testimony, as a 
naturalist; and I take it to be a mere plain truth that throughout 
industrial Europe there is not a single large manufacturing city which 
is free from a vast mass of people whose condition is exactly that 
described, and from a still greater mass who, living just on the edge 
of the social swamp, are liable to be precipitated into it by any lack 
of demand for their produce. And, with every addition to the popu- 
lation, the multitude already sunk in the pit and the number of the 
host sliding toward it continually increase. 
Argumentation can hardly be needful to make it clear that no 
society, in which the elements of decomposition are thus swiftly and 
surely accumulating, can hope to win in the race of industries. 
Intelligence, knowledge, and skill are undoubtedly conditions of 
success; but of what avail are they likely to be unless they are 
backed up by honesty, energy, good-will, and all the physical and 
moral faculties that go to the making of manhood, and unless they 
are stimulated by hope of such reward as men may fairly look to ? 
And what dweller in the slough of want, dwarfed in body and soul, 
demoralized, hopeless, can reasonably be expected to possess these 
qualities. 
Any full and permanent development of the productive powers of 
an industrial population, then, must be compatible with and, indeed, 
based upon a social organization which will secure a fair amount of 
physical and moral welfare to that population ; which will make foi SOCIAL DISEASES 
good and not for evil. Natural science and religious enthusiasm 
rarely go hand in hand, but on this matter their concord, is complete; 
and the least sympathetic of naturalists can but admire the insight 
and the devotion of such social reformers as the late Lord Shaftes- 
bury, whose recently published Lift and Ltlltrs gives a vivid picture 
of the condition of the working classes fifty years ago, and of the 
pit which our industry, ignoring these plain truths, was then digging 
under its own feet. 
There is, perhaps, no more hopeful sign of progress among us in 
the last half-century than the steadily-increasing devotion which has 
been and is directed to measures for promoting physical and moral 
welfare among the poorer classes. Sanitary reformers, like most 
other reformers whom I have had the advantage of knowing, seem 
to need a goocf dose of fanaticism, as a sort of moral coca, to keep 
them up to the mark, and, doubtless, they have made many mistakes; 
but that the endeavor to improve the condition under which our 
industrial population live, to amend the drainage of densely-peopled 
streets, to provide baths, washhouses and gymnasia, to facilitate 
habits of thrift, to furnish some provision for instruction and amuse- 
ment in public libraries and the like, is not only desirable from a 
philanthropic point of view, but an essential condition of safe indus- 
trial development, appears to me to be indisputable. It is by such 
means alone, so far as I can see, that we can hope to check the con- 
stant gravitation of industrial society toward la misirt, until the 
general progress of intelligence and morality leads men to grapple 
with the sources of that tendency. If it is said that the carrying out 
of such arrangements as those indicated must enhance the cost of 
production, and thus handicap the producer in the race of competi- 
tion, I venture, in the first place, to doubt the fact; but if it be so, it 
results that industrial society has to face a dilemma, either horn of 
which threatens impalement. 
On the one hand, a population whose labor is sufficiently remune- 
rated may be physically and morally healthy and sociably stable, but 
may fail in industrial competition by reason of the dearness of 
its produce. On the other hand, a population whose labor is in- 
sufficiently remunerated must become physically and morally un- 
healthy, and socially unstable ; and though it may succeed for a 
while in industrial competition, by reason of the cheapness of its pro- 
duce, it must in the end fall, through hideous misery and degradation, 
to utter ruin. 
Well, if these art the only possible alternatives, let us for ourselves 
and our children choose the former, and, if need be, starve like men. 
But I do not believe that a stable society made up of healthy, vigor- 
ous, instructed, and self-ruling people would ever incur serious risk of 
that fate. They are not likely to be troubled with many competitors AND WORSE REMEDIES. 
21 
of the same character, just yet; and they may be safely trusted to 
find ways of holding their own. 
Assuming that the physical and moral well-being and the stable 
social order, which are the indispensable conditions of permanent in- 
dustrial development, are secured, there remains for consideration the 
means of attaining that knowledge and skill, without which, even 
then, the battle of competition cannot be successfully fought. Let us 
consider how we stand. A vast system of elementary education has 
now been in operation among us for sixteen years, and has reached all 
but a very small fraction of the population. I do not think that there 
is any room for doubt that, on the whole, it has worked well, and that 
its indirect no less than its direct benefits have been immense. But, as 
might be expected, it exhibits the defects of all our educational sys- 
tems—fashioned as they were to meet the wants of a bygone condition 
of society. There is a widespread and I think well-justified complaint 
that it has too much to do with books and too little to do with things. 
I am as little disposed as any one can well be to narrow early educa- 
tion and to make the primary school a mere annex of -the shop. And 
it is not so much in the interests of industry as in that of breadth of 
culture that I echo the common complaint against the bookish and 
theoretical character of our primary instruction. 
If there were no such things as industrial pursuits, a system of edu- 
cation which does nothing for the faculties of observation, which 
trains neither the eye nor the hand, and is compatible with utter igno- 
rance of the commonest natural truths, might still be reasonably re- 
garded as strangely imperfect. And when we consider that the 
instruction and training which are lacking are exactly those which 
are of most importance for the great mass of our population, the fault 
becomes almost a crime, the more that there is no practical difficulty 
in making good these defects. There really is no reason why drawing 
should not be universally taught, and it is an admirable training for 
both eye and hand. Artists are born, not made ; but everybody may 
be taught to draw elevations, plans and sections ; and pots and pans 
are as good, indeed better, models for this purpose than the Apollo 
Belvedere. The plant is not expensive ; and there is this excellent 
quality about drawing of the kind indicated, that it can be tested 
almost as easily and severely as arithmetic. Such drawings are either 
right or wrong, and if they are wrong the pupil can be made to see 
that they are wrong. From the industrial point of view, drawing has 
the further merit that there is hardly any trade in which the power of 
drawing is not of daily and hourly utility. In the next place, no good 
reason, except the want of capable teachers, can be assigned why ele- 
mentary notions of science should not be an element in general 
instruction. In this case, again, no experience or elaborate apparatus 
is necessary. The commonest thing—a candle, a boy’s squirt, a piece SOCIAL DISEASES 
of chalk—in the hands of a teacher who knows his business may be 
made the starting points whence children may be led into the regions 
of science as far as their capacity permits, with efficient exercise of 
their observational and reasoning faculties on the road. If object 
lessons often prove trivial failures, it is not the fault of object les- 
sons, but that of the teacher, who has not found out how much the 
power of teaching a little depends on knowing a great deal, and that 
thoroughly ; and that he has not made that discovery is not the fault 
of the teachers, but of the detestable system of training them which 
is widely prevalent.' 
As I have said, I do not regard the proposal to add these to the 
present subjects of universal instruction, as made merely in the inter- 
ests of industry. Elementary science and drawing are just as needful 
at Eton (where I am happy to say both are now parts of the regular 
course) as in the lowest primary school. But their importance in the 
education of the artisan is enhanced, not merely by the fact that the 
knowledge and skill thus gained—little as they may amount to—will 
still be of practical utility to him ; but further, because they constitute 
an introduction to that special training which is commonly called 
“ technical education.” 
I conceive that our wants in this last direction may be grouped 
under three heads : (i) Instruction in the principles of those branches 
of science and of art which are peculiarly applicable to industrial pur- 
suits, which may be called preliminary scientific education. (2) In- 
struction in the special branches of such applied science and art, as 
technical education proper. (3) Instruction of teachers in both these 
branches. (4) Capacity-catching machinery. 
A great deal has already been done in each of these directions, but 
remains to be done. If elementary education is amended in 
the way that has been suggested, I think that the school boards will 
have quite as much on their hands as they are capable of doing well. 
The influences under which the members of these bodies are elected 
do not tend to secure fitness for dealing with scientific or technical 
education ; and it is the less necessary to burden them with an un- 
congenial task, as there are other organizations, not only much better 
fitted to do the work, but already actually doing it. 
In the matter of preliminary scientific education, the chief of these 
is the Science and Art Department, which has done more during the 
last quarter of a century for the teaching of elementary science 
among the masses of the people than any organization which exists 
either in this or in any other country. It has become veritably a 
1 Training in the use of simple tools is no doubt very desirable, on all grounds. 
From the point of view of “ culture,” the man whose ** fingers are all thumbs" is but 
a stunted creature. But the practical difficulties in the way of introducing handiwork 
of this kind into elementary schools appear to me to be considerable. AND WORSE REMEDIES. 
23 
people’s university, so far as physical science is concerned. At the 
foundation of our old universities they were freely opened to the 
poorest, but the poorest must come to them. In the last quarter of 
a century the Science and Art Department, by means of its classes 
spread all over the country and open to all, has conveyed instruction 
to the poorest. The University Extension movement shows that our 
older learned corporations have discovered the propriety of follow- 
ing suit. 
Technical education, in the strict sense, has become a necessity for 
two reasons. The old apprenticeship system has broken down, partly 
by reason of the changed conditions of industrial life, and partly be- 
cause trades have ceased to be “ crafts,” the traditional secrets 
whereof the master handed down to his apprentices. Invention is 
constantly changing the face of our industries, so that “ use and 
wont,” “rule of thumb,” and the like, are gradually losing their im- 
portance, while that knowledge of principles which alone can deal 
successfully with changed conditions is becoming more and more 
valuable. Socially, the “master” of four or five apprentices is dis- 
appearing in favor of the “employer” of forty, or four hundred, or 
four thousand “ hands,” and the odds and ends of technical knowl- 
edge, formerly picked up in a shop, are not, and cannot be, supplied 
in the factory. The instruction formerly given by the master must 
therefore be more than replaced by the systematic teaching of the 
technical school. 
Institutions of this kind on varying scales of magnitude and com- 
pleteness, from the splendid edifice set up by the City and Guilds 
Institute to the smallest local technical school, to say nothing of 
classes, such as those in technology instituted by the Society of Arts 
(subsequently taken over by the City Guilds), have been established 
in various parts of the country, and the movement in favor of their 
increase and multiplication is rapidly growing in breadth and inten- 
sity. But there is much difference of opinion as to the best way in 
which the technical instruction, so generally desired, should be given. 
Two courses appear to be practicable—the one is the establishment 
of special technical schools, with a systematic and lengthened course 
of instruction, demanding the employment of the whole time of the 
pupils ; the other is the setting afoot of technical classes, especially 
evening classes, comprising a short series of lessons on some special 
topic, which may be attended by persons already earning wages in 
some branch of trade or commerce. 
There is no doubt that technical schools, on the plan indicated 
under the first head, are extremely costly ; and, so far as the teach- 
ing of artisans is concerned, it is very commonly objected to 
them that, as the learners do not work under trade conditions, they 
are apt to fall into amateurish habits, which prove of more hindrance 24 
Snrr <r. DISEASES 
than service in the actual business of life. When such schools are 
attached to factories under the direction of an employer who desires 
to train up a supply of intelligent workmen, of course this objection 
does not apply ; nor can the usefulness of such schools for the train- 
ing of future employers and for the higher grade of the employed be 
doubtful; but they are clearly out of the reach of the great mass of 
the people, who have to earn their bread as soon as possible. We 
must therefore look to the classes, and especially to evening classes, 
as the great instrument for the technical education of the artisan. 
The utility of such classes has now been placed beyond all doubt ; 
the only question which remains is to find the ways and means of ex- 
tending them. 
We are here, as in all other questions of social organization, met 
by two diametrically opposed views. On the one hand, the methods 
pursued in foreign countries are held up as our example. The State 
is exhorted to take the matter in hand, and establish a great system 
of technical education. On the other hand, many economists of the 
individualist school exhaust the resources of language in condemning 
and repudiating not merely the interference of the general govern- 
ment in such matters, but the application of a farthing of the funds 
raised by local taxation to these purposes. I entertain a strong con- 
viction that, in this country, at any rate, the State had much better 
leave purely technical and trade instruction alone. Hut, although my 
personal leanings are decidedly toward the individualists, I have 
arrived at that conclusion on merely practical grounds. In fact, my 
individualism is rather of a sentimental sort, and I sometimes think I 
should be stronger in the faith if it were less vehemently advocated.1 
I am unable to see that civil society is anything but a corporation 
established for a moral object—namely, the good of its members— 
and therefore that it may take such measures as seem fitting for the 
attainment of that which the general voice decides to be the general 
good. That the suffrage of the majority is by no means a scientific 
test of social good and evil is unfortunately too true ; but in practice 
it is the only test we can apply, and the refusal to abide by it means 
anarchy. The purest despotism that ever existed is as much based 
upon that will of the majority (which is usually submission to the will 
of a small minority) as the freest republic. Law is the expression of 
the opinion of the majority ; and it is law, and not mere opinion, be- 
cause the many are strong enough to enforce it. 
I am as strongly convinced as the most pronounced individualist 
can be, that it is desirable that every man should be free to act in 
In what follows I am only repeating and emphasizing opinions which I expressed 
seventeen years ago, in an address to the members of the Midland Institute (repub- 
lished in “ Critiques and Addresses” in 1873) I have seen no reason to modify 
them, notwithstanding high authority on the other side. AND WORSE REMEDIES. 
25 
every way which does not limit the corresponding freedom of his 
fellow-man. But I fail to connect that great induction of political 
science with the practical corollary which is frequently drawn from 
it; that the State—that is, the people in their corporate capacity— 
has no business to meddle with anything but the administration of 
justice and external defense. It appears to me that the amount of 
freedom which incorporate society may fitly leave to its members is 
not a fixed quantity, to be determined a priori by deduction from the 
fiction called “ natural rights ; ” but that it must be determined by, 
and vary with, circumstances. I conceive it to be demonstrable that 
the higher and the more complex the organization of the social body, 
the more closely is the life of each member bound up with that of 
the whole ; and the larger becomes the category of acts which cease 
to be merely self-regarding, and which interfere with the freedom of 
others more or less seriously. 
If a squatter, living ten miles away from any neighbor, chooses to 
burn his house down to get rid of vermin, there may be no necessity 
(in the absence of insurance offices) that the law should interfere 
with his freedom of action ; his act can hurt nobody but himself. 
But, if the dweller in a street chooses to do the same thing, the State 
very properly makes such a proceeding a crime, and punishes it as 
such. He does meddle with his neighbor’s freedom, and that seri- 
ously. So it might, perhaps, be a tenable doctrine, that it would be 
needless, and even tyrannous, to make education compulsory in a 
sparse agricultural population, living in abundance on the produce of 
its own soil ; but, in a densely populated manufacturing country, 
struggling for existence with competitors, every ignorant person 
tends to become a burden upon, and, so far, an infringer of the 
liberty of, his fellows, and an obstacle to their success. Under such 
circumstances an education rate is, in fact, a war tax, levied for pur- 
poses of defense. 
That State action always has been more or less misdirected, and 
always will be so, is, I believe, perfectly true. But I am not aware 
that it is more true of the action of men in their corporate capacity, 
than it is of the doings of individuals. The wisest and most dispas- 
sionate man in existence, merely wishing to go from one stile in a 
field to the opposite, will not walk quite straight—he is always going 
a little wrong, and always correcting himself; and I can only con- 
gratulate the individualist who is able to say that his general course 
of life has been of a less undulatory character. To abolish State 
action, because its direction is never more than approximately cor- 
rect, appears to me to be much the same thing as abolishing the man 
at the wheel altogether, because do what he will, the ship yaws more 
or less. “Why should I be robbed of my property to pay for teach- 
ing another man’s children?” is an individualist question, which is 26 
SOCIAL DISEASES 
not unfrequently put as if it settled the whole business. Perhaps it 
does, but I find difficulties in seeing why it should. The parish in 
which I live makes me pay my share for the paving and lighting of a 
great many streets that 1 never pass through ; and I might plead 
that I am robbed to smooth the way and lighten the darkness of 
other people. But I am afraid the parochial authorities would not 
let me off on this plea ; and I must confess I do not see why they 
should. 
I cannot speak of my own knowledge, but I have every reason to 
believe that I came into this world a small reddish person, certainly 
without a gold spoon in my mouth, and in fact with no discernible 
abstract or concrete “rights” or property of any description. If a 
foot was not, at once, set upon me as a squalling nuisance, it was 
either the natural affection of those about me, which I certainly had 
done nothing to deserve, or the fear of the law which, ages before 
my birth, was painfully built up by the society into which I intruded, 
that prevented that catastrophe. If I was nourished, cared for, 
taught, saved from the vagabondage of a wastrel, I certainly am not 
aware that I did anything to deserve those advantages. And, if I 
possess anything now, it strikes me that, though I may have fairly 
earned my day’s wages for my day’s work, and may justly call them 
my property—yet, without that organization of society, created out 
of the toil and blood of long generations before my time, I should 
probably have had nothing but a flint axe and an indifferent hut to 
call my own ; and even those would be mine only so long as no 
stronger savage came my way. 
So that if society, having—quite gratuitously—done all these things 
for me, asks me in turn to do something toward its preservation— 
even if that something is to contribute to the teaching of other men’s 
children—I really, in spite of all my individualist leanings, feel rather 
ashamed to say no. And if I were not ashamed, I cannot say that I 
think that society would be dealing unjustly with me in converting 
the moral obligation into a legal one. There is a manifest unfairness 
in letting all the burden be borne by the willing horse. 
It does not appear to me, then, that there is any valid objection to 
taxation for purposes of education ; but, in the case of technical 
schools and classes, I think it is practically expedient that such taxa- 
tion should be local. Our industrial population accumulates in par- 
ticular towns and districts ; these districts are those which immediately 
profit by technical education ; and it is only in them that we can find 
the men practically engaged in industries, among whom some may 
reasonably be expected to be competent judges of that which is wanted, 
and of the best means of meeting the want. 
In my belief, all methods of technical training are at present tenta- 
tive, and, to be successful, each must be adapted to the special AND WORSE REMEDIES. 
peculiarities of its locality. This is a case in which we want twenty 
years, not of “ strong government,” but of cheerful and hopeful 
blundering ; and we may be thankful if we get things straight in that 
time. 
The principle of the Bill introduced, but dropped, by the Govern- 
ment last session, appears to me to be wise, and some of the objections 
to it I think are due to a misunderstanding. The bill proposed in 
substance to allow localities to tax themselves for purposes of techni- 
cal education—on the condition that any,scheme for such purpose 
should be submitted to the Science and Art Department, and declared 
by that Department to be in accordance with the intention of the 
Legislature. 
A cry was raised that the Bill proposed to throw technical education 
into the hands of the Science and Art Department. But, in reality, 
no power of initiation, nor even of meddling with details, was given 
to that Department—the sole function of which was to decide whether 
any plan proposed did or did not come within the limits of “ technical 
education.” The necessity for such control, somewhere, is obvious. 
No legislature, certainly not ours, is likely to grant the power of 
self-taxation without setting limits to that power in some way ; and it 
would neither have been practicable to devise a legal definition of 
technical education, nor commendable to leave the question to the 
Auditor-General to be fought out in the law courts. The only alter- 
native was to leave the decision to an appropriate State authority. If 
it is asked, what is the need of such control if the people of the 
localities are the best judges, the obvious reply is that there are 
localities and localities, and that while Manchester, or Liverpool, or 
Birmingham, or Glasgow, might, perhaps, be safely left to do as they 
thought fit, smaller towns, in which there is less certainty of full dis- 
cussion by competent people of different ways of thinking, might 
easily fall a prey to crotcheteers. 
Supposing our intermediate science teaching and our technical 
schools and classes are established, there is yet a third need to be 
supplied, and that is the want of good teachers. And it is necessary 
not only to get them, but to keep them when you have got them. 
It is impossible to insist too strongly upon the fact, that efficient 
teachers of science and of technology are not to be made by the pro- 
cesses in vogue at ordinary training colleges. The memory loaded 
with mere bookwork is not the thing wanted—is, in fact, rather worse 
than useless—in the teacher of scientific subjects. It is absolutely 
essential that his mind should be full of knowledge and not of mere 
learning, and that what he knows should have been learned in the 
laboratory rather than in the library. There are happily already, both 
in London and in the provinces, various places in which such training 
is to be had, and the main thing at present is to make it in the first 28 
SOCIAL DISEASES 
place accessible and in the next indispensable to those who under- 
take the business of teaching. But when the well-trained men are 
supplied, it must be recollected that the profession of teacher is not 
a very lucrative or otherwise tempting one, and that it may be advis- 
able to offer special inducements to good men to remain in it. These, 
however, are questions of detail into which it is unnecessary to enter 
further. 
Last, but not least, comes the question of providing the machinery 
for enabling those who are by nature specially qualified to undertake 
the higher'branches of industrial work, to reach the position in which 
they may render that service to the community. If all our educational 
expenditure did nothing but pick one man of scientific or inventive 
genius, each year, from amidst the hewers of wood and drawers of 
water, and give him the chance of making the best of his inborn 
faculties, it would be a very good investment. If there is one such 
child among the hundreds of thousands of our annual increase, it 
would be worth any money to drag him either from the slough of 
misery or from the hotbed of wealth, and teach him to devote himself 
to the service of his people. Here, again, we have made a beginning 
with our scholarships and the like, and need only follow in the tracks 
already worn. 
The programme of industrial development, briefly set forth in the 
preceding pages, is not what Kant calls a “ Hirngespinnst,” a cobweb 
spun in the brain of a Utopian philosopher. More or less of it has 
taken bodily shape in many parts of the country, and there are towns 
of no great size or wealth in the manufacturing districts (Keighley, 
for example) in which almost the whole of it has, for some time, been 
carried out so far as the means at the disposal of the energetic and 
public-spirited men, who have taken the matter in hand, permitted. 
The thing can be done ; I have endeavored to show good grounds for 
the belief that it must be done, and that speedily, if we wish to hold 
our own in the war of industry. I doubt not that it will be done, 
whenever its absolute necessity becomes as apparent to all those who 
are absorbed in the actual business of industrial life as it is to some of 
the lookers-on. 
[Perhaps it is necessary for me to add that technical education is 
not here proposed as a panacea for social diseases; but simply as a 
medicament which will help the patient to pass through an imminent 
crisis. 
An ophthalmic surgeon may recommend an operation for cataract 
in a man who is going blind, without being supposed to undertake 
that it will cure him of gout. And I may pursue the metaphor so far 
as to point out, that the surgeon is justified in pointing out that a diet 
of pork-chops and burgundy will probably kill his patient; though he AND WORSE REMEDIES. 
29 
may be quite unable to suggest a mode of living which will free him 
from his constitutional disorder.. 
Mr. Booth asks me : Why do you not propose some plan of your 
own ? Really, that is no answer to my argument that his treatment 
will make the patient very much worse.] 
January, 1891. IN DARKEST ENGLAND. 
I. 
The “ Times'* December f, 1890. 
Sir—A short time ago a generous and philanthropic friend wrote to 
me, placing at my disposal a large sum of money fpr the furtherance 
of the vast scheme which the General of the Salvation Army has pro- 
pounded, if I thought it worthy of support. The responsibility of 
advising my benevolent correspondent has weighed heavily upon me, 
but I felt that it would be cowardly, as well as ungracious, to refuse 
to accept it. I have therefore studied Mr. Booth’s book with some 
care, for the purpose of separating the essential from the accessory 
features of his project, and I have based my judgment—1 am sorry to 
say an unfavorable one—upon the data thus obtained. Before com- 
municating my conclusions to my friend, however, 1 am desirous to 
know what there may be to be said in arrest of that judgment; 
and the matter is of such vast public importance that I trust you will 
aid me by publishing this letter, notwithstanding its length. 
There are one or two points upon which I imagine all thinking men 
have arrived at the same convictions as those from which Mr. Booth 
starts. It is certain that there is an immense amount of remediable 
misery among us ; that, in addition to the poverty, disease and deg- 
radation, which are the consequences of causes beyond human con- 
trol, there is a vast, probably a very much larger, quantity of misery 
which is the result of individual ignorance, or misconduct, and of 
faulty social arrangements. Further, I think it is not to be doubted 
that, unless this remedial misery is effectually dealt with, the hordes 
of vice and pauperism will destroy modern civilization as effectually 
as uncivilized tribes of another kind destroyed the great social 
organizations which precede ours. Moreover, I think all will agree 
that no reforms and improvements will go to the root of the evil 
unless they attack it in its ultimate source—namely, the motives of 
the individual man. Honest, industrious, and self-restraining men 
will make a very bad social organization prosper; while vicious, idle, 
and reckless citizens will bring to ruin the best that ever was, or ever 
will be, invented. 
The leading propositions which are peculiar to Mr. Booth, I take 
to be these :— SOCIAL DISEASES AND WORSE REMEDIES. 
(x) That the only adequate means to such reformation of the indi- 
vidual man is the adoption of that form of somewhat corybantic 
Christianity of which the soldiers of the Salvation Army are the 
militant missionaries. This implies the belief that the excitement of 
the religious emotions (largely by processes described by their em- 
ployers as “ rousing” and “convivial ”) is a_ desirable and trustworthy 
method of permanently amending the conduct of mankind. 
I demur to these propositions. I am of opinion that the testimony 
of history, no less than the cool observation of that which lies within 
the personal experience of many of us, is wholly adverse to it. 
(2) That the appropriate instrument for the propagation and main- 
tenance of this peculiar sacramental enthusiasm is the Salvation 
Army—a body of devotees, drilled and disciplined as a military 
organization, and provided with a numerous hierarchy of officers, 
every one of whom is pledged to blind and unhesitating obedience to 
the “General,” who frankly tells us that the first condition of the 
service is-“ implicit, unquestioning obedience.” “ A telegram from 
me will send any of them to the uttermost parts of the earth ; ” every 
one “has taken service on the express condition that he or she will 
obey, without questioning, or gainsaying, J;he orders from head- 
quarters” (“Darkest England,” p. 243). 
This proposition seems to me to be indisputable. History confirms 
it. Francis of Assisi and Ignatius Loyola made their great experi- 
ments on the same principle. Nothing is more certain than that a 
body of religious enthusiasts (perhaps we may even say fanatics) 
pledged to blind obedience to their chief, is one of the most efficient 
instruments for effecting any purpose that the wit of man has -yet 
succeeded in devising. And I can but admire the insight into human 
nature which has led Mr. Booth to leave his unquestioning and 
unhesitating instruments unbound by vows. A volunteer slave is 
worth ten sworn bondsmen. 
(3) That the success of the Salvation Army, with its present force 
of 9416 officers “wholly engaged in the work,” its capital of three- 
quarters of a million, its income of the same amount, its 1375 corps 
at home, and 1499 in the colonies and foreign countries (Appendix, 
pp. 3 and 4), is a proof that Divine assistance has been vouchsafed 
to its efforts. 
Here I am not able to agree with the sanguine commander-in-chief 
of the new model, whose labors in creating it have probably inter- 
fered with his acquisition of information respecting the fate of 
previous enterprises of like kind. 
It does not appear to me that his success is in any degree more re- 
markable than that of Francis of Assisi, or that of Ignatius Loyola, than 
that of George Fox, or even than that of the Mormons, in our own 
time. When I observe the discrepancies of the doctrinal foundations SOCIAL DISEASES 
32 
from which each of these great movements set out, I find it difficult 
to suppose that supernatural aid has been given to all of them ; still 
more, that Mr. Booth’s smaller measure of success is evidence that it 
has been granted to him. 
But what became of the Franciscan experiment?1 If there was 
one rule rather than another on which the founder laid stress, it was 
that his army of friars should be absolute mendicants, keeping them- 
selves sternly apart from all worldly entanglements. Yet even before 
the death of Francis, in 1226, a strong party, headed by Elias of 
Cortona, the deputy of his own appointment, began to hanker after 
these very things; and, within thirty years of that time, the Fran- 
ciscans had become one of the most powerful, wealthy, and worldly 
corporations in Christendom, with their fingers in every sink of 
political and social corruption, if so be profit for the order could be 
fished out of it; their principal interest being to fight their rivals, the 
Dominicans, and to persecute such of their own brethren as were 
honest enough to try to carry out their founder’s plainest injunctions. 
We also know what has become of Loyola’s experiment. For two 
centuries the Jesuits have been the hope of the enemies of the 
Papacy ; whenever it becomes too prosperous they are sure to bring 
about a catastrophe by their corrupt use of the political and social 
influence which their organization and their wealth secure. 
With these examples of that which may happen to institutions 
founded by noble men, with high aims, in the hands of successors of 
a different stamp, armed with despotic authority, before me, common 
prudence surely requires that before advising the handing over of a 
lar-ge sum of money to the general of a new order of mendicants I 
should ask what guarantee there is that, thirty years hence, the 
“General” who then autocratically controls the action, say, of 
100,000 officers pledged to blind obedience, distributed through the 
whole length and breadth of the poorer classes, and each with his 
finger on the trigger of a mine charged with discontent and religious 
fanaticism; with the absolute control, say, of eight or ten millions 
sterling of capital and as many of income; with barracks in every 
town, with estates scattered over the country, and with settlements 
in the colonies—will exercise his enormous powers, not merely 
honestly, but wisely ? What shadow of security is there that the 
person who wields this uncontrolled authority over many thousands 
of men shall use it solely for those philanthropic and religious objects 
which, I do not doubt, are alone in the mind of Mr. Booth ? Who is 
to say that the Salvation Army, in the year 1920, shall not be a 
replica of what the Franciscan order had become in the year 1260? 
The personal character and the intentions of the founders of such 
organizations as we are considering count for very little in the for- 
• See note. pp. 33, 34. AND WORSE REMEDIES. 
33 
mation of a forecast of their future ; and if they did, it is no dis- 
respect to Mr. Booth to say that he is not the peer of Francis of 
Assisi. But if Francis’s judgment of men was so imperfect as to per- 
mit him to appoint an ambitious intriguer of the stamp of Brother 
Elias his deputy, we have no right to be sanguine about the perspi- 
cacity of Mr. Booth in a like matter. 
Adding to all these considerations the fact that Mr. Llewelyn 
Davies, the warmth of whose philanthropy is beyond question, and in 
whose competency and fairness I, for one, place implicit reliance, 
flatly denies the boasted success of the Salvation Army in its pro- 
fessed mission, I have arrived at the conclusion that, as at present 
advised, I cannot be the instrument of carrying out my friend’s pro- 
posal. 
Mr. Booth has pithily characterized certain benevolent schemes as 
doing sixpenny worth of good and a shilling’s worth of harm. I grieve 
to say that, in my opinion, the definition exactly fits his own project. 
Few social evils are of greater magnitude than uninstructed and un- 
chastened religious fanaticism ; no personal habit more surely de- 
grades the conscience and the intellect than blind and unhesitating 
obedience to unlimited authority. Undoubtedly, harlotry and intem- 
perance are sore evils, and starvation is hard to bear or even to know 
of ; but the prostitution of the mind, the soddening of the conscience, 
the dwarfing of manhood are worse calamities. It is a greater evil 
to have the intellect of a nation put down by organized fanaticism; 
to see its political and industrial affairs at the mercy of a despot 
whose chief thought is to make that fanaticism prevail; to watch the 
degradation of men, who should feel themselves individually respon- 
sible for their own and their country’s fates, to mere brute instru- 
ments ready to the hand of a master for any use to which he may 
put them. 
But that is the end to which, in my opinion, all such organizations 
as that to which kindly people, who do not look to the consequences 
of their acts, are now giving their thousands, inevitably tend. Unless 
clear proof that I am wrong is furnished, another thousand shall not 
be added by my instrumentality. 
I am, Sir, your obedient servant, 
T. H. Huxley. 
NOTE. 
An authoritative contemporary historian, Matthew Paris, writes thus of the Mino- 
rite, or Franciscan, Friars in England in 1235, just nine years after the death of 
Francis of Assisi:— 
“ At this time some of the Minorite brethren, as well as some of the Order of 
Preachers, unmindful of their profession and the restrictions of their order, impu- 
dently entered the territories of some noble monasteries, under pretence of fulfilling 
their duties of preaching as if intending to depart after preaching the next day. Under 
pretence of sickness, or on some other pretext, however, they remained, and, con- 
structing an altar of wood, they placed on it a consecrated stone altar, which they had SOCIAL DISEASES 
34 
brought with them, and clandestinely and in a low voice performed mass, and even 
received the confessions of many of the parishioners, to the prejudice of the priests. 
... And if by chance they were not satisfied with this, they broke forth in insults and 
threats, reviling every other order except their own, and asserting that all the rest 
were doomed to damnation, and that they would not spare the soles of their feet till 
they had exhausted the wealth of their opposers, however great it might be. The re- 
ligious men, therefore, gave way to them in many points, yielding to avoid scandal 
and offending those in power. For they were the councillors and messengers of the 
nobles, and even secretaries of the i’ope, and therefore obtained much secular 
favor. Some, however, finding themselves opposed at the Court of Rome, were re- 
strained by obvious reasons, and went away in confusion ; for the Supreme Pontiff, 
with a scowling look, said to them, ‘ What means this, my brethren ? To what lengths 
are you going ? Have you not professed voluntary poverty, and that you would 
traverse towns and castles and distant places, as the case required, barefooted and 
unostentatiously in order to preach the word of God in all humility ? And do you 
now presume to usurp these estates to yourselves against the will of the lords of these 
fees ? Your religion appears to be in a great measure dying away, and your doctrines 
to be confuted.’ ’ 
Under date of 1243, Matthew writes :— 
“ For three or four hundred years or more the monastic order did not hasten to 
destruction so quickly as their order [Minorites and Preachers] of whom now the 
brothers, twenty-four years having scarcely elapsed, had first built in England dwel- 
lings which rivaled regal palaces in height. These are they who daily expose to view 
their inestimable treasures, in enlarging their sumptuous edifices, and erecting lofty 
walls, thereby impudently transgressing the limits of their original poverty and violat- 
ing the basis of their religion, according to the prophecy of German Hildegarde. 
When noblemen and rich men are at the point of death, whom they know to fc* pos- 
sessed of great riches, they, in their love of gain, diligently urge them, to the injury 
and loss of the ordinary pastors, and extort confessions and hidden wills, lauding 
themselves and their own order only, and placing themselves before all others. So no 
faithful man now believes he can be saved, except he is directed by the counsels of 
the Preachers and Minorites."—Matthew Paris's “ English History,” translated by 
the Rev. J. A. Giles, 1889, Vol. I. 
II. 
The “ Times,” December 9, 1890. 
Sir—The purpose of my previous letter about Mr. Booth’s scheme 
was to arouse the contributors to the military chest of the Salvation 
Army to a clear sense of what they are doing. I thought it desirable 
that they should be distinctly aware that they are setting up and 
endowing a sect in many ways analogous to the “ Ranters ” and 
“Revivalists” of undesirable notoriety in former times; but with 
this immensely important difference, that it possesses a strong, far- 
reaching, centralized organization, the disposal of the physical, moral, 
and financial strength of which rests with an irresponsible chief who, 
according to his own account, is assured of the blind obedience of 
nearly 100,000 subordinates. I wish them to ask themselves, Ought 
prudent men and good citizens to aid in the establishment of an 
organization which, under sundry, by no means improbable, contin- 
gencies, may easily become a worse and more dangerous nuisance 
than the mendicant friars of the middle ages? If this is an academic 
question, I really do not know what questions deserve to be called AND WORSE REMEDIES. 
35 
practical. As you divined, I purposely omitted any consideration of 
the details of the Salvationist scheme, and of the principles which 
animate those who work it, because I desired that the public appre- 
ciation of the evils, necessarily inherent in all such plans of despotic 
social and religious regimentation, should not be obscured by the 
raising of points of less comparative, however great absolute, im- 
portance. 
But it is now time to undertake a more particular criticism of 
“ Darkest England.” At the outset of my examination of that work, I 
was startled to find that Mr. Booth had put forward his scheme with 
an almost incredibly imperfect knowledge of what had been done 
and is doim? in the same direction. A simple reader might well im- 
agine that the author of “ Darkest England ” posed as the Columbus, 
or at any rate the Cortez, of that region. “Go to Mudie’s,” he tells 
us, “ and you will be surprised to see how few books there are upon 
the social problem.” That may or may not be correct ; but if Mr. 
Booth had gone to a certain reading-room, not far from Mudie’s, I 
undertake to say that the well-informed and obliging staff of the 
national library in Bloomsbury would have provided him with more 
books on this topic, in almost all European languages, than he would 
read in three months. Has socialism no literature ? And what is 
socialism but an incarnation of the social question ? Moreover, I am 
persuaded that even “ Mudie’s ” resources could have furnished Mr. 
Booth with the “ Life of Lord Shaftesbury ” and Carlyle’s works. Mr. 
Booth seems to have undertaken to instruct the world without having 
heard of “ Past and Present ” or of “ Latter-Day Pamphlets though, 
somewhat late in the day, a judicious friend called his attention to 
them. To those of my contemporaries on whom, as on myself, Carlyle’s 
writings on this topic made an ineffaceable impression forty years 
ago, who know that, for all that time, hundreds of able and devoted 
men, both clerical and lay, have worked heart and soul for the per- 
manent amendment of the condition of the poor, Mr. Booth’s “Go to 
Mudie’s ” affords an apt measure of the depth of his preliminary 
studies. However, I am bound to admit that these earlier laborers 
in the field labored in such a different fashion, that the originality of 
the plan started by Mr. Booth remains largely unaffected. For them 
no drums have beat, no trombones brayed ; no sanctified buffoonery, 
after the model of the oration of the Friar in Wallenstein’s camp, 
dear to the readers of Schiller, has tickled the ears of the groundlings 
on their behalf. Sadly behind the great age of rowdy self-advertise- 
ment in which their lot has fallen, they seem not to have advanced 
one whit beyond John the Baptist and the Aposties, 1,800 years ago, 
in their notions of the way in which the ?neta?ioia, the change of mind 
of the ill-doer, is to be brought about. Yet the new model was there, 
ready for the imitation of those ancient savers of souls. The ranting 36 
SOCIAL DISEASES 
and roaring mystagogues of some of the most venerable of Greek 
and Syrian cults also had their processions and banners, their fifes and 
cymbals and holy chants, their hierarchy of officers to whom the art 
of making collections was not wholly unknown, and who, as freely as 
their modern imitators, promised an Elysian future to contributory 
converts. The success of these antique Salvation armies was enor- 
mous. Simon Magus was quite as notorious a personage, and prob- 
ably had as strong a following, as Mr. Booth. Yet the Apostles, 
with their old-fashioned ways, would not accept such success as a 
satisfactory sign of the Divine sanction, nor depart from their own 
methods of leading the way to the higher life. 
I deem it unessential to verify Mr. Booth’s statistics. The exact 
strength of the population of the realm of misery—be it one, two, or 
three millions—has nothing to do with the efficacy of any means pro- 
posed for the highly desirable end of reducing it to a minimum. The 
sole question for consideration at present is whether the scheme, 
keeping specially in view the spirit in which it is to be worked, is 
likely to do more good than harm. 
Mr. Booth tells us with commendable frankness, that “ it is pri- 
marily and mainly for the sake of saving the soul that I seek the 
salvation of the body ” (p. 45), which language, being interpreted, 
means that the propagation of the special Salvationist creed comes 
first, and the promotion of the physical, intellectual, and purely moral 
welfare of mankind second in his estimation. Men are to be made 
sober and industrious, mainly, that, as washed, shorn, and docile 
sheep, they may be driven into the narrow theological fold which 
Mr. Booth patronizes. If they refuse to enter, for all their moral 
cleanliness, they will have to take their place among the goats as 
sinners, only less dirty than the rest. 
I have been in the habit of thinking (and I believe the opinion is 
largely shared by reasonable men) that self-respect and thrift are the 
rungs of the ladder by which men may most surely climb out of the 
slough of despond of want; and I have regarded them as perhaps 
the most eminent of the practical virtues. That is not Mr. Booth’s 
opinion. For him they are mere varnished sins—nothing better than 
“ pride re-baptized ” (p. 46). Shutting his eyes to the necessary con- 
sequences of the struggle for life, the existence of which he accepts 
as fully as any Darwinian,' Mr. Booth tells men, whose evil case is 
one of those consequences, that envy is a corner-stone of our com- 
petitive system. With thrift and self-respect denounced as sin, with 
the suffering of starving men referred to the sins of the capitalist, 
the gospel according to Mr. Booth may save souls, but it will hardly 
save society. 
In estimating the social and political influence which the Salvation 
1 See p. 53. AND WORSE REMEDIES. 
37 
Army is likely to exert, it is important to reflect that the officers 
(pledged to blind obedience to their General) are not to confine them- 
selves to the functions of mere deacons and catechists (though, under 
a general like Cyril, Alexandria knew to her cost what even they 
could effect) ; they are to be “ tribunes of the people,” who are to act 
as their gratuitous legal advisers ; and, when law is not sufficiently 
effective, the whole force of the army is to obtain what the said tri- 
bunes may conceive to be justice, by the practice of ruthless intimi- 
dation. Society, says Mr. Booth, needs “mothering;” and he sets 
forth, with much complacency, a variety of “ cases,” by which we 
may estimate the sort of “ mothering ” to be expected at his parental 
hands. Those who study the materials thus set before them will, I 
think, be driven to the conclusion that the “mother” has already 
proved herself a most unscrupulous meddler, even if she has not 
fallen within reach of the arm of the law. 
Consider this “ case.” A, asserting herself to have been seduced 
twice, “ applied to our people. We hunted up the man, followed him 
to the country, threatened him with public exposure, and forced from 
him the payment to his victim of down, an allowance of a 
week, and an insurance policy on his life for in her favor ” 
(p. 222). 
Jedburgh justice this. “We” constitute ourselves prosecutor, 
judge, jury, sheriff’s officer, all in one ; “ we ” practice intimidation as. 
deftly as if we were a branch of another League ; and, under threat 
of exposure, “ we ” extort a tolerably heavy hush-money in payment 
of our silence. 
Well, really, my poor moral sense is unable to distinguish these re- 
markable proceedings of the new popular tribunate from what in 
French is called “ chantage ” and in plain English “ blackmailing.” 
And when we consider that anybody, for any reason of jealousy, or 
personal spite, or party hatred, might be thus “ hunted,” “ followed,” 
threatened,” and financially squeezed or ruined, without a particle 
of legal investigation, at the will of a man whom the familiar charged 
with the inquisitorial business dare not hesitate to obey, surely it is 
not unreasonable to ask how far does the Salvation Army, in its “tri- 
bune of the people ” aspect, differ from a Sicilian Mafia ? I am no 
apologist of men guilty of the acts charged against the person 
who yet, 1 think, might be as fairly called a “ victim ” in this case as 
his partner in wrong-doing. It is possible that, in so peculiar a case, 
Solomon himself might have been puzzled to apportion the relative 
moral delinquency of the parties. However that may be, the man 
was morally and legally bound to support his child, and any one 
would have been justified in helping the woman to her legal rights, 
and the man to the legal consequences (in which exposure is included) 
of his fault. SOCIAL DISEASES 
The action of the General of the Salvation Army in extorting the 
heavy fine he chose to impose as the price of his silence, however 
excellent his motives, appears to me to be as immoral as, I hope, it is 
illegal. 
So much for the Salvation army as a teacher of questionable ethics 
and of eccentric economics, as the legal adviser who recommends 
and practices the extraction of money by intimidation, as the fairy 
godmother who proposes to “ mother ” society in a fashion which is 
not to my taste, however much it may commend itself to some of Mr. 
Booth’s supporters. 
I am, Sir, your obedient servant, 
T. H. Huxley. 
III. 
The “ Times," December n, 1890. 
Sir—When I first addressed you on the subject of the projected oper- 
ations of the Salvation Army, all that I knew about that body was de- 
rived from the study of Mr. Booth’s book, from common repute, and 
from occasional attention to the sayings and doings of his noisy squad- 
rons, with which my walks about London, in past years, have made me 
familiar. I was quite unaware of the existence of evidence respecting 
the present administration of the Salvation forces which would have 
enabled me to act upon the sagacious maxim of the American humor- 
ist, “ Don’t prophesy unless you know.” The letter you were good 
enough to publish has brought upon me a swarm of letters and 
pamphlets. Some favor me with abuse ; some thoughtful correspond- 
ents warmly agree with me, and then proceed to point out how much 
worthier certain schemes of their own are of my friend’s support; 
some send valuable encouragement, for which I offer my hearty thanks, 
and ask them to excuse any more special acknowledgment. But 
that which I find most to the purpose “just now” is the revelation 
made by some of the documents which have reached me, of a fact of 
which I was wholly ignorant—namely, that persons who have faith- 
fully and zealously served in the Salvation Army, who express 
unchanged attachment to its original principles and practice, and who 
have been in close official relations with the “ General,” have publicly 
declared that the process of degradation of the organization into a 
mere engine of fanatical intolerance and personal ambition, which I 
declared was inevitable, has already set in and is making rapid 
progress. 
It is out of the question, Sir, that I should occupy the columns of the 
Tima with a detailed exposition and criticism of these piices jtutifica- AND WORSE REMEDIES. 
39 
tives of my forecast. I say criticism, because the assertions of persons 
who have quitted any society must, in fairness, be taken with the 
caution that is required in the case of all ex parte statements of 
hostile witnesses. But it is, at any rate, a notable fact that there 
are parts of my first letter, indicating the inherent and necessary evil 
consequences of any such organization, which might serve for abstracts 
of portions of this evidence, long since printed and published under 
the public responsibility of the witnesses. 
Let us ask the attention of your readers, in the first place, to “ An 
ex-Captain’s Experience of the Salvation Army,” by J. J. R. Redstone, 
the genuineness of which is guaranteed by the preface (dated April 
5th, 1888) which the Rev. Dr. Cunningham Geikie has supplied. Mr. 
Redstone’s story is well worth reading on its own account. Told in 
simple, direct language, such as John Bunyan might have used, it 
permits no doubt of the single-minded sincerity of the man, who gave 
up everything to become an officer of the Salvation Army, but, 
exhibiting a sad want of that capacity for unhesitating and blind 
obedience on which Mr. Booth lays so much stress, was thrown aside, 
penniless—no, I am wrong, with 2s. 4d. for his last week’s salary—to 
shift, with his equally devoted wife, as he best might. I wish I could 
induce intending contributors to Mr. Booth’s army chest to read Mr. 
Redstone’s story. I would particularly ask them to contrast the pure 
simplicity of his plain tale with the artificial pietism and slobbering 
unction of the letters which Mr. Ballington Booth addresses to his 
“dear boy” (a married man apparently older than himself), so long 
as the said “ dear boy ” is facing brickbats and starvation as per order. 
I confess that my opinion of the chiefs of the Salvation Army has 
been so distinctly modified by the perusal of this pamphlet, that I am 
glad to be relieved from the necessity of expressing it. It will be 
much better that I should cite a few sentences from the preface 
written by Dr. Cunningham Geikie, who expresses warm admiration 
for the early and uncorrupted work of the Salvation Army, and 
cannot possibly be accused of prejudice against it on religious 
grounds: 
(1) “The Salvation Army ‘ is emphatically a family concern. Mr. 
Booth, senior, is General; one son is chief of the staff, and the 
remaining sons and daughters engross the other chief positions. It is 
Booth all over ; indeed, like the sun in your eyes, you can see nothing 
else wherever you turn.’ And, as Dr. Geikie shrewdly remarks, ‘ to be 
the head of a widely-spread sect carries with it many advantages—not 
all exclusively spiritual.’ 
(2) “ Whoever becomes a Salvation officer is henceforth a slave, 
helplessly exposed to the caprice of his superiors.” 
“ Mr. Redstone bore an excellent character both before he entered 
the army and when he left it. To join it, though a married man, he SOCIAL DISEASES 
40 
gave up a situation which he had held for five years, and he served 
Mr. Booth two years, working hard in most difficult posts. His one 
fault, Major Lawley tells us,' was, that he was ‘ too straight ’—that is, 
too honest, truthful and manly—or, in other words, too real a 
Christian. Yet without trial, without formulated charges, on the 
strength of secret complaints, which were never, apparently, tested, 
he was dismissed with less courtesy than most people would show a 
beggar—with 2s. 4d. for his last week’s salary. If there be any mis- 
take in this matter I shall be glad to learn it.” 
(3) Dr. Geikie confirms, on the ground of information given con- 
fidentially by other officers, Mr. Redstone’s assertion that they are 
watched and reported by spies from headquarters. 
(4) Mr. Booth refuses to guarantee his officers any fixed amount ol 
salary. While he and his family of high officials live in comfort, if not 
in luxury, the pledged slaves, whose devotion is the foundation of any 
true success the Army has met with, often have “hardly food enough 
to sustain life. One good fellow frankly told me that when he had 
nothing he just went and begged.” 
At this point it is proper that I should interpose an apology for hav- 
ing hastily spoken of such men as Francis of Assisi, even for purposes 
of warning, in connection with Mr. Booth. Whatever may be thought 
of the wisdom of the plans of the founders of the great monastic 
orders of the middle ages, they took their full share of suffering and 
privation, and never shirked in their own persons the sacrifice they 
imposed on their followers. 
I have already expressed the opinion, that whatever the ostensible 
purpose of the scheme under discussion, one of its consequences will 
be the setting up and endowment of a new Ranter-Socialist sect. I 
may now add that another effect will be—indeed, has been—to set up 
and endow the Booth dynasty with unlimited control of the physical, 
moral and financial resources of the sect. Mr. Booth is already a 
printer and publisher, who, it is plainly declared, utilizes the officers 
of the Army as agents for advertising and selling his publications ; 
and some of them are so strongly impressed with the belief that active 
pushing of Mr. Booth’s business is the best road to their master’s 
favor, that when the public obstinately refuse to purchase his papers, 
they buy them themselves and send the proceeds to headquarters Mr. 
Booth is also a retail trader on a large scale, and the Dean of Wells 
has, most seasonably, drawn attention to the very notable banking 
project which he is trying to float. Any one who follows Dean 
Plumptre’s clear exposition of the principles of this financial operation 
can have little doubt that, whether they are or are not adequate to 
the attainment of the first and second of Mr. Booth’s ostensible 
objects, they may be trusted to effect a wide extension of any king- 
dom in which worldly possessions are of no value. We are, in fact, in AND WORSE REMEDIES. 
41 
sight of a financial catastrophe like that of Law a century ago. Only 
it is the poor who will suffer. 
I have already occupied too much of your space, and yet I have 
drawn upon only one of the sources of information about the inner 
working of the Salvation Army at my disposition. Far graver charges 
than any here dealt with are publicly brought in the others. 
I am, Sir, your obedient servant, 
T. H. Huxley. 
P. S.—I have just read Mr. Buchanan’s letter in the Times of to-day. 
Mr. Buchanan is, I believe, an imaginative writer. I am not acquainted 
with his works, but nothing in the way of fiction he has yet achieved 
can well surpass his account of my opinions and of the purport of my 
writings. 
IV. 
The “ Times," December 20, 1890. 
Sir—In discussing Mr. Booth’s projects I have hitherto left in 
the background a distinction which must be kept well in sight by 
those who wish to form a fair judgment of the influence, for good or 
evil, of the Salvation Army. Salvationism, the work of “ saving 
souls ” by revivalist methods, is one thing ; Boothism, the utilization 
of the workers for the furtherance of Mr. Booth’s peculiar projects, 
is another. Mr. Booth has captured and harnessed with sharp bits 
and effectual blinkers, a multitude of ultra-Evangelical missionaries 
of the revivalist school who were wandering at large. It is this skill- 
fully, if somewhat mercilessly, driven team which has dragged the 
“ General’s ” coach-load of projects into their present position. 
Looking, then, at the host of Salvationists proper, from the “ 
tains” downward (to whom, in my judgment, the family hierarchy 
stands in the relation of the Old Man of the Sea to Sinbad), as an 
independent entity, I desire to say that the evidence before me, 
whether hostile or friendly to the General and his schemes, is dis- 
tinctly favorable to them. It exhibits them as, in the main, poor, 
uninstructed, not unfrequently fanatical, enthusiasts, the purity of 
whose lives, the sincerity of whose belief, and the cheerfulness of 
whose endurance of privation and rough usage, in what they con- 
sider a just cause, command sincere respect. For my part, though I 
conceive the corybantic method of soul-saving to be full of dangers, 
and though the theological speculations of these good people are to 
to me wholly unexceptable, yet I believe that the evils which must 
follow in the track of such errors, as of all other errors, will be largely 
outweighed by the moral and social improvement of the people whom 42 
SOCIAL DISEASES 
they convert. I would no more raise my voice against them (so long 
as they abstain from annoying their neighbors) than I would quar- 
rel with a man, vigorously sweeping out a stye, on account of the 
shape of his broom, or because he made a great noise over his work. 
I have always had a strong faith in the principle of the injunction, 
“Thou shalt not muzzle the ox that treadeth out the corn." If a 
kingdom is worth a Mass, as a great ruler said, surely the reign of 
clean living, industry and thrift is worth any quantity of tamborines 
and eccentric doctrinal hypotheses. All that I have hitherto said, 
and propose further to say, is directed against Mr. Booth’s extremely 
clever, audacious and hitherto successful attempt to utilize the credit 
won by all this honest devotion and self-sacrifice for the purposes of 
his socialistic autocracy. 
I now propose to bring forward a little more evidence as to how 
things really stand where Mr. Booth’s system has had a fair trial. 
I obtain it, mainly, from a curious pamphlet, the title of which 
runs :—“ The New Papacy. Behind the Scenes in the Salvation Army,” 
by an ex-Staff Officer. “Make not my Father’s house a house of 
merchandise.” (John ii. 16.) 1889. Published at Toronto, by A. 
Britnell. On the cover it is stated that “ This is the book which wa* 
burned by the authorities of the Salvation Army.” I remind tht 
reader, once more, that the statements which I shall cite must be. 
regarded as ex parte; all I can vouch for is that, on grounds of inter- 
nal evidence and from other concurrent testimony respecting the 
ways of the Booth hierarchy, I feel justified in using them. 
This is the picture the writer draws of the army in the early days 
of its invasion of the Dominion of Canada :— 
“Then, it will be remembered, it professed to be the humble hand- 
maid of the existing churches ; its professed object was the evangeli- 
zation of the masses. It repudiated the idea of building up a separ- 
ate religious body, and it denounced the practice of gathering to- 
gether wealth and the accumulation of property. Men and women 
other than its own converts gathered around it and threw themselves 
heart and soul into the work, for the simple reason that it offered, as 
they supposed, a more extended and widely open field for evangelical 
effort. Ministers everywhere were invited and welcomed to its plat- 
forms, majors and colonels were few and far between, and the supre- 
macy and power of the General were things unknown. . . . Care 
was taken to avoid anything like proselytism ; its converts were never 
coerced into joining its ranks. ... In a word, the organization 
occupied the position of an auxiliary mission and recruiting agency 
for the various religious bodies. . . . The meetings were crowded, 
people professed conversion by the score, the public liberally supplied 
the means to carry on the work in their respective communities; 
therefore every corps was wholly self-supporting, its officers were AND WORSE REMEDIES. 
43 
properly, if not luxuriously, cared for, the local expenditure was 
amply provided, and under the supervision of the secretary, a 
local member, and the officer in charge, the funds were disbursed in 
the towns where they were collected, and the spirit of satisfaction 
and confidence was mutual all around ” (pp. 4, 5). 
Such was the army as the green tree. Now for the dry :— 
“ Those who have been daily conversant with the army’s machinery 
are well aware how entirely and radically the whole system has 
changed, and how, from a band of devoted and disinterested workers, 
united in the bonds of zeal and charity for the good of their fellows, 
it has developed into a colossal and aggressive agency for the building 
up of a system and a sect, bound by rules and regulations altogether 
subversive of religious liberty and antagonistic to every (other ?) 
branch of Christian endeavor, and bound hand and foot to the will of 
one supreme head and ruler. ... As the work has spread through 
the country, and as the area of its endeavors has enlarged, each lead- 
ing position has been filled, one after the other, by individuals 
strangers to the country, totally ignorant of the sentiments and 
idiosyncrasies of the Canadian people, trained in one school under 
the teachings and dominance of a member of the Booth family, and 
out of whom every idea has been crushed, except that of unquestion- 
ing obedience to the General and the absolute necessity of going for- 
ward to his bidding without hesitation or question (p. 6.) 
“What is the result of all this? In the first place, while material 
prosperity has undoubtedly been attained, spirituality has been 
quenched, and, as an evangelical agency, the army has become almost 
a dead letter. . . . In seventy-five per cent, of its stations its officers 
suffer need and privation, chiefly on account of the heavy taxation 
that is placed upon them to maintain an imposing headquarters and 
a large ornamental staff. The whole financial arrangements are car- 
ried on by a system of inflation and a hand-to-mouth extravagance 
and blindness as to future contingencies. Nearly all of its original 
workers and members have disappeared (p. 7). . . . In reference to 
the religious bodies at large the army has become entirely antagon- 
istic. Soldiers are forbidden by its rules to attend other places of 
worship without the permission of their officers. . . . Officers or 
soldiers who may conscientiously leave the service or the ranks are 
looked upon and often denounced publicly as backsliders. . . . Means 
of the most despicable description have been resorted to in order to 
starve them back to the service (p. 8). . . . In its inner workings the 
army system is identical with Jesuitism. . . . That ‘the end justifies 
the means,’ if not openly taught, is as tacitly agreed as in that cele- 
brated order” (p. 9). 
Surely a bitter, overcharged, anonymous libel is the reflection which 
will occur to many who read these passages, especially the last. SOCIAL DISEASES 
Well, I turn to other evidence which, at any rate, is not anonymous. 
It is contained in a pamphlet entitled “General Booth, ‘the Family,’ 
and the Salvation Army, showing its Rise, Progress, and Moral and 
Spiritual Decline,” by S. H. Hodges, LL.B., late Major in the Army, 
and formerly private secretary to General Booth (Manchester, 1890). 
I recommend potential contributors to Mr. Booth’s wealth to study 
this little work also. I have learned a great deal from it. Among 
other interesting novelties, it tells me that Mr. Booth has discovered 
“the necessity of a third step or blessing in the work of Salvation. 
He said to me one day, 4 Hodges, you have only two barrels to your 
gun; I have three”' (p. 31). And if Mr. Hodges’ description of 
this third barrel is correct—“giving up your conscience” and “for 
God and the army stooping to do things which even honorable 
worldly men would not consent to do” (p. 32)—it is surely calculated 
to bring down a good many things, the first principles of morality 
among them. 
Mr. Hodges gives some remarkable examples of the army practice 
with the “General’s” new rifle. But I must refer the curious to his 
instructive pamphlet. The position I am about to take up is a serious 
one; and I prefer to fortify it by the help of evidence which, though 
some of it may be anonymous, cannot be sneered away. And I shall 
be believed, when I say that nothing but a sense of the great social 
danger of the spread of Boothism could induce me to revive a 
scandal, even though it is barely entitled to the benefit of the Statute 
of Limitations. 
On the 7th of July, 1883, you, Sir, did the public a great service by 
writing a leading article on the notorious “Eagle” case, from which 
I take the following extract:— 
“Mr. Justice Kay refused the application, but he was induced to 
refuse it by means which, as Mr. Justice Stephen justly remarked, 
were highly discreditable to Mr. Booth. Mr. Booth filed an affidavit 
which appears totally to have misled Mr. Justice Kay, as it would 
have misled any one who regarded it as a frank and honest statement 
by a professed teacher of religion.” 
When I addressed my first letter to you I had never so much as 
heard of the “Eagle” scandal. But I am thankful that my percep- 
tion of the inevitable tendency of all religious autocracies toward 
evil, was clear enough to bring about a provisional condemnation of 
Mr. Booth’s schemes in my mind. Supposing that I had decided the 
other way, with what sort of feeling should I have faced my friend, 
when I had to confess that the money had passed into the absolute 
control of a person, about the character of whose administration 
this concurrence of damnatory evidence was already extant? 
I have nothing to say about Mr. Booth personally, for I know noth 
ing. On that subject, as on several others, I profess myself an AND WORSE REMEDIES. 
45 
agnostic. But, if he is, as he may be, a saint actuated by the purest 
of motives, he is not the first saint, who, as you have said, has shown 
himself “in the ardour of prosecuting a well-meant object” to be 
capable of overlooking “ the plain maxims of every day morality.” 
If I were a Salvationist soldier, I should cry with Othello, “Cassio, I 
love thee; but never more be officer of mine.” 
I am, Sir, your obedient servant, 
T. H. Huxley. 
V. 
The “ Times" December 24, 1890. 
Sir—If I have any strong points, finance is certainly not one of 
them. But the financial, or rather fiscal, operations of the General of 
the Salvation Army, as they are set forth and exemplified in “ The 
New Papacy,” possess that grand simplicity which is the mark of 
genius; and even I can comprehend them—or, to be more modest, I 
can portray them in such a manner that every lineament, however 
harsh, artd every shade, however dark, can be verified by published 
evidence. 
Suppose there is a thriving, expanding colonial town ; and that, 
scattered among its artizans and laborers, there is a sprinkling of 
Methodists, or other such ultra-evangelical good people, doing their 
best, in a quiet way, to “ save souls.” Clearly, this is an outpost which 
it is desirable to capture. “We,” therefore, take measures to get up 
a Salvation “ boom ” of the ordinary pattern. Enthusiasm is roused. 
A score or two of soldiers are enlisted into the ranks of the Salvation 
Army. “We” select the man who promises to serve our purposes 
best, make a “ captain ” of him, and put him in command of the 
“corps.” He is very pleased and grateful ; and indeed he ought to 
be. All he has done is that he has given up his trade ; that he has 
promised to work at least nine hours a day in our service (none of 
your eight-hour nonsense for us) as collector, bookseller, general 
agent, and anything else we may order him to be. “ We,” on the 
other hand, guarantee him nothing whatever ; to do so might weaken 
his faith and substitute worldly for spiritual ties between us. Know- 
ing that, if he exerts himself in a right spirit his labors will surely be 
blessed, we content ourselves with telling him that if, after all expenses 
are paid and our demands are satisfied each week, remains, he 
may take it. And, if nothing remains, he may take that, and stay his 
stomach with what the faithful may give him. With a certain grim 
playfulness, we add that the value of these contributions will be 
reckoned as so much salary. So long as our “ captain ” is successful, 46 
SOCIAL DISEASES 
therefore, a beneficent spring of cash trickles unseen into our treasury ; 
when it begins to dry up we say “ God bless you, dear boy,” turn him 
adrift (with or without 2s. 4d. in his pocket), and put some other wil- 
ling horse in the shafts. 
The “ General,” 1 believe, proposes, among other things, to do 
away with “ sweating.” May he not as well set a good example by 
beginning at home ? 
My little sketch, however, looks so like a monstrous caricature that, 
after all, 1 must produce the original from the pages of my Canadian 
authority. He says that a “ captain ” “ has to pay 10 per cent of all 
collections and donations to the divisional fund for the support of his 
divisional officer, who has also the privilege of arranging for such 
special meetings as he shall think fit, the proceeds of which he takes 
away for the general needs of the division. Headquarters, too, has 
the right to hold such special meetings at the corps and send around 
such special attractions as its wisdom sees fit, and to take away the 
proceeds for the purposes it decides upon. ... He has to pay 
the rent of his building, either to headquarters or a private individual; 
he has to send the whole collection of the afternoon meeting of the 
first Sunday in the month to the 1 Extension Fund ’ at headquarters; 
he has to pay for the heating, lighting and cleaning of his hall, to- 
gether with such necessary repairs as may be needed ; he has to pro- 
vide the food, lodging and clothing of his cadet, if he has one ; head- 
quarters taxes him with so many copies of the army papers each week, 
for which he has to pay, sold or unsold ; and when he has done this, 
he may take §6 (or $5, being a woman), or such proportion of it as 
may be left, with which to clothe and feed himself and to pay the rent 
and provide for the heating and lighting of his quarters. If he has a 
lieutenant he has to pay him $6 per week, or such proportion of it as 
he himself gets, and share the house expenses with him. Now, it will 
be easily understood that in at least 60 per cent, of the stations in 
Canada the officer gets no money at all, and he has to beg specially 
among his people for his house-rent and food. There are few 
places in the Dominion in which the soldiers do not find their officers 
in all the food they need ; but it must be remembered that the value 
of the food so received has to be accounted for at headquarters and 
entered upon the books of the corps as cash received, the amount 
being deducted from any moneys that the officer is able to take from 
the week’s collections. So that, no matter how much may be specially 
given, the officer cannot receive more than the value of $6 per week. 
The officer cannot collect any arrears of salary, as each week has to 
pay its own expenses; and if there is any surplus cash after all de- 
mands are met it must be sent to the ‘war chest’ at headquarters." 
—“ The New Papacy ” (pp. 35, 36). 
Evidently, Sir, “ headquarters ” has taken to heart the injunction AND WORSE REMEDIES. 
47 
about casting your bread upon the waters. It casts the crumb of a 
day or two’s work of an emissary and gets back any quantity of 
loaves of cash, so long as “ captains’’'present themselves to be used 
up and replaced by new victims. What can be said of these devoted 
poor fellows except, O sancta simplicitas ! 
But it would be a great mistake to suppose that the money-gather- 
ing efficacy of Mr. Booth’s fiscal agencies is exhausted by the fore- 
going enumeration of their regular operations. Consider the following 
edifying history of the “ Rescue Home ” in Toronto :— 
“ It is a fine building in the heart of the city ; the lot cost $7,000, 
and a building was put up at a cost of $7,000 more, and there is a 
mortgage on it amounting to half the cost of the whole. The land 
to-day would probably fetch double its original price, and every year 
enhances its value. ... In the first five months of its existence 
this institution received from the public an income of $1,812.70 ; out 
of this $600 were paid to headquarters for rent, $590.52 were spent upon 
the building in various ways, and the balance of $622.18 paid the 
salaries of the staff and supported the inmates” (pp. 24, 25). 
Said I not truly that Mr. Booth’s fisc bears the stamp of genius? 
Who else could have got the public to buy him a “corner lot,” put a 
building upon it, pay all its working expenses, and then, not content 
with paying him a heavy rent for the use of the handsome present 
they had made him, they say not a word against his mortgaging it to 
half its value? And, so far as any one knows, there is nothing to 
stop headquarters from selling the whole estate to-morrow and using 
the money as the “ General ” may direct. 
Once more listen to the author of “ The New Papacy,” who affirms 
that “ out of the funds given by the Dominion for the evangelization 
of the people by means of the Salvation Army, one-sixth had been 
spent in the extension of the Kingdom of God and the other five- 
sixths had been invested in valuable property, all handed over to Mr. 
Booth and his heirs and assigns as we have already stated ” (p. 26). 
And this brings me to the last point upon which I wish to touch. 
The answer to all inquiries as to what has become of the enormous 
personal and real estate which has been given over to Mr. Booth is 
that it is held “ in trust.” The supporters of Mr. Booth may feel 
justified in taking that statement “on trust.” I do’not. Anyhow, 
the more completely satisfactory this “ trust ” is, the less can any 
man who asks the public to put blind faith in his integrity and his 
wisdom object to acquaint them exactly with its provisions. Is the 
trust drawn up in favor of the Salvation Army? But what is the 
legal status of the Salvation Army ? Have the soldiers any claim ? 
Certainly not. Have the officers any legal interest in the “trust?” 
Surely not. The “ General ” has taken good care to insist on their 
renouncing all claims as a condition of their appointment. Thus, to 48 
SOCIAL DISEASES 
all appearance, the army, as a legal person, is identical with Mr. 
Booth. And in that case any “trust” ostensibly for the benefit of 
the army is—what shall we say that is at once accurate and polite? 
I conclude with these plain questions : Will Mr. Booth take coun- 
sel’s opinion as to whether there is anything in such legal arrange- 
ments as he has at present made which prevents him from disposing 
of the wealth he has accumulated at his own will and pleasure ? Will 
anybody be in a position to set either the civil or the criminal law in 
motion against him or his successors, if he or they choose to spend 
every farthing in ways very different from those contemplated by the 
donors ? 
I may add that a careful study of the terms of a “ Declaration of 
Trust by William Booth in favor of the Christian Mission," made in 
1878, has not enabled persons of much greater competence than my- 
self to answer these questions satisfactorily. 
I am, Sir, your obedient servant, 
T. H. Huxley. 
On the 24th December a letter appeared in the Times signed “ J. S. 
Trotter,” in which the following passages appear : 
“ It seems a pity to put a damper on the spirits of those who agree 
with Professor Huxley in his denunciation of General Booth and all 
his works. May I give a few particulars as to the * book ’ which was 
published in Canada? I had the pleasure of an interview with the 
author of a book written in Canada. Thf book was printed at 
Toronto, and two copies only struck off by the printers ; one of these 
copies was stolen from the printer, and the quotation sent to you by 
Professor Huxley was inserted in the book, and is consequently a 
forgery. The book was published without the consent and against the 
will of the author. 
“ So the quotation is not only * a bitter, overcharged, anonymous 
libel,' as Professor Huxley intimates, but a forgery as well. As to 
Mr. Hodges, it seems to me to be simply trifling with your readers to 
bring him in as an authority. He was turned out of the army, out of 
kindness taken on again, and again dismissed. If this had happened 
to one of your staff, would his opinion of the Times as a newspaper 
be taken for gospel ? ” 
But in the Times of December 29th, Mr. J. S. Trotter writes :— 
“ I find I was mistaken in saying, in my letter of Wednesday to 
the Times, that Mr. Hodges was dismissed from the service of General 
Booth, and regret any inconvenience the statement may have caused 
to Mr. Hodges.” 
And on December 30th, the Times published a letter from Mr. 
Hodges in which he says that Mr. Trotter’s statements as they regard AND WORSE REMEDIES. 
49 
himself “are the very reverse of truth. I was never turned out of the 
Salvation Army. Nor, so far as I was made acquainted with General 
Booth’s motives, was I taken on again out of kindness. In order to 
rejoin the Salvation Army, I resigned the position of manager in a 
mill where I was in receipt of a salary of per annum, with house 
rent and one-third of the profits. Instead of this Mr. Booth allowed 
me jQ2 per week and house rent. 
The “ Times," December 26, 1890. 
VI. 
Sir—I am much obliged to Mr. J. S. Trotter for the letter which 
you publish this morning. It furnishes evidence which I much desired 
to possess on the following points:— 
1. The author of “ The New Papacy ” is a responsible, trustworthy 
person ; otherwise Mr. Trotter would not speak of having had “the 
pleasure of an interview ” with him. 
2. After this responsible person had taken the trouble to write a 
pamphlet of sixty-four closely printed pages, some influence was 
brought to bear upon him, the effect of which was that he refused his 
consent to its publication. Mr. Trotter’s excellent information will 
surely enable him to tell us what influence that was. 
3. How does Mr. Trotter know that any passage I have quoted is 
an interpolation? Does he possess that other copy of the “two” 
which alone, as he affirms, were printed ? 
4. If so, he will be able to say which of the passages I have cited is 
genuine and which is not; and whether the tenor of the whole uninter- 
polated copy differs in any important respect from that of the copy 
I have quoted. 
It will be interesting to hear what Mr. J. S. Trotter has to say 
upon these points. But the really important thing which he has 
done is that he has testified, of his own knowledge, that the anony- 
mous author of “ The New Papacy ” is no mere irresponsible libeler, 
but a person of whom even an ardent Salvationist has to speak with 
respect. 
I am, Sir, your obedient servant, 
T. H. Huxley. 
[I may add that the unfortunate Mr. Trotter did me the further 
service of eliciting the letter from Mr. Hodges referred toonpp. 48,49, 
which sufficiently establishes that gentleman’s credit, and leads me 
to attach full weight to his evidence about the “third barrel.”] 
January, 1891. 50 
SOCIAL DISEASES 
VII. 
The “ Times," December 27, 1890. 
Sir—In making use of the only evidence of the actual working of 
Mr. Booth’s autocratic government accessible to me, I was fully 
aware of the slippery nature of the ground upon which 1 was tread- 
ing. For, as I pointed out in my first letter, “ no personal habit more 
surely degrades the conscience and the intellect than blind and un- 
hesitating obedience to unlimited authority.” Now we have it, on 
Mr. Booth’s own showing, that every officer of his has undertaken to 
“obey without questioning or gainsaying the orders from head- 
quarters.” And the possible relations of such orders to honor and 
veracity are demonstrated not only by the judicial deliverance on 
Mr. Booth’s affidavit in the “Eagle” case, which I have already 
cited ; not only by Mr. Bramwell Booth’s admission before Mr. Justice 
Lopes that he had stated what was “ not quite correct," because he 
had “ promised Mr. Stead not to divulge” the facts of the case (the 
Times, November 4, 1885) ; but by the following passage in Mr. 
Hodges’ account of the reasons of his withdrawal from the Salvation 
Army : 
“ The General and Chief did not and could not deny doing these 
things ; the only question was this, was it right to practice this de- 
ception ? These points of difference were fully discussed between 
myself and the Chief of the Staff on my withdrawal, especially the 
Leamington incident, which was the one that finally drove me to de- 
cision. I had come to the conclusion, from the first, that they had 
acted, as they supposed, with a single eye to the good of God’s cause, 
and had persuaded myself that the things were, as against the devil, 
right to be done ; that, as in battle, one party captured and turned 
the enemy’s own guns upon them, so, as they were fighting against 
the devil, it would be fair to use against him his weapons. And I 
wrote to this effect to the General ” (p. 63). 
Now, I do not wish to say anything needlessly harsh, but I ask any 
prudent man these questions. Could I, under these circumstances, 
trust any uncorroborated statement emanating from headquarters, or 
made by the General’s order ? Had I any reason to doubt the truth 
of Mr. Hodges’ naive confession of the corrupting influence of Mr. 
Booth’s system ? And did it not behove me to pick my way care- 
fully through the mass of statements before me, many of them due to 
people whose moral sense might, by possibility, have been as much 
blunted by the army discipline in the use of the weapons of the devil 
as Mr. Hodges affirms that his was ? 
Therefore, in my third letter, I commenced my illustrations of the 
practical working of Boothism with the evidence of Mr. Redstone, AND WORSE REMEDIES. 
fortified and supplemented by that of a non-Salvationist, Dr. Cun- 
ningham Geikie. That testimony has not been challenged, and until 
it is I shall assume that it cannot be. In my fourth letter I cited a 
definite statement by Mr. Hodges in evidence of the Jesuitical prin- 
ciples of headquarters. What sort of answer is it to tell us that Mr. 
Hodges was dismissed the army ? A child might expect that some 
such red herring would be drawn across the trail ; and, in anticipa- 
tion of the stale trick, I added the strong prima facie evidence of the 
trustworthiness of my witness, in this particular, which is afforded by 
the “ Eagle ” case. It was not until I wrote my fourth letter to you, 
Sir—until the exploitation of the “captains” and the Jesuitry of 
headquarters could be proved up to the hilt—that I ventured to have 
recourse to “ The New Papacy.” So far as the pamphlet itself goes, 
this is an anonymous work ; and, for sufficient reasons, I did not 
choose to go beyond what was to be found between its covers. To 
any one accustomed to deal with the facts of evolution, the Boothism 
of “ The New Papacy ” was merely the natural and necessary de- 
velopment of the Boothism of Mr. Redstone’s case and of the “ Eagle ” 
case. Therefore, I felt fully justified in using it, at the same time 
carefully warning my readers that it must be taken with due caution. 
Mr. Trotter’s useful letter admits that such a book was written by 
a person with whom he had the “pleasure of an interview,” and that 
a version of it (interpolated according to his assertion) was published 
against the will of the author. Hence I am justified in believing 
that there is a foundation of truth in certain statements, some of 
which have long been in my possession, but which for lack of Mr. 
Trotter’s valuable corroboration I have refrained from using. The 
time is come when I can set forth some of the heads of this informa- 
tion, with the request that Mr. Trotter, who knows all about the 
business, will be so good as to point out any error that there may be 
in them. I am bound to suppose that his sole object, like mine, is 
the elucidation of the truth, and to assume his willingness to help me 
therein to the best of his ability. 
1. “The author of ‘The New Papacy’ is a Mr. Sumner, a person 
of perfect respectability and greatly esteemed in Toronto, who held a 
high position in the Army. When he left, a large public meeting, 
presided over by a popular Methodist minister, passed a vote of 
sympathy with him.” 
Is this true or false ? 
2. “On Saturday last, about noon, Mr. Sumner, the author of the 
book, and Mr. Fred Perry, the Salvation Army printer, accompanied 
by a lawyer, went down to Messrs. Imrie and Graham’s establish- 
ment, and asked for all the manuscript, stereotype plates, etc., of the 
book. Mr. Sumner explained that the book had been sold to the 52 
SOCIAL DISEASES 
Army, and, on a check for the amount due being given, the printing 
material was delivered up.” 
Did these paragraphs appeaf in the Toronto Ttlrgram of April 24th, 
1889, or did they not? Are the statements they contain true or 
false ? 
3. “ Public interest in the fate or probable outcome of that myster- 
ious book called 4 The New Papacy ; or, Behind the Scenes in the 
Salvation Army/ continues unabated, though the line of proceedings 
by the publisher and his solicitor, Mr. Smoke, of Watson, Thorne, 
Smoke and Masten, has not been altered since yesterday. The book, 
no doubt, will be issued in some form. So far as known, only one 
complete copy remains, and the whereabouts of this is a secret which 
will be profoundly kept. It is safe to say that if the Commissioner 
kept on guessing until the next anniversary, he would not strike the 
secluded location of the one volume among five thousand which 
escaped, when he and his assistant, Mr. Fred Perry, believed they 
had cast every vestige of the forbidden work into the fiery furnace. 
On Tuesday last, when the discovery was made that a copy of 4 The 
New Papacy ’ was in existence, Publisher Britnell, of Yonge Street, 
was at once the suspected holder, and in a short time his book-store 
was the resort of army agents sent to reconnoitre ” (Toronto Nrws, 
April 28th, 1889). 
Is this a forgery, or is it not? Is it in substance true or false? 
When Mr. Trotter has answered these inquiries categorically, we 
may proceed to discuss the question of interpolations in Mr. Sum- 
ner’s book. 
I am, Sir, your obedient servant, 
T. H. Huxley. 
[On the 26th of December a letter, signed J. T. Cunningham, late 
Fellow of University College, Oxford, called forth the following 
commentary]. 
The '* Times,” December 29, 1890. 
VIII. 
Sir—If Mr. Cunningham doubts the efficacy of the struggle for 
existence, as a factor in social conditions, he should find fault with 
Mr. Booth and not with me. 
“ I am laboring under no delusion as to the possibility of inaugu- 
rating the millennium by my social specific. In the struggle of life 
the weakest will go to the wall and there are so many weak. The 
fittest in tooth and claw will survive. All that we can do is to soften AND WORSE REMEDIES. 
53 
the lot of the unfit and make their suffering less horrible than it is at 
present” (“ In Darkest England,” p. 44). 
That is what Mr. Cunningham would have found if he had read 
Mr. Booth’s book with attention. And, if he will bestow equal pains 
on my second letter, he will discover that he has interpolated the 
word “wilfully”, in his statement of my “argument,” which runs 
thus: “Shutting his eyes to the necessary consequences of the strug- 
gle for life, the existence of which he admits as fully as any Dar- 
winian, Mr. Booth tells men whose evil case is one of those conse- 
quences that envy is a corner-stone of our competitive system.” Mr. 
Cunningham’s physiological studies will have informed him that the 
process of “shutting the eyes,” in the literal sense of the words, is 
not always wilful; and I propose to illustrate, by the crucial instance 
his own letter furnishes, that the “ shutting of the eyes ” of the mind 
to the obvious consequences of accepted propositions may also be 
involuntary. At least, I hope so. 
1. “ Sooner or later,” says Mr. Cunningham, “the population prob- 
lem will block the way once more.” What does this mean, except 
that multiplication, excessive in relation to the contemporaneous 
means of support, will create a severe competition for those means ? 
And this seems to me to be a pretty accurate “ reflection of the con- 
ceptions of Malthus ” and the other poor benighted folks of a past 
generation at whom Mr. Cunningham sneers. 
2. By way of leaving no doubt upon this subject, Mr. Cunningham 
further tells us, “ The struggle for existence is always going on, of 
course ; let us thank Darwin for making us realize it.” It is pleasant 
to meet with a little gratitude to Darwin among the epigo?ii who are 
squabbling over the heritage he conquered for them, but Mr. Cun- 
ningham’s personal expression of that feeling is hasty. For it is 
obvious that he has not “ realized ” the significance of Darwin’s 
teaching—indeed, I fail to discover in Mr. Cunningham’s letter any 
sign that he has even “realized” what he would be at. If the 
“struggle for existence is always going on,” and if, as I suppose 
will be granted, industrial competition is one phase of that struggle, 
I fail to see how my conclusion that it is sheer wickedness to tell 
ignorant men that “envy” is a corner-stone of competition, can be 
disputed. 
Mr. Cunningham has followed the lead of that polished and in- 
structed person, Mr. Ben Tillett, in rebuking me for (as the associates 
say) attacking Mr. Booth’s personal character. Of course, when I 
was writing, I did not doubt that this very handy, though not too 
clean, weapon would be used by one or other of Mr. Booth’s support- 
ers. And my action was finally decided by the following considera- 
tions : I happen to be a member of one of the largest life insurance SOCIAL DISEASES 
54 
societies. There is a vacancy in the directory at present, for which 
half a dozen gentlemen are candidates. Now, I said to myself, sup- 
posing that one of these gentlemen (whose pardon I humbly beg for 
starting the hypothesis), say Mr. A., in his administrative capacity 
and as a man of business, has been the subject of such observations 
as a Judge on the Bench bestowed upon Mr. Booth, is he a person 
for whom I can properly vote ? And, if I find, when I go to the 
meeting of the policy-holders, that most of them know nothing of this 
and other evidences of what, by the mildest judgment, must be 
termed Mr. A.’s unfitness for administrative responsibilities, am I to 
let them remain in their ignorance ? I leave the answer and its ap- 
plication to men of sense and integrity. 
The mention of Mr. Cunningham’s ally reminds me that I have 
omitted to thank Mr. Tillett for his very useful and instructive letter; 
and I hasten to repair a neglect which I assure Mr. Tillett was more 
apparent than real. Mr. Tillett’s letter is dated December 20th. On 
the 21 st the following pregnant (however unconscious) commentary 
upon it appeared in Reynolds's Nnvspaper: 
“I have always maintained that the Salvation Army is one of the 
mightiest Socialistic agencies in the country; and now Professor 
Huxley comes in to confirm that view. How could it be otherwise? 
The fantastic religious side of Salvationism will disappear in the 
course of time, and what will be left ? A large number of men and 
women who have been organized, disciplined, and taught to look for 
something better than their present condition, and who have become 
public speakers and not afraid of ridicule. There you have the raw 
materials for a Socialist army.” 
Mr. Ben Tillett evidently knows Latin enough to construe prox- 
imus ardet. 
I trust that the public will not allow themselves to be led away by 
the false issues which are dangled before them. A man really may 
love his fellow-men ; cherish any form of Christianity he pleases; 
and hold not only that Darwinism is ** tottering to its fall,” but, if he 
pleases, the equally sane belief that it never existed ; and yet may 
feel it his duty to oppose, to the best of his capacity, despotic Social- 
ism in all its forms, and, more particularly, in its Boothian disguise. 
I am, Sir, your obedient servant, 
T. H. Huxley. 
[Persons who have not had the advantage of a classical education 
might fairly complain of my use of the word epigoni. To say truth, I 
had been reading Droysen’s “ Geschichte des Hellenismus,” and the 
familiar historical title slipped out unawares. In replying to me, how- 
ever, the late “Fellow of University College,*’ Oxford, declares he AND WORSE REMEDIES. 
55 
had to look the word out in a Lexicon. I commend the fact to the 
notice of the combatants over the desirability of retaining the present 
compulsory modicum of Greek in our Universities.] 
IX. 
Sir—I am much obliged to Messrs. Ranger, Burton and Matthews 
for their prompt answer to my questions. I presume it applies to all 
money collected by the agency of the Salvation Army, though not 
specifically given for the purposes of the “ Christian Mission ” named 
in the deed of 1878 ; to all sums raised by mortgage upon houses and 
land so given ; and further, to funds subscribed for Mr. Booth’s various 
projects, which have no apparent reference to the objects of the 
“ Christian Mission,” as defined in the deed. Otherwise, to use a 
phrase which has become classical, “ it does not assist us much.” But 
I must leave these points to persons learned in the law. 
And, indeed, with many thanks to you, Sir, for the amount of valu- 
able space which you have allowed me to occupy, I now propose to 
leave the whole subject. My sole purpose in embarking upon an 
enterprise, which was extremely distasteful to me, was to prevent the 
skillful “ General,” or rather “ Generals,” who devised the plan of 
campaign, from sweeping all before them with a rush. I found the 
pass already held by such stout defenders as Mr. Loch and the Dean 
of Wells, and, with your powerful help, we have given time for the 
reinforcements, sure to be sent by the abundant, though somewhat 
slowly acting, common sense of our countrymen, to come up. 
I can no longer be useful, and I return to more congenial occupa- 
tions. 
I am, Sir, your obedient servant, 
T. H. Huxley. 
The ** Times'* December 30, 1890. 
X. 
The “ Times," January 13, 1891. 
Sir—A letter from Mr. Booth-Clibborn, dated January 3, appeared 
in the Times of yesterday. This elaborate document occupies three 
columns of small print—space enough, assuredly, for an effectual 
reply to the seven letters of mine to which the writer refers, if any 
such were forthcoming. Mr. Booth-Clibborn signs himself “Com- 
missioner of the Salvation Army for France and Switzerland,” but he 
says that he accepts my “ challenge ” without the knowledge of his 56 
SOCIAL DISEASES 
chiefs. Considering the self-damaging character of his letter, it was, 
perhaps, hardly necessary to make that statement. 
Mr. “Commissioner” Booth-Clibborn speaks of my “challenge.” I 
presume that he refers to my request for information about the 
authorship and fate of “ The New Papacy,” in the letter published in 
the Times on December 27, 1890. The “Commissioner” deals with 
this matter in paragraph No. 4 of his letter ; and I observe, with no 
little satisfaction, that he does not venture to controvert any one of 
the statements of my witnesses. He tacitly admits that the author of 
“The New Papacy” was a person “greatly esteemed in Toronto,” 
and that he held “a high position in the army;” further, that the 
Canadian “ Commissioner ” thought it worth while to pay the printer’s 
bill, in order that the copies already printed off might be destroyed, 
and the pamphlet effectually suppressed. Thus the essential facts of 
the case are admitted and established beyond question. 
How does Mr. Booth-Clibborn try to explain them away ? 
“ Mr. Sumner, who wrote the little book in a hot fit, soon regretted 
it (as any man would do whose conscience showed him in a calmer 
moment, when his ‘ respectability ’ returned with his repentance, that 
he had grossly misrepresented), and just before it appeared offered to 
order its suppression if the army would pay the costs already incurred, 
and which he was unable to bear.” 
“The New Papacy” fills sixty closely-printed duodecimo pages. It 
is carefully written, and for the most part in studiously moderate 
language ; moreover, it contains many precise details and figures, the 
ascertainment of which must have taken much time and trouble. Yet, 
forsooth, it was written in a “hot fit.” 
■ I sincerely hope, for the sake of his own credit, that Mr. “ Com- 
missioner ” Booth-Clibborn does not know as much about this melan- 
choly business as I do. My hands are unfortunately tied, and I am 
not at liberty to use all the information in my possession. I must 
Content myself with quoting the following passage from the preface 
to “ The New Papacy : ” 
“ It has not been without considerable thought and a good deal of 
urging that the following pages have been given to the public. But 
though we would have shrunk from a labor so distasteful, and have 
gladly avoided a notoriety anything but pleasant to the feelings, or 
conducive to our material welfare, we have felt that in the interests 
of the benevolent public, in the interests of religion, in the interests 
of a band of devoted men and women whose personal ends are being 
defeated, and the fruit of whose labor is being destroyed, and, above 
all, in the interests of that future which lies before the Salvation Army 
itself if purged and purified in its executive and returned to its original 
position in the ranks of Canadian Christian effort, it is no more than 
our duty to throw such light as we are able upon its true inwardness, AND WORSE REMEDIES. 
57 
and with that object and for the furtherance of those ends we offer 
our pages to the public view.” 
The preface is dated April, 1889. According to the statement in 
the Toronto Telegram, which Mr. “Commissioner” Booth-Clibborn 
does not dare to dispute, his Canadian fellow “ Commissioner ” bought 
and destroyed the whole edition of “The New Papacy ” about the end 
of'the third week in April. It is clear that the writer of the paragraph 
quoted from the preface was well out of a “ hot fit ” if he had ever 
been in one, while he had not entered on the stage of repentance 
within three weeks of that time. Mr. “Commissioner” Booth-Clib- 
born’s scandalous, insinuations that Mr. Sumner was bribed by “a few 
sovereigns,” and that he was “bought off,” in the face of his own 
admission that Mr. Sumner “ offered to order its suppression if the 
army would pay the costs already incurred, and which he was unable 
to bear,” is a crucial example of that Jesuitry with which the officials 
of the army have been so frequently charged. 
Mr. “Commissioner ” Booth-Clibborn says that when “ London head- 
quarters heard of the affair, it disapproved of the action of the Com- 
missioner.” That circumstance indicates that headquarters is not 
wholly devoid of intelligence ; but it has nothing to do with the value 
of Mr. Sumner’s evidence, which is all I am concerned about. Very 
likely London headquarters will disapprove of its French “Commis- 
sioner’s” present action. But what then? The upshot of all this is 
that Mr. Booth-Clibborn has made as great a blunder as simple 
Mr. Trotter did. The pair of Balaams greatly desired to curse, but 
have been compelled to bless. They have, between them, completely 
justified my reliance on Mr. Sumner as a perfectly trustworthy wit- 
ness ; and neither of them has dared to challenge the accuracy of one 
solitary statement made by that worthy gentleman, whose full story I 
hope some day or other to see set before the public. Then the true 
causes of his action will be made known. 
Paragraph 2 of the “Commissioner’s” letter says many things, but 
not much about Mr. Hodges. The columns of the Times recently 
showed that Mr. Hodges was able to compel an apology from Mr. 
Trotter. I leave it to him to deal with the “Commissioner.” 
As to the “ Eagle ” case, treated of in paragraph No. 3, a gentleman 
well versed in the law, who was in Court during the hearing of the 
appeal, has assured me that the argument was purely technical; that 
the facts were very slightly gone into ; and that, so far as he knows, 
no dissenting comment was made on the strictures of the Judge before, 
whom the case first came. Moreover, in the judgment of the Master 
of the Rolls, fully recorded in the Times of February 14, 1884, the 
following passages occur : 
“ The ease had been heard by a learned Judge* who had exercised 58 
SOCIAL DISEASES 
his discretion upon it, and the Court would not interfere with his dis- 
cretion unless they could see that he was wrong. The learned Judge 
had taken a strong view of the conduct of the defendant, but never- 
theless had said that he would have given relief if he could have seen 
how far protection and compensation could be given. And if this 
Court differed from him In that view, and could give relief without 
forfeiture, they would be acting on his own principle in doing so. 
Certain suggestions had been made with that view, and the Court had 
to consider the case under all the circumstances. . . . He him- 
self (the Master of the Rolls) considered that it was probable the 
defendant, with his principles, had intended to destroy the property 
as a public-house, and that it was not right thus to take property 
under a covenant to keep it up as a public-house, intending to destroy 
it as such. He did not, however, think this was enough to deprive 
him of all relief. . . . The defendant could only expect severe 
terms.” 
Yet, Sir, Mr. “Commissioner” Booth-Clibborn, this high official 
of the Salvation Army, has the audacity to tell the public that if I 
had made inquiries I should have found that “ in the Court of Appeal 
the Judge reversed the decision of his predecessor as regards seven- 
eighths of the property, and the General was declared to have acted 
all along with straightforwardness and good faith.” 
But the nature of Mr. “ Commissioner ” Booth-Clibborn’s concep- 
tions of straightforwardness and good faith is so marvelously illus- 
trated by the portions of his letter with which I have dealt, that I 
doubt not his statements are quite up to the level of the “ Army ” 
Regulations and Instructions in regard to those cardinal virtues. As 
I pointed out must be the case, the slave is subdued to that he 
works in. 
For myself, I must confess that the process of wading through 
Mr. “Commissioner’s” verbose and clumsy pleadings has given me a 
“hot fit," which, I undertake to say, will be followed by not so much 
as a passing shiver of repentance. And it is under the influence of 
the genial warmth diffused through the frame—on one of those rare 
occasions when one may be “angry and sin not ”—that I infringe my 
resolution to trouble you with no more letters. On reflection, I am 
convinced that it is undesirable that the public should be misled, for 
even a few days, by misrepresentations so serious. 
I am copiously abused for speaking of the Jesuitical methods of 
the superior officials of the Salvation Army. But the following facts 
have not been, and, I believe, cannot be, denied :— 
1. Mr. Booth’s conduct in the “ Eagle ” case has been censured by 
two of the judges. 
2. Mr. Bramwell Booth admitted before Mr. Justice Lopes that he AND WORSE REMEDIES. 
59 
had made an untrue statement because of a promise he had made to 
Mr. Stead.' 
And I have just proved that Mr. “Commissioner” Booth-Clibborn 
asserts the exact contrary of that which your report of the judgment 
of the Master of the Rolls tells us that distinguished judge said. 
Under these circumstances, I think that my politeness in applying 
no harder adjective than “Jesuitical” to these proceedings is not 
properly appreciated. 
I am, Sir, your obedient servant, 
T. H. Huxley. 
1 This statement has been disputed, but not yet publicly. THE SALVATION ARMY. 
ARTICLES OF WAR. 
TO BE SIGNED BY ALL WHO WISH TO BE ENTERED ON 
THE ROLL AS SOLDIERS. 
Having received with all my heart the Salvation offered to me by the tender mercy 
of Jehovah, I do here and now publicly acknowledge God to be my Father and King, 
Jesus Christ to be my Saviour, and the Holy Spirit to be my Guide, Comforter, and 
Strength ; and that I will, by His help, love, serve, worship, and obey this glorious 
God through all time and through all eternity. 
Believing solemnly that The Salvation Army has been raised up by God, and is 
sustained and directed by Him, I do here declare my full determination, by God's 
help, to be a true Soldier of the Army till I die. 
I am thoroughly convinced of the truth of the Army’s teaching. 
I believe that repentance toward God, faith in our Lord Jesus Christ, and con- 
version by the Holy Spirit, are necessary to Salvation, and that all men may 
be saved. 
I believe that we are saved by Grace, through faith in our Ix>rd Jesus Christ, 
and that he that believeth hath the witness of it in himself. I have got it. 
Thank God ! 
I believe that the Scriptures were given by inspiration of God, and that they 
teach that not only does continuance in the favor of God depend on contin- 
ued faith in, and obedience to, Christ, but that it is possible for those who 
have been truly converted to fall away and be eternally lost. 
I believe that it is the privilege of all God’s people to be “ wholly sanctified," 
and that “their whole spirit and soul and body” may " be preserved blame- 
less unto the coming of our Ix>rd Jesus Christ.” That is to say, I believe 
that after conversion there remain in the heart of the believer inclinations 
to evil, or roots of bitterness, which, unless overpowered by Divine grace, 
produce actual sin ; but these evil tendencies can be entirely taken away by 
the Spirit of God, and the whole heart thus cleansed from anything contrary 
to the will of God, or entirely sanctified, will then produce the fruit of the 
Spirit only. And I believe that persons thus entirely sanctified may, by the 
power of God, be kept unblamable and unreprovable before Him. 
I believe in the immortality of the soul ; in the resurrection of the body ; in 
the general judgment at the end of the world ; in the eternal happiness of 
the righteous; and in the everlasting punishment of the wicked. SOCIAL DISEASES AND WORSE REMEDIES. 
61 
Therefore, I do here, and now, and forever, renounce the world with all its 
sinful pleasures, companionships, treasures and objects, and declare my full determi- 
nation boldly to show myself a Soldier of Jesus Christ in all places and companies, 
no matter what I may have to suffer, do, or lose, by so doing. 
I do here and now declare that I will abstain from the use of all intoxicating 
liquors, and also from the habitual use of opium, laudanum, morphia, and all other 
baneful drugs, except when in illness such drugs shall be ordered for me by a doctor. 
I do here and now declare that I will abstain from the use of all low or profane 
language ; from the taking of the name of God in vain ; and from all impurity, or 
from taking part in any unclean conversation or the reading of any obscene book or 
paper at any time, in any company, or in any place. 
I do here declare that I will not allow myself in any falsehood, deceit, misrepre- 
sentation, or dishonesty ; neither will I practice any fraudulent conduct, either in my 
business, my home, or in any other relation in which I may stand to my fellow-men, 
but that I will deal truthfully, fairly, honorably, and kindly with all those who may 
employ me or whom I may myself employ. 
I do here declare that I will never treat any woman, child, or other person, whose 
life, comfort or happiness may be placed within my power, in an oppressive, cruel, or 
cowardly manner, but that I will protect such from evil and danger so far as I can, 
and promote, to the utmost of my ability, their present welfare and eternal salvation. 
I do here declare that I will spend all the time, strength, money, and influ- 
ence I can in supporting and carrying on this War, and that I will endeavor to lead 
my family, friends, neighbors, and all others whom I can influence, to do the same, 
believing that the sure and only way to remedy all the evils in the world is by bring- 
ing men to submit themselves to the government of the Lord Jesus Christ. 
I do here declare that I will always obey the lawful orders of my Officers, and that 
I will carry out to the utmost of my power all the Orders and Regulations of the 
Army; and further, that I will be an example of faithfulness to its principles, advance 
to the utmost of my ability its operations, and never allow, where I can prevent it, 
any injury to its interests or hindrance to its success. 
And I do here and now call upon all present to witness that I enter into this 
undertaking and sign these Articles of War of my own free will, feeling that the love 
of Christ who died to save me requires from me this devotion of my life to His service 
for the Salvation of the whole world, and therefore wish now to be enrolled as a Sol- 
dier of the Salvation Army. 
CORPS 
.18 .Corps. 
.Division. 
.18 
(SINGLE) 
FORM OF APPLICATION 
FOR AN APPOINTMENT AS AN 
OFFICER IN THE SALVATION ARMY 
Name 
Address 
1. What was your AGE last birthday ? What it the 
date of your birthday ? 
2. What is your height ? 
3. Are you free from bodily defect or disease? 
4. What serious illnesses have you had. and when ?. 
5. Have you ever had fits of any kind ? If so, how 
long ago, and what kind ? 
6. Do you consider your health good, and that you are strong enough for the work 
of an Officer ? If not, 
or if you are doubtful, write a letter and explain the matter. 
7. Is your doctor's certificate a full and correct statement so far as you know ? 
8. Are you, or have you ever been married ? 
9. When and where CONVERTED? 
10. What other Religious Societies have you belonged to ? 
11. Were you ever a Junior Soldier? If so, how long? 
12. How long have you been enrolled as a SOLDIER ? 
and signed Articles of War ? . * •. 
13. If you hold any office in your Corps, say what and how long held?. 
14. Do you intend to live and die in the ranks of the Salvation Army ?. SOCIAL DISEASES AND WORSE REMEDIES. 
63 
15. Have you ever been an open BACKSLIDER ? jf 
how long ? 
16. Why? Date of your Restoration? 
17. Are you in DEBT? If so, how much? 
Why? 
18. How long owing? What for? 
19. Did you ever use intoxicating Drink ? if S0) how long 
is it since you entirely gave up its use? 
20. Did you ever use Tobacco or Snuff ? If so, how long 
is it since you gave up using either ? 
21. What UNIFORM do you wear? 
22. How long have you worn it? 
23. Do you agree to dress in accordance with the direction of Headquarters? 
24. Can you provide your own uniform and “ List of Necessaries” before entering 
the Service? 
25. Are you in a SITUATION? If so, how long? 
26. Nature of duties, and salary ? 
27. Name and address of employer? 
28. If out, date of leaving last situation? How 
long there? 
29. Why did you leave ? 
30. Name and address of last employer? 
31. Can you start the SINGING? 
32. Can you play any musical instrument ? If so, what ? 
33. Is this form filled up by you ? C.an you read well at 
first sight? 
34. Can you write SHORTHAND? If so, what speed 
and system? 
35. Can you speak any language other than English ? If 
so, what? 
36. Have you had any experience and success in the JUNIOR SOLDIERS’ WAR ? 
37- H so, what ? 
38. Are you willing to sell the “ WAR CRY” on Sundays? 
39. Do you engage not to publish any books, songs, or music, except for the benefit 
of the Salvation Army, and then only with the consent of Headquarters? 
40. Do you promise not to engage in any trade, profession, or other money-making 
occupation, except for the benefit of the Salvation Army, and then only with 
the consent of Headquarters ? 
41. Would you be willing to go ABROAD if required? 64 
SOCIAL DISEASES 
42. Do you promise to do your utmost to help forward the Junior Soldiers’ work If 
accepted ? 
43. Do you pledge yourself to spend not less than nine hours every day in the active 
service of the Army, of which not less than three hours of each week-day 
shall be spent in VISITATION ? 
44. Do you pledge yourself to fill up and send to Headquarters forms as to how your 
day is spent ? 
45- Have you read, and do you believe, the DOCTRINES printed on the other 
side? 
46. Have you read the “ Orders and Regulations for Field Officers” of the Army?.. 
(If you have not got a copy of “ Orders and Regulation*," get one from Candidate*' Department at 
once. The price to candidates is at. bd.) 
47. Do you pledge yourself to study and carry out, and to endeavor to train others to 
carry out, all orders and regulations of the Army ? 
48. Have you read the Order on page 3 of this Form as to PRESENTS and TES- 
TIMONIALS, and do you engage to carry it out ? 
49. Do you pledge yourself never to receive any sum in the form of pay beyond the 
amount of allowances granted under the scale which follows? 
Allowances—From the day of arrival at his station, each officer is entitled to 
draw the following allowances, provided the amount remains in hand after 
meeting all local expenses, namely: For Single Men—Lieutenants, ifw. weekly, 
and Captains, iSs For Single Women—Lieutenants, tar. weekly, and Cap- 
tains, 15/. weekly. Married men, 27/. per week, and is. per week for each 
child under 14 years of age ; in all cases without house-rent. 
50. Do you perfectly understand that no salary or allowance is guaranteed to you, and 
that you will have no claim against The Salvation Army, or against any one 
connected therewith, on account of salary or allowances not received by you ?.. 
51. Have you ever APPLIED BEFORE? If so, when? 
52. With what result ? 
53. If you have ever been in the service of The Salvation Army in any position, say 
what ? ; 
54. Why did you leave ?. 
55. Are you willing to come into TRAINING that we may see whether you have the 
necessary goodness and ability for an Officer in The Salvation Army, and 
should we conclude that you have not the necessary qualifications, do you 
pledge yourself to return home and work in your Corps without creating any 
dissatisfaction ? 
56. Will you pay your own traveling expenses if we decide to receive you In Training? 
57. How much can you pay for your maintenance while in Training? '. 
58. Can you deposit £\ so that we can provide you with a suit of Uniform when you 
are commissioned ? 
59. What is the shortest NOTICE you require should we want you?. 
60. Are your PARENTS willing that you should become an Officer? 
61. Does anyone depend upon you for support ? If so, who? 
62. To what extent ? 
63. Give your parents’, or nearest living relatives', full address AND WORSE REMEDIES. 
64. Are you COURTING? If so, give name and address 
of the person? .• 
65. How long have you been engaged? What is the person’s 
age? 
66. What is the date of Birthday ? How long enrolled as a 
SOLDIER? 
67. What Uniform does the person wear? How long 
worn ? * 
68. What does the person do in the Corps? 
69. Has the person applied for the work ? 
70. If not, when does the person intend doing so? '. 
71. Do the parents agree to the person coming into Training? 
72. Do you understand that you may not be allowed to marry until three years after 
your appointment as an Officer, and do you engage to abide by this ? 
73. If you are not courting, do you pledge yourself to abstain from anything of the 
kind during Training, and for at least twelve months after your appointment as 
a Commissioned Field Officer? 
74. Do you pledge yourself not to carry on courtship with anyone at the station to 
which you are at the time appointed? 
75. Do you pledge yourself never to commence, or allow to commence, or break off 
anything of the sort, without first informing your Divisional Officer, or Head- 
quarters, of your intention to do so ?. 
76. Do you pledge yourself never to marry anyone, marriage with whom would take 
you out of the Army altogether? 
77. Have you read, and do you agree to carry out the following Regulations as to 
Courtship and Marriage? 
(a) “ Officers must inform their Divisional Officer or Headquarters of their desire 
to enter into or break off any engagement, and no Officer is permitted to en- 
ter into or break off an engagement without the consent of his or her D. O. 
(*) “ Officers will not be allowed to carry on any courtship in the Town in which 
they are appointed ; nor until twelve months after the date of their Com- 
mission. 
(c) “ Headquarters cannot consent to the engagement of Male Lieutenants, until 
their Divisional Officer is prepared to recommend them for command of 
a Station as Captain 
(d) “ Before Headquarters can consent to the marriage of any Officer, ihe Divis- 
ional Officer must be prepared to give him three Stations as a married man. 
(e) “ No Officer accepted will be allowed to marry until he or she has been at 
least three years in the field, except in cases of long-standing engage- 
ments before application for the work. 
(/) “ No Male Officer will, under any circumstances, be allowed to marry before 
he is twenty-two years of age unless required by Headquarters for special 
service. 
(g) “ Headquarters will not agree to the Marriage of any Male Officer (except 
under extraordinary circumstances) until twelve months after consenting 
to his engagement. 
(h) V Consent will not be given to the engagement of any Male Officer unless the 
young woman is likely to make a suitable wife for an Officer, and (if not 
already an Officer) is prepared to come into Training at once. 66 
SOCIAL DISEASES 
(i) ** Consent will be given to engagements between Female Officers and Sol- 
diers, on condition that the latter are suitable for Officers, and are willing 
to come into Training if called upon. 
(/') “ Consent will never be given to any engagement or marriage which would 
take an Officer out of the Army. 
(4) “ Every officer must sign before marriage the Articles of Marriage, contained 
in the Orders and Regulations for h ield Officers. 
PRESENTS AND TESTIMONIALS. 
1. Officers are expected to refuse utterly and to prevent, if possible, even the pro- 
posal of any present or testimonial to.them. 
2. Of course, an officer who is receiving no salary, or only part salary, may accept 
food or other gifts, such as are needed to meet his wants ; but it i* dishonorable for 
any one who is receiving their salary to accept gifts of food also 
THE DOCTRINES OF THE SALVATION ARMY. 
The principal Doctrines taught in the Army are as follows: 
1. We believe that the Scriptures of the Old and New Testament were given by 
inspiration of God, and that they only constitute the Divine rule of Christian faith and 
practice. 
2. We believe there is only one God, who is infinitely perfect, the Creator, Pre- 
server, and Governor of all things. 
3. We believe there are three persons in the Godhead—the Father, the Son, and 
the Holy Ghost, undivided in essence, co-equal in power and glory, and the only 
proper object of religious worship 
4. We believe that.-in the person of Jesus Christ, the Divine and human natures 
are united, so that He is truly and properly God, and truly and properly man. 
5. \N e believe that our first parents were created in a state of innocency, but by 
their disobedience they lost their purity and happiness ; and that, in consequence of 
their fall, all men have become sinners, totally depraved, and as such are justly ex- 
posed to the wrath of God. 
6. We believe that the Ix>rd Jesus Christ has, by His suffering and death, made 
an atonement for the whole world, so that whosoever will may be saved. 
7. We believe that repentance toward God, faith in our Lord Jesus Christ, and 
regeneration by the Holy Spirit are necessary to Salvation. 
8. We believe that we are justified by grace, through faith in our Lord Jesus 
Christ, and that he that believetb hath the witness in himself. 
9. We believe the Scriptures teach that not only does continuance in the favor 
of God depend upon continued faith in, and obedience to, Christ, but that it is possible 
for those who have been truly converted to fall away and be eternally lost 
10. We believe that it is the privilege of all believers to be “wholly sanctified," AND WORSE REMEDIES. 
67 
and that “the whole spirit and soul and body” may “be preserved blameless unto 
the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.” That is to say, we believe that after conver- 
sion there remain in the heart of the believer inclinations to evil, or roots of bitter- 
ness, which, unless overpowered by Divine grace, produce actual sin ; but that these 
evil tendencies can be entirely taken away by the Spirit of God, and the whole heart, 
thus cleansed from everything contrary to the will of God, or entirely sanctified, will 
then produce the fruit of the Spirit only. And we believe that persons thus entirely 
sanctified may, by the power of God, be kept unblamable and unreprovable before 
Him. 
i r We believe in the immortality of the soul; in the resurrection of the body ; in 
the general judgment at the end of the world ; in the eternal happiness of the right- 
eous ; and in the everlasting punishment of the wicked. 
DECLARATION. 
I HEREBY DECLARE that I will never, on any consideration, do anything cal- 
culated to injure the Salvation Army, and especially, that I will never, without first 
having obtained the consent of The General, take any part in any religious services or 
in carrying on services held in opposition to The Army. 
I PLEDGE MYSELF to make true records, daily, on the forms supplied to me,* 
of what I do, and to confess, as far as I am concerned, and to report, as far as I may 
see in others, any neglect or variation from the orders or directions of The General. 
I FULLY UNDERSTAND that he does not undertake to employ or to retain in 
the service of The Army any one who does not appear to him to be fitted for the 
work, or faithful and successful in it; and I solemnly pledge myself quietly to leave 
any Army Station to which I may be sent, without making any attempt to disturb or 
annoy The Army in any way, should The General desire me to do so. And I hereby 
discharge The Army and The General from all liability, and pledge myself to make 
no claim on account of any situation, property, or interest I may give up in order to 
secure an engagement in The Army. 
I understand that The General will not be responsible in any way for any loss I 
may suffer in consequence of being dismissed from Training ; as I am aware that the 
Cadets are received into Training for the very purpose of testing their suitability for 
the work of Salvation Army Officers. 
I hereby declare that the foregoing answers appear to me to fully express the truth 
as to the questions put to me, and that I know of no other facts which would prevent 
my engagement by The General, if they were known to him. 
Candidate to sign here - 
NOTICE TO CANDIDATES. 
1. All Candidates are expected to fill up and sign this form themselves, if they can 
write at all. 
2. You are expected to have obtained and read “Orders and Regulations for Field 
Officers,” before you make this application. SOCIAL DISEASES AND WORSE REMEDIES. 
3. Making this application does NOT imply that we can receive you as an Officer, 
*od you are, therefore, NOT to leave your home, or give notice to leave your situa- 
tion'until you hear again from us. 
4. If you are appointed as an Officer, or received into Training, and it is afterward 
discovered that any of the questions in this form have not been truthfully answered, 
yru will be instantly dismissed. 
5. If you do not understand any question in this form, or if you do not agree t* 
any of the requirements stated upon it, return it to Headquarters, and say so in a 
atraightforward manner. 
6. Make the question for this appointment a matter of earnest prayer, as k is the 
yiost important step you have taken since your conversion. 
IVe must have your Photo. Please inclose it with your forms, and address thorn 
“ Candidate Departmentioi Queen Victoria Street, London, E. C. 7-ENT j+OORs> 1OR THE PRICE OF ONE. 
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* EMPIRE OF THE WISE. 
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