Even in conversations about simple matters, statements clearly made are often misconceived from impatience of attention. The tendency to conclude quickly from small evidence, which leads most people to judge of strangers on a first meeting, and which causes them to express surprise when to the question – “How do you like so and so,” you reply that you have formed no opinion, is often betrayed in their habits as listeners. Continually it turns out that from the beginning of a sentence in course of utterance, they have inferred an entire meaning; and, ignoring the qualifying clauses which follow, quite misapprehend the idea conveyed. This impatience of attention is connected with, and often results from, inability to grasp as a whole the elements of a complex proposition. One who undertakes to explain an involved matter to a person of undisciplined intelligence, finds that though the person has understood each part of the explanation, he has failed to co-ordinate the parts; because the first has dropped out of his mind before the last is reached.
This holds not of listeners only, but of many readers. Either a premature conclusion positively formed from the earlier portions of an exposition, makes further reading seem superfluous; or else the explanations afterwards read do not adequately modify this conclusion which has already obtained possession, and on behalf of which some amour propre is enlisted; or else there is an incapacity for comprehending in their totality the assembled propositions, of which the earlier are made tenable only by combination with the later.
I am led to make these remarks by finding how greatly misunderstood have been some of the doctrines set forth in this work. Where I had, as I believed, made my meaning clear, and where, on re-reading, the statements still seem to me adequate, I have been supposed to express views quite different from those I intended to express. The issue of this revised edition affords an opportunity for rectifying these misinterpretations, and I gladly take it.
I will begin with one which, partly ascribable to the causes just indicated, is partly ascribable to another cause. It shows in a striking manner, how established modes of conceiving things hinder the formation of alien conceptions: even to the extent of producing an apparent inability to form them.
In Chapter XIV., I have contended that policies, legislative and other, which, while hindering survival of the fittest, further the propagation of the unfit, work grave mischiefs. In the course of the argument I have said: –
“Fostering the good-for-nothing at the expense of the good, is an extreme cruelty. It is a deliberate stirring-up of miseries for future generations. There is no greater curse to posterity than that of bequeathing them an increasing population of imbeciles and idlers and criminals. To aid the bad in multiplying is, in effect, the same as maliciously providing for our descendants a multitude of enemies. It may be doubted whether the maudlin philanthropy which, looking only at direct mitigations, persistently ignores indirect mischiefs, does not inflict a greater total of misery than the extremest selfishness inflicts.”
After insisting on the blameworthiness of those who, by thoughtless giving, increase suffering instead of decreasing it, I have guarded myself against misinterpretation by saying: –
“Doubtless it is in the order of things that parental affection, the regard of relative, and the spontaneous generosity of friends and even of strangers, should mitigate the pains which incapacity has to bear, and the penalties which unfit impulses bring round. Doubtless in many cases the reactive influence of this sympathetic care which the better take of the worse, is morally beneficial, and in a degree compensates by good in one direction for evil in another. It may be fully admitted that individual altruism, left to itself, will work advantageously-wherever, at least, it dose not go to the extent of helping the unworthy to multiply.”
And the reprobation I have expressed is mainly directed against the public agencies which do coercively what should be done voluntarily; as where I have said that
“A mechanically-working State-apparatus, distributing money drawn from grumbling rate-payers, produces little or no moralizing effect on the capables to make up for multiplication of the incapables.”
Little did I think that these passages would bring on me condemnation as an enemy to the poor. Yet in four French periodicals, representing divergent schools of French opinion, have I been thus condemned. Here is a passage from the Bulletin du Mouvement Social, 15 Juin, 1879: –
“Qu’un économiste imbu exclusivement des principes du Darwinisme se mette à raisonner sur la condition des misérables, vous le verrez arriver à un voe miseris aussi barbare que le voe victis des anciens. Il vous dira que, dans l’intérêt du progrès de l’espèce, il faut l’existence. Je le ne leur fais pas dire. Ecoutez Spencer,” &c.