"No reasonable moral being may draw breath in the world without an open-eyed freedom of choice; and if the moral world is to be governed by laws, better to people it with automatic machines than with living men and women. In our human world the precision of mechanism is for ever impossible."
This is one of the points where the author's optimism becomes apparent, and where the Devil's Advocate sees his chance. "Automatic machines" are what men and women are becoming; "the precision of mechanism" is what the industrial system is forcing them to acquire. The present reviewer, as a devout believer in Satan, holds that in our age he is incarnate in the captain of industry, whether trust magnate or communist commissar. But to say to the ordinary person: "Remain a living man or woman; do not become an automatic machine," is equivalent to saying: "Die of hunger, and do not attempt to earn your living." Advice of this sort is apt to be coldly received. Moreover the state of an automaton, once achieved, is pleasant; a life which is entirely habitual involves a minimum of friction and responsibility. The Bolsheviks and the Fabians, quite rightly, insist that love of spontaneity is anarchic and aristocratic. All true democrats in the present day mean by "democracy" the reduction of the few to the level of the many, not the raising of the many to the level of the few; consequently they welcome increasing mechanization, and wish it to become universal. The power of Satan, therefore, is just as great as in past times.
To speak without diabolic metaphors, the question is whether life is to be conceived as a game or a fight. In the former case, we may agree with all that Mr Havelock Ellis says; in the latter case, we shall import something of traditional morals into our outlook. Let us agree at once that life ought to be a game, that there is nothing intrinsically desirable about fighting, and that the disappearance of the sterner virtues, if it were permanently possible, would be an unmitigated boon. But if—to take an analogy—the game of football were illegal, it could only be played by organizing a subsidiary team to take on the police, and this team would have to be much larger than the teams that were playing. In this case, the preservation of football would require a high order of self-sacrifice in those who faced prison to protect players. It happens that football is not illegal, but many occupations quite as innocent and quite as productive of a balance of pleasure are illegal. Bishops and other
