THE IRON HEEL
by Jack London
"At first, this Earth, a stage so gloomed with woe
You almost sicken at the shifting of the scenes.
And yet be patient. Our Playwright may show
In some fifth act what this Wild Drama means."
THE IRON HEEL
FOREWORD
It cannot be said that the Everhard Manuscript is an important
historical document. To the historian it bristles with errors--not
errors of fact, but errors of interpretation. Looking back across
the seven centuries that have lapsed since Avis Everhard completed
her manuscript, events, and the bearings of events, that were
confused and veiled to her, are clear to us. She lacked
perspective. She was too close to the events she writes about.
Nay, she was merged in the events she has described.
Nevertheless, as a personal document, the Everhard Manuscript is of
inestimable value. But here again enter error of perspective, and
vitiation due to the bias of love. Yet we smile, indeed, and
forgive Avis Everhard for the heroic lines upon which she modelled
her husband. We know to-day that he was not so colossal, and that
he loomed among the events of his times less largely than the
Manuscript would lead us to believe.
We know that Ernest Everhard was an exceptionally strong man, but
not so exceptional as his wife thought him to be. He was, after
all, but one of a large number of heroes who, throughout the world,
devoted their lives to the Revolution; though it must be conceded
that he did unusual work, especially in his elaboration and
interpretation of working-class philosophy. "Proletarian science"
and "proletarian philosophy" were his phrases for it, and therein
he shows the provincialism of his mind--a defect, however, that was
due to the times and that none in that day could escape.
But to return to the Manuscript. Especially valuable is it in
communicating to us the FEEL of those terrible times. Nowhere do
we find more vividly portrayed the psychology of the persons that
lived in that turbulent period embraced between the years 1912 and
1932--their mistakes and ignorance, their doubts and fears and
misapprehensions, their ethical delusions, their violent passions,
their inconceivable sordidness and selfishness. These are the
things that are so hard for us of this enlightened age to
understand. History tells us that these things were, and biology
and psychology tell us why they were; but history and biology and
psychology do not make these things alive. We accept them as
facts, but we are left without sympathetic comprehension of them.
This sympathy comes to us, however, as we peruse the Everhard
Manuscript. We enter into the minds of the actors in that long-ago
world-drama, and for the time being their mental processes are our
mental processes. Not alone do we understand Avis Everhard's love
for her hero-husband, but we feel, as he felt, in those first days,
the vague and terrible loom of the Oligarchy. The Iron Heel (well
named) we feel descending upon and crushing mankind.
And in passing we note that that historic phrase, the Iron Heel,
originated in Ernest Everhard's mind. This, we may say, is the one
moot question that this new-found document clears up. Previous to
this, the earliest-known use of the phrase occurred in the
pamphlet, "Ye Slaves," written by George Milford and published in
December, 1912. This George Milford was an obscure agitator about
whom nothing is known, save the one additional bit of information
gained from the Manuscript, which mentions that he was shot in the
Chicago Commune. Evidently he had heard Ernest Everhard make use
of the phrase in some public speech, most probably when he was
running for Congress in the fall of 1912. From the Manuscript we
learn that Everhard used the phrase at a private dinner in the
spring of 1912. This is, without discussion, the earliest-known
occasion on which the Oligarchy was so designated.
The rise of the Oligarchy will always remain a cause of secret
wonder to the historian and the philosopher. Other great
historical events have their place in social evolution. They were
inevitable. Their coming could have been predicted with the same
certitude that astronomers to-day predict the outcome of the
movements of stars. Without these other great historical events,
social evolution could not have proceeded. Primitive communism,
chattel slavery, serf slavery, and wage slavery were necessary
stepping-stones in the evolution of society. But it were
ridiculous to assert that the Iron Heel was a necessary stepping-
stone. Rather, to-day, is it adjudged a step aside, or a step
backward, to the social tyrannies that made the early world a hell,
but that were as necessary as the Iron Heel was unnecessary.
Black as Feudalism was, yet the coming of it was inevitable. What
else than Feudalism could have followed upon the breakdown of that
great centralized governmental machine known as the Roman Empire?
Not so, however, with the Iron Heel. In the orderly procedure of
social evolution there was no place for it. It was not necessary,
and it was not inevitable. It must always remain the great
curiosity of history--a whim, a fantasy, an apparition, a thing
unexpected and undreamed; and it should serve as a warning to those
rash political theorists of to-day who speak with certitude of
social processes.
Capitalism was adjudged by the sociologists of the time to be the
culmination of bourgeois rule, the ripened fruit of the bourgeois
revolution. And we of to-day can but applaud that judgment.
Following upon Capitalism, it was held, even by such intellectual
and antagonistic giants as Herbert Spencer, that Socialism would
come. Out of the decay of self-seeking capitalism, it was held,
would arise that flower of the ages, the Brotherhood of Man.
Instead of which, appalling alike to us who look back and to those
that lived at the time, capitalism, rotten-ripe, sent forth that
monstrous offshoot, the Oligarchy.
Too late did the socialist movement of the early twentieth century
divine the coming of the Oligarchy. Even as it was divined, the
Oligarchy was there--a fact established in blood, a stupendous and
awful reality. Nor even then, as the Everhard Manuscript well
shows, was any permanence attributed to the Iron Heel. Its
overthrow was a matter of a few short years, was the judgment of
the revolutionists. It is true, they realized that the Peasant
Revolt was unplanned, and that the First Revolt was premature; but
they little realized that the Second Revolt, planned and mature,
was doomed to equal futility and more terrible punishment.
It is apparent that Avis Everhard completed the Manuscript during
the last days of preparation for the Second Revolt; hence the fact
that there is no mention of the disastrous outcome of the Second
Revolt. It is quite clear that she intended the Manuscript for
immediate publication, as soon as the Iron Heel was overthrown, so
that her husband, so recently dead, should receive full credit for
all that he had ventured and accomplished. Then came the frightful
crushing of the Second Revolt, and it is probable that in the
moment of danger, ere she fled or was captured by the Mercenaries,
she hid the Manuscript in the hollow oak at Wake Robin Lodge.
Of Avis Everhard there is no further record. Undoubtedly she was
executed by the Mercenaries; and, as is well known, no record of
such executions was kept by the Iron Heel. But little did she
realize, even then, as she hid the Manuscript and prepared to flee,
how terrible had been the breakdown of the Second Revolt. Little
did she realize that the tortuous and distorted evolution of the
next three centuries would compel a Third Revolt and a Fourth
Revolt, and many Revolts, all drowned in seas of blood, ere the
world-movement of labor should come into its own. And little did
she dream that for seven long centuries the tribute of her love to
Ernest Everhard would repose undisturbed in the heart of the
ancient oak of Wake Robin Lodge.
ANTHONY MEREDITH
Ardis,
November 27, 419 B.O.M.
THE IRON HEEL
CHAPTER I
MY EAGLE
The soft summer wind stirs the redwoods, and Wild-Water ripples
sweet cadences over its mossy stones. There are butterflies in the
sunshine, and from everywhere arises the drowsy hum of bees. It is
so quiet and peaceful, and I sit here, and ponder, and am restless.
It is the quiet that makes me restless. It seems unreal. All the
world is quiet, but it is the quiet before the storm. I strain my
ears, and all my senses, for some betrayal of that impending storm.
Oh, that it may not be premature! That it may not be premature!*
* The Second Revolt was largely the work of Ernest Everhard, though
he cooperated, of course, with the European leaders. The capture
and secret execution of Everhard was the great event of the spring
of 1932 A.D. Yet so thoroughly had he prepared for the revolt,
that his fellow-conspirators were able, with little confusion or
delay, to carry out his plans. It was after Everhard's execution
that his wife went to Wake Robin Lodge, a small bungalow in the
Sonoma Hills of California.
Small wonder that I am restless. I think, and think, and I cannot
cease from thinking. I have been in the thick of life so long that
I am oppressed by the peace and quiet, and I cannot forbear from
dwelling upon that mad maelstrom of death and destruction so soon
to burst forth. In my ears are the cries of the stricken; and I
can see, as I have seen in the past,* all the marring and mangling
of the sweet, beautiful flesh, and the souls torn with violence
from proud bodies and hurled to God. Thus do we poor humans attain
our ends, striving through carnage and destruction to bring lasting
peace and happiness upon the earth.
* Without doubt she here refers to the Chicago Commune.
And then I am lonely. When I do not think of what is to come, I
think of what has been and is no more--my Eagle, beating with
tireless wings the void, soaring toward what was ever his sun, the
flaming ideal of human freedom. I cannot sit idly by and wait the
great event that is his making, though he is not here to see. He
devoted all the years of his manhood to it, and for it he gave his
life. It is his handiwork. He made it.*
* With all respect to Avis Everhard, it must be pointed out that
Everhard was but one of many able leaders who planned the Second
Revolt. And we to-day, looking back across the centuries, can
safely say that even had he lived, the Second Revolt would not have
been less calamitous in its outcome than it was.
And so it is, in this anxious time of waiting, that I shall write
of my husband. There is much light that I alone of all persons
living can throw upon his character, and so noble a character
cannot be blazoned forth too brightly. His was a great soul, and,
when my love grows unselfish, my chiefest regret is that he is not
here to witness to-morrow's dawn. We cannot fail. He has built
too stoutly and too surely for that. Woe to the Iron Heel! Soon
shall it be thrust back from off prostrate humanity. When the word
goes forth, the labor hosts of all the world shall rise. There has
been nothing like it in the history of the world. The solidarity
of labor is assured, and for the first time will there be an
international revolution wide as the world is wide.*
* The Second Revolt was truly international. It was a colossal
plan--too colossal to be wrought by the genius of one man alone.
Labor, in all the oligarchies of the world, was prepared to rise at
the signal. Germany, Italy, France, and all Australasia were labor
countries--socialist states. They were ready to lend aid to the
revolution. Gallantly they did; and it was for this reason, when
the Second Revolt was crushed, that they, too, were crushed by the
united oligarchies of the world, their socialist governments being
replaced by oligarchical governments.
You see, I am full of what is impending. I have lived it day and
night utterly and for so long that it is ever present in my mind.
For that matter, I cannot think of my husband without thinking of
it. He was the soul of it, and how can I possibly separate the two
in thought?
As I have said, there is much light that I alone can throw upon his
character. It is well known that he toiled hard for liberty and
suffered sore. How hard he toiled and how greatly he suffered, I
well know; for I have been with him during these twenty anxious
years and I know his patience, his untiring effort, his infinite
devotion to the Cause for which, only two months gone, he laid down
his life.
I shall try to write simply and to tell here how Ernest Everhard
entered my life--how I first met him, how he grew until I became a
part of him, and the tremendous changes he wrought in my life. In
this way may you look at him through my eyes and learn him as I
learned him--in all save the things too secret and sweet for me to
tell.
It was in February, 1912, that I first met him, when, as a guest of
my father's* at dinner, he came to our house in Berkeley. I cannot
say that my very first impression of him was favorable. He was one
of many at dinner, and in the drawing-room where we gathered and
waited for all to arrive, he made a rather incongruous appearance.
It was "preacher's night," as my father privately called it, and
Ernest was certainly out of place in the midst of the churchmen.
* John Cunningham, Avis Everhard's father, was a professor at the
State University at Berkeley, California. His chosen field was
physics, and in addition he did much original research and was
greatly distinguished as a scientist. His chief contribution to
science was his studies of the electron and his monumental work on
the "Identification of Matter and Energy," wherein he established,
beyond cavil and for all time, that the ultimate unit of matter and
the ultimate unit of force were identical. This idea had been
earlier advanced, but not demonstrated, by Sir Oliver Lodge and
other students in the new field of radio-activity.
In the first place, his clothes did not fit him. He wore a ready-
made suit of dark cloth that was ill adjusted to his body. In
fact, no ready-made suit of clothes ever could fit his body. And
on this night, as always, the cloth bulged with his muscles, while
the coat between the shoulders, what of the heavy shoulder-
development, was a maze of wrinkles. His neck was the neck of a
prize-fighter,* thick and strong. So this was the social
philosopher and ex-horseshoer my father had discovered, was my
thought. And he certainly looked it with those bulging muscles and
that bull-throat. Immediately I classified him--a sort of prodigy,
I thought, a Blind Tom** of the working class.
* In that day it was the custom of men to compete for purses of
money. They fought with their hands. When one was beaten into
insensibility or killed, the survivor took the money.
** This obscure reference applies to a blind negro musician who
took the world by storm in the latter half of the nineteenth
century of the Christian Era.
And then, when he shook hands with me! His handshake was firm and
strong, but he looked at me boldly with his black eyes--too boldly,
I thought. You see, I was a creature of environment, and at that
time had strong class instincts. Such boldness on the part of a
man of my own class would have been almost unforgivable. I know
that I could not avoid dropping my eyes, and I was quite relieved
when I passed him on and turned to greet Bishop Morehouse--a
favorite of mine, a sweet and serious man of middle age, Christ-
like in appearance and goodness, and a scholar as well.
But this boldness that I took to be presumption was a vital clew to
the nature of Ernest Everhard. He was simple, direct, afraid of
nothing, and he refused to waste time on conventional mannerisms.
"You pleased me," he explained long afterward; "and why should I
not fill my eyes with that which pleases me?" I have said that he
was afraid of nothing. He was a natural aristocrat--and this in
spite of the fact that he was in the camp of the non-aristocrats.
He was a superman, a blond beast such as Nietzsche* has described,
and in addition he was aflame with democracy.
* Friederich Nietzsche, the mad philosopher of the nineteenth
century of the Christian Era, who caught wild glimpses of truth,
but who, before he was done, reasoned himself around the great
circle of human thought and off into madness.
In the interest of meeting the other guests, and what of my
unfavorable impression, I forgot all about the working-class
philosopher, though once or twice at table I noticed him--
especially the twinkle in his eye as he listened to the talk first
of one minister and then of another. He has humor, I thought, and
I almost forgave him his clothes. But the time went by, and the
dinner went by, and he never opened his mouth to speak, while the
ministers talked interminably about the working class and its
relation to the church, and what the church had done and was doing
for it. I noticed that my father was annoyed because Ernest did
not talk. Once father took advantage of a lull and asked him to
say something; but Ernest shrugged his shoulders and with an "I
have nothing to say" went on eating salted almonds.
But father was not to be denied. After a while he said:
"We have with us a member of the working class. I am sure that he
can present things from a new point of view that will be
interesting and refreshing. I refer to Mr. Everhard."
The others betrayed a well-mannered interest, and urged Ernest for
a statement of his views. Their attitude toward him was so broadly
tolerant and kindly that it was really patronizing. And I saw that
Ernest noted it and was amused. He looked slowly about him, and I
saw the glint of laughter in his eyes.
"I am not versed in the courtesies of ecclesiastical controversy,"
he began, and then hesitated with modesty and indecision.
"Go on," they urged, and Dr. Hammerfield said: "We do not mind the
truth that is in any man. If it is sincere," he amended.
"Then you separate sincerity from truth?" Ernest laughed quickly.
Dr. Hammerfield gasped, and managed to answer, "The best of us may
be mistaken, young man, the best of us."
Ernest's manner changed on the instant. He became another man.
"All right, then," he answered; "and let me begin by saying that
you are all mistaken. You know nothing, and worse than nothing,
about the working class. Your sociology is as vicious and
worthless as is your method of thinking."
It was not so much what he said as how he said it. I roused at the
first sound of his voice. It was as bold as his eyes. It was a
clarion-call that thrilled me. And the whole table was aroused,
shaken alive from monotony and drowsiness.
"What is so dreadfully vicious and worthless in our method of
thinking, young man?" Dr. Hammerfield demanded, and already there
was something unpleasant in his voice and manner of utterance.
"You are metaphysicians. You can prove anything by metaphysics;
and having done so, every metaphysician can prove every other
metaphysician wrong--to his own satisfaction. You are anarchists
in the realm of thought. And you are mad cosmos-makers. Each of
you dwells in a cosmos of his own making, created out of his own
fancies and desires. You do not know the real world in which you
live, and your thinking has no place in the real world except in so
far as it is phenomena of mental aberration.
"Do you know what I was reminded of as I sat at table and listened
to you talk and talk? You reminded me for all the world of the
scholastics of the Middle Ages who gravely and learnedly debated
the absorbing question of how many angels could dance on the point
of a needle. Why, my dear sirs, you are as remote from the
intellectual life of the twentieth century as an Indian medicine-
man making incantation in the primeval forest ten thousand years
ago."
As Ernest talked he seemed in a fine passion; his face glowed, his
eyes snapped and flashed, and his chin and jaw were eloquent with
aggressiveness. But it was only a way he had. It always aroused
people. His smashing, sledge-hammer manner of attack invariably
made them forget themselves. And they were forgetting themselves
now. Bishop Morehouse was leaning forward and listening intently.
Exasperation and anger were flushing the face of Dr. Hammerfield.
And others were exasperated, too, and some were smiling in an
amused and superior way. As for myself, I found it most enjoyable.
I glanced at father, and I was afraid he was going to giggle at the
effect of this human bombshell he had been guilty of launching
amongst us.
"Your terms are rather vague," Dr. Hammerfield interrupted. "Just
precisely what do you mean when you call us metaphysicians?"
"I call you metaphysicians because you reason metaphysically,"
Ernest went on. "Your method of reasoning is the opposite to that
of science. There is no validity to your conclusions. You can
prove everything and nothing, and no two of you can agree upon
anything. Each of you goes into his own consciousness to explain
himself and the universe. As well may you lift yourselves by your
own bootstraps as to explain consciousness by consciousness."
"I do not understand," Bishop Morehouse said. "It seems to me that
all things of the mind are metaphysical. That most exact and
convincing of all sciences, mathematics, is sheerly metaphysical.
Each and every thought-process of the scientific reasoner is
metaphysical. Surely you will agree with me?"
"As you say, you do not understand," Ernest replied. "The
metaphysician reasons deductively out of his own subjectivity. The
scientist reasons inductively from the facts of experience. The
metaphysician reasons from theory to facts, the scientist reasons
from facts to theory. The metaphysician explains the universe by
himself, the scientist explains himself by the universe."
"Thank God we are not scientists," Dr. Hammerfield murmured
complacently.
"What are you then?" Ernest demanded.
"Philosophers."
"There you go," Ernest laughed. "You have left the real and solid
earth and are up in the air with a word for a flying machine. Pray
come down to earth and tell me precisely what you do mean by
philosophy."
"Philosophy is--" (Dr. Hammerfield paused and cleared his throat)--
"something that cannot be defined comprehensively except to such
minds and temperaments as are philosophical. The narrow scientist
with his nose in a test-tube cannot understand philosophy."
Ernest ignored the thrust. It was always his way to turn the point
back upon an opponent, and he did it now, with a beaming
brotherliness of face and utterance.
"Then you will undoubtedly understand the definition I shall now
make of philosophy. But before I make it, I shall challenge you to
point out error in it or to remain a silent metaphysician.
Philosophy is merely the widest science of all. Its reasoning
method is the same as that of any particular science and of all
particular sciences. And by that same method of reasoning, the
inductive method, philosophy fuses all particular sciences into one
great science. As Spencer says, the data of any particular science
are partially unified knowledge. Philosophy unifies the knowledge
that is contributed by all the sciences. Philosophy is the science
of science, the master science, if you please. How do you like my
definition?"
"Very creditable, very creditable," Dr. Hammerfield muttered
lamely.
But Ernest was merciless.
"Remember," he warned, "my definition is fatal to metaphysics. If
you do not now point out a flaw in my definition, you are
disqualified later on from advancing metaphysical arguments. You
must go through life seeking that flaw and remaining metaphysically
silent until you have found it."
Ernest waited. The silence was painful. Dr. Hammerfield was
pained. He was also puzzled. Ernest's sledge-hammer attack
disconcerted him. He was not used to the simple and direct method
of controversy. He looked appealingly around the table, but no one
answered for him. I caught father grinning into his napkin.
"There is another way of disqualifying the metaphysicians," Ernest
said, when he had rendered Dr. Hammerfield's discomfiture complete.
"Judge them by their works. What have they done for mankind beyond
the spinning of airy fancies and the mistaking of their own shadows
for gods? They have added to the gayety of mankind, I grant; but
what tangible good have they wrought for mankind? They
philosophized, if you will pardon my misuse of the word, about the
heart as the seat of the emotions, while the scientists were
formulating the circulation of the blood. They declaimed about
famine and pestilence as being scourges of God, while the
scientists were building granaries and draining cities. They
builded gods in their own shapes and out of their own desires,
while the scientists were building roads and bridges. They were
describing the earth as the centre of the universe, while the
scientists were discovering America and probing space for the stars
and the laws of the stars. In short, the metaphysicians have done
nothing, absolutely nothing, for mankind. Step by step, before the
advance of science, they have been driven back. As fast as the
ascertained facts of science have overthrown their subjective
explanations of things, they have made new subjective explanations
of things, including explanations of the latest ascertained facts.
And this, I doubt not, they will go on doing to the end of time.
Gentlemen, a metaphysician is a medicine man. The difference
between you and the Eskimo who makes a fur-clad blubber-eating god
is merely a difference of several thousand years of ascertained
facts. That is all."
"Yet the thought of Aristotle ruled Europe for twelve centuries,"
Dr. Ballingford announced pompously. "And Aristotle was a
metaphysician."
Dr. Ballingford glanced around the table and was rewarded by nods
and smiles of approval.
"Your illustration is most unfortunate," Ernest replied. "You
refer to a very dark period in human history. In fact, we call
that period the Dark Ages. A period wherein science was raped by
the metaphysicians, wherein physics became a search for the
Philosopher's Stone, wherein chemistry became alchemy, and
astronomy became astrology. Sorry the domination of Aristotle's
thought!"
Dr. Ballingford looked pained, then he brightened up and said:
"Granted this horrible picture you have drawn, yet you must confess
that metaphysics was inherently potent in so far as it drew
humanity out of this dark period and on into the illumination of
the succeeding centuries."
"Metaphysics had nothing to do with it," Ernest retorted.
"What?" Dr. Hammerfield cried. "It was not the thinking and the
speculation that led to the voyages of discovery?"
"Ah, my dear sir," Ernest smiled, "I thought you were disqualified.
You have not yet picked out the flaw in my definition of
philosophy. You are now on an unsubstantial basis. But it is the
way of the metaphysicians, and I forgive you. No, I repeat,
metaphysics had nothing to do with it. Bread and butter, silks and
jewels, dollars and cents, and, incidentally, the closing up of the
overland trade-routes to India, were the things that caused the
voyages of discovery. With the fall of Constantinople, in 1453,
the Turks blocked the way of the caravans to India. The traders of
Europe had to find another route. Here was the original cause for
the voyages of discovery. Columbus sailed to find a new route to
the Indies. It is so stated in all the history books.
Incidentally, new facts were learned about the nature, size, and
form of the earth, and the Ptolemaic system went glimmering."
Dr. Hammerfield snorted.
"You do not agree with me?" Ernest queried. "Then wherein am I
wrong?"
"I can only reaffirm my position," Dr. Hammerfield retorted tartly.
"It is too long a story to enter into now."
"No story is too long for the scientist," Ernest said sweetly.
"That is why the scientist gets to places. That is why he got to
America."
I shall not describe the whole evening, though it is a joy to me to
recall every moment, every detail, of those first hours of my
coming to know Ernest Everhard.
Battle royal raged, and the ministers grew red-faced and excited,
especially at the moments when Ernest called them romantic
philosophers, shadow-projectors, and similar things. And always he
checked them back to facts. "The fact, man, the irrefragable
fact!" he would proclaim triumphantly, when he had brought one of
them a cropper. He bristled with facts. He tripped them up with
facts, ambuscaded them with facts, bombarded them with broadsides
of facts.
"You seem to worship at the shrine of fact," Dr. Hammerfield
taunted him.
"There is no God but Fact, and Mr. Everhard is its prophet," Dr.
Ballingford paraphrased.
Ernest smilingly acquiesced.
"I'm like the man from Texas," he said. And, on being solicited,
he explained. "You see, the man from Missouri always says, "You've
got to show me." But the man from Texas says, "You've got to put
it in my hand." From which it is apparent that he is no
metaphysician."
Another time, when Ernest had just said that the metaphysical
philosophers could never stand the test of truth, Dr. Hammerfield
suddenly demanded:
"What is the test of truth, young man? Will you kindly explain
what has so long puzzled wiser heads than yours?"
"Certainly," Ernest answered. His cocksureness irritated them.
"The wise heads have puzzled so sorely over truth because they went
up into the air after it. Had they remained on the solid earth,
they would have found it easily enough--ay, they would have found
that they themselves were precisely testing truth with every
practical act and thought of their lives."
"The test, the test," Dr. Hammerfield repeated impatiently. "Never
mind the preamble. Give us that which we have sought so long--the
test of truth. Give it us, and we will be as gods."
There was an impolite and sneering scepticism in his words and
manner that secretly pleased most of them at the table, though it
seemed to bother Bishop Morehouse.
"Dr. Jordan* has stated it very clearly," Ernest said. "His test
of truth is: 'Will it work? Will you trust your life to it?'"
* A noted educator of the late nineteenth and early twentieth
centuries of the Christian Era. He was president of the Stanford
University, a private benefaction of the times.
"Pish!" Dr. Hammerfield sneered. "You have not taken Bishop
Berkeley* into account. He has never been answered."
* An idealistic monist who long puzzled the philosophers of that
time with his denial of the existence of matter, but whose clever
argument was finally demolished when the new empiric facts of
science were philosophically generalized.
"The noblest metaphysician of them all," Ernest laughed. "But your
example is unfortunate. As Berkeley himself attested, his
metaphysics didn't work."
Dr. Hammerfield was angry, righteously angry. It was as though he
had caught Ernest in a theft or a lie.
"Young man," he trumpeted, "that statement is on a par with all you
have uttered to-night. It is a base and unwarranted assumption."
"I am quite crushed," Ernest murmured meekly. "Only I don't know
what hit me. You'll have to put it in my hand, Doctor."
"I will, I will," Dr. Hammerfield spluttered. "How do you know?
You do not know that Bishop Berkeley attested that his metaphysics
did not work. You have no proof. Young man, they have always
worked."
"I take it as proof that Berkeley's metaphysics did not work,
because--" Ernest paused calmly for a moment. "Because Berkeley
made an invariable practice of going through doors instead of
walls. Because he trusted his life to solid bread and butter and
roast beef. Because he shaved himself with a razor that worked
when it removed the hair from his face."
"But those are actual things!" Dr. Hammerfield cried. "Metaphysics
is of the mind."
"And they work--in the mind?" Ernest queried softly.
The other nodded.
"And even a multitude of angels can dance on the point of a needle-
-in the mind," Ernest went on reflectively. "And a blubber-eating,
fur-clad god can exist and work--in the mind; and there are no
proofs to the contrary--in the mind. I suppose, Doctor, you live
in the mind?"
"My mind to me a kingdom is," was the answer.
"That's another way of saying that you live up in the air. But you
come back to earth at meal-time, I am sure, or when an earthquake
happens along. Or, tell me, Doctor, do you have no apprehension in
an earthquake that that incorporeal body of yours will be hit by an
immaterial brick?"
Instantly, and quite unconsciously, Dr. Hammerfield's hand shot up
to his head, where a scar disappeared under the hair. It happened
that Ernest had blundered on an apposite illustration. Dr.
Hammerfield had been nearly killed in the Great Earthquake* by a
falling chimney. Everybody broke out into roars of laughter.
* The Great Earthquake of 1906 A.D. that destroyed San Francisco.
"Well?" Ernest asked, when the merriment had subsided. "Proofs to
the contrary?"
And in the silence he asked again, "Well?" Then he added, "Still
well, but not so well, that argument of yours."
But Dr. Hammerfield was temporarily crushed, and the battle raged
on in new directions. On point after point, Ernest challenged the
ministers. When they affirmed that they knew the working class, he
told them fundamental truths about the working class that they did
not know, and challenged them for disproofs. He gave them facts,
always facts, checked their excursions into the air, and brought
them back to the solid earth and its facts.
How the scene comes back to me! I can hear him now, with that war-
note in his voice, flaying them with his facts, each fact a lash
that stung and stung again. And he was merciless. He took no
quarter,* and gave none. I can never forget the flaying he gave
them at the end:
* This figure arises from the customs of the times. When, among
men fighting to the death in their wild-animal way, a beaten man
threw down his weapons, it was at the option of the victor to slay
him or spare him.
"You have repeatedly confessed to-night, by direct avowal or
ignorant statement, that you do not know the working class. But
you are not to be blamed for this. How can you know anything about
the working class? You do not live in the same locality with the
working class. You herd with the capitalist class in another
locality. And why not? It is the capitalist class that pays you,
that feeds you, that puts the very clothes on your backs that you
are wearing to-night. And in return you preach to your employers
the brands of metaphysics that are especially acceptable to them;
and the especially acceptable brands are acceptable because they do
not menace the established order of society."
Here there was a stir of dissent around the table.
"Oh, I am not challenging your sincerity," Ernest continued. "You
are sincere. You preach what you believe. There lies your
strength and your value--to the capitalist class. But should you
change your belief to something that menaces the established order,
your preaching would be unacceptable to your employers, and you
would be discharged. Every little while some one or another of you
is so discharged.* Am I not right?"
* During this period there were many ministers cast out of the
church for preaching unacceptable doctrine. Especially were they
cast out when their preaching became tainted with socialism.
This time there was no dissent. They sat dumbly acquiescent, with
the exception of Dr. Hammerfield, who said:
"It is when their thinking is wrong that they are asked to resign."
"Which is another way of saying when their thinking is
unacceptable," Ernest answered, and then went on. "So I say to
you, go ahead and preach and earn your pay, but for goodness' sake
leave the working class alone. You belong in the enemy's camp.
You have nothing in common with the working class. Your hands are
soft with the work others have performed for you. Your stomachs
are round with the plenitude of eating." (Here Dr. Ballingford
winced, and every eye glanced at his prodigious girth. It was said
he had not seen his own feet in years.) "And your minds are filled
with doctrines that are buttresses of the established order. You
are as much mercenaries (sincere mercenaries, I grant) as were the
men of the Swiss Guard.* Be true to your salt and your hire;
guard, with your preaching, the interests of your employers; but do
not come down to the working class and serve as false leaders. You
cannot honestly be in the two camps at once. The working class has
done without you. Believe me, the working class will continue to
do without you. And, furthermore, the working class can do better
without you than with you."
* The hired foreign palace guards of Louis XVI, a king of France
that was beheaded by his people.
