Of Co-Operation
18 May 1932
In these days, under the influence of democracy,
the virtue of co-operation has taken the place formerly held by obedience. The
old-fashioned schoolmaster would say of a boy that he was disobedient; the modern
schoolmistress says of an infant that he is non-co-operative. It means the same
thing: the child, in either case, fails to do what the teacher wishes, but in
the first case the teacher acts as the government and in the second as the representative
of the People, i.e. of the other children. The result of the new language, as
of the old, is to encourage docility, suggestibility, herd-instinct and conventionality,
thereby necessarily discouraging originality, initiative and unusual intelligence.
Adults who achieve anything of value have seldom been ``co-operative'' children.
As a rule, they have liked solitude: they have tried to slink into a corner with
a book and been happiest when they could escape the notice of their barbarian
contemporaries. Almost all men who have been distinguished as artists, writers
or men of science have in boyhood been objects of derision and contempt to their
schoolfellows; and only too often the teachers have sided with the herd, because
it annoyed them that a boy should be odd.
It ought to be part of the training of
all teachers to be taught to recognise the marks of unusual intelligence in
children and to restrain the irritation caused in themselves by anything so
unusual. Until this is done, a large proportion of the best talent in America
will be persecuted out of existence before the age of fifteen. Co-operativeness,
as an ideal, is defective: it is right to live with reference to the community
and not for oneself alone, but living for the community does not mean doing
what it does. Suppose you are in a theatre which catches fire, and there is
a stampede: the person who has learnt no higher morality than what is called
``co-operation'' will join in the stampede since he will possess no inner force
that would enable him to stand up against the herd. The psychology of a nation
embarking on a war is at all points identical.
I do not wish, however, to push the doctrine
of individual initiative too far. Godwin, who became Shelley's father-in-law
because Shelley so much admired him, asserted that ``everything that is usually
understood by the term `co-operation' is in some degree an evil.'' He admits
that, at present, ``to pull down a tree, to cut a canal, to navigate a vessel
requires the labour of many'', but he looks forward to the time when machinery
is so perfected that one man unaided will be able to do any of these things.
He thinks also that hereafter there will be no orchestra. ``Shall we have concerts
of music?'' he says. ``The miserable state of mechanism of the majority of the
performers is so conspicuous as to be even at this day a topic of mortification
and ridicule. Will it not be practicable hereafter for one man to perform the
whole?'' He goes on to suggest that the solitary performer will insist on playing
his own productions and refuse to be the slave of composers dead and gone.
All this is, of course, ridiculous, and
for my part I find it salutary to see my own opinions thus caricatured. I remain
none the less convinced that our age, partly as a result of democratic sentiment,
and partly because of the complexity of machine production, is in danger of
carrying the doctrine of co-operativeness to lengths which will be fatal to
individual excellence, not only in its more anarchic forms, but also in forms
which are essential to social progress. Perhaps, therefore, even a man like
Godwin may have something to teach those who believe that social conformity
is the beginning and end of virtue.
Notes:
On
Denoting (1905)
Vagueness (1923)
Icarus
or The Future of Science (1924)
What is an Agnostic
Knowledge and
Wisdom
Why I am
not a Christian (06.03.1927)
In
Praise of Idleness (1932)
Of Co-Operation
(18.05.1932)
On Sales Resistance
(22.06.1932)
On Modern
Uncertainty (20.07.1932)
What is the Soul?
(28.09.1932)
On youthful
Cynism (1930)
Philosophical
Consequences of Relativity (1626)
On Astrologers
How
to become a Man of Genius
Education
and Disciple
What
Desires are politically important? (Speech at the Nobel Award, 11.12.1950)
Prolog to his Autobiography: What
I have lived for