MR. RUSSELL AND THE RECONSTRUCTION OF SOCIETY 491
food-material, intellectual or spiritual it craves for is a matter beyond its control. If it is mutilated by the lack of variety of food, it will be through social default and not its own.
Another allegations of Mr. Russell is that property as the embodient of the possessive instinct leads to war. One may agree with Mr. Russell and yet say that Fredric Nietzsche understood the effects of property better than Mr. Russell. This effect is well summed up in a story which Thucydides relates somewhere. He depicts a farmer who having gathered his harvest was sitting by the side of the heap brooding over the market and the gains of his business; while deeply engrossed in his reverie he was surprised by a robber. Thus aroused, the farmer, without even uttering a word of protest, at once consented to share his pile and thanked heavens for having escaped with the loss only of a half. Whether the above is a fact or a fable, it contains a kernel of truth not always perceived. How much man is tamed of his wild nature by his acquisitions through the course of time it is not possible to measure. But that it is so is beyond doubt. Nietzsche was perfectly aware of this and would not therefore let his Superman hold any property lest he (the Superman) might not play the havoc Nietzsche wanted him to play for the fear of losing his acquisitions in the bargain. The trouble therefore one might say, is not with property but with the unequal distribution of it; for those who have none of it are prone to perpetrate more destruction for its possession than, those who have. An industrial dispute of the modern time is another illustration and that workers, in a strike, use more violence than their employers can only be understood in the light of the above remarks. It is the existence of the stake that blunts the sword and it is the nonexistence thereof that sharpens it. Thus property may be aggressive. Yet it is not without its compensating effects.
It would be unjust to pass over silently a most fundamental notion that pervades the whole outlook of Mr. Russell. He says that “men’s impulses and desires may be divided into those that are creative and those that are possessive. Some of our activities are directed to creating what would not otherwise exist, others towards acquiring or retaining what exists already. The best life is that in which creative impulses play the largest part and possessive impulses the smallest. [14] Is it possible so to divide the impulses ? Is there such a thing as an impulse to appropriate? It is beyond the scope of this review to discuss this large question. I simply intend to raise a query because I feel, that by making the distinction as one of instinct, Mr. Russell is not quite on safe ground. Every impulse if uninhibited, will lead to some creative act. Whether the product will be appropriated or not is a matter wholly different from any act of impulse or instinct. It depends, I submit, upon the method of its production—whether individualistic or otherwise—and upon the nature of its use—whether communal or otherwise. No one sets
- Principles of Social Reconstruction, p. 234.