PLOUGHSHARE AND PRUNING-HOOK Ten Lectures on Social Subjects BY LAURENCE HOUSMAN THE SWARTHMORE PRESS LTD. (formerly trading as Headley Bros. Publishers Ltd.) 72 OXFORD STREET, LONDON, W1 FIRST PRINTED SEPTEMBER, 1919...

These papers, originally given as lectures, make no pretence to the solution of the social or political problems with which they are concerned. They indicate rather a certain standpoint or attitude of mind from which these and like questions may be viewed, one which may find acceptance with only a few of my readers. Even those who are friendly may consider it too idealistic; those who are adverse will employ other and harder terms. With regard to that standpoint, while not wishing to avert criti

(1913) “You never know yourself,” says Thomas Traherne, “till you know more than your own body. The Image of God was not seated in the features of your face but in the lineaments of your soul. In the knowledge of your powers, inclinations, and principles, the knowledge of yourself chiefly consisteth.... The world is but a little centre in comparison of you ... like a gentleman’s house to one that is travelling, it is a long time before you come unto it—you pass it in an instant—and you leave it

(1918) The two words Crime and Punishment have come to us in a conjunction which it is very difficult to separate. Our fathers have told us, and our teachers and theologians have strenuously insisted that the one necessarily entails the other. The whole of our social order is based upon the idea that if a man commits crime—an offence, that is to say, against the written law of the community—he must be punished for it. If he were not, social order would go to pieces. But our social order does not

(1916) The State, which accepts the proposition that force is a remedy, has logical ground for employing force to secure its ends, until worsted by the forces opposed to it, or by some other power. Such a State, naturally and logically, claims the assistance of its subjects in pursuing a course for which, in time of peace, and with their apparent consent, it has made great preparation, entailing a vast expenditure of the nation’s wealth and energy. This claim of the State for the personal servic

(1918) It is a curious commentary upon the confusion of tongues which has descended upon us in our efforts to build towers reaching to Heaven, that you would have been misled had I given this address its true title. Had I called it “the Value of Purity” most of you would have imagined that I was going to speak of what is usually called—with such strange one-sidedness—the “social evil”; just as we call the liquor traffic “the Trade.” You would have thought, probably, that I was going to speak abo

(1912) In every age some fetich of government has been set up designed to delude the governed, and to induce a blind rather than an intellectual acceptance of authority. To set up in government some point over which you must not argue, is always very convenient to those who govern; and so you will note, throughout the world’s history, that the manipulators of government have always tried to impose some incontrovertible proposition as the basis on which their authority shall rest; and then, havin

(1915) Discreditable conduct, according to its right derivation, is conduct provocative of disbelief. It is that kind of conduct which makes us doubt the professions of its agents, because it is practically inconsistent with the things that they preach. Many things are done in this world which are very reprehensible, vindictive, cruel, narrow-minded—I might go through a whole catalogue of the vices; but they are not therefore “discreditable.” A man who has gone about the world expressing his und

( or the Art of Living ) (1915) I suppose you would all be very much surprised if I said that not use but ornament was the object of life. I refrain from doing so because so definite a statement makes an assumption of knowledge which it may always be outside man’s power to possess. The object of life may for ever remain as obscure to us as its cause. It seems, indeed, likely enough that the one ignorance hinges necessarily on the other, and that without knowing the cause of life neither can we k

(1915.) We are frequently told (more especially by those whose profession it is to preach belief in a revealed religion), that if man be not endowed with an immortal soul, then the game of life is not worth the candle. Incidentally we are warned that if the bottom were knocked out of that belief, morals would go to pieces and humanity would become reprobate. Now I can imagine a similar sort of claim put forward in other departments of life for other pursuits which seem to their advocate to make