FOOTNOTES:
[31] These figures represent the position at the last meeting of the Association held at Zurich, 1912.
[32] The distinguished Permanent Head of the French Labour Office.
XI
COMMON IDEALS OF SOCIAL REFORM
Earlier ages were more able than ours to believe in the good old days. We, knowing more of the past than our forefathers did, can find in it no golden age. But our eyes do not rest even upon the present. In the nineteenth century men thought they were at the end of a process, and their evolutionary creed was often only a polite method of saying what fine fellows they were. Now we look forward. The future seems to us longer than the past and more important than the present; and we ourselves seem to be at the beginning rather than at the end of time. A knowledge of the past has made it impossible to believe that growth has stopped, and we understand how different the future may be, in part at least, by perceiving how different even this grimy and blood-stained present is from the still more inhuman past.
Among the recorded changes the Economists write of an increasing interchange of goods, and we can see as well an increasing interchange of ideas across the frontiers of States. Music, painting, literature, and science have all been influenced; and ideas concerning political, economic, and social facts have been affected by that interchange which has developed our philosophy, our science, and our art. No one nation has originated all; and each nation has depended on hints and hypotheses which have arisen in others.
But the interchange of ideas on social life has led to an increase of ideals, which are plans of action emotionally appreciated and therefore motive forces. Some of these are the Utopias of individual thinkers; but we shall consider here only those more powerful ideals which are shared, however vaguely, by many. In this case also, as in the purely intellectual sphere, the fire spreads from group to group, from nation to nation; and as the interchange of ideas increases knowledge, so the exchange of enthusiasm makes action more powerful. A really effective ideal, however, cannot arise except from the perception of definite evil. Vague discontents may cause such revolution as leads to reaction; but the clear sight of evil is the only source of reform. We may take it for granted, then, that although an ideal is nerveless if it is not passionate, it is futile unless it is based on knowledge. Therefore a hint must be given of the evils from the knowledge of which ideals of social reform now rise. That all is not well in the relations of man to man or of group to group must be fairly obvious to any one with imagination enough for sympathy. General dissatisfaction and universal cures for society are childish; but the perception of this and that evil gives rise to different plans for reform which all originate in the enthusiasm which is an ideal. We may put aside the long history of the growth of this shared enthusiasm for better relations between men, whatever their ability, their rank, their race, or their government.
The common ideals of the present are the result of a gradual development, but we shall consider them here as attempts to deal with existing evils and plans for a better future.
Some social evils of the present are perhaps as old as any settled civilization. Such are disease and personal violence. Some are due to forces which have come into existence recently, owing to increased communication and accumulated wealth. Such are extreme poverty and the dehumanizing of social relations. With both kinds of evil we are moved to deal, and we are not deterred from the attempt to reform even long-established evil; for we feel that we do not know what is possible. Nothing is inevitable. This is not the place to give in detail the description of those evils which are being dealt with. It is enough if we recognize that it is no abstract or airy theory of equality or human nature which moves us to action. All real theories are intensely personal: and no theory has ever yet moved men unless they saw through it to the crude facts. However it may be phrased in a theory of society, we recognize it as evil that disease, leading to premature death, should be as common as it is. As a social evil it may be said to disturb seriously the relations between men. We see also that it is a social evil that men should use fraud or violence in compelling labour or in the pursuit of riches. Of the newer social evils there is the physical and spiritual deterioration which seems to result from the massing of men in great cities. There is also the dehumanizing of the relations between master and man. And this is like in kind to the dehumanizing of all functions in the vast institutions of modern times. The director of a company comes to regard himself as part of a machine; and so does the shareholder. So eventually does the agent of the State. Until at last we reach the immense evil that human action is done for which no moral responsibility is felt. How then shall we act? What has been done and what is still hoped for? The answer to such questions will be a statement of ideals.
One may speak of ideals of social reform from two different points of view; either with respect to (1) the changing sentiment which produces movements for reform or with respect to (2) the institutional change which embodies that sentiment. The two are complementary parts of one historical movement: and it is difficult to divide them as cause and effect. For sentiment, becoming enthusiasm, certainly causes institutional change, and yet the reformed institution invariably creates a new sentiment. The province of law and of social custom is to lead as well as to register—a dynamic as well as a static influence, to increase order and to incite to liberty. In actual life, therefore, it is often impossible to separate the sentiment from its embodiment in measures of social reform.
For purposes of study, however, one may divide. We may put aside the moving sentiments—the passions, however faint, which urge men to wish for a better future—and we may consider first the particular instances of reform.
One definite and in some sense new departure in the results of the shared enthusiasms of nations has been the industrial legislation of recent years. That has been already dealt with. But, although in an economic age such as ours industrial reform may seem the most striking, it is not the only effect of our shared enthusiasm and later ages may not think it the most important. There has been reform of social evils owing to the interchange between nations of ideas on education, religious toleration, medicine, and sanitation, the treatment of criminals, the suppression of slavery and many other subjects. All these and many more reforms are, as it were, registered in institutional (legal or administrative) change.
Perhaps it is better to begin with a definite instance of the working of an ideal, lest it may seem that we are speaking only of an empty aspiration. We may take as an example the reforms connected with medicine and sanitation, and those only in so far as they have been officially established by the joint action of states. This is a very restricted embodiment of a social ideal, since of course we may find the same use of common labour between men of different races in the private contest with disease or in the municipal preventive medicine which in every great city owes much to investigators and practitioners of other nations. But it is better to take the most tangible effect in purely governmental action.
The French Government proposed an international conference, which met in 1851, to deal with infectious disease; and a second conference met in 1856. In 1865 the outburst of cholera in the East led to a third congress at Constantinople. Great Britain opposed treaties for regulating quarantine, &c., because of the delay which might be caused to the pursuit of shipping interests. But at last a treaty was made in 1892 at Venice for protection against cholera. Further and more effective treaties were agreed to by civilized states in 1897 and 1903. A bureau of information concerning infectious disease was established at Paris, and commissions to supervise were established in Turkey and Egypt. With regard to sleeping sickness Great Britain took the initiative; and a conference met in 1907, in London, at which six countries were represented. So much with respect to disease; we may now turn to examples of the joint action of states as regards crime.
The African slave traffic has been dealt with since 1885 (Berlin Conference) by the European States acting together on certain general principles. And what is known as the White Slave traffic was the subject of arrangement between fifteen states in the conference at Paris in 1902.
Again, the reform of prisons and penitentiaries has been much assisted by international congresses since 1846. The last was held in 1910 in America, at which twenty-eight states were represented. A secretariat has been established at Berne for the exchange of expert opinion and for making suggestions to governments.
These are examples of a very numerous class of reforms undertaken by the joint action of governments. They are all comparatively recent and most of the twenty-eight unions between governments for concerted action have been established during the years of European peace between 1871 and 1914. In these instances the States of Europe have put their precious sovereignties into their pockets; although the lawyers and diplomatists explain the situation in the old terms.
With respect to all these movements for social reform three points must be noticed: first, the initiative in most reform has come from private enterprise and not from diplomacy or governments. Secondly, this private interest has spread from the few of one nation to the few of another before any effective result was attained. Thirdly, the states have not acted together because of any general theory of international action, but simply because certain social evils could not be dealt with at all by any state acting separately. Whatever hampers common action, then, also hinders effective reform in dealing with disease or crime. I need not elaborate the conclusion.
There are also instances of governmental action being directly influenced by the practice of other states, even when there has been no common action. The two most striking reforms of recent years have been in education and religious toleration. Of education enough has already been said. The interest from our point of view here is chiefly in the effect of education on social structure. It is increasingly evident that of all forces for transforming a nation, education is the most powerful; but no one nation can transform its education effectively without respect to the mistakes and successes of its neighbours. This has been perceived and acted upon. The influence, for example, of Germany on England is sufficiently well known. German precedents were quoted in the House of Commons in the early days of state education for England: and the Education Acts of 1870 and 1876 were largely due to the impression made in England by the success of state education in Prussia. Coleridge, Carlyle, and Matthew Arnold definitely acknowledged a debt to Germany. But Germany owed something to England in the perception of the value of surroundings and corporate life in schools. France also was affected by English education; and, in fact, French educators had to come to England to find the thing for which the French gave us the name—Esprit de Corps.
The United States have been very definitely influenced in their University education both by Germany and England; and their Government has in primary education certainly established for all states the transforming possibilities of a school system. It must be remembered that the crudity of civilization and its apparent corruption in the United States are European not American. It is because Europe has neglected its duty, enslaved and brutalized its peoples, that social and political evil enters with the immigrants; and all this mass of European incompetence, the result of neglect or evil-doing in Ireland, Poland, the Slavonic Countries and Italy, the Government of the United States exorcises with education: and the effect is spreading beyond the frontiers of the States. A further effect of influence passing from nation to nation has been the change with regard to the relations of State and Church. In England it is some years since the State persecuted in the supposed interest of religion; but we remember that the abolition of tests against Roman Catholics was as late as 1830 and as against Jews as late as 1850. Even the most backward of European countries have been affected by the general feeling. In 1874 Austria for the first time allowed any creed, not dangerous to morals, to be preached; and ecclesiastical power is not any longer to be used against any but members of the particular Church which is offended. In Spain there are still some obstacles to public manifestations of any religious belief but that which is most prevalent; free worship in private, however, is at last allowed. Thus, the general tendency, spreading from the nations which are most intricately divided in religion, has been towards what is called toleration. Connected with this has been the gradual recognition of civil marriage; in which the old privilege of the most powerful Church is no longer recognized by the modern State. Law and custom have both changed.
Perhaps the general attitude has not really changed. We persecute more for political than for religious unorthodoxy; or it may be that in our more economic age we forbear to burn heretics only because we cannot afford the faggots. But in any case the relations between men in society are more justly arranged, even where religion is concerned.
We have thus examples of (1) joint governmental action and (2) separate actions of governments influenced directly by foreign governments.
There are also certain results of the interchange of ideals between nations which are not yet, or only in part, registered in legal or political institutions. Such for example is the changed position given to women. A change has occurred quite outside the political or even the economic sphere, both in the habits of western humanity and in their guiding conceptions.
The change is affecting the meaning of marriage, since we are becoming inclined to suppose that man and woman are not simply male and female. Human individuality is given a new value; and there is no telling yet what the new attitude may involve in lessening the friction due to primitive and obsolete tradition or in making society more reasonable and civilized. The source of the change is undoubtedly an enthusiasm which has been influenced by men and women of all nations. Ibsen has a place in the history of social transformation. And besides, the contact between nations has made it possible for the freer position of women in one group to affect the domestic slavery of another.
In the position of children, also, an immense change is proceeding. We cannot fail to call it social reform, that the child should be given so much more definite a place in the social organism. Aristotle thought woman was a mistake of nature's in the attempt to make man; and nearly all philosophers have treated children as if they ought to be rather ashamed of themselves for not being grown up. I speak of philosophers in the wide sense of the term, for I do not think the metaphysicians knew that there was such a thing as a child in the universe. However that may be, we can hardly believe that as late as the nineteenth century parents really imagined that they knew what was good for their children. In our more sceptical age, children have generally to be careful not to allow their parents to read certain books, and in every well brought up family, it is thought that parents should be seen and not heard. A social change has occurred in the comparative importance we assign to childhood and age.
Thirdly, there is gradually coming about a transformation of social castes. One must speak carefully; for in the West we are supposed not to have castes. There is, however, an uncomfortable feeling that society is not one, that the two cities which Plato said would divide and destroy the true city of men are now established—the rich and the poor. I do not mean those with £3,000 a year, and those with £160 a year. It is not a question for the Exchequer. I mean that great numbers in all 'civilized' nations are ill-fed and ill-clothed from birth, and die prematurely. To perceive it is to desire action which perhaps no state can perform. But that we perceive it is something. Read the complacent rhymes of Lord Tennyson about 'freedom slowly broadening down' and then turn to contemporary literature, to Jean Richepin or John Galsworthy, and you will acknowledge that a common ideal of social reform has come into existence. We are at least restless in face of a social organization which wastes humanity during long years of peace almost as completely, though not so recklessly, as during a few months of war.
Something has been already done—English writers and English experience have given a motive power to Hungarian, Russian, Finnish, Turkish, Persian, and Indian democracy. Groups of men have claimed, for example in South America, their right to free development. And everywhere during the period of European peace the contact between nations was teaching every nation the force of its own character, while the new complexities of society were weakening the old dividing lines of caste between individuals.
In all these matters we seem to be moved by a desire for a freer social atmosphere. Whether law or administration changes or not, it is clear that most European nations have undergone in the years of peace from 1871 to 1914 considerable social changes. How far they are effective in all nations and in all classes it is very difficult for a contemporary to judge. It may be that the social structure of the decorative upper fringe or of the bedraggled hem of society is much the same as it was before communication was easy and transit rapid. But the central body of European society is certainly changed; and, after all, between the scum and the dregs is the good soup.
Such are the changes which have been introduced into social life owing to the interdependence of nations. But we should not understand what has happened if we accepted the mere record of achievements. The future is built not only upon what we have done, but upon what we hope to do. Reforms accomplished do not make us more satisfied to endure evil not yet reformed—for always working in the achieved present is the ideal which transformed the past into what we now see.
We may turn, then, to consider some general features of the force working in social reform which is not yet achieved. And for that purpose we put aside established law and custom to consider the implied attitude.
Now that political privilege and inequality before the law are more or less removed, there is a greater concentration upon the underlying social injustice. We all accept it as good that the activities of government should not be for the benefit of the few, or that the money should not be drawn from one class. We suppose at least that there should be one law for rich and poor.
To any one with a knowledge of history this seems an immense step since small classes in every nation held political privilege, made law for others, and forced tribute from the majority. Not that all is justice and liberty. The law still, with noble impartiality, forbids both the millionaire and the pauper to steal bread. Of course it is not directed against the poor. The law never forbids the poor man to cheat the state out of more than £3,000 a year. Again, political power still depends on the social position of your cousins and your aunts. But something has been done.
We hear much more nowadays about social than about political or legal reform. That, in itself, is a sign of a change of attitude. In the revolution of 1381 the crowds came marching to London swearing, in the words of the old chronicle, that there would be no peace in the land till each and every lawyer was slain. In the revolutions of 1830 and 1848 it was 'death to the politicians'. Now—it may be that we despair of lawyers or politicians, dead or alive. In any case the attention of those in every state who are moved by enthusiasm for a better society is concentrated less upon votes and laws than upon the distribution of well-being.
Secondly, there has been a transference of enthusiasm of the religious or poetic kind from the sphere of contemplation or aloofness to that of earthly and even material action. Ideals of social reform do not any longer involve a neglect of food and clothing: we are all more and more convinced that it is idle to preach culture to a starving man, or to talk of liberty to one whose whole life is a bestial struggle for bare food and covering. I speak of normal times. In England, France, and Germany, social betterment means giving to a greater number security of bare life, upon which alone the good life can be built.
It will be seen that I imply a disagreement with the Tolstoian conception of reform; in so far as that involves a neglect of food and clothing and generally of what are called material goods. That conception is not perhaps powerful among those who deal with what is usually called social reform. It is not 'modern', and it is also dependent upon a mistaken argument in ethical theory. An unfortunate confusion made by what is called Eastern, Stoic, or Mediaeval asceticism led to the idea that because the mind is more important than the body, the body has no importance at all. But we need not deal with this theory in detail, especially as the general attitude of to-day is opposed to it. There is undoubtedly a concentration upon the bare necessities of human life with a view to discovering how these can be shared more generally.
We are fully aware of the immense social danger in the desire for riches; but that is no objection to the desire for bread and clothing and the bare necessities of human life. And the seemingly materialistic enthusiasm which will gradually transform our semi-bestial civilization is no less poetic or religious than any Eastern aloofness or Tolstoian simplicity. Poetry is not all rhyming couplets: religion is not all for the intellectually or artistically incompetent. So, a world in which twenty per cent. of humanity did not slowly starve to death would not necessarily be less worthy of admiration. Nor would religion disappear if every one were healthy, unless religion means the result of neurasthenia or dyspepsia or premature ageing. No doubt there is some exaggeration in this element of the common social ideals. Not even a poor man lives on bread alone; and it is indeed possible to have a perfectly well-fed society which would be quite barbarous. But we must regard the fine flower of culture as purchased at too high a price if, for the sake of a few connoisseurs and courtiers not to say bourgeois plutocrats, the majority in every nation must lack a bare human life. Some declare that the division between nations is more important than that between the rich and the poor. It may be so; but the only reason must be that what the few have, the many, however dimly, may hope to share or may be induced to think they do share. Humanity is infinitely gullible. But in every nation there is rising a murmur which may yet become an articulate cry.
The writers of modern Utopias in their detailed conception of what is desirable may speak only for themselves; but it is a sign of the common enthusiasm that they all attach so much importance to organization and to physical health. This indicates that we all, in every nation, look forward, however vaguely, to a society in which human life shall be less difficult for the majority to obtain. We speak sometimes of the redistribution of leisure—August Bebel made it one of the chief articles of his creed. But this as an ideal does not indicate any desire that the dock-labourer should have time to loaf in a club, or his wife time to play bridge, except in so far as time to loaf is an opportunity for some other employment than the mere struggle for food. There is nothing inevitable in a situation which makes the development of most of the human faculties a privilege of a few and an impossibility for the greater number. Nor is it correct to suppose that the half-starved and the ill-clothed should be satisfied with being 'virtuous', and leave it to others, possibly wicked and certainly far from simple, to cultivate art and science.
Nor again is it absurd to hope for a world in which all should have at least the opportunity for the development of any faculties they may possess. The social gain would be immense. It would be like the change from a harmony which is produced by a few amateurs to one of a full orchestra.
Thirdly, it is increasingly evident that no one state or nation can act effectively in social reform unless it acts in concert with others. Treaties of commerce, common prison legislation, and common measures for sanitation and medicine have proved effective because they are in the nature of things. They are necessary means for the desired prosperity even of the most selfish and segregated state.
But ignorance and prejudice and irrational violence spread as easily as disease or crime. Knowledge is not secure until it is widespread; and civilization perishes, which is segregated in a world of barbarism. Therefore education also, in its widest sense, must be contrived in common. Not merely school systems influenced by foreign ideas, but the very atmosphere of thought must change in harmony among all nations, if we are not to go toppling down into the abyss from which by painful centuries we have ascended.
This ideal of social reform then seems to be agreed upon between some men of all nations, that more common action should be taken. It is not a vague sentiment for the abolition of conflict between states; nor is it a pious aspiration for peace. It is the clear perception that the state cannot fulfil its functions in modern life if it continues to act as isolated or segregated. That for which the state itself stands cannot be attained even within the frontiers of one state by any state acting alone.
This is not the place to distinguish those subjects upon which states should act together from those on which they should act separately. That is simply the problem as to the limits of political regionalism. The fact which is sufficient for our argument here is that certain forces, chiefly economic, have come into existence in recent years, which disregard state boundaries. In concrete terms, these are international trusts and international labour interests. But it is increasingly evident that these cannot be effectively dealt with by any one state acting separately. The isolated sovereign state of earlier times is simply helpless before the elaborate world-system of economics; and control can only be secured by an established world-system of politics. The states, one supposes, exist for justice and liberty. Divided, they will perish or become mere playthings in the hands of non-moral economic 'interests'.
To save itself and all it stands for, the state must cease to pose as a possible opponent to any other state, and must deliberately co-operate in an increasing number of reforms.
It is better to put into the coldest terms a conception which has too often hitherto proved futile, because it arose rather from vague discontent, than from the perception of a definite evil. The fire of enthusiasm must indeed work upon that conception before any effective change can be made in the attitude of governments or of peoples. But enthusiasm will be wasted if we cannot pause to see against what we are contending.
We are struggling with the greatest of all obstacles to social reform when we attack the isolation of nations. Unless that is overcome we shall perhaps patch and prop; but, time and again, we shall be enslaved to the immensely powerful non-moral forces, in the midst of which humanity finds its way. I cannot speak more clearly—[Greek: bous epi glôssê]. The nations face each other in conflict, while death, disease, violence, bestial indolence and docility corrode every state.
But when war was at its brutish worst Grotius spoke with effect of a moral bond which survived between men who in physical conflict had been trying to take their 'enemies' for beasts and stones. And humanity began once more its long struggle with the beast in man. So now—I leave it to your imagination.
We have made immense progress by assisting each other across the frontiers of states in such science as may provide high explosive and submarine warfare. In these the nations have co-operated. The guns which kill the English at the Dardanelles were made by Englishmen. There may yet come a time when high explosives will be out of date, and the state will use the careful dissemination of disease among its enemies. The only reason, I think, why it is not now done, is that no group can be certain of making itself immune from the disease it may spread among its enemies.
Our conclusion, therefore, is that one of the elements in the present attitude towards social reform is a tendency to co-operation between nations. We have seen that this has already had effect in various details of law and administration; and there is every reason to suppose that the method will be carried further.
But the problem cannot be left there. Co-operation as a word is a mere charm, like Evolution. There has been, and there may be co-operation in doing wrong. That action has become common does not prove that it is right; and an ideal implies at least some ethical judgement. Therefore, in every nation there are some few who are convinced of the necessity for more deliberately moral action in common between men of different races. If there can be so much co-operation in the making of armaments or the defrauding of shareholders, there may yet be more co-operation in the elimination of disease and poverty. And not only may there be such co-operation, but it must be. The situation no longer exists in which most of the effects of an evil régime are confined within frontiers. The social distress of European nations must be dealt with as a whole because it is a whole. Therefore whatever militates against the unity of western civilization destroys the possibility of social reform.
Many times before it has been seen that there are nobler conflicts than the struggle for markets or for the political domination of one clique or one nation. Many times before it has been felt, at least by a few, that man is deceived when he imagines that man is his enemy. And many times when the deliverance seemed near we have been enslaved again by an evil magic. A hundred years ago, at the end of the Napoleonic wars, the dreamers imagined that humanity would have done with its false prophets and lay the ghosts which have haunted it since it began to shake off the manners of the beasts. But a dismal succession of new falsehoods and new blind guides appeared. And now, in this so advanced age, we have to face the same possibility. There is much to excuse a despair; from which nothing can free us but a new enthusiasm. The evil magic must be overcome by magic of another kind, and how acute the crisis seems it is hardly possible to indicate.
The quality of our age was its expectancy. For that reason men of every nation were moved to desire a transformed society. But perhaps that quality of expectancy was the quality of youth. For the first time in history, in the early twentieth century, age was giving place to youth in the political equilibrium of the generations. Now—I dare not speak too plainly. The young men of the western world are already, since August 1914, noticeably fewer. Death may have made no difference to them. It has made an immense difference to the future. It means that the eager expectancy of youth, which is the source of so much enthusiasm for a better world, is being lost. The crisis is here. As yet the common ideals of civilized nations still survive; but the desire for a better future is at ebb and flow with a tired acquiescence in the established order. It is in our hands to decide which shall overcome. No generation has faced a greater issue. We cannot tell what will be the outcome; but to hope too much is at least a more generous fault than to despair too soon.
BOOKS FOR REFERENCE
C.D. Burns, Political Ideals. Clarendon Press.
P. Geddes, Cities in Evolution. Williams & Norgate.
J.A. Hobson, Towards International Government. Allen & Unwin.
P.S. Reinsch, Public International Unions. Ginn & Co.
XII
POLITICAL BASES OF A WORLD-STATE
World-state is a term likely to be offensive in its arrogance, if it be taken to mean the substitution of a single political community and government for the numerous separate national states which have hitherto existed. I therefore hasten to say that I intend no such meaning, but use the term as a convenient expression to cover any body of political arrangements, to which most of the principal nations of the world are parties, sufficiently stable in character and wide in scope to merit the title of international government.
Towards such a possibility the nineteenth century has made three great contributions. During that century great advances have been made in the settlement of political government upon a basis of nationality. This process has been accomplished partly by throwing off the dominion of some foreign power, as in the case of Belgium, Greece, Montenegro, Bulgaria, Rumania, and Serbia, and the South American colonies of Spain; partly by the closer federal union of independent states, as in the case of Germany and Switzerland; partly by a blend of the two methods as in the case of Italy; and partly by the peaceful dissolution of an unnatural union, as with Norway and Sweden. Though much still remains to be done before the identification of statehood with nationality even for Europe is completed, and some backward steps have been taken, the growing acceptance of the conception of nationality as a just and expedient basis of government is a powerful guarantee for the persistence of this joint work of liberation and of union. If, as the result of the settlement following this war, political readjustments are made which fairly satisfy the remaining aspirations after national autonomy, the more pacific atmosphere will favour all opportunities for co-operation between nations.
The second contribution of the nineteenth century towards political internationalism is of a more positive character. It consists in a series of inchoate and fragmentary but genuine attempts of the Great Powers to work together upon critical occasions in the interests of 'justice and order', as they understood those terms, and to embody in acts or conventions some policy which is the result of their deliberations. This flickering light, called the Concert of Europe, first kindled at the Congress of Vienna, has reappeared fitfully throughout the century. The treaties, declarations, and conventions, proceeding from these conferences or congresses of the Powers, have marked important advances, not only in the substance of international law, but in the method of legislation. For whereas, before the Congress of Vienna, all the treaties between states which helped to form the body of international law were the acts of two or, at the most, a small group of states, since that time law-making treaties of general application and of world-wide importance have come into being. The most noteworthy examples of these general treaties are the Final Act of the Vienna Congress in 1815, the Declaration of Paris in 1856, the Geneva Convention of 1864, the Treaty of Berlin in 1878, the General Act of the Congo Conference in 1885, and the two Hague Conferences of 1899 and 1907. Having regard to the general character of many of the rules laid down at these conferences, as, for instance, the abolition of the slave trade, the neutralization of certain lands and waters, and the regulation of the rules of war, it is clear that we have to recognize throughout last century the existence of a rudimentary organ of international legislation, very irregular in its operation, very imperfect in structure and authority, but none the less a genuine experiment in international government.
Hardly less significant for our purpose has been the prominent assertion of the principle of federalism in the formation or growth of national government. The great example of the United States has been followed by Switzerland and Germany, by Mexico, Argentine, Brazil, and Venezuela, and by the dominions of the British Empire in Canada, Australia, and South Africa. I must not in this brief survey even touch upon the different forms of federalism. It must suffice to remark that, whether as a a principle of devolution, as in the case of the proposal of Home Rule for the constituent parts of Great Britain, or as a principle of closer union, as in the proposal for a federated British Empire, federalism is very much alive. It furnishes a hopeful mode not only for reconciling demands for local autonomy with effective central sovereignty among the provinces or districts of a single national state, but even for harmonizing the claims of separate nationality with those of wider racial, linguistic, and traditional sympathy. But even more important than these distinctively political movements and events, as a pledge of the coming world-state, is the manifold structure of industrial and commercial internationalism which has been growing during the last few generations at an ever accelerating pace. The network of material, financial, and intellectual communications, connecting all parts of the developed world, and establishing quick, constant, cheap, and reliable modes of transport for men, goods, money, and information, form the actual basis of what may not improperly be called an economic world-state. Though much of this machinery, with the great work of international trade and capitalistic co-operation which it assists to perform, lies outside the sphere of politics, there are innumerable points of political contact and pressure. The realities of foreign policy in every state are more and more concerned with issues of trade, communications, and concessions, and the treaties and other formal arrangements between states are to a growing extent the instruments and the expressions of the internationalism of economic interests. The imperialism and the colonial policy of each great Power, though composed of various ingredients, are mainly directed by commerce and finance. Most of the disagreements and conflicts between governments relate to interferences with the free play of economic internationalism by states whose policy is still dominated by foolish and obsolescent rules of a narrowly national economy. An enlightened interpretation of the needs and interests of modern man demands that all such national economic barriers be removed and replaced by governmental co-operation to secure, by free trade and an open door, for capital and labour the fullest and best development and distribution of the economic resources of the world.
While, therefore, the most impressive political events of the nineteenth century have been the expression and the successful realization of nationalism, many powerful undercurrents of internationalism have been gathering force. The pressures of civilization have been more and more towards extra-national activities. Thoughtful men and women in our time recognize the urgent need of closer international communion for three related purposes: First, the consolidation, extension, and effective sanction of the existing body of international law; secondly, the establishment of peace on a basis of reliable methods for the just settlement of differences; thirdly, the provision of regular accepted means for the co-operation of nations in all sorts of positive constructive work for the human commonwealth.
These general considerations I will ask you to regard as introductory to the grave practical question which confronts us. Is this essential work of internationalism consistent with the preservation of the sovereignty and independence of the present national state, or does its performance involve some definite cession of these national state-rights to the requirements of an international government?
The terrible events which are passing to-day ripen and sharpen this issue. They bring into powerful relief the inherent defects of an international polity based upon the absolute independence of the several states, and the futile mechanical balances and readjustments by which foreign policy has been conducted hitherto. But how far do they offer assistance or security for the achievement of organic reform? After this war has come to a close, will the nations and governments be enabled to lay a sound basis for pacific settlement of disputes and for active co-operation in the common cause of humanity for the future? No confident answer to this question is possible. For nobody can predict the composition and the relative strength of the feelings and ideas which will constitute 'the state of mind' of the several nations and their statesmen. As regards immediate or early policy, much will, of course, depend upon the definiteness of the victory and defeat, and the consequent distribution and intensity of the passions of elation and depression, anger and revenge, which peace may leave behind. It is, of course, part of the fighting strength of every belligerent to persuade himself that an overwhelming victory for himself affords the best security of peace and progress in the future. But this conclusion, based on the prior assumption, equally liable to error, that one's own cause is entirely right and one's enemy's entirely wrong, is unlikely to be sound. A peace which brings the least intensity of triumph and humiliation, the most even distribution of gains and losses, would seem to give an atmosphere most favourable to the growth of pacific internationalism. This, of course, will be sharply contested, and those who contest it will exhibit the usual excessive confidence of those whose mind moves in a shut oven of heated but unmeaning phrases about fighting to a finish, crushing German militarism, and 'a war to end war'. But there is no stronger evidence of the intellectual and moral havoc of war than the easy acceptance of what Ruskin called 'masked words' in lieu of thinking.
"There are masked words abroad, I say, which nobody understands, but which everybody uses, and most people will also fight for, live for, or even die for, fancying they mean this or that or other of the things dear to them. There were never creatures of prey so mischievous, never diplomatists so cunning, never poisoners so deadly, as these masked words; they are the unjust stewards of all men's ideas; whatever fancy or favourite instinct a man most cherishes, he gives to his favourite masked word to take care of for him; the word at last comes to have an infinite power over him—you cannot get at him but by its ministry." In war-time this domination of 'masked words' is all-powerful, and is likely to leave the thinking powers of all Europe seriously impaired when the war is over.
There are those who hold that sheer exhaustion, nervous and economic, will compel the nations to seek concerted action against the recurrence of so shattering an experience, that some sheer instinct of self-preservation will find expression in adequate political arrangements. I should be the last to deny the reality of the collective instinct. But remember that, as an instinct, it works blindly, and is liable to be diverted and frustrated in a thousand ways by the conflicting streams of narrow passion amongst which it moves. Mere exhaustion and a general feeling of insecurity cannot yield a sufficient motive and directing force for the work of international construction. It is necessary to rationalize this instinct of self-preservation and co-operation, in order to make it of effective service. Here lies the heart of our difficulty. War is the most intensely derationalizing process, and the long steeping of European civilization in the boiling cauldron will have twisted and blunted the very instruments of thought. As Professor Murray points out in a powerful essay, war rapidly undoes the slow secular process by which liberty and capacity for individual thought have grown up, and plunges the personal judgement into the common trough of the herd-mind. It is, I take it, the recognition of this peril to the human mind, this necessity of safeguarding the powers of individual thought and personal responsibility, that brings us here. We seek to fortify the separate centres of personal judgement, to inform the individual mind, because the work of making a positive contribution to the unity of civilization depends upon the vigorous independent functioning of many minds.
This consideration brings me directly to confront the enemy, that is to say, those who contend that a world-state or any real international government is now and must always remain an impossibility, an unrealizable Utopian dream. The process of social evolution on its political side ends with the national state. It is a final product. National states cannot, will not, and ought not, to abate one jot or tittle of their inherent sovereignty and independence, and the experience of history shows that all attempts at international federation or union are pre-doomed to failure.
It is evidently quite impossible for me to present here a full formal refutation of these positions. I will therefore content myself with brief demurrers. To the argument from social evolution I would reply that evolution knows no finality of type, and that the presumption lies in favour of those who hold that the centripetal or co-operative powers, which have forged the national state out of the smaller social unities, are not exhausted, but are capable of carrying the organizing process further. To those who rely upon the authority of history, citing the collapse of the experiments in federation which followed the Congress of Vienna as proof that similar experiments will similarly fail to-day or to-morrow, I reply that this view is based on a false interpretation of the statement that 'history repeats itself'. A psychological or sociological experiment is not the same when fundamental changes have taken place in the psychical and social conditions. We have already recognized that the nineteenth century has seen a series of vital changes in the economic and spiritual structure of civilization. The evidence of 1815 cannot, therefore, be conclusive as regards the possibilities of 1915. To those who insist on the sovereignty and independence of the national state as an eternal verity, I will make no further reply than to say that such language has for me no more meaning than talk of 'the divine right of kings', 'the natural rights of man', or any other phrase of the abracadabra of metaphysical politics. The actual world in which we live knows no such absolutes. Sovereignty and independence, like all other legal claims, are subject to modification and compromise. Every bargain made by treaty or agreement with another state, every acceptance of international law or custom, involves some real diminution of sovereign independence, unless indeed the liberty to break all treaties and to violate all laws is expressly reserved as an inalienable right of nations. Moreover, within the limits of a single nation, sovereignty is itself divided and distributed. Alike in the United States of America, the Swiss Republic, and the German Empire, the constituent states as well as the nations are recognized as sovereign, possessing certain rights or powers safeguarded by the constitution against all encroachments of the central or federal government. So again within the state itself, the sovereignty is often no longer concentrated in a single person or a single body of persons, but is exercised by the joint action of several organs, as in Great Britain, where the king and the Houses of Parliament are the joint administrators of the sovereignty of the state. Sovereignty thus becomes more and more a question of degree and of adjustment. International lawyers will doubtless insist that neither treaties nor international laws involve any derogation of sovereign powers. But when the substantial liberties of action are curtailed by any binding agreement, the unimpaired sovereignty is an idle abstraction.
When, therefore, we ask whether it is not possible to extend and consolidate the agreements between so-called sovereign states into some form of effective international government, we broach a proposition less revolutionary in substance than in sound. If all the separate treaties, conventions, and other agreements, existing now between pairs of nations for the performance of specific acts and the settlement of differences, were modified and gathered into the forms of general treaties signed by all the treaty-making states; if all international laws and usages were codified and brought under the surveillance of some single representative court or council,—we should discover that there existed already the substance of an international government, not indeed adequate to our needs, but far ampler than we had suspected. In the Hague conventions and courts, again, and in certain other intergovernmental instruments, such as the Postal and Telegraphic Bureaux at Berne, we already possess the nucleus of the general forms required. We possess already the beginnings alike of the legislative, judicial, and administrative apparatus of international government. But it is slight in substance, fragmentary in its application, and exceedingly imperfect in its sanctions. Moreover, it has just shown itself quite inadequate to perform the first function of a government, viz. to keep the public peace.
The task of converting so feeble a structure of government into an effective instrument of international peace and progress is evidently one of great magnitude and difficulty. But it is the task which lies persistently before us, and upon its performance the safety of civilization itself depends. It is, therefore, well not to exaggerate its difficulties, but to measure them as closely as we can. This can best be done by means of a brief survey of the principal lines of advance which have been proposed. In this country, in America, in Holland, and elsewhere, the air is thickening with schemes for obtaining better international relations after the war. All of them have this, I think, in common, that they concern themselves primarily not with ideal or practical plans for the general co-operation of nations in advancing the welfare of the world, but with methods of preventing future wars and securing relief against the burden of armaments. All agree that some general formal arrangements between nations must be substituted for 'the clash of competing ambitions, of groupings and alliances and a precarious equipoise', and that only by such stable agreement can disarmament be got and peace rendered secure. All agree that the instrument of this international government must be a general treaty to which a number of states must be parties and that the terms of this treaty must require them to submit all forms of disputes to some pacific mode of settlement. Nearly all, moreover, accept the distinction drawn between justiciable issues, relating to the application or interpretation of laws or to the ascertainment of facts by means of legal evidence, which are suitable for settlement by a judicial or arbitral process, and those which, not being capable of such settlement, are better suited for a looser process of inquiry and conciliation.
But the proposals differ widely, both as regards the scope they assign to the work of preventing war, and as regards the measures they advocate for securing the fulfilment of international agreement. They may be grouped, I think, in three classes on an ascending scale of rigour. The first class envisages a general treaty, by which the signatory states shall undertake to submit all differences between them to processes of arbitration or conciliation conducted by impartial courts or commissions, and to abstain from all acts of hostility during the progress of such investigation. This principle has recently found an important expression in the treaties signed last year by the United States with Great Britain and France, and other nations. The first article of these treaties reads as follows: 'The High Contracting Parties agree that all disputes between them, of every nature whatsoever, other than disputes the settlement of which is provided for, and in fact achieved, under existing agreements between the High Contracting Parties, shall, when diplomatic methods of adjustment have failed, be referred for investigation and report to a Permanent International Commission to be constituted in the manner prescribed in the next succeeding article; and they agree not to declare war or begin hostilities during such investigation and before the report is submitted.' The objects of this method of pacific settlement are three: first, to provide impartial and responsible bodies for a reasonable inquiry into all disputes; secondly, to secure a 'cooling off' time for the heated feelings of the contestants; thirdly, to inform the public opinion of the world and to make effective its moral pressure for a sound pacific settlement.
The efficacy of any such arrangement evidently depends upon two conditions, first, the confidence of the signatory states that each and all will abide by their undertaking, and, secondly, the uncovenanted condition that they will accept and carry into effect the awards or recommendations of the arbitral and conciliation commissions. These proposals, however, furnish no sanctions or guarantees other than those of conscience and public opinion for the due performance of the treaty obligations, and make no attempt to bind the parties to an acceptance of the decision of the commissions. Moreover, regarded as a means of securing world-peace and disarmament, all such proposals appear defective in that they make no provision for disputes between one or more of the signatory states and outside states which are no parties to the arrangement.
Such considerations have moved many to seek to strengthen the bond of the alliance, and to make it available for mutual support against outside aggression. The vital issue here is one of sanctions or the use of joint force, diplomatic, economic, or military, to compel the fulfilment of treaty obligations and the execution of the awards. Many hold that, while most civilized states might be relied upon to carry out their undertakings, some powerful state—Germany, or Russia, or Japan—could not be trusted, and that this want of confidence would oblige all nations to maintain large armaments with all their attendant risks and burdens. To obviate this difficulty, it is proposed by some that the signatories shall pledge themselves to take joint action, diplomatic, economic, or forcible, against any of their members who, in defiance of the treaty obligations, makes or proposes an armed attack upon another member. This is the measure of stiffening added by Mr. Lowes Dickinson in his constructive pamphlet After the War: 'The Powers entering into the arrangement' are to 'pledge themselves to assist, if necessary, by their national forces, any member of the League who should be attacked before the dispute provoking the attack has been submitted to arbitration or conciliation.' A state, however, by Mr. Dickinson's scheme, is still to remain at liberty to refuse an award, and after the prescribed period, even to make war for the enforcement of its demands. Other peace-leaguers go somewhat further, assigning to the league an obligation to use economic or forcible pressure for securing the acceptance of the award of the Court of Arbitration, though leaving the acceptance of the recommendations of the Conciliation Court to the free option of the parties. This is the proposal made by Mr. Raymond Unwin, and by the League of Peace.
Now a definite halt at this position is intelligible and defensible. While binding by strict sanctions the States to submit all disputes to the pacific machinery that is provided, to await the conclusion of the arbitral and conciliatory processes, and even to accept the legal awards of arbitration, it leaves a complete formal freedom to refuse the recommendations of the Commission of Conciliation. Yet it must be borne in mind that most of the really dangerous disputes, involving likelihood of war, are not arbitrable in their nature, and will come before the Commission of Conciliation. If no provision is made for enforcing the acceptance of the recommendations of this body, what measure of real security for peace has been attained? An incendiary torch, like that kindled last year in the Balkans, may once again put Europe in flames. The defenders of the position we are now considering have three replies. They admit that their proposal still leaves open the possibility of war, but they contend that if a sufficient cooling-off time or 'moratorium' is secured, the likelihood of an ultimate recourse to war by rejection of the award will be reduced to a minimum. They urge that no scheme which can be devised will preclude the possibility of a strong criminal or reckless State violating its treaty obligations and seeking to enforce its will by force. Finally they urge that many self-respecting States would refuse to abandon the ultimate right of declaring war, in cases where they deemed their vital interests were affected, and that any invitation to take this step might wreck the possibility of a less complete but very valuable arrangement.
Now it would be a considerable advance towards world government, if all or most powerful States would consent to abandon separate alliances, or subordinate them to a general alliance binding them to submit all disputes to a process of impartial inquiry before attempting to enforce their national will by arms. It may be that this is as far as it is possible to go in the direction of securing world-peace and international co-operation in the early future. If States will not carry their co-operation so far as to agree upon united action to put down all wars between their members, and to take a united stand against all attacks from outside, it would be necessary to respect their scruples, and to rely upon the softening influence of the moratorium and informed public opinion to render a final recourse to arms unlikely among civilized States. But, in considering the measure of security thus achieved, we must remember that we must look to the weakest link in the chain of the alliance, and ask ourselves how far the plan of conciliation represented in the recent treaties between the United States and several friendly European nations can be considered equally secure in dealing with Germany, Russia, or Japan. If our international arrangement is to dispense with all forcible pressure in the last resort, and to rely upon purely moral pressure, it seems evident that the validity of the arrangement depends upon the degree of confidence which other States will entertain as to the bona fides and pacific disposition of the least scrupulous of the powerful signatory States. For if the opinion held of any one or two powerful States is that under the stimulus of greed or ambition they would be likely, in defiance of an award or of the public opinion of other States, to enforce their will upon some weaker neighbour, such an opinion will keep alive so strong a feeling of insecurity that no considerable reduction of military preparations will be possible.
In assessing the early value of all proposals for better international relations, the best practical test is afforded by the question, 'Will the proposal lead nations to reduce their armaments?' For it will be admitted that any settlement or international agreement, which leaves the claims of militarism and navalism upon the vital and financial resources of the several nations unimpaired, affords little hope of a pacific future. A return to the era of competing armaments will destroy the moral strength of any formal international agreements, however specious. The importance of this consideration has led many to insist that an explicit agreement for proportional disarmament should take a prominent place in any settlement. This proposal, however, seems to me defective in that it presumes in all or some of the nations a persistence of the motives which have hitherto led them to strengthen their fighting forces. Now the primary object of such international arrangements as we are discussing, is to bring about a state of things in which the past motives to arm will weaken and tend to disappear. If nations, actuated either by arrogance or greed or fear, continue to desire to increase their fighting strength, no arrangements for proportionate disarmament are likely to be effective. On the other hand, if the basis of a really valid league or federation can be laid, precluding the most ambitious State from any reasonable hope of indulging dreams of successful conquest, while relieving timid States from the apprehensions under which they have lived hitherto, the natural play of political forces within each State will favour disarmament. An international arrangement that meets our requirements must be strong enough to reverse the motives, aggressive and defensive, which in the past have caused nations to arm. Nations will not pile up armaments if they believe that they will have no need or opportunity to use them. To produce this belief in the uselessness of national armies and navies is therefore a prime object of international policy. The successful establishment of this belief involves, however, a change of disposition among national governments amounting to the process known in religious circles as conversion. They must be induced to forgo that right of war which according to past statecraft has been the brightest jewel in the crown of sovereignty.
Thus we are again brought round to our vital issue, that of the amount and kind of cession of sovereignty required for an effective International Government. It may be the case that it will be impossible to induce a sufficient number of the great States to transfer the ultimate right of waging war to a representative International Government, or to cede to such a Government the right to legislate on international relations with power to enforce obedience to these laws. There are, however, many of us who hold that these powers are essential to an international arrangement which shall effectively guarantee the peace of the world. The abandonment of the sovereign right to make war is essential for the future security of peace. Legislative and executive powers for an International Government are essential to obtain by pacific means those changes in the political and economic relations of peoples which hitherto have only been attainable by war. No merely statical settlement will suffice. Great new issues of national controversy or of economic needs will certainly come up afresh for settlement, and until some stable method of government is established with power to determine and enforce the equities and the utilities they represent, recourse to the arbitrament of war will still be likely.
But granting that national government does not represent a final form of political structure, and that some federal internationalism is now practicable, is it possible to hope or to expect that by a single stride, or by a series of rapid strides, the sovereignty of national states will submit to so much diminution as is involved in the more advanced scheme of international government? Most historians, statesmen, and political philosophers will, I think, hold that so large and rapid a process of development is impracticable, however desirable in theory it might be. It will be necessary, they insist, to take one step at a time, to preserve as closely as possible the principle of continuity, and not to attempt to move further and faster than circumstances and the necessities of the time compel.
But do circumstances and necessities always compel us to move slowly and to take one step at a time? Though normal growth is slow and continuous, modern science tends to lay increasing stress upon discontinuous and sudden larger variations in the production of organic changes. Biology distinguishes these mutations by which new species arise from the normal process of evolution by insensible gradations. There is, as I understand it, no real breach of continuity, no miraculous creation, but a sudden removal from a structural position which by slow accumulation of prior changes had become unstable, or to a new position of stability, involving a swift readjustment of organic parts. May not similarly important mutations occur in the evolution of political institutions, when a similar stress of circumstances makes itself felt? Nay, we may further ask, whether the special function of man's reasonable will is not to bring about these changes in the direction of individual and collective conduct. The power of making new quick and complex adaptations to new environments is the essential economy of the human brain. Freedom of thought and of will are continually producing new judgements and new determinations for action which contain this quality of sudden mutation. Quick conversions of thought and will are of the essence of our conscious life. When they carry important consequences to our conduct they appear to be, and in fact are, breaches of the normal conduct of our life which proceeds by custom, repetition, and insensible modifications.
In politics, as in religion, sudden conversions under the stress of circumstances are not unknown, and they may be genuine and lasting. And what holds of individual wills and judgements holds also of the collective mind. That human nature in its fundaments of thought and feeling, its primary needs, desires and emotions, will not be appreciably changed even by this shattering experience of war must be conceded. But what we may call the general state of mind, or the moral and intellectual atmosphere, will be profoundly affected. This will be in part the result of the great economic and political disturbances which are occurring, and which will have undermined and loosened the old ideas and valuations in relation to such important institutions as property, the control of industry, the activities of woman, the party system, the State itself. But more profound still will be the direct reaction of sorrow and suffering of war, the revelation of the power of the organized destructiveness and cruelty, and of the inadequacy of reason, justice, and goodwill as defences of civilization. The very foundations of organized religion in the hearts of men will be shaken. The patent failure of the State to perform its primary function of safeguarding life and property is likely to feed currents of revolutionism in every country. The sudden changes produced in the balance of age and of sex by the destruction of so large a proportion of the young and energetic men of every nation, will affect all processes of thought and policy. Some of these changes will seem favourable to conservatism, timidity, and reaction. Everywhere, at the close of the war, military and official autocracy will be enthroned in the seats of power, and the spirit of political authority will be stoking the fires of fevered nationalism which war evokes. But other forces will be making for bold political experiments. Not only the fear of restive and impoverished workmen, who have recently acquired the use of arms and perhaps the taste for risks, but the havoc wrought upon industry and commerce, and above all the crushing burden of taxation, will dispose the controlling and possessing classes to seek alternatives to a return to the era of competing alliances and armaments. Mild and conservative measures will be obviously unavailing. During the years of exhaustion following the war, resolute leaders of public opinion will be setting themselves everywhere to frame schemes of international relations which shall yield adequate guarantees of peace. For the first time in history great reading and thinking communities will give their chief attention to international politics. They will recognize the urgency of the work of building the society of nations upon a basis of genuinely representative government. Behind this reasonable process of constructive thinking, carried on in every country by politically convinced individuals and groups, will be the powerful support of the unthinking, suffering masses, motived by no clear conception of causes or remedies, but by that collective instinct of self-preservation which impels the herd to avoid destruction and to follow leaders who point the way to safety.
The International Crisis in its Ethical and Psychological Aspects. Humphrey Milford.
G. Lowes Dickinson, After the War. Fifield.
C.E. Hooper, The Wider Outlook beyond the World-War. Watts & Co.
F.N. Keen, The World in Alliance. Southwood.
Norman Angell, Prussianism and its Destruction. Heinemann.
Allison Phillips, The Confederation of Europe. Longmans.
The New Statesman. Special Supplement. Suggestions for the Prevention of War.
J.A. Hobson, Towards International Government. Allen & Unwin.
XIII
RELIGION AS A UNIFYING INFLUENCE IN WESTERN CIVILIZATION
The argument of these essays has been to prove that even now, in the greatest armed conflict of the world, the term 'Christendom' is not inapplicable to Europe. There is a real unity in Western civilization—a unity due in large measure to the influence of religious faith and organization. The mediaeval Church gave the Teutonic peoples of Northern Europe, and the barbarians who overran the Roman Empire, their first momentous introduction into the great inheritance formed by the uneasy blending of Christian faith and literature with Greco-Roman civilization. The spiritual achievements of Greek and Roman, Jew and Christian have remained the common possessions of the West, the foundation of what is still Christendom. In so far as it exists Christendom witnesses to the formative power of a religious faith: in so far as it remains a dream, we may suspect it demands the renewed impulse of a faith enlightened and chastened by all the experience of the past.
If, however, we ask, Is there any likelihood that a common religious faith and life will contribute to raise Western civilization to a yet higher unity? modern as contrasted with mediaeval history seems at first sight to demonstrate the futility of any such inquiry.
Since the Reformation, religion has made for division rather than co-operation. The modern period of European history begins in disruption. Not only was Europe rent by the conflict of Catholic and Protestant, but the dream of an international reformed Church which at one time floated before the mind of Cranmer was dissipated by the strength of nationalism and the cleavage in the ranks of the reformers themselves. In our own country, what is euphemistically termed the Elizabethan Settlement proved to be the source of further dissension, and reform appeared as the prolific mother of sects and schisms. The Protestant Churches were organized on national and state lines. They ceased to retain any international character in their constitution, while international intercourse became a diminishing influence. The Church of Rome in the conflict with Gallicanism found herself at grips with the spirit of nationalism, and to-day the strength of national feeling within Roman Catholicism hinders the Pope from exerting a moral authority over sovereign states that would parallel the judicial functions successfully asserted by Innocent III. No Christian Church to-day so rises above the national states of Europe, as to control or even adequately to criticize the claims of those states. The Churches no longer serve to embody and express an European conscience.
The break-up of a common ecclesiastical organization was not perhaps the most serious loss of unifying power which religion in the West suffered at the time of the Reformation. If it be true that the Bible and the Greek spirit are the great common factors of Western civilization, then we must recognize that these two great influences tended to fall apart and even to oppose each other in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The humanist element in the Reform-movement grew less and less, while humanism itself became more definitely secular. The European mind has ever since been conscious of a disturbing division between religion and culture. A development of religion which should render to Western civilization services comparable to those rendered by the mediaeval Church demands not only a heightened international consciousness among Christians, which shall be able to find organized expression, but also some fresh synthesis of religion and culture, some reunion of the spirit of Hellas, the Greek delight in beauty and faith in reason, with the moral strength and religious insight of Hebrew prophecy.
Those who are concerned for the future of our civilization will look eagerly for signs of any such development in the religious life and thought of our time. Do recent history and present experience discover any influences at work which may yet restore a unifying power to religion? Naturally any answer to such a question will be of a subjective character. The personal equation cannot easily be eliminated; we may be duped by our hopes or deceived by our fears. In the last analysis we cannot safely predict the future of religion. We may, however, take stock of our present situation, and survey its significant elements, even if our value-judgements as to their relative importance will inevitably vary.
While religious divisions have not vanished from the West, and indeed show no prospect of immediate reconciliation, and while the formation of new sects, of which the Christian Science Movement offers an example, has not altogether ceased, there has been an admitted decline of the dogmatic and sectarian tempers, and this decline has opened the way for knitting up severed friendships. The revolt against the dogmatic attitude of mind and even against religious dogma itself is widespread. The sense of loss involved in the isolation of any sect, and the wish to pass beyond the limits of any denominational tradition, are both appreciably affecting the religious situation. In England Matthew Arnold's somewhat unhappy criticism of Dissent expressed a dislike both of dogma and sectarian narrowness. His profounder contribution to the better understanding of St. Paul derives its worth precisely from his elevation of the mystic and the saint in Paul at the expense of the doctrinal theologian of Calvinist tradition. The wish to be rid of dogma continues to find vigorous intellectual expression, of which Mr. Lowes Dickinson's Religion, a Criticism and a Forecast, may be taken as an example. In another direction the Brotherhood Movement and the Adult School Movement represent the search, if not for an altogether undogmatic faith, yet at least for a broader basis of association than is compatible with the insistence on definite statements of belief. Both would unite in the prayer
God send us men whose aim will be
Not to defend some outworn creed,
and some members of both entertain the suspicion that all creeds are outworn.
This dislike of dogma may cloak an unwarranted scepticism as to the possibility of reaching truth in religion, but it is symptomatic of the longing for larger sympathy and broader fellowship. It is but the extreme expression of a temper which has reduced the angularity of those who are very far from surrendering or belittling definite beliefs and doctrines. The denominationalist who used to have no hesitation in claiming a monopoly of the truth for his particular Church, now falters where he firmly stood. We are more ready to recognize our limitations. A growing number of thoughtful minds appreciate Lord Acton's position when he wrote to Mary Gladstone: 'I scarcely venture to make points against the religion of other people, from a curious experience that they have more to say than I know, and from a sense that it is safer to reserve censure for one's own which one understands more intimately, having a share in responsibility and action.' This more chastened mood opens the way to fresh understandings in the religious world. Whence does this change in atmosphere originate?
In tracing out the causes of this new temper in religion, a first place may legitimately be assigned to the growth of the scientific spirit. In considering science as a source of unity, it is a mistake to dwell exclusively on the creation of a body of common knowledge. To know the same thing may do little to unite men. To attack problems in the same way, and to share the same spirit of free inquiry, the same reverence for fact, the same resolute endeavour to surmount prejudice, issue in a far closer bond of union. Science unites men even more closely by its spirit than by its achievement. The application of scientific method to the literary and historical study of the Bible, as well as in the psychological analysis of religious experience, has called into being in every Church and every land, groups of people who approach the subject-matter of their faith from the same angle and under the guidance of the same mental discipline. As a result of the critical movement a man finds his foes in his own and his friends in his neighbours' ecclesiastical household. The study of religion renews international contact and requires international co-operation as much as any other branch of science. It is possible to detect differing characteristics in the scholarship of the leading nations, though it may be doubted whether these are fundamental differences. The volume of critical work published in Germany is so considerable as to foster the illusion that it constitutes a self-sufficing world. Thus it is possible for Dr. Schweitzer in his brilliant survey of research into the life of Jesus, to represent the whole inquiry as the work of German genius and as the endeavour of German liberalism to picture Jesus in accordance with its own half-unconscious bias. Yet even so the cloven-hoof of international interdependence makes its appearance, for he has to devote one unsympathetic chapter to Renan, even if he contrives to ignore Seeley's Ecce Homo. But the debt of English scholarship to Germany is undeniable, and must not be repudiated in war-time. Nor is the debt entirely on one side. It is worth recalling that Adolph Harnack, perhaps the greatest living German scholar in the realm of New Testament criticism and Church History, derived no little inspiration from the work of Edwin Hatch. At any rate the acceptance of the critical method associates scholars in all lands, produces International Congresses for the study of Religions, and fosters personal friendships which even war will not destroy.
Beyond the internationalism of scholarship, we must remember the reaction of criticism on popular religious thought. Slowly but surely the judgements of believers, lay and clerical, are being permeated with some sense of historical perspective. The mere attempt to recognize the literary character of the various books of the Bible has effected a liberation. The variation of the different parts of the Bible in literary quality, in evidential value for history and in spiritual significance, are at last being freely recognized outside the study and the lecture-room. Men are ceasing to regard the Bible as a series of legal enactments or common-law precedents of equal authority. This is leading to a revision of inherited traditions, that were based on a view of the Bible which is no longer tenable. In general this development favours a more modest assertion of one's own beliefs and a more charitable consideration of other people's. When we continue to differ, we differ with a more sympathetic understanding of those from whom we differ.
It is impossible to trace here in any detail the influence of the critical movement on traditional beliefs or even on the conception of authority in religion. It may, however, be worth while to point out that the psychological study of religion has tended to broaden sympathy by promoting the frank recognition of the varieties of religious experience. More allowance is made for temperament, and there is less anxiety to force all spiritual life into the same mould or scheme. The sacramentalist and the non-sacramentalist, the mystic and the intellectualist, the man of feeling and the man of action, those who experience sudden changes and those who are the subjects of more gradual growth—each receives his due, and neither need despise the other. There are dangers associated with our constant reference to temperament. It is really a condemnation of a Church to say that its position appeals to a particular temperament, while it is often no real kindness to an individual to be excused from attempting to enter into a particular phase of religious life on the ground that he is temperamentally disqualified. But it is clearly a gain to challenge an over-rigid standardization of religious life. It is pathetic to hear people protest that they have no religious experience, when they are simply blinded by too narrow an interpretation of the term. In so far as the psychology of religion throws into relief the manifold appeal of religious ideas to different minds, it helps to create a new sense of unity in difference.
Accompanying the growth of the scientific spirit and in part stimulated by it, more distinctly religious and philosophical influences are at work quickening the desire for wider and deeper fellowship. Considering first the problem within the borders of the Christian Church, I think we may claim that there is a growing willingness to co-operate and a revival of the hope of reunion. We may further claim that certain advances in thought, in the understanding of Christianity itself, have already been made, and render co-operation if not reunion less Utopian than before. Of these I would put first the acceptance of the principle of toleration as an essential element of Christian faith. It has been suggested by Mr. Norman Angell that the religious wars of the seventeenth century came to an end through economic exhaustion and through rationalism. Toleration was accepted as a state-principle on the strength of a common-sense calculation as to the uselessness of repression. I am not disposed to ignore the forcefulness of the argument, 'You will starve or go bankrupt, if you do not cease to persecute heretics or fight Protestants,' nor would I underestimate the influence of common-sense in closing the era of religious wars, but I cannot help thinking that an intense religious conviction of the duty of toleration and a kind of philosophic liberalism, though entertained by few, contributed to the triumph of the principle. For the Christian, the duty has become clearer through the influence of the gospels. Some of the Churches have begun to take to heart the rebuke of Jesus to the disciples who wished to call down fire on the Samaritans. Nor is it a question of a particular incident. A deep respect for individuality is found to lie at the centre of the gospel. For the Christian, the attitude of toleration, the reliance on persuasion, on the appeal to every man's conscience, has become more and more clearly the indispensable qualification of the ambassador for Christ. As the acceptance of the principle of toleration is by no means universal in the Church, its fuller recognition in some quarters may serve at first to intensify division. It may emphasize, e.g. the continued necessity for Protestantism, by bringing into clearer light the moral obstacle to reunion in the Inquisition and disciplinary methods of the Church of Rome. But in the long run, this development of thought must make for better understanding and wider fellowship.
Still confining our survey to the Christian Church, there has been a significant fastening of attention on those parts of the New Testament in which the idea of Catholicity is fully developed. The epistle to the Ephesians and the seventeenth chapter of John are beginning to haunt the Christian consciousness as never before since the days of the Reformation. It is clear that the present position of the Church, in which divisions have crystallized into separate organizations, does not reflect and envisage the ideal that 'they all may be one'. The unity of the Church appears to be a condition precedent to the success of its testimony. The scandal and the impotence of division are more acutely felt. Unless the Church of Christ can heal herself or find healing for herself, it is little enough which she will be able to contribute to the healing of the nations.
There is hope then for closer fellowship within the Church, because the problem is being more and more definitely laid upon the consciences of her members. A further advance in thought which makes possible a closer approximation of the severed fragments of the Christian Church, is to be found in the process of sifting the essential from the accidental in the Christian tradition. It would be idle to pretend that the process has reached its conclusion, or that there is any large measure of agreement as to what constitutes the essence of Christianity. No one indeed believes any longer in the whole Bible from cover to cover—not even those who say they do. The fight for the creeds is more strenuous, while Rome cannot afford to admit that any article of faith which has been authoritatively defined may be treated as non-essential. But if I may venture a personal judgement, I cannot see that even the Apostles' creed will be able to retain its place as a summary of essential Christianity. The articles which deal with the Descent into Hades and the Resurrection of the Body, and perhaps those which deal with the Virgin-Birth and Ascension of our Lord, are dubious, if not false, and cannot fairly be regarded as indispensable. If I may attempt to forecast, I would say that the ultimate cleavage is coming not over particular articles of the Apostles' Creed, but over the value we set on the history and person of Jesus. The choice will lie between a conception of God for which the story and character of Jesus are final and determinative, and a vaguer spiritual theism for which Jesus has no supreme significance. This is not even the division between Trinitarian and Unitarian. The ultimate parting of the ways turns on the question whether a man's faith in God is Christ-centred or not. The significant cleavage of the future will come between those who believe that Christianity—the belief in the Fatherhood of God through Jesus Christ—is the final religion, and those who hold that Christianity in this sense is destined to be swallowed up in some still broader faith in God for which other revelations, through nature and through other figures in history, are as significant as the creed embodied in a tale in Galilee and on Golgotha nineteen centuries ago. But whatever cleavage may appear hereafter in the religion of the West, the search for the essence of Christianity, even when it works through controversy, will contribute to lop off idle dissensions and reveal fellowship in fundamentals where men had previously supposed themselves to be hopelessly divided.
It is a little invidious to choose out any particular movements for special reference, and in so doing I may merely betray personal bias rather than critical judgement. Yet it is perhaps permissible to point out that the genesis of the Adult School movement is the natural development of the Quaker respect for that of God in every man. It represents the longing for a religious fellowship which does not force opinion but offers the most favourable conditions for the formation of independent judgement and the growth of individual faith. How far the movement realizes its ideal, I forbear to inquire, but its very existence affords some evidence of the belief in the positive virtue of toleration as an essential element of the Christian character. Another powerful factor making for co-operation and better understanding among Christians may be found in the Student Christian movement. For this country its value has been enhanced if not created by the opening of the older Universities to Nonconformists. The future leaders of all our Churches are now being educated together, and through the Student Christian movement, they are educating each other and facing together old controversies and inherited problems at a time when their judgements are least hampered either by tradition or responsibility. What this may mean for the religious life of this country, we cannot yet tell, but it is certain that a new temper will be brought to bear on our divisions. The men who learn to appreciate one another through this association, tend to hold together when they pass out of the Universities into their life-work. There are springing up through the Student movement new associations or fellowships which conserve and continue the unifying impetus of the movement itself. Nor is that unifying power confined to this country. It forms a world-wide federation whose lines of communication have not been cut even by the present war. In every land, the Student movement intends to resume international intercourse at the earliest possible moment. I think it is not simply the bias of a student in favour of his own class, which makes me regard the Student Christian movement as one of the most hopeful developments in the religious life of our age.
Perhaps the influence of this movement itself may be traced in the growing demand for co-operation in the missionary task of the Church. This demand has no doubt arisen in part through the changes in the means of transport and communication which have made the world a smaller place. Missionary effort is less sporadic than it was. The Churches are developing a Weltpolitik. The exact proportions of the task before them are now more clearly grasped. The difficulty of overtaking the task even when united, and the impossibility of discharging it effectively while divided are also more apparent. But the demand for unity and the power of co-operation have also been strengthened by the men and women who have gone abroad under the influence of the Student Volunteer Missionary Union. High Churchmen and Nonconformist having learnt to work together on a Christian Student executive do not find it difficult to co-operate, where opportunity offers, in India or China. A half-involuntary revolution of sentiment is proceeding under our eyes. The strength of the new spirit of co-operation was revealed in the Edinburgh Conference of 1910. That date will stand out as supremely significant in the growth of a new Catholicism in the West.
We have so far been concerned with influences making for a deeper sense of unity within the Christian Church. But if we attempt a wider survey, we shall discover that religious thought and feeling in the West, whether definitely Christian or no, possess some common characteristics, bear the impress of convictions which are ever struggling for expression.
First among these characteristic features of religious thought in the West I would place faith in the solidarity of mankind. The origin of this faith probably passes beyond our analysis. I should suspect that there is a universal impulse stimulating this belief which I should be inclined to regard as instinctive. Yet it has certainly found fuller expression in the West than in the civilization of India or China. It is possible to point to traditions, to philosophies, and to particular events which have carried this faith in human solidarity deep into the consciousness of the West. Dr. Prichard, whose scientific labours, we were told in an earlier lecture, refuted the heresy of polygenism, was moved to undertake his inquiries by a desire to maintain the accuracy of the Mosaic tradition as to the common origin of mankind. It is a little curious to reflect that illusory anthropology, accepted on the authority of Moses and of Rousseau, the belief in Adam, and the belief in the free and happy savage, have perhaps done more than scientific research into primitive culture to maintain our faith in human brotherhood and equality. We must not, however, attach too much weight to the story of Adam. The Western sense of the dignity of ordinary manhood owes much more to the great Stoic conception of humanity, as Mr. Barker reminded us in his lecture on the Middle Ages. Perhaps even more significant is the feeling for humanity engendered by regarding all men as the objects of a common redemption. The poorest of men have been protected from their fellows where they have been recognized as brothers for whom Christ died. It would be worth while, if one had the time and the knowledge, to follow the growth of this sentiment in modern times, to trace the influence of the doctrine of Natural Rights, of the French Revolution, of the philosophy of Comte, and of the Evangelical Revival, upon its development. But whatever the sources and phases of its growth, the existence and strength of this faith in humanity are undeniable. It is this faith which compels us to refuse to think of Western civilization as merely Western. For we believe that the West holds in trust for mankind, not only a right knowledge of nature, not only a correct scientific method, but also an essential conception of the worth and unity of human life. Whatever we are to gain from the East, this is one of the gifts we bring to the other half of the world.
In speaking of this faith in human solidarity as Western, I am aware that I am making broad statements which badly need qualification. I am far from wishing to suggest that there is no such sentiment of humanity in the great structures of Asiatic civilization, particularly in the ethical systems of China. But I am persuaded that there is a broad contrast between West and East in this respect, and that in particular there is a significant gulf between the West and Hinduism. In the West, this often inarticulate faith in humanity has acted as a spring of progress. It inspires our faith in democracy, it acts as a perpetual challenge to privilege and oppression, as a constant denial of permanence to divisions of class, nationality, and race. The very difficulty which the orthodox Hindu experiences in appreciating the spiritual meaning of democracy—his feeling that the democratic movement is an irrational blindly selfish confusing of a divine appointed social order—discloses the existence of this gulf. It is not for nothing that the religious traditions of Hinduism trace the four castes back to divine appointment and regard them as coeval with the race. Nor is it without significance that India rejected Buddhism—a movement which challenged caste and whose missionary enthusiasm embodied a broader sentiment of humanity than has yet been woven into Indian civilization. The influence of the West is now renewing the attack on caste which Buddha initiated and failed to accomplish.
Without serious injustice we may claim that this faith in human solidarity has attained clearer expression and exerts greater influence in the West than in the East. To detail its influence is impossible. It underlies our hopes of social reform, it refuses to believe in the subhuman—at least it refuses to believe in the necessity of his continued existence. It inspires the religious enthusiasm with which men embrace Socialism as 'a hope for mankind'. It turns the brotherhood of man into a 'masked word.' As a character in one of St. John Ervine's novels puts it, 'Brother'ood of man, my boy—that's my motter. Brother'ood of man! the 'ole world, see! Not a little bit like England! the 'ole world! all of us! see? No fightin or nothink! Just peace an' 'appiness! Takes your breath away when you think on it. It do, straight.' The same religious impulse is at work in that disease of humanitarianism which distresses Chauvinists—the humanitarianism which Bernhardi denounces in Germany and Mr. Moreton Fullerton deplores in France. It is reflected in the religious life alike of Russia and of France. Paul Sabatier's book is largely concerned with following out the influence of this sense of solidarity in all philosophic and religious schools and in all classes in France. He notes, for example, the anti-clericalism of the French peasant, which does not, however, lead him to embrace the dogmatic negations of Free-thought. The peasant still clings to the rites of the Church through 'the perhaps unconscious desire to perform an act of social solidarity, to meet our fellow-men elsewhere than on the field of material interests and distractions, to accept the rendezvous which they offer to us and we to them, that we may draw together and, more than that—unite and unify'. In another quarter we may witness a new feeling for humanity resulting from the throwing together of diverse racial elements in the melting-pot of the United States. Zangwill's play might be cited as a document of this larger faith, while Jane Addams has sympathetically described its genesis in her Newer Ideals of Peace. Yet another expression of this instinctive faith may be discovered in the broad human interest of much of our modern literature and art. For the standard of orthodoxy in this connexion requires not only that we respond to a grand conception of humanity as a whole, but that also in particulars we are loyal to the Terentian tag, 'Homo sum: humani nil a me alienum puto.' The worthier side of modern realism has done full justice to this motto.
The expressions of this faith in human solidarity are so various, and its influence so pervading, that it is not surprising to find some modern thinkers looking to it as the essence of religion. In the sociological theory of religion, it is suggested that to become aware of society and its claims constitutes religion itself. A man is converted when his soul is 'congregationalized'. There is even a tendency to find the highest element in religious experience in a strong feeling of one's unity with one's fellows. Such a feeling of endless sympathy and tolerance is so large a part of love that it is easily mistaken for the whole. For this starting-point, we might readily imagine a Western faith in humanity with Walt Whitman as its prophet. But a second characteristic of Western thought about religion forbids any idealization of humanity as we know it, and draws us beyond the indiscriminate catholicism of 'The Open Road'. This characteristic may be defined as our faith in the worth of activity and in the reality of progress. We believe in the unity of mankind much more as a task to be achieved than as an accomplished or given fact to be enjoyed. Nietzsche says somewhere, 'if the goal of humanity be wanting, do we not lack humanity itself?' We look for the ultimate unity of mankind in the pursuit of a common end. The search for such a goal, and the effort to achieve it, lend worth to history and to present action.
This faith, often blind and unreasoned, is distinctly Western and modern. We do not derive it even from Greece. It comes to us through Christianity and modern science. The absence of any such faith in activity and progress creates the pessimism of the East. Hinduism and Buddhism are alike in their bankruptcy on this side. The majestic religious philosophy of India sees in history only an endless and meaningless repetition. Thucydides and Plato assume the same view, if I mistake not. As Eucken says, 'Ancient views of life bore throughout an unhistorical character. The numerous philosophical doctrines of the procession of endless similar cycles, which continually return to the starting-point, were only the expression of the conviction that all movement at bottom brings nothing new and that life offers no prospect of further improvement.' When Paul discovered that the law was a schoolmaster to bring men to Christ, he enunciated a profounder philosophy of history than Plato ever knew.
The very fact that Christianity sprang out of Judaism means that it enshrines and suggests the idea of progress in the very circumstances of its origin. But its hold on the idea is something deeper than its connexion with Judaism. Christianity claims to be the final religion, but its claim differs in kind from the parallel claim of Mohammedanism. The world of Islam is held in mortmain by the prophet. It cannot advance beyond the forms in which he embodied his message without denying the claims he made for himself. But to the early Christians the synoptic gospels were the record of all that Jesus began to do and to say, while the highest development of Christian experience and reflection in the New Testament, the gospel of John, contemplates the greater things which the followers of Jesus shall accomplish and the fuller revelations which shall come as the disciples are able to bear them. The claim of Christianity to finality rests on its opening up endless possibilities of spiritual growth to mankind. To some of us it seems that part of this fuller revelation has come through modern knowledge and discovery. The faith in progress which Christians have often held falteringly and have sometimes denied, appears to be confirmed and clarified by all that we are learning of creative evolution. In any case, the influence of modern science has tended to produce a faith in progress in the West—a faith which some regard as essentially different from the Christian view of the world and history, but which for others seems more and more to coalesce with that earlier if in some respects cruder Christian conviction. No doubt when the facts of evolution were held to point to gradual and continuous development, they favoured a view of steady progress which was antagonistic to the Christian belief in the sudden introduction of new elements into history. But the later advances of evolutionary theory seem more akin to the early Christian attitude. The element of apocalyptic is seen not to be so alien from nature as had been at first supposed.
However it arises and whatever form it takes, this faith in progress is characteristic of the Western outlook, and gives a positive answer to the question, Is life worth living? That such a faith is strange to India may be evidenced by the reception accorded to the poet Tagore in India itself. Mr. Yeats gives us the judgement of a Bengali who said of Tagore, 'He is the first among our saints who has not refused to live, but spoken out of Life itself, and that is why we give him our love.' Now Tagore's genius is thoroughly Indian, but his originality in this respect is due directly or indirectly to contact with the influence of the West. It is our belief in action and in the worth of human achievement which is voiced in his poems and in his philosophy, and the note is new in India.
Illustrations of this belief in progress and activity are superfluous, though I may remind you of the prevalence of this temper in the realm of philosophy as well as of religion at the present time. Perhaps it is worth recalling that Harnack's great history of dogma ends with this significant sentence from Zwingli: 'It is not the part of a Christian man to be for ever talking grandly about dogma, but always to be attempting big things in fellowship with God.' This represents as well as anything our Western insistence on the worth of effort. As an admirable embodiment at once of the faith in humanity and the faith in progress, the close of Matthew Arnold's poem 'Rugby Chapel' recurs to the mind. You remember how he conceives the function of great men to lie in preserving the union of mankind, and how he conceives the life of mankind as a journey towards a city that hath foundations.
These two characteristics, faith in the oneness of mankind and in the reality of progress, do add a sense of common aspiration to the civilization of the West. But of themselves they do not create a very close unity. Men may believe in human solidarity and in the worth of effort, and yet be following divergent ideals and divisive enthusiasms. These beliefs are surrounded by haze and indefiniteness. In themselves they scarcely constitute a religion that will satisfy, much less one that can effectively unite us. However fully we share them, they will not enable us to meet and surmount the present crisis. So far as I can judge, these vaguer beliefs in humanity and progress are largely the deposit of Christian faith, and to be rendered effective they need to be ever reconnected with the central elements in that faith; in particular, with the Christian judgement on sin and with the Christian devotion to the historic Jesus.
The sense of sin has received a peculiar impress in the West. We owe it largely to the religious experience of the Jew and to the seriousness of the Latin mind. There is a curious coincidence of the seventh chapter of Romans with a famous quotation from Ovid. The Latin fathers, particularly Augustine, have developed, not to say over-developed, the analysis of sin. The concept of sin never had the same significance for the Greek, and humanism has always resented the severity of the tradition that comes from Paul through Augustine and Calvin. Mr. Holmes's stimulating books on education are inspired by a theological polemic against the doctrine of original sin. He not unnaturally takes refuge in Buddhism, for Buddhism makes suffering, not sin, the root trouble of human life. 'The division between the will and the power, the struggle of the senses against our better judgement, the falling below the moral ideal—none of all this comes within the horizon of Buddha.' Now it may freely be confessed that the Calvinist view of sin led to a distrust of human nature, and incidentally of child-nature, which had a not altogether healthy reaction on home discipline and school-life. It is very difficult to maintain the right balance, and the danger of morbidity through emphasis on sin is undeniable. Yet it seems to me that the worst errors of Calvinism and Evangelicalism in this regard have lain in a tendency to theological formalism and a failure to keep in touch with real life. In consequence, those who most deplore our waning sense of sin try us by a perverted or antiquated standard, and fasten often on changes of sentiment and habit which are by no means necessarily or largely sinful. They are least conscious of the want of a sense of sin, in modern society, where that want is most serious. But I do not doubt that our often old-fashioned friends are right on the main issue. I do not believe that we shall see the progress we desire, unless we recover a heightened sense of sin. I hold with Lord Acton that our internal conflicts are due to indifference to sin and not to a religious idea. We judge ourselves and our race too lightly. We quench our hope of progress by a leniency and indulgence towards our failings which involve an underestimate of our powers and responsibilities. The present crisis will not issue in a hopeful reaction through regret but only through repentance.
The sense of sin which Christianity has brought to the West is not, I think, to be found elsewhere. It only appears where men feel they have an assured knowledge of God's will. It is intense only where men are conscious of God's presence. The vision of the Holiest reveals to Isaiah that he is a man of unclean lips. Such a conviction of sin seems to me inexplicable apart from contact with the living God. Two things are required to bring home to men a true estimate of their moral failure, first a right standard of judgement, and, second, a conviction of the reality of God. Is it too much to say that we are not likely to reach either, apart from Jesus of Nazareth? 'It is through Jesus and not from Adam that we know sin.' It is through Him that men discover their moral ideal and learn not simply to believe that there is a God, but to say, O God, Thou art my God even for ever and ever.
Surely there is something providential in the resolute endeavour of the last century to get back to Christ. The whole movement has succeeded in disentangling the authority of Christ from that either of Moses or of Paul. We are almost where the disciples were when they saw no man save Jesus only. Some things in the traditions remain obscure and baffling. But we see enough to measure afresh our distance from Him. And when the peoples of Europe are thoroughly weary of the work of destruction, it may be they will turn to Him again for the secret of rest, and find that He alone can guide their feet into the way of peace.
BOOKS FOR REFERENCE
Sabatier, L'Orientation religieuse de la France actuelle. Armand Colin: Paris.
W.K.L. Clarke, Facing the Facts; or, an Englishman's Religion. Nisbet.
E.C. Moore, Christian Thought since Kant. Duckworth's Studies in Theology.
XIV
THE GROWTH OF HUMANITY
The preceding chapter has recalled attention to the need of deeper elements of unity in civilization than can be afforded by any commercial, financial or political ties. Plans for a political union of nations, common tendencies in social reform, even the essential unity of commerce and science, will be of no avail, unless there is a basis in common sentiments of a religious kind, in the consciousness that we are all members one of another and can only advance and realize ourselves by the help and sympathy of other members of the same body. It is to this point then that we will address ourselves in the concluding section of the subject. The mechanics of unity need both earnest advocacy and careful study. But beneath and beyond them a motive force has to be found in ideals and sentiments by which alone in the end the working of all such mechanical arrangements is rendered possible. Right sentiments are not a sufficient safeguard, but they are an essential foundation, and it is of the first importance to realize the things to which the mass of mankind are most deeply attached, how they are affected towards one another, the channels through which the tide of feeling most naturally flows and is extended. Looked at from this point of view the problem becomes primarily an educational one. We study mankind as we find it in order to effect an improvement in the direction which we desire.
We find then in the first place that men as a rule are most strongly attached to the localities and the people with whom they are first brought closely in contact. Here in the family is the first true microcosm, the first community in which the individual is developed by association with his fellows. On the value of this earliest social training there are hardly two opinions, and we need not dwell upon it. It is at the next stage that divergence, both of definite opinion and still more of emphasis, begins to be apparent. How far is attachment to country a valuable thing, how far should it be cultivated, what are the necessary limitations and controlling ideas? As to the reality of the sentiment every man can examine himself. We know, most of us, with what intense satisfaction we return to the country, the district, of our birth and home. The feeling is one of the strongest and deepest things in us, even if our reason deprecates and disallows the claim. As Englishmen, perhaps even more as Scotchmen and Irish, we love with an indefinable and ineradicable passion our sea-coast, our hills and valleys, the fields and cottages, even the sometimes sordid, nearly always ill-assorted, congeries of houses which we have thrown together as towns. We fight among ourselves, we have more religious, political, and social differences than any other people. Yet when we need companionship for work or pleasure, at home or abroad, we would sooner have an Englishman at our side than any other man. Men and country—'dear souls and dear, dear land'—these are the elements which make up the real thing called patriotism and which, in spite of all our curses and all our self-seeking, lead us in millions to work or die for our country, and will, while life lasts, bring us home at last.
To those who know the local narrowness, the jealousies and pettiness of much of our own national life, it will seem a primary duty in education to present the country as an object of education and service, imperfect indeed and limited by larger ends, but yet supreme over the selfish interests of trade, town, or individual. This, with all its terrible losses, the war is doing for us with mighty and irresistible strokes, and it is a tragic truth that in our present imperfect social state, it is only a war, hurling us against other great and really co-operating communities of men, which can make us bear with comparative ease and cheerfulness the most serious burdens of loss and suffering. We act instantly as one people in war, we haggle and hesitate about the most moderate sacrifices to secure an advance in peace. It is this quality in patriotism, and in war as its stimulus, which largely and naturally biases our view. But to the ideal of a united Western civilization or a united mankind it is only one step. We cannot do without patriotism, but we must immediately proceed beyond it. We cannot reform the troubles and conflicts of mankind by attempting to root up some of our most tenacious passions; we progress by mastering and not mutilating our being. We have to advance beyond the limits of patriotism by wider sympathy, by seeing analogies, by recognizing the facts of common interests and co-operation in the world.
But here again, looking at the question from an educational rather than an abstract point of view, we have to recognize that actual realization of the life and services of other nations is a slow, difficult, and, at best, a limited process. It was really easier for the travelling student of the Middle Ages to enter into the simple and similar life of universities abroad than for the modern traveller to grasp the complex relations of a great foreign city or state. We have therefore, in practice, to select and concentrate. For the modern Englishman a knowledge of one or two other countries and languages is as much as the pressure of life will permit, and it is greatly to be regretted that poverty and hard work limit even this acquisition to very few. A Wanderjahr for the working-man would do much to cement the unity of western civilization.
Until the recent acute rivalry with Germany developed, English sympathies were fairly evenly divided. Your Liberal, as a rule, was a Frenchman, and your Conservative a German. George Meredith and John Morley sang the praises of France, Coleridge and Carlyle would have us learn from Germany. Now for many years the die is cast. We shall face the settlement and the dangers of the future side by side with France.
This becomes, then, one of the fixed points in our orientation. History and geography both dictate it. Just as in the building of our fatherland and its attendant sentiments, the process is not a purely logical one, but comes to its completion by most irregular courses, with all sorts of bypaths due to the odd configuration of our nature and the world we live in, so in widening out from patriotism to humanity we have to follow a line given, for the most part, by external facts. The French as our nearest neighbours have always had a special interest for us. They, like ourselves, have inherited a mixed race and a mixed civilization, partly Teutonic, partly Celtic, partly Roman, but with elements variously combined. To us a more predominantly Teutonic stock and an insular position have given a more independent and unique character, history, and constitution. France, as being continental and more central, was also more completely Romanized, and has at all periods of her history been more in touch with the general stream of thought than ourselves. Often she has led it, always she has reflected it more quickly and perfectly. Our traditional rivalry has been a chivalrous one, marked by many episodes of real admiration and close friendship. To Elizabeth, to Cromwell, to the Crusaders of the twelfth and the philosophers of the eighteenth century, France and England seemed as naturally allied as they are now in repelling a common aggression on their homes and liberty. But for the future the strongest links will be the two great common ideals, self-government and individual freedom at home, and the community of free peoples abroad. In the practical democracy already realized at home, and in the ideal of a humanity built up of such self-governing and co-operating states, France and England stand for the unity of western civilization in the sense in which it has been traced in this volume, the only sense which makes it worth the sacrifice of wealth and toil and life.
ERRATUM.
Page 305, line 14 from bottom
for cannot it abolish read it cannot abolish
Marvin: The Unity of Western Civilization.
[** Transcriber's Note: The text below was modified to reflect the ERRATUM above. The original ERRATUM is left in the document for historical purposes. **]
The unity of which we believe ourselves to be now the champions must therefore be a real thing based on freedom and realized by conscious effort; but it must also be truly comprehensive, not exclusive of any willing co-operator, not aimed against any one but for the whole. It is not intended in this volume to discuss any burning questions of the day, and therefore the briefest indications must be given of how the nucleus of western culture has been formed and how it must reform itself after the war. France, Germany, and England have been for many years, collectively far the most important centres of science and social progress in the world, and it would have been the ideal policy for them to give a united lead to the rest of the world. The war has altered that, but it cannot abolish the fundamental facts on which the civilization of the West is based, science, power over nature, and social organization. In these the same three countries will still have a certain primacy, though the position of the United States will be enormously strengthened. No peace can, of course, be permanent which contemplates the excommunication of a leading member of the human family.
Italy in science, philosophy, and literature, is a worthy colleague, and Russia makes a great stride forward by allying herself with the forces of progress and European unity.
Now it is clear that there are two distinct lines of approach to our goal of a united mankind. We may cultivate for ourselves, as an ideal based on love and reason, the notion of all men as brothers working together, helping one another even when unknown, strengthening one another's powers, and gradually advancing towards a higher goal. This, though not a complete religion for most people, at least partakes of the nature of religion. The other line is concerned with the practical task of reconciling actual difficulties, bringing nations together for various purposes—arbitration, international trade, boards of conciliation and the like. This is the slow and thorny path, and on account of its very difficulty is apt to engross the thoughts and energy of the best brains which devote themselves to the cause. But the first line, of self-cultivation and the promotion of a favourable spirit among others, though open to any one and easy of approach, is apt to be neglected. Such 'mere idealism', like pure benevolence, runs some risk of being choked by the multiplicity of details and agencies and organizations which beset the modern world. Humanity, as an idea, was perhaps more easily apprehended in the days of Turgot and Condorcet than it is with us when the implements of a united mankind have been immeasurably augmented and improved. All the greater, then, the need to re-integrate the notion. Just as in science the dispersive effect of specialism has led many thinkers to desire another order of minds specially devoted to generalism, to knitting together the results of the detailed investigations of others, so in conduct, morals and politics, it is more and more imperative to recall men's minds, and, in the first place, our own, to the large governing ideas by which after all our lesser rules and objects must stand or fall. For who will dispute that all our alliances and international action and the war itself can only be ultimately justified if they are seen to serve the highest interests of mankind as a whole?
A volume, and a very valuable one, might be written on the evolution of this idea of Humanity in history. We should need in the first place to analyse, with some care, in what sense it is in each case used. There is the simple sense of brotherhood such as we know to be deeply felt among our allies in Russia. Of this there must have been germs from the earliest appearance of mankind upon earth. It is one of those most precious things which the development of wealth and class and distinctive culture has tended to blunt in more elaborate civilizations. But when we consider that the full conception of Humanity involves a knowledge of man's evolution, his growth in power, and organization throughout history, as well as the simple but indispensable sense of man's brotherhood, we shall see how long a road the Russian moujik—as well as multitudes of his fellows in all other lands—must travel before he comes in view of the goal. In the fuller sense of a self-conscious and developing being, the idea of Humanity first appears with the Stoics, after the Greeks had put their leaven of abstract thought into the world. The whole inhabited world as the City of Man was the Stoic ideal, and it embraced both the idea of the [Greek: polis] which Platonic and Aristotelian thought had reached in the fourth century B.C., and the extension to the rest of mankind which was in the air just before the Christian era. Christianity affected the conception in a twofold manner. On the one hand it limited it, for the Stoic City of Man became the City of God, who was to be sought and worshipped in one prescribed order. On the other hand it deepened it, for the springs of a common humanity were found to go beneath the superficial facts of a citizen life into the depths of souls which have identical relations with eternal things, with sin and suffering and hopes of the future.
It is not till after the outburst of science in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, after that reawakening of the hopes of human powers which takes our minds back to the Greeks, that we find the conception of Humanity appearing in something like the form in which we can now imagine it. It will have been gathered from our chapter on Science and Philosophy how essential is the growth of organized thought to the realization of any unity in a progressive world. For the realm of thought is the only one in which no distinctions of race or nation are possible, but it must be thought in which agreement is reached. So long as men can differ, as they still do, on questions of human affairs, politics, social arrangements, or even archaeological matters where race or national predominance is involved, so far science does not exert her unifying sway. But in mathematics, physics, chemistry, all the matters in which it is impossible for a man to take another view because he is a Frenchman or a German—here we reach a haven of intellectual peace; and these calm waters are spreading over the world, in spite of the tempests.
To return to the educational point from which we started, we can see now another line of approach to unity in training our own minds and those of others. In some respects it is a surer way, though less direct. When studying the political life and history of other nations, even if we do so deliberately in order to find out what we owe to them, we are bound to be arrested here and there by things that we do not like, even among our best friends. The French may seem frivolous or less self-restrained than ourselves; they have had their sanguinary outbursts of revolution. Where they have impeded our own movements, as in colonization, we are the more conscious of their faults. Or we may feel that Americans have their materialistic vein. And so on. This with our best friends, who, no doubt, feel the same about us. But on the other line of approach, the study of the things on which men now agree without question, which they have built up steadily with co-operating hands, the mental effect is quite different. The opening vista leads us on, with growing admiration and confidence in the unbreakable solidarity of mankind. We know that Newton who completes Galileo, Maxwell who follows Laplace, Helmholtz who uses the results of Joule, can have no conflicting jealousies. Here quite obviously and indisputably all are fellow-workers, and before the greatness of their work the passions of rival domination in material things, the differences of national taste and habit, the quarrels of the past or the future, appear contemptible and insignificant.
They are not insignificant, as we know to our cost. But by dwelling on the things of greater moment and solidity, we train ourselves and others to reduce the elements of discord to their true proportion and allay the storm. The progress of a united mankind is thus an ideal, slowly realizing itself in time. But its realization is quickened and rendered wider and more beneficent, the more we think of it and believe in it. A blow comes, such as the present war, and seems to shatter the whole picture which so many hands have limned and so many eyes admired. Those who have followed its growth through the ages, know well that no such blow can finally destroy a living growth or even go very deep in injuring its features.
It is surely a commonplace that in proportion as western populations, from statesmen downwards, are animated by sentiments of comradeship which arise from considerations such as these, the danger of war must diminish and the possibilities of fruitful common action increase. Yet there is probably no country in Europe where any deliberate attempt is made to instruct the people in ideas which would most surely broaden their sympathies and lay the foundations of peace.
The argument takes us back for a moment to the essay on education. We left off there at a point where the old unity based on Greco-Roman culture was seen to be disappearing in a confused mass of new studies, partly suggested by modern languages and history, still more by the growth of science and the application of science to the problems of contemporary life. It may well be that in this conception of humanity, the co-operation of mankind in a growing structure of thought, we shall ultimately find the idée-mère under which all the other subordinate ideas in education may be grouped and inspired. This might take place if the notion were grasped in no narrow sense, but so broadly that all human thought, religion, and philosophy, art as well as science, might find their justification in it.
The advantage of putting the educational issue first has been already indicated. We can all get to work on it at once for ourselves, and it is a far more fundamental and, in some respects, easier thing to introduce a new idea into the minds of others than to alter the boundaries and political conditions of States. If we once achieved a general atmosphere of co-operation and goodwill in the world, the practical problems would be already more than half solved.
Discussion will take place, with more and more vigour as years go on, as to the various measures which have been described collectively as the establishment of a World-State. At what point could it be said that a World-State is in being? How can such a World-State be reconciled with the independent sovereignty of the several States comprised in it? What is to be the sanction imposing the decisions of the larger community on its constituent members? Such are a few of the problems involved in any advance towards the Kantian ideal of cosmopolitanism. None of them admit of a single definite answer. They do not belong to questions of pure theory, and we shall have to solve them slowly and with difficulty, seizing every favourable opportunity of a slight advance, avoiding grave obstacles, compromising with every possible friend.
But for the moment we seem likely to be overwhelmed by unchained passions which are the practical denial of everything that the ideal of humanity implies. Instead of co-operation we are faced by schemes of conquest and domination, and the simplest notion of brotherhood is limited to comradeship in arms for defence or attack. Many will be found to ridicule the idea that any real progress in unity has ever been made, or that the world can ever be envisaged except as an irksome enclosure of rival armed forces thirsting for the fray. But to those who are not prepared to accept this as the last word in human association the argument of this volume may have some weight. It will lead those who follow it to a quiet but well-grounded belief that the forces tending to unity in the world are different in quality, incomparably greater in scope than those which make for disruption. Discord is explosive and temporary, harmony rises slowly but dominates the final chord.
Like the great common purposes of science, the common tendencies of human action have in recent years suffered some eclipse through the bustle of our activity and the multiplicity of its detail. The colours, too, of a conflict of any kind are so much more vivid and arresting than the quiet and monotonous tones of a long piece of harmonious and co-operative work. The labours of such a bureau of international effort as is described in Chapter X appear to our pressmen and publicists so little interesting that they are practically ignored, and the results of scientific congresses, being of a highly specialized kind, are left perforce to those who can understand them. Yet it is precisely in these things, if our diagnosis is correct, that the most characteristic features of the age are to be found. For in them and in similar movements we see united the two fundamental human traits from which we started, reason and sympathy: reason winning triumphs over nature, sympathy realizing itself at last in a community of men devoting their powers to mutual aid. 'Idle dreams', it will be said, as we hurl more and more millions of our best youth to destruction by the most highly developed resources of science. Yes, but the same nations were only yesterday celebrating the services of Pasteur, Virchow, and Lister to a common humanity, and will do so again to-morrow or the day after.
It is in truth one of the most poignant features of the tragedy in which we are manfully and rightly bearing our part, that the community-sense in the world had never been so highly developed, or found so many channels in which to diffuse itself, as just at the moment when the blow fell. The socialist movements in all civilized countries have always had this as a leading motive; comrades and poor among themselves, these men have always been eager to stretch out a hand to those of like mind abroad. And in the last chapter we saw how among Christian communities throughout the world there has been in recent years a growing approximation. Neither the cause nor the effects of such forces can die away. They will reappear when the storm has passed and rebuild the wreck.
One large aspect of the united action of the western world has received no notice in this volume, though it might very well be the subject of a detailed study in itself. This is the relation of the more advanced and powerful nations of the West towards the weaker and less progressive peoples. It might, indeed, be treated as the touchstone of our civilization, just as the education of the young is a good, perhaps the best, test of the advancement of any single people. For it involves some joint action of the western nations; it shows how far they are disinterested and how far skilful in their treatment of the less advanced.
The record is not a good one, but it confirms, on the whole, the view we have suggested that a growth of the sense and conception of humanity may be traced from the time when modern science was born in the sixteenth century. The Middle Ages hardly furnish us with any examples of the action of Christendom towards heathen and weaker people until the Crusades, in which, with rare examples of personal chivalry, the earlier attitude was one of contempt and hatred of the unbeliever. In the conquest of the New World, which was to some of its earliest conquerors a new Crusade, there is the same general savagery marked by rare cases of Christian kindness, such as Las Casas showed. But after the Reformation, when the Church itself had been purified and more human tolerance and care and interest in life prevailed, we find the enlightened Jesuit missions to China and Paraguay, St. Francis Xavier's work in India, and the Quaker dealings with Red Indians in the New World. From the middle of the seventeenth century, slavery, which had fallen into abeyance during the Middle Ages as a domestic institution, began to be denounced as a trade. We are on the threshold of the great humanitarian outburst of the eighteenth century. It is impossible to believe that this growth of human feeling in dealing with other men is unconnected with that new gospel of human power which Bacon and Descartes had just proclaimed. Except for the occasional superman, the greater the powers a man possesses and the higher he rates human capacity at its best, the more careful he is to cherish and develop the germs of humanity in the young and weak.
This was undoubtedly the case with the 'philosophers' of the eighteenth century; it is equally true of the nineteenth century, an age wonderful alike for its unexampled development of science and for the rise of activities, national and international, for the betterment of the race. Jointly the western nations have in this period put down the slave trade, and in the Brussels Conference of 1890 we see the highest point yet reached by the united humanity of the West expressed by the assembled states in regard to backward people. The point therefore is a notable one, and Englishmen will be glad to remember that it was Lord Salisbury, then Foreign Secretary, who took the first step. The previous Conference at Berlin, in 1884, had secured freedom of trade for the basins of the Congo and the Niger, and in 1889 Lord Salisbury, through the Belgian Government, called the Powers together to consider questions relating to the slave trade in Africa. For Africa, home of the black race, last exploited of the continents, discovered after the white man had discovered science, was pre-eminently the part of the world where the co-operation of leading peoples in civilizing backward races was most needed and most to be expected. The Congo, the Herreros, Morocco, Tripoli, Omdurman, offer a blood-stained record in reply.
But the general act of the Brussels Conference is clear and adequate as to what the purpose of the Powers should be. "To put an end to the crimes and devastations engendered by the traffic in African slaves, to protect effectively the aboriginal populations of Africa, to ensure for that vast continent the benefits of peace and civilization", is in fact the whole duty of a united western civilization when dealing with the less civilized. The results achieved may well seem small compared with the magnitude of the purpose, but those who know most about it do not despise them. Slave-raiding and tribal wars have been diminished and some check put on importing arms and spirits.
It is not a topic on which it is easy to keep a cheerful mind. Some Putumayo will constantly occur to remind us of the fierce brutality of strength unsupervised and unrestrained. We compare the actual performance of mankind when free to try their best or wreak their worst on comparatively defenceless folk, with the noble rivalry which we can imagine between the nations of the world in leading the weaker people to develop their resources and themselves, on paths which may tend to the greatest prosperity and happiness of all, advanced and backward together: and the comparison leaves us sick at heart. But a sober judgement will not deny that even here advance is being made. The ideal has been admitted. The rights of smaller States are being made, as in the present conflict, the subject of the concern of their strongest neighbours. Steps are being taken all over the world to preserve and ameliorate the remnants of primitive people. Horrors when revealed are more strongly reprobated. Missionaries are pursuing their labours with more enlightenment and zeal, and in wider spheres. In spite of cynics and doubters, it is true in this as in the other activities of a united mankind, e pur si muove. And as the work moves on it is seen to involve the same guiding thoughts that inspire us in the case of the young and feeble at home—pity for their weakness, love for their humanity, hope for the future.
BOOKS FOR REFERENCE
Kant's Perpetual Peace (new edition just published).
International Policy. Chapman & Hall.
Fayle, The Great Settlement. Murray.
The Leadership of the World. (Oxford pamphlet.)