FINALE
On this final evening of the Rose-Festival, all the guests were assembled on the platform, the host in their midst. It had been determined that on this last evening there should be no long addresses by individual speakers, but that all the members of the Rose Order, whether their voices had been heard during any of the sessions or not, should make brief speeches to the audience: speeches in which, if possible, by a few short sentences, each individual should declare what was his loftiest aim in life and what he would most of all wish to have carried away as a message to his fellow-men from that far-sounding tribune. John Toker announced his programme to the public and added:—
“We regard this last evening of ours as a special opportunity for us to communicate with the outside world and to grasp in compact form the things that have been revealed to us during this Rose-Week.
“I will use this opportunity to comment on what we heard yesterday from the mouth of my young fellow-countryman. He spread out before us a whole cargo of precious gifts; he handed us a gigantic ingot of gold and said: ‘Go hence and coin it.’
“Now the question arises: ‘How?’ Above all, a new valuation is required for the new coins which are to be minted. The whole system, the whole principle on which the social life of the present time is built up, must be invalidated so as to give place to another system, another principle. Economical and political intercourse of men with one another at the present time still rest on robbery, imposture, fraud, distrust, unscrupulous extermination of competitors, and all this supported by the spirit of envy, which runs through the whole gamut from ill will to hatred. And do you know what we need in order to coin the new currency?—the spirit of good will. And that is certain to come. It will not create the new social intercourse, but it will grow out of the soil of the changed circumstances, as ill will flourishes in the morass of to-day.
“Inestimable is what has been given to mankind by the unlimited control of the powers of nature, creating wealth and labor; all the forces which may be spent in doing mutual harm, in mutual attack and defense, in deceiving, in betraying, in robbing, in destroying one another—all these forces are now to be free for the common task of coining that ingot of gold into current coin.
“It will be no small trouble, no brief work, to reorganize the world on this quite changed principle. Stupidity, routine, and malignity will resist for a long time; but just as radium can annihilate microbes, so will the radiant element of the human spirit, aroused to comprehension, annihilate the microbes of malignity. We shall become healthy, physically and spiritually.
“I am glad that the awakening call, the shout of the herald, rings forth from here. The tidings of triumph are to sound back from the victorious van; a vast new country is ours; we must make it fertile; let us take possession!
“But to do so, the old methods and the old utensils are useless; we must first train the whole race till it is fit for its new destiny. Practical work must be expanded in this direction. May all those to whom our summons comes, clearly ringing, gird their loins to take hold of this work! Domestic colonization, garden-cities, hygiene along the whole line, extermination of the last vestige of illiteracy. And then, high schools will be established for the nurture of High Thinking and world-journals will be founded for its propaganda. And temples will be built dedicated to the cult of good will.
“The problem must be worked out intensively, strenuously. It is not sufficient that from here and there more ideas fly forth; ideas are all right, for they are the seed from which things spring—but actually, what now opens up before us consists already in things, and they demand to be executed: above all, they want to be grasped. I intend to seize upon them: as soon as I reach home, I intend to take measures to found the free academy of High Thinking. May this become the mint which my young friend requires for the store of gold which he displayed before our eyes.