[93] It is true that the state is concerned with those conditions of the spiritual reactions that are capable of being enforced, but in instituting such conditions the spiritual content is inevitably kept in view. And in the very process of fitting the body to the spirit, the form to the content, the content itself will be discerned more clearly and explicitly.
[94] See the chapter in The World Crisis.
[95] To myself as an individual I say: look to your radiations, consider the effects you produce on others; if the effects are harmful trace them to faults in your character, and let your desire and obligation to influence others beneficently be the spur to lead you to transform your own character. The same each people should say to itself. For instance the obvious faults of our democracy have retarded the progress of democracy in Europe. Our failure in municipal government is constantly quoted abroad as an argument against democracy. This should be a real incentive to rouse us out of our self-complacency.
[96] Cf. Lord Cromer’s remarks on this subject in his book on Egypt.
[97] See, however, the importation of Indian and Chinese coolies, and the surreptitious resurrection of the slave trade mentioned by Sir Charles Dilke in his Problems of Greater Britain.
[98] As to practical steps that might be taken to give effect to this conception of international law, see my published address “The Great Rôle of the United States After the War,” in which is discussed the creation of an international law-making body or a Parliament of Parliaments. In connection with the latter, I should attach particular importance to the institution of commissions which may serve as a link between the international legislature and the less civilized peoples—the commissions to study the needs and gifts of those peoples with a view to securing their development along their own lines. In the case of civilized peoples that have until recently been stationary, like the Chinese, the commission representing the Western nations would sit in consultation with the most enlightened leaders of the Chinese people themselves, the common object being to discover the points of attachment in Chinese civilization which may wisely be made the starting point of a more modern and progressive evolution. For instance the filial piety of the Chinese, the rectitude of their merchants, the absence of an aristocracy, and their civil service resting on education (despite its defects). In this manner it may become possible to avoid the abrupt, superficial, and infinitely destructive substitution of modern ideas for the system at present existing, and gradual development will take the place of intrusive and uncongenial change.
[99] I add that this conception will react on the internal life of democracy. Democracy is at present regarded as a relation between equals. In fact, we have in America the negro population, the illiterate and backward immigrants. A truer conception of democracy depends on our realizing that within each people as well as between people and people there is the distinction of the more advanced and the less advanced groups. Democracy rightly conceived will be found to consist in the effort spent by the more advanced in each vocational group to uplift the less advanced, the more advanced themselves coming into possession of their spiritual worth in the degree that they realize this their task of leadership and its great responsibilities.
[100] Among other ethical relations based on free election, friendship is the most important. In a separate Book of Friendship which I hope to publish, I intend to review the ideals of friendship as they have arisen from time to time in the history of civilized mankind—the ideal of Pythagorean friendship, the ideals presented by Aristotle, Kant, Emerson. And I shall endeavor to show in each case the connection between the friendship ideal and the general philosophy of life. I shall then set forth that ideal of friendship which is the corollary of the spiritual conceptions outlined in this volume: the friend being in my view one who assists spiritual development as a spectator. He is the faithful mirror of his friend’s progress toward personality, the benevolent yet incorruptible recorder and appraiser. By this token friendship is distinguished from the interlocking relations such as that between partners in marriage, vocational co-workers, etc.
[101] In certain Ethical Societies abroad, the fear of encouraging the rise of a new clericalism led to the plan of drawing for ethical teachers on professors of universities, and others engaged in various lines of practical activity. These persons could of necessity give only the leavings of their time and thought to the complex questions which they undertook to discuss; and the experiment, as might have been foreseen, proved disastrous.
[102] It has been said that the science of today lives only in superseding the science of yesterday. Whether this be true of science or not it is not true of religion. The religions of the past are not merely superseded. There is much in them that is to be reinterpreted, and thus perpetuated.