Most of the great tragedies have been the crushing out of human and natural feeling by some ideal which, once helpful, has become monstrous. Such were the Greek tragedies, where men were the victims of the gods.
War is the colossal force of an ideal, patriotism, where the check of the humanities has been entirely cut off.
It is supposed to ennoble men and states. It has always been the preferred occupation of the noble class, kings and courtiers, because the contempt of personal feelings and the merciless sacrifice of the humanities have seemed grand and royal.
But by and by war must yield to the eternal humanities. Sheer human sympathies will abolish it.
The humanities are peculiarly of the common people. Therefore they find expression and come into political effect quickly in democracies. In the United States, for instance, the rule of a religious party or the program of patriotic militarism is impossible. We have too much red passion to permit the ascendency of white passions.
“Uncle Tom’s Cabin,” a book of red passion, sympathy for the negro, overthrew the “white” ideals of the slave oligarchy.
The cry of a starving mother, the protest of wronged workmen, can defeat the apparently resistless power of massed capital.
One drop of blood outweighs the most splendid scheme of the theorist.
The history of the world is the unceasing struggle of the humanities against great ideals which, crystallized into institutions, have become inhuman.