Neither erudition nor art nor both together can, of course, fulfill all the requirements for a social education suited to our present needs. It is presumably in the social life itself, in the form of a practical activity, that social education will in great part be gained. This educational social life, which is also practical, will, however, be one in which every opportunity is taken to show the social life in its historical perspective, and to make clear its purposes and meaning; and in which sympathetic moods and intense social states are realized by conducting this social life, so far as possible, so that it will be subjected to the influences of what we may call in a broad way art.
CHAPTER X[ToC]
RELIGION AND EDUCATION AFTER THE WAR
The war, which has left no field of human interest untouched, has raised many questions about religion that must be dealt with in new ways—about its validity, its power, its future. The impression the whole experience of the war seems to convey is that religion has failed to be either a great creative force or a great restraining power, although to express this as a failure of religion may imply more than we have a right to expect of it. Religion did not cause the war, but it certainly did not prevent it. It had no power to make peace. Yet we see that now religion is needed more than ever, and that if the social life be not deeply infused with the religious spirit, and if we do not live as a world more in the religious spirit, something fundamental and necessary will be wanting which may be the most essential factor of progress and civilization. The war leaves us with the feeling, perhaps, that until now the world has had far too many religions and too little religion. There has been too much of creed and too little of deep and sustaining religious moods. Perhaps, as Russell says, we are to be convinced that religion has been too professional; there has been too much paid service, and too little voluntary service.
Such conclusions of course have in them all the reservation that personal reactions must have, but it is easy to believe that in the life of such a nation as our own, and indeed in the world, no practical unity will ever be permanently reached unless there be a firm basis in a common religious foundation. This we might say is made probable by the truth that religion is the most fundamental thing in life, and if there be no unity and common understanding in that sphere, there can be none in reality anywhere in life. Differences in creed mean little, except in so far as they conceal basic agreement and make artificial barriers; differences in the way of understanding and valuing the world mean everything. We want a common religious faith—common in the possession at least of the moods which make a harmonious social life possible, and of the spirit in which the world's work can, we may believe, alone be done.
Upon such grounds one might maintain that a very important part of the work of education everywhere is to teach now more natural religion, or rather perhaps that the school must be everywhere conducted to a greater extent in the spirit of religion. Then we might hope to see religion becoming actually a power in the social life, helping to transform the crude forces and purposes of the day into higher ones. With such a religious basis we might begin to see the working of God in history and in the world as a whole, and we should feel in the history of the world and in the world that is before us the presence of reality. Then we should have a common ground for the sympathy and understanding without which not even the most practical affairs can be conducted efficiently. That ideal in education, often expressed by the educator, which holds that the purpose of all teaching is to convey the meaning of the world to the child, to make the world live in epitome, so to speak, in the soul of every child, is religious and nothing else, and quite satisfies the demands of our present day.
If such a standpoint be the right one, certainly the ambition of any nation (or indeed of any group) to have a religion peculiar to itself and an outgrowth of its own culture is unfortunate, and indeed comes from the very essence of morbid nationalism. In such desires there is thinly veiled the hope that through religion the old claim of nations to the right to temporal supremacy may be vindicated. Lagarde, in about 1874, was probably the first to say that Germany must have a national religion, but during the war this hope has been expressed again and again—Germany must have a new religion, befitting a great independent people, and must no longer be dependent for its religion upon an old and inferior race. Whether this longing for a new religion has not been in reality a longing to be upheld again by the old pagan faith, which was a fitting cult for the nationalistic temper, with its ideal of force, may justly be asked. It is interesting to remember that in Japan also, in recent times, there has been a demand for a national religion that should unite all the creeds in one. That this idea of a national religion, as contrasted with an universal religion, is opposed to the spirit of Christianity is plain, and the claim that Germany has not been able to understand the key-note of Christianity, as it is revealed in humanity and justice, may therefore be said to have some foundation in truth.