Confucius was a great man.
But Confucius is hindered—hindered by littleness—little Confucians.
Christ? Christ is great, fascinatingly, commandingly great.
But Christ is hindered—hindered by the pettiness of pugnacity, hindered by littleness, little Christians.
Let us be brothers? Let us have peace?
Not yet. We can’t. We must wait. Strange, but true, we must wait for the most reasonable thing in the world—peace.
Peace is on the program—next number.
From the warring tribes of the long, long ago, up, up, upward to the federated races of the world,—that is the first number on the program—a long steep climb for the human mind, up, up through the hundreds of centuries, a half million years consumed in expanding the human heart, in refining the human affections, in strengthening the social vision to see all the way ’round the world, in widening the diameter of Society, in creating, revising, and re-creating a definition of “Brother,”—the race generating the Social Man, the World Patriot, the International Citizen.
The arithmetic of history—Given: Life. To find, or produce, or deduce, the god, the god of aspiring intelligence, the god of a socialized race. A puzzling problem—how to subtract the brute, add the brother and multiply the brains; how to proceed to the next number on the program—Peace; how to move our bruised lips to say: “Put up thy sword. We are of one blood.”
We are hindered.