Viewed in this more modest light, many usages which, if prevalent in a civilized country, might well make one despair of humankind, are seen to be, like the crimes of children, symptoms of the thoughtless infancy of our race. We are not civilized folk who have degenerated into monsters, but untamed savages who, on the whole, make a rather creditable display, and may in future centuries become civilized.
For example, when one meets a number of “sportsmen” going forth, with horses and with hounds, to do to death with every circumstance of barbarity some wretched little animal whom they have actually bred, or “preserved,” or imported for the purpose, such a sight—if one regards them as rational and civilized beings—might well spoil one’s happiness for a fortnight. But if we take a lower stand, and see in them nothing more than fine strapping barbarians, engaged in one of the national recreations of those “dark ages” in which we live, the outlook becomes immediately a more cheerful one; and instead of being surprised that ladies and gentlemen in the twentieth century should desire to “break up” a fox, we are able to recognize the moderation and civility with which in other respects they conduct themselves.
One advantage, at least, can be drawn by humanitarians from the present state of affairs—a more accurate apprehension of the obstacles by which their hopes are beset. Much has been said and written about the causes of the war; and it is inevitable that the immediate causes (for they alone are discussed) should be thoroughly investigated. But the deeper underlying causes of the recent war, and of every war, are not those upon which diplomatists and politicians and journalists and historians are intent: they must be sought in that callous and selfish habit of mind—common to all races, and as such accepted without thought, and transmitted from one generation to another—which exhibits itself not in war only, but in numerous other forms of barbarity observed in so-called civilized life.
No League of Nations, or of individuals, can avail, without a change of heart. Reformers of all classes must recognize that it is useless to preach peace by itself, or socialism by itself, or anti-vivisection by itself, or vegetarianism by itself, or kindness to animals by itself. The cause of each and all of the evils that afflict the world is the same—the general lack of humanity, the lack of the knowledge that all sentient life is akin, and that he who injures a fellow-being is in fact doing injury to himself. The prospects of a happier society are wrapped up in this despised and neglected truth, the very statement of which, at the present time, must (I well know) appear ridiculous to the accepted instructors of the people.
The one and only talisman is Love. Active work has to be done, but if it is to attain its end, it is in the spirit of love that it must be undertaken. Perhaps the most significant symptom of the brutishness aroused by the war-fever was the blank inability which many Christians showed not only to practise such injunctions as “Love your enemies,” but even to understand them.[47] Had it not been that humour, like humaneness, was sunk fathoms deep in an ocean of stupidity, one would have been tempted to quote Ernest Crosby’s delightful lines on “Love the Oppressors”:
Love the oppressors and tyrants:
It is the only way to get rid of them!
In these days, when the voice of hatred and malevolence is so dominant, it is a joy to turn to the pages of writers who proclaim a wiser faith. “This is a gray world,” says Howard Moore. “There is enough sorrow in it, even though we cease to scourge each other—the sorrow of floods, famines, fires, earthquakes, storms, diseases, and death. We should trust each other, and love each other, and sympathize with and help each other, and be patient and forgiving.” Nor is it only the human that claims our sympathy; for does not Pierre Loti, in his Book of Pity and Death, imagine even his stray Chinese cat, whom he had befriended on shipboard, addressing him in similar words: “In this autumn day, so sad to the heart of cats, since we are here together, both isolated beings ... suppose we give, one to the other, a little of that kindness which softens trouble, which resembles the immaterial and defies death, which is called affection, and which expresses itself from time to time by a caress.”
Has not this distracted world had enough, and more than enough, of jealousies and denunciations? Is it not time that we tried, in their stead, the effect, say, of a bombardment of blessings? If there are light-waves, heat-waves, sound-waves, may there not also be love-waves? How if we sent out a daily succession of these to earth’s uttermost parts? A benediction is as easily uttered as a curse; and it needs no priest to pronounce it. At least it is pleasant to think (and men put faith in creeds that are much less believable) that gentle thoughts, the “wireless” of the heart, may penetrate and be picked up in regions that are beyond our ken, and so create a more favourable atmosphere for gentle deeds. “Why did none of them tell me,” asks Crosby, “that my soul was a loving-machine?” It is strange, certainly, that we take so much more pains to kindle the fires of hate than the fires of love.
“Boundless compassion for all living beings,” says Schopenhauer, “is the surest and most certain guarantee of pure moral conduct, and needs no casuistry. Whoever is filled with it will assuredly injure no one, do harm to no one, encroach on no man’s rights; he will rather have regard for every one, forgive every one, help every one as far as he can, and all his actions will bear the stamp of justice and loving-kindness.”[48] Incidentally it may be observed that, as Schopenhauer points out, the difficulties of what is called the sex question would in large measure be solved, if this rule of “injure no one” were more fully believed and acted on.
The lesson of the past six years is this. It is useless to hope that warfare, which is but one of many savage survivals, can be abolished, until the mind of man is humanized in other respects also—until all savage survivals are at least seen in their true light. As long as man kills the lower races for food or sport, he will be ready to kill his own race for enmity. It is not this bloodshed, or that bloodshed, that must cease, but all needless bloodshed—all wanton infliction of pain or death upon our fellow-beings. Only when the great sense of the universal kinship has been realized among us, will love cast out hatred, and will it become impossible for the world to witness anew the senseless horrors that disgrace Europe to-day.