Can Human Nature Change?
Education and religion are alike based on the assumption that it is possible to change human nature. In fact, it requires but little investigation to show that the one thing we can say with certainty about any living thing is that it cannot keep from changing. Without change there can be no life. Even the mineral cannot resist change, and the higher we go in the scale of being, the more varied, complex, and wonderful do the changes become. Moreover, in progress and development among creatures of all grades we find two kinds of change—one slow, gradual, often almost imperceptible; and the other rapid, sudden and dramatic. The latter occur at what are called “critical stages” of development. In the case of minerals we find such critical stages at the melting and boiling points, for example, when the solid suddenly becomes a liquid or the liquid becomes a gas. In the case of plants we see such critical stages when the seed begins to germinate, or the bud bursts into leaf. In the animal world we see the same on every hand, as when the grub suddenly changes into a butterfly, the chick emerges from its shell, or the babe is born from its mother’s womb. In the higher life of the soul we often see a similar transformation, when a man is “born again” and his whole being becomes radically changes in its aims, its character and activities. Such critical stages often affect a whole species or multitude of species simultaneously, as when vegetation of all kinds suddenly bursts into new life in springtime.
Bahá’u’lláh declares that just as lesser living things have times of sudden emergence into new and fuller life, so for mankind also a “critical stage,” a time of “rebirth,” is at hand. Then modes of life which have persisted from the dawn of history up till now will be quickly, irrevocably, altered, and humanity enter on a new phase of life as different from the old as the butterfly is different from the caterpillar, or the bird from the egg. Mankind as a whole, in the light of new Revelation, will attain to a new vision of truth; as a whole country is illumined when the sun rises, so that all men see clearly, where but an hour before everything was dark and dim. “This is a new cycle of human power,” says ‘Abdu’l-Bahá. “All the horizons of the world are luminous, and the world will become indeed as a rose garden and a paradise.” The analogies of nature are all in favor of such a view; the Prophets of old have with one accord foretold the advent of such a glorious day; the signs of the times show clearly that profound and revolutionary changes in human ideas and institutions are even now in progress. What could be more futile and baseless therefore, than the pessimistic argument that, although all things else change, human nature cannot change?
First Steps Toward Unity
As a means of promoting religious unity Bahá’u’lláh advocates the utmost charity and tolerance, and calls on His followers to “consort with the people of all religions with joy and gladness.” In His last Will and Testament He says:—
Contention and conflict hath He strictly forbidding in His book (Kitáb-i-Aqdas); such is the command of the Lord in this all-highest Revelation—a command which He hath exempted from all annulment and arrayed with the adorning of His confirmation.
O ye people of the world! The Religion of God is for the sake of love and union; make it not the cause of enmity and conflict.... The hope is cherished, that the people of Bahá shall ever turn unto the Hallowed Word: “Lo! All things are of God.”—the All-Glorious Word that, like unto water, quencheth the fire of hate and rancor which doth smoulder in hearts and breasts. By this one Word shall the diverse sects of the world attain unto the light of real union; verily the Truth He speaketh, and to the Path He leadeth, and He is the Mighty, the Gracious, the Beauteous.
‘Abdu’l-Bahá says:—