Quite as much of the art, the literature and the philosophy of the greatest periods of civilisation has been wiped out and destroyed beyond recovery by these possessive struggles of the past as has been hazardously preserved and passed down to us through interludes of peace; nor have we any cause to think that in the future we shall be any wiser while our views as to possession show so little change. And that loss in beautiful production is but the symbol, the outward and visible sign of a loss immensely more great in flesh and blood and spirit, which has gone on—not only while wars were waged, but when (war being ended) dominance over the conquered was imposed as a condition of peace. Every nation that has made itself materially great on these terms, has done so on a débris of perished loveliness which does not reach its full amount in the hour of the victors’ triumph; but goes on accumulating till that also which caused it is brought to the dust.
It is many years, for instance, since we conquered India; and in so far as our dominion has saved it from other conquests and wars of native State against State, and creed against creed, our rule may have been beneficial—though I do not think that we ought to take our own word for it, or indeed anyone’s word except that of the native communities themselves and a native press, free and unfettered for the giving or the withholding of its testimonial. But one thing we assuredly have done: we have gone on steadily destroying the native arts and “mysteries,” and substituting for them our own baser code of commercialism and capitalised industry. And in so far as we have done this we have not possessed ourselves, but have dispossessed ourselves of the real beauties and values of Indian civilization; and, for the sake of trade-profit to our merchants and manufacturers, we hold in our hand a poorer India in consequence, and are the poorer possessors of it.
All that poverty—poverty of invention, poverty of craft—is the product of a false ideal of possession, false to human nature, because quite obviously a cause of deterioration to those visible proofs of man’s well-being—the joyous labour of his hand and brain.
Set against the witness of all that misguidance of the past that wise and lovely saying of Christ, so unlikely in its first seeming: “Blessed are the meek, for they shall possess the earth.” At first it sounds so improbable—so contrary to all we know of man’s long struggle for existence up to date. And yet, (however much we must still qualify the possession of the meek upon earth) still more must we qualify the possession of the overbearing and the proud, when we realise what true possession should be. A modern writer has described war as “the great illusion,” and has set himself to show that all those advantages at which the State aims when it turns to military operations, become as dust in the balance if compared to the real cost in treasure which war entails even for those who are nominally the victors. And war is only one form or aspect of that great strife for possession which has afflicted every race in its progress from the cradle to the grave—merely a larger and more apparent version of the conflict between folly and wisdom which goes on in every human breast. Possession is the great illusion through which man physically or intellectually strong seeks to secure power, and succeeds only in securing weakness—not only for himself but for others.
For you cannot test strength truthfully without relation to its surroundings. A tower built upon foundations that shift and give way under its weight is not strong, however formidably it has been reared, or however closely its windows are grated and barred. Its very bulk and weight may help to bring about its fall. Similarly any strength of despotism or government which is reared up and depends for its stay upon the weakness of others is a mere apparition of power. Here to-day, it is gone to-morrow when those upon whose subjection it rested have discovered a strength of their own—or, because of their weakness, have failed in its support.
True possession can only be had in relation and in proportion to the self-possession of others; the man who reduces the self-possession of others never adds to his own; and where self-possession is absent, no real or strength-giving possession remains possible.
“What shall it profit a man if he gain the whole world and lose his own soul,” is one of those profound messages of wisdom which have been obscured by the theological gloss laid upon them. Instead of the immediate and practical condemnation of here and now, the hypothetical condemnation to loss in a future life has been substituted, and our spiritual preceptors have not concentrated upon making clear to us how, here and now, possession of the whole world (in any material sense) does actually tend to destroy soul.
The possessive outlook, in its very inception, sets a limit to the springs of spiritual growth or action, and to that “perfect freedom” the basis of which is service. But if “service is perfect freedom,” then “domination is perfect bondage,” as much for those who impose as for those who suffer it. For the man who domineers over his fellows receives in his own soul the reflex or complementary part of that evil effect which he has on others. There is no act done by man to man which is not sacramental in its operation for good or ill; in all his deeds to his neighbours he both gives and receives, either for his own help or hindrance. Whosoever gives a blow receives one; and that blow may be the heavier that is not returned in kind. He who does unkindness to others is unkind to his own soul; he who diminishes the self-possession of others diminishes his own.