Lately the struggle theory has been transferred from the physical to the intellectual world. Many writers who see society as a continuous conflict think its highest form is discussion. One of these says, “Not for a moment would I deny that fighting is better carried on by the pen than by the sword, but some sort of fighting will be necessary to the end of the world.” No, as long as we think of discussion as a struggle, as an opportunity for “argument,” there will be all the usual evil consequences of the struggle theory. But all this is superficial. If struggle is unavailing, it is unavailing all along the line. It is not intellectual struggle that marks the line of progress, but any signs of finding another method than struggle. Two neighbors quarrelling in words are little more developed than two men fighting a duel. We must learn to think of discussion not as a struggle but as experiment in coöperation. We must learn coöperative thinking, intellectual team-work. There is a secret here which is going to revolutionize the world.
Perhaps the most profound reason against struggle is that it always erects a thing-in-itself. If I “fight” Mr. X, that means that I think of Mr. X as incapable of change—that either he or I must prevail, must conquer. When I realize fully that there are no things-in-themselves, struggle simply fades away; then I know that Mr. X and I are two flowing streams of activity which must meet for larger ends than either could pursue alone.
Is Germany the last stronghold of the old theory of evolution, is she the last being in a modern world to assert herself as a thing-in-itself? President Wilson’s contribution to this war is that he refuses to look upon Germany as a thing-in-itself.
The idea of adaptation to environment has been so closely connected with the “struggle for existence” theory that some people do not seem to realize that in giving up the latter, the former still has force, although with a somewhat different connotation. We now feel not only that adaptation to environment is compatible with coöperation, but that coöperation is the basis of adaptation to environment. But our true environment is psychic, and as science teaches adaptation to the physical, so group psychology will teach the secret of membership in the psychic environment, will teach the branch to know its vine, where its own inner sources of life are revealed to it. Then we shall understand that environment is not a hard and rigid something external to us, always working upon us, whose influence we cannot escape. Not only have self and environment acted and reacted upon each other, but the action and reaction go on every moment; both self and environment are always in the making. The individual who has been affected by his environment acts on an environment which has been affected by individuals. We shall need an understanding of this for all our constructive work: it is not that formative influences work on a dead mass of inertia, but formative influences work on an environment which has already responded to initiatives, and these initiatives have been affected by the responses. We cannot be practical politicians without fully understanding this.
Progress then must be through the group process. Progress implies respect for the creative process not the created thing; the created thing is forever and forever being left behind us. The greatest blow to a hide-bound conservatism would be the understanding that life is creative at every moment. What the hard-shelled conservative always forgets is that what he really admires in the past is those very moments when men have strongly and rudely broken with tradition, burst bonds, and created something. True conservatism and true progressivism are not two opposites: conservatives dislike “change,” yet they as well as progressives want to grow; progressives dislike to “stand pat,” yet they as well as conservatives want to preserve what is good in the present. But conservatives often make the mistake of thinking they can go on living on their spiritual capital; progressives are often too prone not to fund their capital at all.
What we must get away from is “the hell of rigid things.” There is a living life of the people. And it must flow directly through our government and our institutions, expressing itself anew at every moment. We are not fossils petrified in our social strata. We are alive. This is the first lesson for us to learn. That very word means change and change, growth and growth. To live gloriously is to change undauntedly—our ideals must evolve from day to day, and it is upon those who can fearlessly embrace the doctrine of “becoming” that the life of the future waits. All is growing; we must recognize this and free the way for the growth. We must unclose our spiritual sources, we must allow no mechanism to come between our spiritual sources and our life. The élan vital must have free play.
Democracy must be conceived as a process, not a goal. We do not want rigid institutions, however good. We need no “body of truth” of any kind, but the will to will, which means the power to make our own government, our own institutions, our own expanding truth. We progress, not from one institution to another, but from a lesser to a greater will to will.
We know now that there are no immutable goals—there is only a way, a process, by which we shall, like gods, create our own ends at any moment—crystallize just enough to be of use and then flow on again. The flow of life and we the flow: this is the truth. Life is not a matter of desirable objects here and there; the stream flows on and he who waits with his object is left with a corpse. Man is equal to life at every moment, but he must live for life and not for the things life has produced.
Yet while it is true that life can never be formalized or formulated, that life is movement, change, onwardness, this does not mean that we must give up the abiding. The unchangeable and the unchanging are both included in the idea of growth.[[32]] Stability is neither rigidity nor sterility: it is the perpetual power of bringing forth.
Writers are always fixing dates for the dividing line between the ancient and the modern world, or between the mediæval and the modern world. Soon the beginning of modern times, of modern thought, will, I believe, be dated at the moment when men began to look at a plastic world, at a life constantly changing, at institutions as only temporary crystallizations of life forces, of right as evolving, of men as becoming.