Or, do those who talk of "unchanging human nature" and "thousands of years" really plead that we are in danger of a repetition of such a scene? In that case our religious toleration is a mistake. Protestants stand in danger of such tortures, and should arm themselves with the old armory of religious combat—the rack, the thumbscrew, the iron maiden, and the rest—as a matter of sheer protection.
"Men are savage, bloodthirsty creatures, and will fight for a word or a sign," the Spectator tells us, when their patriotism is involved. Well, until yesterday, it was as true to say that of them when their religion was involved. Patriotism is the religion of politics. And as one of the greatest historians of religious ideas has pointed out, religion and patriotism are the chief moral influences moving great bodies of men, and "the separate modifications and mutual interaction of these two agents may almost be said to constitute the moral history of mankind."[120]
But is it likely that a general progress which has transformed religion is going to leave patriotism unaffected; that the rationalization and humanization which have taken place in the more complex domain of religious doctrine and belief will not also take place in the domain of politics? The problem of religious toleration was beset with difficulties incalculably greater than any which confront us in this problem. Then, as now, the old order was defended with real disinterestedness; then it was called religious fervor; now it is called patriotism. The best of the old inquisitors were as disinterested, as sincere, as single-minded, as are doubtless the best of the Prussian Junkers, the French Nationalists, the English militarists. Then, as now, the progress towards peace and security seemed to them a dangerous degeneration, the break-up of faiths, the undermining of most that holds society together. Then, as now, the old order pinned its faith to the tangible and visible instruments of protection—I mean the instruments of physical force. And the Catholic, in protecting himself by the Inquisition against what he regarded as the dangerous intrigues of the Protestant, was protecting what he regarded not merely as his own social and political security, but the eternal salvation, he believed, of unborn millions of men. Yet he surrendered such instruments of defence, and finally Catholic and Protestant alike came to see that the peace and security of both were far better assured by this intangible thing—the right thinking of men—than by all the mechanical ingenuity of prisons and tortures and burnings which it was possible to devise. In like manner will the patriot come finally to see that better than Dreadnoughts will be the recognition on his part and on the part of his prospective enemy, that there is no interest, material or moral, in conquest and military domination.
And that hundred years which I have mentioned as representing an apparently impassable gulf in the progress of European ideas, a period which marked an evolution so great that the very mind and nature of men seemed to change, was a hundred years without newspapers—a time in which books were such a rarity that it took a generation for one to travel from Madrid to London; in which the steam printing-press did not exist, nor the railroad, nor the telegraph, nor any of those thousand contrivances which now make it possible for the words of an American statesman spoken to-day to be read by the millions of Europe to-morrow morning—to do, in short, more in the way of the dissemination of ideas in ten months than was possible then in a century.
When things moved so slowly, a generation or two sufficed to transform the mind of Europe on the religious side. Why should it be impossible to change that mind on the political side in a generation, or half a generation, when things move so much more quickly? Are men less disposed to change their political than their religious opinions? We all know that not to be the case. In every country in Europe we find political parties advocating, or at least acquiescing in, policies which they strenuously opposed ten years ago. Does the evidence available go to show that the particular side of politics with which we are dealing is notably more impervious to change and development than the rest—less within the reach and influence of new ideas?
I must risk here the reproach of egotism and bad taste to call attention to a fact which bears more directly on that point, perhaps, than any other that could be cited.
It is some fifteen years since it first struck me that certain economic facts of our civilization—facts of such visible and mechanical nature as reacting bourses and bank rate-movements, in all the economic capitals of the world, and so on—would soon force upon the attention of men a principle which, though existing for long past in some degree in human affairs, had not become operative to any extent. Was there any doubt as to the reality of the material facts involved? Circumstances of my occupation happily furnished opportunities of discussing the matter thoroughly with bankers and statesmen of world-wide authority. There was no doubt on that score. Had we yet arrived at the point at which it was possible to make the matter plain to general opinion? Were politicians too ill-educated on the real facts of the world, too much absorbed in the rough-and-tumble of workaday politics to change old ideas? Were they, and the rank and file, still too enslaved by the hypnotism of an obsolete terminology to accept a new view? One could only put it to a practical test. A brief exposition of the cardinal principles was embodied in a brief pamphlet and published obscurely without advertisement, and bearing, necessarily, an unknown name. The result was, under the circumstances, startling, and certainly did not justify in the least the plea that there exists universal hostility to the advance of political rationalism. Encouragement came from most unlooked-for quarters: public men whose interests have been mainly military, alleged Jingoes, and even from soldiers. The more considerable edition has appeared in English, German, French, Dutch, Danish, Swedish, Spanish, Italian, Russian, Japanese, Erdu, Persian, and Hindustani, and nowhere has the Press completely ignored the book. Papers of Liberal tendencies have welcomed it everywhere. Those of more reactionary tendencies have been much less hostile than one could have expected.[121]
Does such an experience justify that universal rebelliousness to political rationalism on which my critics for the most part found their case? My object in calling attention to it is evident. If this is possible as the result of the effort of a single obscure person working without means and without leisure, what could not be accomplished by an organization adequately equipped and financed? Mr. Augustine Birrell says somewhere: "Some opinions, bold and erect as they may still stand, are in reality but empty shells. One shove would be fatal. Why is it not given?"
If little apparently has been done in the modification of ideas in this matter, it is because little relatively has been attempted. Millions of us are prepared to throw ourselves with energy into that part of national defence which, after all, is a makeshift, into agitation for the building of Dreadnoughts and the raising of armies, the things in fact which can be seen, where barely dozens will throw themselves with equal ardor into that other department of national defence, the only department which will really guarantee security, but by means which are invisible—the rationalization of ideas.