The Higher Powers of Mind and Spirit

by Ralph Waldo Trine

If they had their way and their numbers were sufficiently large, the flames of Bolshevism and anarchy would be so fed that even in America we would have little hope of escaping a great conflagration. They are the ones who are determined to see that their immense profits are uncurtailled, whose homes must have ten bathrooms each; while great numbers of their workers without whom they would have to close up the industry—hence their essential partners in the industry though not in name—haven't even a single bath-room and with families as large and in many cases larger.

They are they who must have three or four homes each, aggregating in the millions to build and to maintain. They are they who cannot see why workmen should discuss such things among themselves, or even question them, though in many cases they are scarcely able to make ends meet in the face of continually advancing or even soaring prices, who never enjoy a holiday, and are unable to lay up for the years to come, when they will no longer be "required" in industry. They are they therefore who have but little if any interest or care for even the physical well-being of their workers, say nothing of their mental and spiritual well-being and enjoyments—beyond the fact that they are well enough fed and housed for the next day's work.

They are they who when it is suggested that, recognizing the change and the run of the tide, they be keen-minded enough to anticipate changing conditions and organize their business so that their workers have some joint share in its conditions and conduct, and some share in its profits beyond a mere living wage, reply—"I'll be damned if I do." It doesn't require much of a prophetic sense now however, to be able to tell them—they'll be damned if they don't.

There is reason to rejoice also that for the welfare of American institutions, the number of this class is continually decreasing. Did they predominate, with the unmistakable undercurrents of unrest, born of a sense of injustice, there would be in time, and in a shorter time than we perhaps realize, but one outcome. Steeped in selfishness, making themselves impervious to all the higher leadings and impulses of the soul—less than men—they are not only enemies of their own better selves, but enemies of the nation itself.

Bolshevism in Russia was born, or rather was able to get its hold, only through the long generations of Czarism and the almost universal state of ignorance in which its people were held, that preceded it. The great preponderance and the continually growing numbers of men with imagination, with a sense of care, mutuality, cooperation, brotherhood, in our various large enterprises is a force that will save this and other nations from a similar experience.

I have great confidence in the Russian people. Its soul is sound; and after the forces of treachery, incompetence and terrorism have spent themselves, and the better elements are able to organize in sufficient force to drive the beasts from its borders, it will arise and assert itself. There will be builded a new Russia that will be one of the great and commanding nations of the world. In the meantime it affords a most concrete and valuable lesson to us and to all other nations—to strike on the one hand, the forces of treachery and lawlessness the moment they show themselves, and on the other hand, to see that the soil is made fertile for neither their entrance nor growth.

The strong nation is that in which under the leadership of universal free education and equal opportunities, a due watch is maintained to see that the rights of all individuals and all classes are nurtured and carefully guarded. In such a government the nation and its interests is and must be supreme. Then if built upon high ethical and moral standards where mutuality is the watch-word and the governing principle of its life, its motto might through right, power through justice, it becomes a fit and effective member of the Society of Nations.

Internationalism is higher than nationalism, humanity is above the nation. The stronger however the individual nation, the stronger necessarily will be the Society of Nations.

Love, sympathy, fellowship, is not inconsistent with the use of force to restrain malignant evil, in the case of nations as in the case of individuals. Where goodness is weak it is exploited and becomes a victim of the stronger, when, devoid of a sense of mutuality, it is conscienceless. Strength without conscience, goodness, ungoverned by the law of mutuality, becomes tyranny. In seeking its own ends it violates every law of God and man.

For the safety therefore of the better life of the world, for the very safety and welfare of the Society of Nations, those nations that combine strength with goodness, strength with good-will, strength with an ever-growing sense of mutuality, which is the only law of a happy, orderly, and advancing human life, must combine to check the power of any people or nation still devoid of the knowledge of this law, lest goodness, truth and all the higher instincts and potentialities of life, even freedom itself perish from the earth. This can be done and must be done not through malice or hatred, but through a sense of right and duty.