All the same, we considered ourselves "Christians of the best edition, all picked and culled," and the churches remained open, prayers rose to Jehovah, many of whose priests—even his bishops!—were in khaki, and quit themselves like men—yes, and scores died the death of heroes! Into such hells of inconsistency does war plunge the best of us!
Learning—new or old—seems a vain thing to save a nation, but possibly, as a set-off, science, as represented by cellulose and sulphuric acid, may yet prove the best bulwark of civilization! In his "History of the Origin of Medicine," [4] Lettsom maintains that the invention of firearms has done more to prevent the destruction of the human species than any other discovery; he says: "Invention and discernment of mind have made it possible to reverse the ancient maxim that strength has always prevailed over wisdom." Science alone may prevent a repetition of the story of Egypt, of Babylonia, of Greece, and of Rome. The suggestion seems brazen effrontery when we have not even given the world the equivalent of the Pax Romana! Ah! what a picture of self-satisfied happiness in Plutarch! One envies that placid life in the midst of the only great peace the world has known, spanning a period of more than two hundred years. And he could say, "No tumults, no civil sedition, no tyrannies, no pestilences nor calamities depopulating Greece, no epidemic disease needing powerful and choice drugs and medicines"; though as a Delphic priest there is a pathetic lament that the Pythian priestess has now only commonplace questions to deal with. [5] Surely those cultivated men of his circle must have felt that their house could never be removed. Has Science reached such control over Nature that she will enable our civilization to escape the law of the Ephesian, written on all known records—panta rei? Perhaps so, now that material civilization is world-wide; cataclysmic forces, powerful enough in centres of origin, may weaken as they pass out in circles. Let this be our hope in the present crisis. At any rate, in the free democracies in which Demos with safety says "L'État c'est moi," it has yet to be determined whether Science, as the embodiment of a mechanical force, can rule without invoking ruin. Two things are clear: there must be a very different civilization or there will be no civilization at all; and the other is that neither the old religion combined with the old learning, nor both with the new science, suffice to save a nation bent on self-destruction. The suicide of Germany, the outstanding fact of the war, followed an outburst of national megalomania. For she had religion—it may shock some of you to hear! I mean the people, not the writers or the thinkers, but the people for whom Luther lived and Huss died. Of the two devotional ceremonies which stand supreme in my memory, one was a service in the Dom, Berlin, in which "not the great nor well bespoke, but the mere uncounted folk" sang Luther's great hymn "Ein' feste Burg ist unser Gott." [6] With the Humanities Germany never broke, and the proportion of students in her schools and universities who studied Greek and Latin has been higher than in any other country. You know better than I the innumerable classical studies of her scholars. In classical learning relating to science and medicine she simply had the field; for one scholar in other countries she had a dozen, and the monopoly of journals relating to the history of these subjects. And she had science, and led the world in the application of the products of the laboratory to the uses of every-day life—in commerce, in the arts, and in war. Withal, like Jeshurun, she waxed fat; and did ever such pride go before such destruction? What a tragedy that the successors of Virchow and Traube and Helmholtz and Billroth should have made her a byword among the nations! "Lilies that fester smell far worse than weeds!"
[ [4] 1778, p. 30.
[ [5] "Why the Pythian Priestess," etc. (Plutarch's Morals, vol. III, p. 100, Goodwin's edition).
[ [6] And the other, how different! The crowded Blue Mosque of Cairo, and the crowded streets with the thousands of kneeling Moslems awaiting the cry of the muezzin from the tower.
II
So much preliminary to the business before us, to meet changed conditions as practical men, with the reinforcement born of hope or with the strong resolution of despair.
For what does this Association stand? What are these classical interests that you represent? Take a familiar simile. By a very simple trick, you remember, did Empedocles give Menippus in the moon-halt—the first stage of his memorable trip—such long and clear vision that he saw the tribes of men like a nest of ants, a seething mass going to and fro at their different tasks. Of the function of the classical members in this myrmecic community there can be no question. Neither warriors, nor slaves, nor neuters, you live in a well-protected social environment, heretofore free from enemies, and have been well taken care of. I hate to speak of you as larvæ, but as such you perform a duty of the greatest import in this trophidium stage of your existence. Let me explain. From earliest days much attention has been paid by naturalists to the incredible affection "—incredible στοργή," Swammerdam calls it—which ants display in feeding, licking, and attending the larvæ. Disturb a nest, and the chief care is to take them to a place of safety. This attention is what our symphilic community—to use a biological term—bestows on you. So intensely altruistic, apparently, is this behaviour, that for the very word "στοργή," which expresses the tenderest of all feelings, there is a difficulty in finding an equivalent; indeed, Gilbert White used it almost as an English word. The truth is really very different.