attributes of the human species? In Nicolai's opinion, they are nothing
of the sort. He inclines, rather, to regard them as aberrations, for man
was originally a pacific and social animal. His anatomical structure
proves it. Man is one of the most defenceless of animals, having neither
claws, nor horns, nor hoofs, nor carapace. His ape-like ancestors had no
other resource but to seek safety among the branches. When man came down
to the ground and took to walking, his hand was freed for other uses.
This five-fingered hand, which in most animals has become a weapon
(clawed or hoofed), has in the apes alone remained a prehensile organ.
Essentially pacific, ill-constructed for striking or tearing, its
natural function was to seize and to take.[50] "The hand ... was
superfluous as an aid to locomotion on the ground, and thus became free
and able to lay hold of something besides trees. Consequently it grasped
tools, thus becoming the means and the symbol of man's future
greatness." But the hand would not have sufficed for man's defence. Had
he been a solitary animal, he would have been destroyed by foes stronger
and better equipped than himself. His strength lay in his being
gregarious. The social state existed for mankind long before family life
began. Men did not voluntarily unite to form a community (the family
first, for instance, then the tribe, then a class, then a commune,
etc.); it was the existence of the primitive community which rendered
possible the advance from the prehuman to the human stage.[51] By
nature, as Aristotle said, man is a sociable animal. The drawing
together of men is older and more primitive than war.
Look, again, at the lower animals. War is rare between members of the
same species. The animals that wage war (stags, ants, bees, and certain
birds), have always reached a stage of development in which proprietary
rights exist, it may be over booty or it may be over a female. Ownership
and war go hand in hand. War is merely one of the innumerable
consequences of ownership at a certain stage of evolution. Whatever the
declared aim of war, its real purpose always is to despoil man of his
labour or of the fruit of his labour. Unless a war be utterly futile,
its necessary result will be the enslavement of a part of humanity.
Shamefacedly we may change the name, but let us avoid being duped by the
new name! A war indemnity is nothing else than part of the labour of the
vanquished enemy. Modern war hypocritically pretends to protect private
property; but in its effect on the conquered nation as a whole, it
indirectly attacks the rights of every individual. Let us be frank. Let
us, when we defend war, dare to admit and to proclaim that we are
defending slavery.
There is no question of denying that both war and slavery may have been
useful, and indeed indispensable, during a certain phase of human
evolution. Primitive man, like the lower animals, had all his energies
monopolised by the attaining of nutriment. When spiritual needs began to
demand their rights, it was necessary that the masses should work to
excess in order that a small minority might pass lives of learned
leisure. The marvellous civilisations of antiquity could not have
existed without slavery. But the time has now arrived when a new
organisation has rendered slavery superfluous. In a modern national
society a community voluntarily renounces part of its earnings (and will
have to renounce an increasingly large part of its earnings) for social
purposes. Machines produce about ten times as much as unaided human
labour. Were they intelligently used, the social problem would be
greatly simplified. A sophism of the political economists assures us
that national wellbeing increases proportionally with the increase in
the consumption of commodities. The principle is unsound. Its outcome is
that it inoculates people with artificial needs. But it is this
artificially excited greed which, in the last resort, continues to
bolster up slavery in the shape of exploitation and war. Property
created war, and property maintains war. For the weak only, is property
a source of virtue, since the weak will not make efforts without the
stimulus afforded by the desire for possession. Throughout history, war
has been for property. Nicolai does not believe that there has ever been
a war for a purely ideal object, and without any thought of material
domination. People may perhaps fight for the pure ideal of country, in
the endeavour to express to the full the genius of their own nation. But
the guns will not really help the ideal forward. Such material arguments
as guns and bayonets will seem valuable only when the abstract idea has
become intertwined with the lusts for power and property. Thus, war,
property, and slavery, are close associates. Goethe wrote:
Krieg, Handel und Piraterie
Dreieinig sind sie, nicht zu trennen.[52]
* * * * *
Nicolai then proceeds to criticise the pseudo-scientific notions from
which our modern intellectuals deduce justifications for war. Above all
he disposes of fallacious Darwinism and of the misuse of the idea of the
struggle for existence. These notions, imperfectly understood and
speciously interpreted, are by many regarded as furnishing a sanction
for war. Or, it is held, war is a method of selection, and is therefore
a natural right. To such conceptions Nicolai opposes genuine science,
the fundamental law of the increase in living beings,[53] and the law
that there is a natural limit to growth.[54] It is obvious that the
existence of these limitations imposes struggle upon individual beings
and upon species, seeing that the world contains only a restricted
quantity of energy, that is to say of nutriment. But Nicolai shows that
war is the most paltry, the stupidest, one may even say the most
ruinous, among all forms of struggle. Modern science, which enables us
to estimate the amount of solar energy reaching our planet, shows us
that the entire animal world does not as yet make use of more than one
twenty thousandth part of the available supply. It is obvious that in
these conditions war, that is to say the murder of another accompanied
by the theft of that other's share of energy, is an inexcusable crime.
It is, says Nicolai, as if loaves were lying about by the thousand, and
we were nevertheless to kill a beggar in order to steal his crust.
Mankind has an almost boundless field to exploit, and man's proper
struggle is the struggle with nature. All other forms of struggle bring
impoverishment and ruin, by distracting our attention from our main
purposes. The creative method is based upon the harnessing of new and
ever new sources of energy. The starting point was the prehistoric
discovery of fire, when man for the first time was able to effect the
explosive liberation of the solar energy stored up by plants. The
discovery marked a new turn in human affairs, and was the dawn of man's
supremacy over nature. During the last hundred years this new principle
has been developed to such an enormous extent that human evolution has
been entirely transformed. Nearly all the chief problems may be said to
have been solved, and what remains requisite is the practical
application. Thermo-electricity renders possible the direct and
purposive utilisation of solar energy. Modern chemical researches point
to the possibility of artificially manufacturing foodstuffs, and so on.
Were man to apply all his combative energy to the utilisation of the
forces of nature, not merely could he live at ease, but there would be
room in the world for milliards of additional human beings. When
compared with this splendid struggle, how puny seems the great war! What
has that war to do with the real struggle for existence? It is a product
of degeneration. War is justifiable. Not war between human beings. But
creative war for man's mastery over natural forces, the young war of
which hardly a millionth part has yet been waged. In this war we can
foresee victories such as no human being has ever yet won.
Nicolai, contrasting this creative struggle with the destructive
struggle, symbolises them in the persons of two German men of science.
One of these is Professor Haber, who has turned his knowledge to account
for the manufacture of asphyxiating bombs, and who will doubtless not be
forgotten. The other is Emil Fischer, the brilliant chemist who has
achieved the synthetic production of sugar, and who will perhaps achieve
the synthesis of albumen. Fischer is the founder, or at any rate the
forerunner, of the new era of humanity. Future generations will
gratefully refer to him as one of the supreme conquerors in the
victorious struggle for the sources of life. He is in very truth a
practitioner of the "divine art" of which Archimedes spoke.
* * * * *
Nicolai's arguments, showing that war is antagonistic to human progress,
are confronted with an indisputable fact, a fact which has to be
explained--the actual existence of war, and its monstrous expansion.
Never has war been more powerful, more brutal, more widespread. Never
has war been more glorified. In an interesting chapter (Chapter
Fourteen), which introduces a number of debatable points, Nicolai shows
that in earlier days apologists for war were exceptional. Even among the
epic poets of war, those whose song was of heroism, the direct
references to war convey fear and disapproval. Delight in war
(Kriegslust), love of war for its own sake, is peculiar to modern
literature. We have to come down to the writings of Moltke, Steinmetz,
Lasson, Bernhardi, and Roosevelt, to find apotheoses of war, pæans of
war whose jubilation is quasi-religious. Nor was it until the outbreak
of the present struggle that such huge armies as those of to-day were
witnessed. The Greek armies in classical antiquity did not exceed
20,000. Those of imperial Rome, ranged from 100,000 to 200,000. In the
eighteenth century, armies of 150,000 were known; while Napoleon had an
army of 750,000. In 1870, there were armies of two and a half millions.
But in the present war there are ten million fighting men in each camp
(Chapter Five and Chapter Six). The increase is colossal, and quite
recent. Even if we take into account the possibility of a struggle in
the near future between Europeans and Mongols, a proportional increase
could not continue beyond a generation or two, for the whole population
of the globe would not suffice to furnish such armies.
But Nicolai is not appalled by the titanic dimensions of the monster he
is fighting. Indeed, this very fact gives him confidence in the ultimate
victory of his cause. For biology has revealed to him the mysterious law
of giganthanasia. One of the most important principles of paleontology
teaches that all animals (with the exception of insects, which, for this
very reason, are, with the brachiopods, the oldest families on the
globe), all species, tend throughout the centuries to grow larger and
larger until, of a sudden, when they seem greatest and strongest, their
forms disappear from the geological record. In nature it is always the
large forms that die. That which is large must die for the reason that,
in conformity with the imperious law of growth, the day comes when it
exceeds the limits of its primordial possibilities. Thus is it, writes
Nicolai, with war. Along the boundless field-grey battle lines, thrills
the warning of the coming Twilight of the Gods. Everything beautiful and
characteristic in the war of ancient days has vanished. Gone is the gay
camp life, gone are the motley uniforms, gone is single combat--gone, in
a word, are the show features. The battlefield, now, has become little
more than an accessory. In former days the scene of battle used to be
selected with care, for then the rival armies manoeuvred for position.
To-day the soldiers settle down haphazard and dig themselves in. The
essential work is carried on elsewhere, by the provision of finance,
munitions, food supply, railways, etc. In place of the one man of genius
as general, we have now the impersonal machinery of the general staff.
The old lively, joyous war is dead.--It may be that even yet war has not
attained its zenith. In the present war there are still neutrals, and
perhaps Freiligrath was right in holding that there must first be some
battle in which the whole world will share. But if so, that will be the
very last. The final war will be the greatest and the most terrible of
all, just as the last of the great saurians was the most gigantic. Our
technique has swelled war to its extremest limits, and will then slay
war.[55]
* * * * *
At bottom, behind its fearsome exterior, the war monster lacks
confidence, and feels that its life is threatened. Never before have
warmongers appealed, as they appeal to-day, to such a compost of
arguments, mystico-scientifico-politico-murderous, to justify the
existence of war. No one would dream of such arguments were it not that
the days of war are numbered, were it not that the most enthusiastic
disciples of war are shaken in their faith. But Nicolai is ruthless in
attack, and part of his book is a pitiless satire upon all the sophisms
wherewith in our folly we attempt to justify war--the executioner's axe
poised over our heads. These sophisms are: the sophism that war is a
biological means for ensuring the survival of the fittest; the sophism
of defensive war; the sophism of the humanisation of war; the sophism of
the alleged solidarity created by war, the so-called party truce; the
sophism of the fatherland--for the fatherland, in practical application,
becomes the narrowly conceived and artificially constructed political
state; the sophism of race; and so on.
I should have been glad to quote numerous extracts from these ironical
and severely critical passages. Of exceptional interest are the
paragraphs in which he castigates the most impudent and the most
flourishing of current sophisms, the sophism of race, for whose sake
thousands of poor simpletons of all nations are slaughtering one
another. He writes as follows:
"The race problem is one of the most melancholy chapters in the history
of human thought. Nowhere else has knowledge, supposedly impartial,
consciously or unconsciously placed itself so unscrupulously at the
service of ambitious and self-seeking politicians. Indeed, it might
almost be said that the various theories of race have never been put
forward save with the object of advancing some claim or other. The
writings of Houston Stewart Chamberlain, an Anglo-German, afford perhaps
the most repulsive example. As we all know, this author has endeavoured
to claim as German everyone of outstanding importance in the history of
the world, Christ and Dante not excepted. It would be strange if this
demagogic example found so [many] imitators.... Recently Paul Souday has
attempted to show that all the notable men of Germany belong to the
Keltic race ('Le Temps,' August 7, 1915)."
Nicolai replies to these extravagances with the following definite
assertions:
1. Proof is lacking that a pure race is better than a mixed race.
(Examples are adduced from animal species and from human history.)
2. It is impossible to define the term race as applied to the
subdivisions of mankind, for valid criteria are lacking. Such
classifications as have been attempted, now upon a historical, now upon
a linguistic, and now upon an anthropological basis, are extremely
inconsistent one with another, and have been almost complete failures.
3. There are no pure races in Europe. Less than any other nation have
the Germans a right to claim racial purity.[56] Anyone who seeks a true
Teuton to-day had better go to Sweden, the Netherlands, or England.
4. If to the term race we attach a definite biological meaning, we can
hardly say that there is any such thing as a European race.
Patriotism based on race is impossible, and in most cases it is utterly
absurd. There is no such thing as ethnic homogeneity in any extant
nation. The cohesion of contemporary nations does not come down to them
as a heritage of which they can dispose at will. From day to day this
cohesion must be rewon. Unremittingly the members of each nation must
fortify their community of thought, feeling, and will. This is meet and
right. As Renan said, "The existence of a nation should be a daily
plebiscite." In a word, what unites people to form a nation is not the
force of history; it is the desire to be together, and the mutual need
felt by the members of the nation. Our thoughts and our feelings are not
guided by the vows that others have made for us, but by our own free
will.
Is it so to-day? What place does free will hold among the nations of
to-day? Patriotism has assumed an extraordinarily oppressive form.
During no other age in history has it been so tyrannical and so
exclusive. It devours everything. Our country, to-day, claims to rank
above religion, above art, science, thought, above civilisation. This
monstrous hypertrophy cannot be explained as an efflux from the natural
sources of patriotic instincts, as an efflux of love of the native soil,
of tribal sentiment, of the social need for forming vast communities.
Its colossal effects are the outcome of a pathological phenomenon; they
are the outcome of mass suggestion. Nicolai tersely analyses this
conception. It is remarkable, he says, that whenever several animals or
several human beings do anything together, the mere fact of cooperation
causes each individual's action to be modified. We have scientific proof
that two men can carry far more than twice as much as one. In like
manner, a number of human beings react in a very different way from
these same beings in isolation. Every cavalryman knows that his horse
will do more in the troop than it will do alone, will cover more ground
and will suffer less fatigue. Forel has pointed out that an ant which,
surrounded by companions, will readily face death, shows fear and runs
away from a much weaker ant when she is alone and some way from the
ant-hill. Among men, in like manner, the feeling of the crowd greatly
intensifies the reactions of each individual. "This is most evident at a
public meeting. In many cases the speaker has hardly opened his mouth
before he communicates some of his own emotion to every one of his
hearers. Suppose it to be only the hundredth part on the average, and
suppose that the audience numbers one thousand, then the speaker's
emotion has already been multiplied tenfold, as will speedily appear
from the reactions of the audience." This in turn reacts on the speaker,
who is carried away by the emotions of his hearers. And so it goes on.
Now in our day the audience is of enormous size, and the world war has
made it gigantic. Thanks to powerful and rapid means of communication,
thanks to the telegraph and the press, the huge groups of allied states
have become, as it were, single publics numbered by millions. Imagine,
in this vibrant and sonorous mass, the effect of the least cry, of the
slightest tremor. They assume the aspect of cosmic convulsions. The
entire mass of humanity is shaken as by an earthquake. Under these
conditions what happens to such a sentiment as the love of country,
originally natural and healthy? In normal times, says Nicolai, a good
man loves his country just as he should love his wife, while well aware
that there may be other women more beautiful, more intelligent, or
better, than she. But one's country to-day is like a hysterically
jealous woman who is in a fury when anyone recognises another woman's
merits. In normal times the true patriot is (or should be) the man who
loves what is good in his country and resists what is evil. But nowadays
anyone who acts thus is deemed an enemy of his country. A patriot, in
the contemporary sense of the word, loves both what is good and what is
bad in his country; he is ready to do evil for the sake of his country;
carried away by the stream of mass suggestion, he is positively eager to
do evil for his country's sake. The weaker a man's character, the more
inflammatory his patriotism. He has no power to resist collective
suggestion; and is indeed passionately attracted by it, for every weak
man looks for others' support, and believes himself stronger if he does
what others are doing. Now, these persons of weak character have no
common bond of profound culture. What they need to unite them is an
external bond, and what can suit them better than national feeling!
"Every blockhead," writes Nicolai, "feels several inches taller if he
and a few dozen millions of his kind can only unite to form a
majority.... The fewer independent personalities a nation possesses, the
fiercer is that nation's patriotism."
This mass attraction, which works like a magnet, is the positive side of
jingoism. The negative side is hatred of foreign countries. War is the
biological culture-medium. War hurls upon the world sufferings mountain
high; it crushes the world by material and spiritual privations. If
people are to endure it, there must be a supreme exaltation of mass
sentiment, to support the weak by herding them more closely together.
This is artificially effected by the newspaper press. The result is
appalling. Patriotism concentrates all the energies of the human mind
upon love for one's own country and upon hatred for the enemy. Hatred
becomes a religion. Hatred without reason, without common sense, and
absolutely without foundation. No room is left for any other faculty.
Intelligence and morality have abdicated. Nicolai quotes a number of
almost incredible examples from the Germany of 1914 and 1915, and
equally striking instances could be given in the case of every
belligerent nation. There was no resistance to these suggestions. In
the collective aberration, all differences of class, education,
intellectual or moral value, are reduced to one level; all are
equalised. The entire human race, from base to summit, is delivered over
to the Furies. If the least sparkle of free will shows itself, it is
trampled under foot, and the isolated independent is torn to pieces as
Pentheus was torn to pieces by the Bacchantes.
But this frenzy does not disturb the calm vision of the thinker. To
Nicolai, the paroxysm he contemplates seems the last flicker of the
torch. Just as, he declares, horse-racing and yachting are undergoing
their fullest development in our own day, when horses and sails are
ceasing to have any practical use, so likewise patriotism has become a
fanatical cult at the very moment when it has ceased to be a factor in
civilisation. It is the fate of the Epigoni. In remote ages it was good,
it was needful, that individual egoism should be broken by the grouping
of human beings in tribes and clans. The patriotism of the towns was
justified when it victoriously resisted the egoism of the robber barons.
The patriotism of the state was justified when it concentrated all the
energies of a nation. The national conflicts of the nineteenth century
had useful work to do. But to-day the work of the national states is
done. New tasks call us. Patriotism is no longer a suitable aim for
humanity; its influence is retrograde. But the retrogressive efforts of
patriotism are fruitless. No one can arrest the progress of evolution,
and people are merely committing suicide by throwing themselves beneath
the iron wheels of the chariot. The sage is unperturbed by the frenzied
resistance of the forces of the past, for he knows them to be the forces
of despair. He leaves the dead to bury their dead; and, looking forward,
he already contemplates the living unity of mankind that is to be. Among
the trials and disasters of the present, he realises within himself the
serene harmony of the "great body" whereof all men are members, as in
the profound saying of Seneca: Membra sumus corporis magni.
In a subsequent article we shall learn how Nicolai describes this corpus
magnum and the mens magna which animates it, the Weltorganismus, the
organism of universal humanity, whose coming is already heralded to-day.
_October 1, 1917._
"demain," Geneva, October, 1917.
II