of war and the sophisms which serve for its support. Nevertheless the
sinister madness triumphs for the time. In 1914, reason went bankrupt.
Spreading from nation to nation, this bankruptcy, this madness,
subsequently involved all the peoples of the world. There was no lack of
established ethical systems and established religions which, had they
done their duty, would have opposed a barrier to this contagion of
murder and folly. But all the ethical systems, all the religions, now in
existence, proved hopelessly inadequate. We have seen it for ourselves
in the case of Christianity; and Nicolai shows, following Tolstoi, that
Buddhism is in no better case.
As far as Christianity is concerned, its abdication is of old date.
After the great compromise under Constantine, in the fourth century of
our era, when the emperor made the church of Christ a state church, the
essential thought of Jesus was betrayed by the official representatives
of the creed, and was delivered over to Cæsar. Only among certain free
religious individualities, most of whom were charged with heresy, was
this essential thought preserved (to a degree) until our own time. But
its last defenders have lately denied it. The Christian sects which up
to now have invariably refused military service, for example the
Mennonites in Germany, the Dukhobors in Russia, the Paulicians, the
Nazarenes, etc., are participating in the war to-day.[57] "Simon Menno,
the founder of the Mennonites, who died in 1561, condemned war and
vengeance.... As late as 1813, the strength of moral conviction in the
members of this sect was still so great that, despite the patriotic
excitement of that year, so ruthless a soldier as York actually exempted
them from Landwehr service, by a decree dated February 18th. But in
1915, H. G. Mannhardt, Mennonite preacher in Danzig, delivered an
address glorifying feats of arms and martial heroes."
"There was a time," writes Nicolai, "when it was believed that Islam was
inferior to Christianity. At that date the Turkish armies were
threatening the heart of Europe. To-day the Turk has almost been driven
out of Europe, but morally he has conquered Europe. Unseen, the green
flag of the Prophet floats over every house in which there is talk of
the 'holy war.'"
German religious poems depict the fight in the trenches as "a test of
piety instituted by God." No one is now astonished at the absurd
contradiction in terms involved in speaking of "Christian warfare." Few
theologians or churchmen have dared to swim against the stream. In his
admirable book _La Guerre infernale_,[58] Gustave Dupin has pilloried
gruesome specimens of militarist Christianity. Nicolai gives other
samples, which it would be a pity to leave unrecorded. In 1915,
Professor Baumgarten, a Kiel theologian, placidly pointed out that there
is opposition between the morality of bellicose nationalism and the
morality of the Sermon on the Mount, but "at present," he went on to
say, "we ought to pay more attention to Old Testament texts"; thus
deliberately, and with a smile, throwing Christianity overboard. Arthur
Brausewetter, another theologian, made a remarkable discovery. War
revealed to him the Holy Spirit. "Never, till this year of war, 1914,
did we really know the nature of the Holy Ghost...."
While Christianity was thus publicly denied by its priests and its
pastors, the religions of Asia were no less ready to jettison the
inconvenient thoughts of their founders. Tolstoi had already pointed
this out. "The Buddhists of to-day do not merely tolerate murder; they
positively justify it. During the war between Japan and Russia, Soyen
Shaku, one of the leading Buddhist dignitaries in Japan, wrote a defence
of war.[59] Buddha had uttered this beautiful word of afflicted love:
'All things are my children, all are images of myself, all flow from a
single source, and all are parts of my own body. That is why I cannot
rest as long as the least particle of what is has failed to reach its
destination.' In this sigh of mystical love, which aspires towards the
fusion of all beings, the Buddhist of to-day has safely discovered an
appeal to a war of extermination. For, he declares, inasmuch as the
world has failed to reach its destination, has failed owing to the
perversity of many men, we must make war on these men and must
annihilate them. 'Thus shall we extirpate the roots of evil.'"--This
bloodthirsty Buddhist recalls to my mind the guillotine-idealism of our
Jacobins in '93. Their monstrous faith is summed up in the words of
Saint-Just which close my tragedy _Danton_:
"The nations slay one another that God may live."[60]
When religions are so weak, it is not surprising that mere ethical
systems should prove unavailing. Nicolai shows us what a travesty Kant's
disciples have made of their master's teaching. Willy-nilly, the author
of the _Critique of Pure Reason_ has been compelled to put on the
field-grey uniform. Have not his German commentators insisted that the
Prussian army is the most perfect realisation of Kant's thought? For,
they tell us, in the Prussian army the sentiment of Kantian duty has
become a living reality.
Let us waste no more time over these inanities, which differ only in
shade from those made use of in every land by the national guard of the
intelligentsia, to exalt their cause and to glorify war. Enough to
recognise, with Nicolai, that European idealism crashed to ruin in 1914.
The German writer's conclusion (which I am content to record without
comment), is that "we have proof that ordinary idealistic morality,
whether Kantian or Christian, is absolutely useless, for it is unable to
lead any of those who profess it to act morally." In view of the
manifest impossibility of founding moral action upon a purely idealistic
basis, Nicolai considers that our first duty is to seek some other
basis. He wishes that Germany, schooled by her ignominious fall, by her
"moral Jena," should work at this task whose fulfilment is so
indispensable to mankind--should work at it for herself even more than
for any other nation, seeing that her need is the greatest. "Let us
see," he says, "if it be not possible to find in nature, scientifically
studied, the conditions of an objective ethic, of an ethic that shall be
independent of our personal sentiments, good or bad, always
vacillating."
* * * * *
In the first part of the volume we have learned that war is a
transitional phenomenon in human evolution. What, then, is the true and
eternal principle of humanity? Is there such a principle? Is there a
higher imperative, valid for all men alike?
Yes, answers Nicolai. This higher imperative is the very law of life,
which governs the entire organism of humanity. Natural law has only two
bases, only two which can never be shaken: the individual, separately
considered; and the human universality. All intermediaries, like the
family and the state, are organised groupings,[61] subject to change,
and they do actually change with changing customs; they are not natural
organisms. Egoism and altruism, the two powerful sentiments which give
life to our moral world, acting therein like the contrasted forces of
positive and negative electricity, are the respective expressions of the
individual and of the collectivity. Egoism is the natural outflow of our
individuality. Altruism owes its existence to the obscure recognition
that we are parts of a united organism, humanity.
In the second half of his book Nicolai undertakes to throw light upon
this obscure realisation, and to establish it upon a scientific
foundation. He undertakes to show that humanity is no mere abstraction,
but a living reality, an organism that can be subjected to scientific
observation.
In this study, the poetical intuition of the ancient philosophers is
interestingly linked with the experimental spirit and the analytical
method of modern science. The latest biological and embryological
theories are invoked to help in the comment on the hylozoism of the
seven sages and the mysticism of the early Christians. Janicki and de
Vries shake hands with Heraclitus and Saint Paul. The upshot is a
strange vision of materialistic and dynamistic pantheism--a vision of
humanity considered as a body and a soul in unceasing motion.
Nicolai begins by reminding us that this idea has existed in all ages.
He summarises the history of the doctrine. We have the "fire" of
Heraclitus, which for the sage of Ephesus was also the universal
intelligence of the world. We have the same thing in the "pneuma" of the
stoics and in the "pneuma agion" of the primitive Christians, the sacred
energy, the vivifying force, which is the concentrated essence of all
the souls. It is what Origen speaks of as "universum mundum velut animal
quoddam immensum." We encounter the idea once more in the fertile
fancies of Cardanus, Giordano Bruno, Paracelsus, and Campanella.
Animistic ideas are mingled with the science of Newton, and permeate his
hypothesis of universal gravitation. Indeed, Musschenbroek, his
immediate disciple, describes the gravitative principle as "amicitia";
while Lichtenberg tells us that it is the "longing of the heavenly
bodies for one another!" In a word, through the whole development of
human thought runs the belief that our world is a single organism with a
consciousness of its own. Nicolai tells us how it would interest him to
write the history of this idea; and he outlines that history in his
fascinating fourteenth chapter, "The Evolution of the Idea of the World
as Organism."[62]
He then passes to scientific demonstration. Is there, he asks, a
material bond, a bodily, living, and enduring tie, between human beings
of all lands and all ages?[63] He finds a proof that there is such a
bond in the researches of Weismann and in that writer's theory of the
germ plasm, which has now become classic.[64] In each individual, the
cells of the germ plasm continue the life of the parents, of which, in
the fullest sense of the word, they are living portions. They are
undying. They pass, changeless, to our children and to our children's
children. Thus there really persists throughout the whole genealogical
tree a part of the same living substance. A portion of this organic
unity lives in each individual and thereby we are physically connected
with the universal community. Nicolai points out, in passing, the
remarkable relationships between these scientific hypotheses of the last
thirty years and certain mystical intuitions of the Greeks and the early
Christians--"the spirit (pneuma) that quickeneth" (Saint John, vi, 63),
the generative spirit, which is not only distinguished from the flesh,
as Saint John declares, but is likewise distinguished from the soul, as
appears from a passage in Saint Paul's first epistle to the Corinthians
(xv, 44), where the "spiritual body" (soma pneumatikon) is contrasted
with the "natural body" (soma psuchikon). The spiritual body is declared
to be more essential than the natural body (the psychical or
intellectual body); and the former really and materially penetrates the
bodies of all men.
Nor is this all. The studies made by contemporary biologists, and
notably by the Russian biologist Janicki, on sexual reproduction[65]
have explained how this method of reproduction safeguards the
homogeneity of the germ plasm in an animal species, and how it
unceasingly renews the mutual contacts among the individual members of a
race. Janicki writes: "The world, if I may say so, has not been broken
up into a mass of independent fragments, which then, for ever isolated
one from another, ... must strike out for themselves on straight
courses, with only side branches. On the contrary, owing to bi-sexual
reproduction (amphimixis), the image of the macrocosm is ... reflected
as a microcosm in each part; and the macrocosm resolves itself into a
thousand microcosms.... Thus the individuals, while remaining
independent, are materially and continuously interconnected, like
strawberry plants whose runners are joined together.... Each separate
individual develops, as it were, through an invisible system of rhizomes
(subterranean roots) which unite the germ substances of countless
individualities."--Thus it has been calculated that in the twenty-first
generation, in five hundred years let us say, and supposing an average
of three children to each couple, the posterity of a single couple will
be equal in number to the entire human race. It may, therefore, be said
that each one of us has within him a small portion of the living
substance belonging to every one of the human beings that were living
five hundred years ago. Consequently it is absurd that anyone should
wish to restrict an individual, be he whom he may, within the category
of a separate nation or race.
Let us add that thought, too, propagates itself throughout mankind, in
like manner with the germ plasm.
Every thought, once expressed, leads in the human community a life
independent of its creator; undergoes development in other minds; and
has, like the germ plasm, an immortal life. So that, in humanity, there
is neither true birth nor true death, whether material or spiritual.
Empedocles, of old, realised this, for he said:
"Yet another truth will I tell unto thee. Not a mortal thing is truly
born, and death the destroyer is not the end. There is nought but
intermixture and exchange of what is intermixed. But among men it is
customary to term this 'birth.'"
Humanity, therefore, materially and spiritually, is a single organism;
all its parts are intimately connected and share in a common
development.
Upon these ideas there must now be grafted the concept of mutation and
the observations of Hugo de Vries.--If this living substance which is
common to all humanity should, at any time and owing to any influence,
have acquired the capacity for changing[66] after a certain lapse of
time, for instance a thousand years, then all those beings which have in
them a share of this substance may suddenly undergo identical changes.
It is well known that Hugo de Vries has observed such sudden variations
in plants.[67] After centuries of stability in the characteristics of a
species, quite suddenly, in a great number of individuals belonging to
this species, there will one year occur a modification, the leaves
becoming longer, or shorter, etc. Thenceforward this modification will
be propagated as a constant feature, so that, by the following year, a
new species will have come into existence.--The same thing happens among
human beings, especially in the human brain; for, as far as man is
concerned, the most striking instances of variation are found in the
psychic domain. In each year, certain human beings present brain
variations. Such abnormal individuals are sometimes regarded as madmen
and sometimes as men of genius. They herald the coming variations of the
species, variations of which they are the forerunners. At due date, the
same peculiarities will suddenly manifest themselves throughout the
species. Experience shows that transformations, or moral and social
discoveries, appear at the same moment in the most widely separated and
the most various countries. I have myself often been struck by this
fact, both when studying history and when observing the men of my own
day. Contemporary societies, at a great distance one from another and
having no means of rapid intercommunication, will simultaneously exhibit
the same moral and social phenomena. Hardly ever is a discovery born in
the brain of a single inventor. At the same instant, other inventors
happen upon it, anticipate it, or are hot upon the trail. The popular
phrase runs, "the idea is in the air." When an idea is in the air, a
mutation is about to occur in the human brain. We are, says Nicolai, on
the eve of a "mutation of war." Moltke and Tolstoi represent the two
great contrasted variations in human thought. Moltke extolled the
ethical value of war; Tolstoi passed unqualified condemnation on war.
Which of these two minds represents the variation of genius and which
the variation of madness? In the light of contemporary events, most
people would be inclined to give the palm to Moltke. But when an
organism is about to undergo mutation, the change is often preluded by
frequent and extensive variations. Of these divergent variations, those
only persist which are best suited to the conditions of existence. Thus,
in Nicolai's view, the ideas of Moltke and his disciples are a
favourable presage that mutation is imminent.
* * * * *
Whatever we may think of this hope that within the near future a
mutation will occur leading to the formation of a humanity radically
opposed to war, it is enough to watch the biological development of the
extant world to acquire the belief that a new organisation, vaster and
more peaceful, is at hand. In proportion as humanity evolves,
communications between men are multiplied. During the last century there
occurred a sudden and enormous improvement in the technical means for
the exchange of ideas. To give one example only. In former days the
circulation of letters throughout the whole world did not exceed one
hundred thousand a year. To-day, the postal correspondence in Germany
amounts to a milliard letters a year (15 per head), whereas formerly the
number was 1 per 1,000 of the population. About forty years ago, in the
countries which now form parts of the postal union, three milliards of
letters, etc., were posted annually. By the year 1906 the number had
increased to thirty-five milliards; and by 1914, to fifty milliards. (In
Germany, 1 per head every 10 days; in Great Britain, 1 per head every 3
days.) We have further to consider the increased speed of communication.
Distance no longer exists for the telegraph; "the entire civilised world
has become a large room in which we can all talk with one another."
Such changes cannot fail to influence social life. In earlier times, any
thought of union or federation between the various states of Europe
remained utopian, were it only on account of the difficulty and slowness
of communications. As Nicolai says, a state cannot extend to infinite
proportions; it must be able to act promptly upon the different parts of
its organism. To a certain extent, therefore, its size is a function of
the rapidity of communications. In prehistoric times, a traveller could
cover only about 12 miles a day; when wheeled traffic became
established, the daily postal journey extended to 60 miles, and in the
later days of mail-coach development, this distance was more than
doubled; towards 1850, the railway service was able to cover 375 miles a
day; modern trains range to 1,250 miles a day; an express service
covering 6,000 miles or more a day is already within the scope of
technical possibilities. For barbarians, the country was limited to a
mountain valley. The states that existed at the close of the middle
ages, states which have not greatly varied down to our times, were
adapted in size to the possibilities of the mail coach. Now, such petty
states are far too small. The modern man will no longer consent to be
restricted in this way. He is continually crossing frontiers. He wants
vast states, like those of America, Australia, Russia, or South Africa.
We look forward to the days when, be it only for material reasons like
the foregoing, the whole world will be a single state. Nothing that we
can do will check this evolution; the change will come whether we like
it or not. We can now understand that all earlier attempts to unite the
nations of Europe, all those initiated in the middle ages and continued
down to the nineteenth century, were rendered impossible of achievement
by the lack of suitable material conditions. With the best will in the
world, their realisation was impossible. But the requisite conditions
exist to-day, and we may say that the organisation of contemporary
Europe no longer corresponds to its biological development. Willy-nilly,
Europe will have to adapt itself to the new conditions. The days of
European unity have come. And the days of world-wide unity are at
hand.[68]
The new body of humanity, the "corpus magnum" of which Seneca spoke,
needs a soul, and it needs a new faith. This faith, while retaining the
absolute character of the old religions, must be wider and more plastic
than they; it must not merely be adapted to the existing needs of the
human mind, but must take into account the possibilities of future
development. All previous religions, rooted in tradition and wishing to
bind man to the past, were encased in dogmatism; and they one and all,
as time passed, became hindrances to natural evolution. Where can we
find a basis for faith and morals which shall be simultaneously absolute
and mutable; shall be above man, and none the less human; shall be
ideal, and none the less real?--We shall find what we want, says
Nicolai, in humanity itself. For us, humanity is a reality which
develops throughout the ages, but which at every moment represents for
us an absolute entity. It evolves in a direction which may be
fortuitous, but which, once taken, cannot be changed. It simultaneously
embraces the past, the present, and the future. It is a unity in time, a
vast synthesis of which we are but fragments. To be human, means to
understand this development, to love it, to trust one's hopes to it, and
to endeavour to participate in it consciously. Herein we find an ethical
system, which Nicolai sums up as follows:
1. The community of mankind is the divine upon earth, and is the
foundation of morals.
2. To be a man is to feel within one's self the reality of humanity at
large. It is to feel, like a living law, that we are elements of that
greater organism, in which (to quote Saint Paul's admirable intuition)
we are all parts of one body and every one members one of another.
3. The love of our neighbour is a feeling of good health. A general love
for humanity is the feeling of organic health in humanity at large,
reflected in one of its members. Therefore we should love and honour the
human community and everything which sustains and fortifies it--work,
truth, good and sound instincts.
4. Fight everything which injures it. Above all, fight bad traditions,
instincts that have become useless or harmful.
* * * * *
"Scio et volo me esse hominem," writes Nicolai at the close of his book.
"I know that I am a man, and I wish to be one."
Man--he understands by this a being aware of the ties which attach him
to the great human family, and aware of the evolution which carries him
along with it--a spirit which understands and loves these ties and these
laws, and which, submitting to them with delight, thereby becomes free
and creative.[69] Man--the term applies to Nicolai himself in the sense
of the character in Terence's play who said, "Homo sum; humani nihil a
me alienum puto." Herein lies the great merit of his work; and herein,
too, we find its defect. In his eagerness to include everything, he has
attempted the impossible. He speaks in one place with an unjust
contempt, and with a contempt which he above all should have been slow
to express, of the "Vielwisser," the polyhistor.[70] But he himself is a
Vielwisser, one of the finest specimens of this genus, too rare in our
day. In all domains, art, science, history, religion, and politics, his
insight is penetrating, but at the same time rapid and incisive.
Everywhere his opinions are lively, often original, and often debatable.
The wealth of his glimpses "de omni re scibili," the abundance of his
intuitions and his reasonings, have a brilliant and at times a
venturesome character. The historical chapters are not above reproach.
Unquestionably the lack of books accounts for certain insufficiencies,
but I think the peculiarities of the author's own genius are partly
responsible. He is headlong and impulsive. These qualities give charm to
his writing, but they are dangerous. What he loves, he sees beautifully.
But woe to what he does not love! Take, for instance, his disdainful and
hasty judgments upon the recent imaginative writers of
Germany--judgments passed wholesale.[71]