duty to perform, for our nation owes most to the others. What we have
gained from international science is incalculable.... Our debts are
manifest in all directions.... When we draw up our scientific
balance-sheet in account with the rest of the world, the credit side is
meagre. In this respect we have to speak chiefly of our passive
advantages, and our modesty forbids us to refer to our active
contributions."
How refreshing is such modesty! How refreshing is it in this
world-crisis of delirious vanity! Nevertheless Ibsen's fellow-countrymen
are entitled to hold their heads high among their European brethren;
for more than any other writer the great Norwegian recluse has stamped
with his seal both the drama and modern thought. The eyes of Young
France turned towards him; the writer of these lines asked counsel of
him.
All the nations are debtors one to another. Let us pool our debts and
our possessions.
If there are any to-day for whom modesty is befitting, it is the
intellectuals. The part they have played in this war has been
abominable, unpardonable. Not merely did they do nothing to lessen the
mutual lack of understanding, to limit the spread of hatred; with rare
exceptions, they did everything in their power to disseminate hatred and
to envenom it. To a considerable extent, this war was their war.
Thousands of brains were poisoned by their murderous ideologies.
Overweeningly self-confident, proud, implacable, they sacrificed
millions of young lives to the triumph of the phantoms of their
imagination. History will not forget.
Gerhard Gran expresses the fear that personal cooperation between
intellectuals of the belligerent lands may prove impossible for many
years. If he is thinking of the generation of those who are over fifty,
of those who stayed at home and waged a war of words in the learned
societies, the universities, and the editorial offices, I fancy that the
Norwegian writer is not mistaken. There is little chance that these
intellectuals will ever join hands. I should say that none of them will
do so, were I not familiar with the brain's astounding faculty for
forgetting, were I not familiar with this pitiful and yet salutary
weakness, by which the mind is not deceived, but which is essential to
its continued existence. But in the present case, oblivion will be
difficult. The intellectuals have burned their boats. At the outset of
the war it was still possible to hope that some of those who had been
carried away by the blind passion of the opening days, would be able
within a few months frankly to admit their mistake. They would not do
so. Not one of them has done so on either side of the frontier. It was
even possible to note that in proportion as the disastrous consequences
to European civilisation became apparent, those whose mission it was to
act as guardians of that civilisation, those upon whose shoulders part
of the responsibility weighed, instead of admitting their mistake, did
all they could to increase their own infatuation. How, then, can we
hope, when the war is over, and when the disasters to which it will have
led will have become unmistakable, that the intellectuals will curb
their pride and will constrain themselves to say, "We were wrong"?--To
ask this would be to ask too much. The older generation, I fear, will
have to endure to the last its sickness of mind and its obstinacy. On
this side there is little hope. We can only wait until the older
generation has died out.
Those who wish to reknit the relations among the peoples, must turn
their hopes towards the other generation, that of those who bleed in the
armies. May they be preserved! They have been ruthlessly thinned out by
the sickle of war. They might even be annihilated if the war should be
prolonged and extended, as may happen, for all things are possible.
Mankind stands, like Hercules, at the parting of the ways. One of these
ways leads (if Asia takes a hand in the game, and accentuates yet
further the characteristics of hideous destruction in which Germany has
set an example inevitably followed by the other combatants) to the
suicide of Europe.--But at the present hour we have still the right to
hope that the young men of Europe, now enrolled in the armies, will
survive in sufficient numbers to fulfil the mission that will devolve on
them after the war, the mission of reconciling the thoughts of the enemy
nations. In either camp, I know a number of independent spirits, who
look forward, when peace is signed, to realising this intellectual
communion. They propose to except from this communion none but those
who, be it in their own or be it in the other camp, have prostituted
thought to the work of hatred. When I reflect on these young men, I am
firmly convinced (and herein I differ from Gerhard Gran) that after the
war the minds of all lands will inter-penetrate one another far more
effectively than they have ever done before. The nations which knew
nothing of one another, or which saw one another only in the form of
contemptuous caricatures, have learned during the last four years, in
the mud of the trenches, and at grips with death, that they are the same
suffering flesh. All are enduring the same ordeal, and in it they become
brothers. This sentiment continues to grow. For when we attempt to
foresee the changes which, after the war, will occur in the
relationships between the nations, we do not sufficiently realise the
extent to which the war will lead to other upheavals, which may well
modify the very essence of the nations. Whatever may be the immediate
upshot of happenings in Russia, the example of the New Russia will not
fail to have its influence upon the other peoples. An intimate unity is
becoming established in the soul of the peoples. It is as if they were
connected by gigantic roots, spreading underground regardless of
frontiers.--As for the intellectuals who, sitting apart from the common
people, are not directly swept along by this social current, they none
the less feel its influence by intuition and sympathy. Notwithstanding
the efforts which, during these four years, have been made to break off
all contact between the writers in the two camps, I know that in both,
on the morrow of the peace, international magazines and other
publications will be founded. I have first-hand information concerning
such schemes, initiated by young writers, soldiers at the front, men
permeated with the European spirit. Among those of my own generation,
there are a few who will give wholehearted assistance to their younger
brethren. In our view, we shall in this way serve, not merely the cause
of mankind, but the cause of our own land, far better than that cause
will be served by the evil counsellors who preach armed isolation. Every
country which shuts itself apart pronounces its own death-sentence. Gone
for ever are the days when the young and tumultuous energies of the
European nations needed, for their clarification, to be surrounded by
partition walls.--Let me quote a few words uttered by Jean Christophe in
his riper age:
"I neither admire nor dread the nationalism of the present time. It will
pass away with the present time; it is passing, it has already passed.
It is but a rung in the ladder. Climb to the top.... Every nation felt
[before the war] the imperious necessity of gathering its forces and
making up its balance-sheet. For the last hundred years all the nations
have been transformed by their mutual intercourse and the immense
contributions of all the brains of the universe, building up new
morality, new knowledge, new faith. Every man must examine his
conscience, and know exactly what he is and what he has, before he can
enter with the rest into the new age. A new age is coming. Humanity is
on the point of signing a new lease of life. Society is on the point of
springing into vigour with new laws. It is Sunday to-morrow. We are all
balancing our accounts for the week, setting our houses in order, making
them clean and tidy, so that, joining together, we may go into the
presence of our common God and enter into a new covenant with Him."
The war will prove (even against our will) to have been the anvil upon
which will have been forged the unity of the European soul.
It is my hope that this intellectual communion will not be restricted to
the European peninsula, but will extend to Asia, to the two Americas,
and to the great islets of civilisation spread over the rest of the
globe. It is absurd that the nations of western Europe should pride
themselves upon the discovery of profound differences, at the very time
when they have never resembled one another more closely in merits and
defects; at a time when their thought and their literature are least
notable for distinctive characteristics; when everywhere there becomes
sensible a monotonous levelling of intelligence; when on all hands we
discern individualities that are dishevelled, threadbare, limp. I will
venture to say that all of them, with their united efforts, are
incompetent to give us the hope of that mental renovation to which the
world is entitled after this formidable convulsion. We must go to
Russia, which has doors thrown wide open towards the eastern world, for
there only will our faces be freshened by the new currents which are
blowing in every department of thought.
Let us widen the concept of humanism, dear to our forefathers, though
its meaning has been narrowed down to the signification of Greek and
Latin manuals. In every age, states, universities, academies, all the
conservative forces of the mind, have endeavoured to make humanism in
this narrower sense a dike against the onslaughts of the new spirit, in
philosophy, in morals, in aesthetics. The dike has burst. The framework
of a privileged culture has been broken. To-day we have to accept
humanism in its widest signification, embracing all the spiritual forces
of the whole world. What we need is, panhumanism.
* * * * *
It is our hope that this ideal, formulated here and there by a few
leading minds, or heralded by the foundation while the war is yet in
progress of centres for the study of universal civilisation,[85] shall
be boldly adopted as its ensign by the international academy, in the
foundation of which I hope (with Gerhard Gran) that Norway will take the
initiative.
I note that Gerhard Gran seems, like Professor Fredrik Stang, to limit
his ambitions to the foundation of an institute for scientific research,
for in his view science is in its essence more international than art
and letters. He writes:
"In art and literature we may, in case of need, discuss the advantages
and disadvantages resulting from the isolation of one nation from the
rest, or from the antagonism of human groups. In science, such a
discussion is absurd. The kingdom of science is the whole world.... The
atmosphere indispensable to science has nothing whatever to do with
national conflicts."
I think that this distinction is not so well founded as it may seem. No
domain of mental activity has been more disastrously involved in the war
than the domain of science. Whereas art and letters have only too often
been accessory stimulants of the crime, science furnished the war with
its weapons, did its utmost to render them more atrocious, to widen the
bounds of suffering and cruelty. I may add that even in time of peace I
have always been struck by the bitterness of national sentiment
displayed by men of science. Those of every nation are fond of accusing
their foreign colleagues of stealing their best discoveries and
forgetting to acknowledge the source. In a word, science shares in the
evil passions which corrode art and letters.
On the other hand, if science needs the collaboration of all the
nations, to art and letters to-day it is no less advantageous that they
should abandon a position of "splendid isolation." Without speaking of
the technical advances which, in painting and music, have during the
course of the nineteenth century and of the one which has begun so badly
brought such sudden and enormous enrichment to the aesthetics of sight
and hearing--apart from such considerations--the influence of one
philosopher, one thinker, one writer, can modify the whole literature of
an epoch, switching the mind on to a new road in psychological, moral,
aesthetic, or social research. If any one wish to be isolated, isolated
let him be! But the republic of the mind tends to enlarge its frontiers
day by day. The greatest men are those who know how to embrace and fuse
in a single vigorous personality the wealth that is dispersed or latent
in the soul of all mankind.
Let us refrain, therefore, from limiting the idea of internationalism to
the field of science. Let us give the fullest possible amplitude to the
scheme. Let us form a world-wide Institute of Art, Letters and Science.
* * * * *
Moreover, I do not think that this foundation could continue isolated.
No longer, to-day, can the internationalism of culture remain the luxury
of a few privileged persons. The practical value of an Institute of
Nations would be small, unless the masters were associated with their
disciples in the same stream, unless all the levels of culture were
permeated with the same spirit.
That is why I greet, as a fruitful initiative and a happy symptom, the
recent foundation in Zurich, by the university students of that city, of
an International Association of Students (Internationaler
Studentenbund). Let me quote from its program.
"Painfully affected by the great ordeal of the war, academic youth has
realised the peculiar social responsibilities enjoined by the privileges
of a studious life, and desires to find a remedy for the deeper causes
of the evil.... The Association will endeavour to bring together those
of all countries who are in close touch with university life, to unite
them in a common faith in the advantages of the free development of the
mind. It groups them for the struggle against the growing empery of
mechanism and militarism in all the manifestations of life.... It hopes
to realise the ideal of universities which shall remain centres of
higher culture, in the service of truth alone, unsullied shrines of
scientific research, absolutely independent in matters of opinion,
paying no attention to selfish aims or to class interests."
This demand for the freedom of scientific research and for independence
of thought, this organisation of young intellectuals for the defence of
a right so essential and hitherto so incessantly violated, seem to me
matters of primary necessity. If you desire that the cooperation between
the teachers in different countries should not remain purely
speculative, it is not enough that the teachers should associate their
efforts. It is further essential that their thoughts shall be able to
spread freely and to fructify in the minds of the young intellectuals
throughout the world. Let us have no more of these barriers erected by
the states between the two classes, between the two ages, of those who
are engaged in the search for truth--teachers and students.
* * * * *
My dream goes further. I should like the seed of universal culture to be
scattered, from the very beginning of education, among the pupils of the
primary and secondary schools. Above all let me suggest that throughout
the countries of Europe an international language should be one of the
compulsory subjects of study. Such international languages (Esperanto,
Ido) have already attained something very near perfection; and with the
minimum of effort the international language could be mastered by all
the children of the civilised world. Not merely would this language be
of unrivalled practical value throughout life. It would further serve as
an introduction to the study of foreign languages and of their own
national tongue; for it would make them realise, far better than any
express instruction, the common elements in the European languages and
the unity of European thought.
I would further insist that both in primary and secondary education
there should be given a sketch of the history of universal thought,
universal literature, universal art. I consider it utterly erroneous
that the syllabus of instruction should concern itself only with these
subjects as manifested within the limits of a single nation, and that
within those limits there should be a further restriction to a period of
two or three centuries. Despite all that has been done to modernise
education, its spirit still remains essentially archaic. It perpetuates
among us the atmosphere of extinct epochs. Let not this criticism be
misunderstood. All my own education was classical. I passed through
every stage of university instruction. In my student days we were still
taught to write Latin speeches and Latin verses. I am impregnated with
the ideas of classical art and classical thought. Far from desiring to
sweep these things away, I should wish such treasures, like those of our
Louvre, to be made accessible to the great mass of mankind. But I must
point out that we should remain free in relation to that which we
admire, and that we are not free in relation to classical thought. The
Greco-Roman mental formulas, which our education has made as it were
second nature, are nowise suited for application to modern problems.
Those into whose minds such formulas have been instilled in childhood
have acquired overwhelming prejudices which they are rarely, if ever,
able to shake off, prejudices which weigh heavily upon contemporary
society. I am inclined to believe that one of the moral errors from
which Europe is chiefly suffering to-day, the Europe whose members are
tearing one another to pieces, is that we have preserved the heroic and
rhetorical idol of the Greco-Roman fatherland, which corresponds no
better to the natural sentiment of the fatherland to-day than the
deities of Homer correspond to the true religious needs of our time.
Humanity grows older, but does not ripen. It is still enmeshed in the
teachings of childhood. Its greatest fault is its slothful unwillingness
to seek renewal. But humanity must seek renewal and growth. For
centuries it has condemned itself to use no more than a modicum of its
spiritual resources. It is like a half-paralysed colossus. It allows
some of its organs to atrophy. Are we not weary of these infirm nations,
of these scattered members of a great body, which might dominate our
planet!
Membra sumus corporis magni.
Let these members unite; let Humanity, the New Adam, arise!
VILLENEUVE, _March 15, 1918._
"Revue Politique Internationale," Lausanne, March and April, 1918.
XXIII
A CALL TO EUROPEANS
In the downfall of imperial Germany, there stand out the great names of
a few free spirits of Germany, the names of those who during the last
four years have strenuously defended the rights of conscience and reason
against the abuses of force. The name of G. F. Nicolai is one of the
most illustrious among these. I devoted two articles[86] to the study of
his excellent work, _The Biology of War_, and have recorded the
conditions under which it was written. This distinguished professor of
physiology at the university of Berlin, a celebrated physician,
appointed at the outbreak of the war as chief of one of the army medical
departments, was cashiered because he had expressed his disapproval of
the misdeeds committed by the statesmen and the high military commanders
of Germany. Suffering humiliation after humiliation, degraded to the
rank of private, sentenced to five months' imprisonment by the Danzig
court-martial, he at length fled from Germany in order to escape yet
severer punishment. A few months ago we learned from the newspapers of
his daring escape in an aeroplane. He has secured asylum in Denmark, and
in that country he has just published the first number of a review, to
whose historical and human interest I now wish to call attention.
* * * * *
This periodical is entitled "Das werdende Europa,--Blätter für
zukunftsfrohe Menschen,--neutral gegenüber den kriegführenden
Ländern,--leidenschaftlich Partei ergreifend für das Recht gegen die
Macht." (The Coming Europe,--a review for men who look joyously towards
the future,--neutral as regards the belligerent lands,--but taking sides
passionately on behalf of right against might.)[87]
Looking joyously towards the future! This is one of Nicolai's most
salient characteristics, and I have alluded to it at the close of my
critique of his _Biology of War_. How many in his place would have been
disheartened by all that he has seen, heard, and endured in the way of
human malice; of cowardice, which is worse; and of folly, which is yet
more intolerable--the folly that rules the world! But Nicolai is a man
of extraordinary elasticity. "Nicht weinen!" as his little girl of two
says to him when he is about to leave her and everything he loves. "Not
cry!" Looking joyously towards the future. To uphold him in this joyance
he has his wonderful vitality, the inviolable strength of his
convictions, his triumphant assurance (meine triumphierende Sicherheit).
He displays an apostolic zeal which we should hardly have expected in a
scientific observer; but Nicolai, of a sudden, becomes from time to time
a seer, an idealist, a prophet, like the religious heroes of old. With
all his equipment of modern science, he is a strange instance of
reincarnation. The Old Germany of Goethe, Herder, and Kant, speaks to us
through his voice. To use his own words, he claims his rights as against
the right of Ludendorff and other usurpers to adopt the political
methods of the Tatars.
The aim of "Coming Europe" is, he tells us, to "awaken love for our new,
our greater fatherland, Europe.... We wish that all the peoples of
Europe shall become useful and happy members of this new organism."--Now
the future of Europe mainly depends upon the condition of Germany, a
country which, by its brutal disregard of European principles, supports
the old policy of armed isolation. The primary aim, therefore, must be
the liberation of Germany.
The first issue of the magazine contains an inaugural article by
Professor Kristoffer Nyrop, member of the Royal Academy of Denmark. It
further includes interesting pages written by Dr. Alfred H. Fried, and
by Carl Lindhagen, burgomaster of Stockholm. But the main contribution,
filling three-fourths of the number, is a long article by Nicolai,
entitled "Warum ich aus Deutschland ging. Offener Brief an denjenigen
Unbekannten, der die Macht hat in Deutschland."[88] These words are the
confession of a great spirit, of one whom the oppressors have wished to
enslave, but who has broken his chains.