I owe you a word of explanation for the seeming audacity displayed in
the title of my lecture. What right have I, what right has any one, to
speak for the mind of the nation? Surely the most that one can do is to
describe the changes of his own mind. The mind of the nation is beyond
him.
I do not believe this. There is one mind in all of us at the present
moment—and it is the mind of the nation. The mind of the nation has
become, to a greater degree than ever before, the mind of the individual
citizen. That is the greatest of all the changes which have taken place
since the war began. The national mind is no longer a mere theme for
speculation. It has entered, in some measure, into every one of us. It
has become an active principle of our consciousness. It has brought
great thoughts and great resolutions to multitudes. It has both
amplified and simplified our lives. It has wakened powers that
slumbered; it has revived great memories that were half forgotten; it
has linked us together and made us one.
Under these circumstances there is no audacity in speaking of the mind
of the nation. The distinction between our own thoughts and the nation’s
thoughts is being obliterated. Ask the first honest man you meet to tell
you what he is thinking, and if he answers faithfully, he will tell you
something of what the nation is thinking.
I
Never, in my memory, has intercourse with thoughtful men been as
suggestive and stimulating as it has been since the war broke out. It is
hardly possible, to-day, to enter into conversation with an educated
person without noting the emergence of some new point of view. Under the
strain and pressure of the time mens’ minds are yielding ideas and
making discoveries. There is in consequence a certain vividness in the
intellectual life of the country which relieves, to some extent, the
moral distress. In the presence of danger our intelligence, our
imagination, our will, are unusually wide awake. We begin to perceive
the limits of accepted forms of thought, the inadequacy of the standards
by which we have been accustomed to pass judgement on life and on
history, and the partial nature of truths we had regarded as final and
complete. A great disturbance, like that of an earthquake, is passing
beneath our life, and the elements of that life are rearranging
themselves in new perspectives. We are virtually living in another world
compared with that in which we were alive eight months ago.
The world before the war was comparatively _safe_; the world of to-day
is _threatened_. Eight months ago we looked out into a future which
seemed assured. We were laying out plans, buying, selling, building,
marrying and giving in marriage, like the men of old before the Lord
rained fire on Sodom and Gomorrah. Our sons were growing up and we were
arranging their peaceful careers. To-day our sons are in arms, and under
orders for the front, and as they gather round us for the parting feast,
we thank God that we cannot raise the veil of the future. Our most
intimate ties are threatened with possibilities of which we dare not
think. Thus at the very centre of our life the earthquake begins, and it
runs outward until every idea, every habit of mind, every interest,
every conviction, has received some share of the shock. But the shock,
far from paralysing the nation’s mind, serves rather to liberate its
reserves of intellectual vitality. The new world in which we find
ourselves is not terrible only; it is full of challenge to our thinking
faculties. It provides a daily stimulus to spiritual curiosity. Thus the
intercourse of thoughtful men grows more vivid, and it becomes easy to
understand how, from conditions like these, new births of the soul have
come to nations; times of danger and calamity being often followed by
times of creativeness in all the arts of life.
Ladies and gentlemen, are we not all _thinking more_ than we did before
the war began—thinking more deeply, more earnestly, more constantly?
There is a new thoughtfulness in the air which is raising the level of
intelligence in all classes of the community. The matters we are
thinking about are big and terrible and splendid, all at the same time.
We are asking questions which it is an education to ask, even though for
the time being we cannot answer them. Because the questions are great
questions they are giving us a juster sense of proportion. We are
thinking a little more about our duties and a little less about our
rights. ‘Business’ still goes on; but not quite as usual, for something
more important than business is in our minds. We are measuring ourselves
by higher standards. The heroism of the forces, the daily spectacle of
our young men going to the war, reminds us of ethical truths we had half
forgotten. Great questions about society and civilization are
challenging our minds and compelling us to look at them from new angles
of vision. It is good for us to be ‘brought up sharp’ by these things.
Still better, that we should be forced to think of them not as mere
academic questions, but as questions of life and death. And best of all,
when the whole people is forced to think about them _at the same time_.
We are coming _together_ into the presence of these problems. That makes
an enormous difference. One reason why the great concerns of life are
not better cared for is that in normal times the interest taken in them
is piecemeal. You think of them to-day and I think of them to-morrow,
with the result that I am hot while you are cold, and I am critical
while you are enthusiastic. But the new thoughtfulness is not of that
broken, interrupted kind. It is simultaneous and widespread. We are all
in it at once. You remember what Emerson says about the strange things
that may happen when God lets loose a thinker on this planet. But this
time a thinking community has been let loose. Momentous results are
bound to follow.
I am inclined to believe that the mind of the nation was never in a more
hopeful frame. I cannot go to the length of a writer in one of the daily
papers who says that England was never so happy. The tragedy is too deep
for that. But I do think that England was never so promising. What will
come from her awakened thoughtfulness no man can predict. But if it
should turn out to be better than the best we have ever hoped for, there
would be no cause for surprise.