What is the real attitude of those who call themselves Christians and
profess to accept the teaching of the New Testament towards the Sermon
on the Mount and especially towards such precepts as ‘Love your
enemies’? That there is here a huge and startling divergence between
theory and practice seems undeniable. It is equally clear that the
divergence is not merely of the kind which unavoidably separates moral
ideals from the actual conduct of imperfect human beings. For this only
means that, because of the frailty of human nature, we cannot, even with
our best endeavours, live up to the level of the moral ideal; it does
not mean that we refuse sincerely to recognize the ideal as a practical
guide—as a standard to which good men will endeavour to conform their
actions as far as lies in their power. But the precept ‘Love your
enemies’ does not seem to be generally recognized in this way as a
practical guide amid the stress and strain of daily life. It is not even
generally appealed to as a standard for approving or condemning the
ordinary behaviour of men. It is not effectively sanctioned by public
opinion and sentiment. If we inquire why this is so, there appear to be
two answers, vaguely and confusedly underlying the position of common
sense. The first is that any sustained effort to pursue the ideal under
the actual conditions of human life is so impossible that it is useless
to attempt it. The second is that if we did succeed in loving our
enemies and in acting as if we loved them, the result would be
disastrous; the good would be exposed without defence to the forces of
evil and life would no longer be worth living. For one or both of these
reasons it seems to be tacitly assumed that in practice we are justified
in setting aside the precept ‘Love your enemies’ and in substituting for
it the precept ‘Love your friends and hate your enemies’. At the same
time it is generally granted that under conditions different from ours
the rule of love would be universally applicable. But this concession
turns out on examination to mean very little. For the state of things
contemplated under which we might be reasonably expected to love our
enemies seems to be one under which our enemies would be prepared to
love us or might easily be induced to love us, and this almost amounts
to saying that we can only be reasonably required to love our enemies
when there are no enemies for us to love.
This conflict between theory and practice remains for the most part
inarticulate and subconscious. There is latent uneasiness; but the
problem is not definitely faced even by thoughtful men. To bring it into
clear consciousness a special crisis is required. For many of us the
present war with its painful incidents and complications has had this
effect. Nor is it difficult to see why this should be so. In war, or, at
any rate, in such a war as this, we devote all our energies to the task
of inflicting hurt, loss, and destruction on the enemy, and he in his
turn devotes all his energies to the task of inflicting hurt, loss, and
destruction on us. Neither side, it would seem, can do this efficiently
without being sustained by strong and enduring feeling. But this feeling
can scarcely partake of the nature of love. It must, it would seem, be
an emotion the reverse of this. Whether and in what sense there can be
an emotion opposed to love which is yet not identified with hate, is a
question which I shall have to discuss later on. In any case, it will
scarcely be denied that the actual feeling generated even in good and
well-meaning men by such conditions as those of the present war are to a
large extent to be classed as feelings of hatred. When the enemy is held
to have been guilty of cruel and inhuman conduct contrary to the
recognized usage of civilized warfare, it seems to be still more
impossible to make any pretence of loving the enemy or of doing anything
but hate the enemy. How can we love the authors and perpetrators of the
Belgian atrocities? Not only is this attitude regarded as inevitable in
war but it is also felt to be justifiable in a special way by the
special conditions. It is taken to be justifiable for reasons which are
not in general applicable to similar relations between private
individuals. One reason is that a private individual is in the main
protected against the grosser forms of injury by the social order of the
community to which he belongs, by its laws and institutions, and by
public opinion and sentiment; to this extent he has no need to take the
law into his own hands. In war this no longer holds good. We seem in war
to be reduced to the position of animals who having directly to repel
harm and aggression themselves, need for that end the primitive and
instinctive emotion of blind anger which impels them to hurt and destroy
indiscriminately the enemies who threaten their own destruction. It is
true that in war there is some protection against certain forms of
injury in what is called the established usage of civilized warfare. But
as we know by recent experience, this safeguard cannot be safely relied
on; and it is just when even this semi-legal protection fails, that we
tend to give full play to the feeling of hatred or analogous feelings,
with the sense that we are right in so doing. Another obvious reason why
we naturally regard hatred of our enemies as especially justified in the
case of war is that here it is not our own private injuries which we
resent but injuries done to the whole community of which we are members.
We are so much in the habit of connecting what is morally wrong with
selfishness that when there is no selfishness, we tend to assume that
there can be nothing wrong or at any rate nothing seriously wrong.
Further, a benevolent disposition towards the common enemy is felt as
disloyalty to our own people. It tends to awaken indignation or disgust
as revealing a want of patriotism. On the other hand, the most unsparing
hatred of the common enemy, though we may more or less condemn it on
other grounds, is at least approved as an expression of patriotism; and
patriotism is a virtue of all others most important and indispensable in
time of war. Hence even though we condemn all hatred as such, yet if we
cannot have the most intense and efficient patriotism without it we feel
justified in preferring the two together.
Such considerations as these seem to make a strong case for regarding
hate, or at least some emotion essentially akin to it, as an attitude
which may be often both unavoidable and justifiable in dealing with our
enemies, and more especially with the enemies of our country in time of
war. None the less it remains true that this attitude is, prima facie,
very hard to reconcile with the spirit and tendency of Christian
morality, and particularly with such precepts as ‘Love your enemies;
bless them that curse you; do good to them that despitefully use you and
persecute you’. Hence all of us who, whatever may be our view of the
dogmas of Christian Theology, agree in accepting the moral teaching of
Christ as expressing the highest human ideal, are placed in a difficult
position. It looks like a mere evasion and not a solution of this
difficulty to content ourselves with saying that the Christian ideal,
though it is in itself the highest, cannot and ought not to be pursued
under the actual conditions of human life. There are not two relatively
independent and separate kinds of truth, the theoretical and the
practical. What is false in practice must, to that extent, be false in
theory also. The highest ideal is the ideal which we ought to endeavour
to pursue under all relevant conditions. There is evidence that this is
recognized by some Christians who entertain no misgiving as to the
righteousness of the present war, and who are convinced of the necessity
of prosecuting it with the utmost zeal and energy, and yet, at the same
time, feel that it is hard or impossible to do so while retaining for
the enemy anything akin to a Christian disposition. We have here,
perhaps, the most fundamental reason why some conscientious men who, in
general, believe in prayer and in the efficacy of prayer, none the less
shrink from praying for the defeat of the enemy in war. Other grounds
are put forward, but they seem valid in this particular case only if
they are valid against prayer in general. It is urged, for instance,
that God controls the course of events in accordance with His own wisdom
and goodness, and that it is therefore a futile impertinence to attempt
to direct His activity to what we erring mortals think best, however
sincere and well-meaning we may be. Any petition, it is said, which is
for our own ends is condemned in advance, in so far as our own ends are
not His ends; and in so far as they do coincide with His the petition is
superfluous. Taken strictly, this argument would cut at the root not
only of all prayer but of all human activity. For whatever ends we
pursue and by whatever means, it is always possible that our aim does
not coincide with the divine purpose. It would follow, if the argument
were sound, that the truly religious attitude would be to sit still with
our hands folded and let events take their course. The fallacy lies in
the assumption that what is best in matters which concern human beings
is determined independently of the thoughts and feelings of the human
beings themselves. In particular, it lies in the assumption that what is
best for us and for the world must be determined quite independently of
whether we pray for it or not.
Another reason urged against praying for success in war is that good men
on the other side are praying for their own success and for our defeat
with a clear conscience and full belief in the righteousness of their
cause. What has been called ‘the spectacle of serious men in opposite
camps raising their competitive prayers to the one God’ may well appear
to reduce to an absurdity the prayers on both sides. Yet I do not see
that this consideration has any real weight. For it is not asserted that
good men ought to refrain from using _other_ ways of pursuing what they
are sincerely convinced is a good end, merely because other good men
with equal sincerity are opposed to them. I can find no cogent reason
for making an exception in the case of prayer. The use of prayer in a
proper spirit can, at least, do no harm. Further, it is to be remembered
that when prayer is offered in a right spirit, all special petitions
have behind them that general attitude of mind which is expressed in the
words ‘Thy Will be done’. So far as this is so the agreement is more
fundamental than the opposition. The real difficulty felt by tender
consciences in praying for success in war seems to me to be of a
different nature. What holds them back is their sense that they cannot
pray in that spirit which would alone make their prayers acceptable, and
that they cannot even prevail on themselves to make a sincere effort to
attain this spirit. They feel that they cannot appeal to God to be on
their side unless, in so far as lies in their power, they in the same
act endeavour to place themselves on the side of God, to conform their
will and their whole mental attitude to His will as directed to what is
highest and best. But how is this possible when they not only continue
to harbour in their heart fierce and embittered emotions, which appear
irreconcilable with the precept ‘Love your enemies’, but cling to them
in such a way that they cannot without hypocrisy pretend to try to lay
them aside or even pray for deliverance from them? They feel that under
such conditions they would be appealing not to the true God but to some
partisan deity such as the Kaiser must have had in view when he spoke of
God as ‘the constant ally of Prussia under the Great Elector and the
Great King’.
Let it be fully understood that I am not here expressing any view
concerning the justification of prayer or the efficacy of prayer, or
concerning Christian doctrine or Christian morality. But if we leave
such questions entirely on one side, the conception of prayer at least
supplies us with a useful mode of approaching our present problem. For
no feelings can be right feelings which in the case of a man who really
believes in prayer would rightly debar him from seeking in his extreme
need the help of a Power whom he regards as all wise and all good. We
may, then, put our question thus: How far is it true that feelings of
hatred or feelings in any way akin to hatred ought to present a barrier
of this kind? It is true that what we gain by this mode of stating the
question is only a point of view which helps us to grapple with it
earnestly and thoroughly without indulging in weak and illogical
compromise. It does not directly bring us any nearer to a solution. For
in order to determine what is acceptable to God we must first determine
what is good. Our course would indeed be plain if we could take such
precepts as ‘Love your enemies’, so to speak at their face value and
treat them without further discussion or interpretation as finally
authoritative. But even theologians, as such, for the most part refuse
to do this. Still less is it admissible that I should do so. For I am
trying to deal with the problem on its own intrinsic merits without
appeal to authority. This being so I can proceed only in one way. I must
begin by asking what reasons there are for holding that hatred and
kindred emotions are evil; then in the light of these reasons I must
attempt to determine in what sense and without what limits, if there be
any limits, the general principle holds good. Here we may look for some
help to the great philosophers. For some of these have maintained, on
independent grounds, the Christian doctrine in its general spirit and
tendency. Plato, for instance, holds firmly that the maxim is entirely
wrong which bids us do good to our friends and harm to our enemies. The
righteous man, he insists, will in all cases aim only at doing good,
whether to enemies or friends. Spinoza, too, lays down the principle
that ‘all hatred is evil’, and even attempts to demonstrate it like a
proposition in Euclid. There is a Christian philosopher, Bishop Butler,
who has given us an admirable discussion of the whole subject on
rational grounds.
At this point I must prepare the ground for further advance by
expressing more exactly the nature of the problem. So far, the question
I have raised is whether hatred and kindred emotions are in all cases
evil. But the tendency of ordinary language is to associate the very
word, hatred, with some form of bad feeling. From this point of view, to
ask the question, Can hatred ever be good? sounds like asking whether
what is bad can be good. But the real issue can easily be stated so as
to avoid this paradox. There is a certain primitive and instinctive
emotion called anger, common to man and animals; in animals, it tends to
be excited by such conditions as overt or threatened attack, painful
wounds or blows, and often by any kind of opposition or interference, or
by the threat of such opposition or interference, or even by the mere
presence of a natural enemy. The real or threatened injury may be either
to the animal itself or to its young or its mate, or, in the case of
gregarious animals, to the community of which it is a member. There is a
modified and restrained form of this passion which arises between
animals closely connected by social ties, as when the mother slaps her
young or the mother cat boxes the kitten’s ears. But where the emotion
is aroused by an outsider there is in general no such limitation. The
impulse is blindly and indiscriminately directed to damage and destroy.
By preference, of course, to damage and destroy the enemy, and in the
next place, whatever is in any way associated with the enemy, but also
beyond this there is a general destructive impulse which vents itself on
whatever may encounter it. Consider, for instance, the behaviour of a
raging bull or of a man who in his fury destroys furniture and breaks
crockery. Now, so far as animals are concerned, this passion is not the
subject either of moral approval or disapproval. It is simply a natural
endowment like the teeth and claws of the cat, or the venom of the
snake, or the malodorous secretion of the skunk. It has the biological
function of preserving the individual and the species in the struggle
for existence; but it has no moral significance. The same holds good
also for a man, so far as he merely reacts like an animal in a sudden
and trying situation which takes him by surprise. But it is quite
otherwise with complex human sentiments which are developed from the
primitive emotion of anger and remain to the end essentially akin to it.
In the animal, the emotion occurs as a transient reaction to a transient
situation. In human beings it passes into a variety of more or less
permanent dispositions or sentiments, which permeate and control complex
systems of thought and conduct. Indeed, in some instances, such a
disposition may be the mainspring of organized thought and action
throughout a lifetime, as we see in the case of Hannibal’s attitude to
the Romans. Now the question we have to deal with is this, Are all these
developed sentiments which have their root in the primitive emotion of
anger to be condemned as evil; and if not, on what principle are we to
draw a distinction? If by the word _hatred_ we agree to mean all bad
passions of this kind, then the question will be, Are all angry
sentiments and dispositions to be classed as forms of hatred? In dealing
with this problem we have especially to consider the state of things
generated by war.
Our first step will be to examine the grounds for regarding hatred as
necessarily evil. We may then proceed to inquire whether these grounds
apply to all forms of angry emotion which compel us to hurt or destroy
our fellow men. The reasons for regarding hatred as evil seem all
capable of being brought under one head. Hatred is evil inasmuch as it
is blind, inasmuch as it perpetuates at a higher level the original
blind and undiscriminating character of the primitive emotion of animal
anger. So far as this is the case, it is incompatible with the
development of the higher nature of man as a rational being. The most
fundamental ground for this position is, perhaps, most clearly stated by
Spinoza. The supreme good for human beings, he asserts, is to be found
only in their union and co-operation with each other. ‘Nothing is more
useful to a man than a man.’ It is only with other men that a man can
enter on that sort of union which is necessary at once for his own
existence and development as a human being and for theirs. ‘Except man
we know of no particular thing in nature in whose Mind we can rejoice.
With nothing else can we unite in friendship or in any kind of social
life’ (_Eth._ V. 14, App. § 26). Hence there is a fundamental
distinction between our relation to human beings and to other things. In
the case of anything else, ‘A regard for our own welfare does not
require us to preserve it, but leads us either to preserve or destroy
it, or to adapt it to our wants in any way according to the varied uses
of which it admits’ (ibid.). It is otherwise in the case of human
beings. To seek to destroy them is virtually to seek to destroy
ourselves. But the passion of hatred blinds us to all this; it blinds us
to the fact that the essential good of man is to be sought in union with
his fellow men and impels us to maintain disunion with them and to seek
our highest good in hurting and destroying them. Nor is it only in its
consequences that hatred as such is evil. As contrary to the rational
nature of man, as blinding him to his true good, it works like a disease
or a cancerous growth in the soul of those who feel it. ‘Nothing can be
so good for a man as such a temper of mind as will unite him with’ his
fellow men and them with him; while nothing on the contrary can be so
bad for him or in him as that which sets him and them at variance. All
hatred, then, is evil and there can be no greater evil.
All this applies to hatred of the enemy in war. Indeed the evil is the
greater because the hatred is between great and highly organized
communities instead of between individuals. There is, however, one fact
which tends to veil and disguise the evil of hatred in this case. War
disunites nations, but within each nation it strengthens union and
mutual co-operation. Now this in itself is good. But it is not good, if
and so far as the source of unity is participation in a common hatred.
To this extent the nation is in the position of the individual hater and
is blinded as he is to its own true good. Speaking broadly, just in so
far as war leads a nation to treat what is good for it as essentially
separate from and opposed to what is good for other nations and for
mankind in general, war does that nation harm. The history of Germany
illustrates this sufficiently. The root of the mischief is to be sought
far back in the horrible Thirty Years’ War. But subsequent wars have
served to keep it alive—the Seven Years’ War, the Napoleonic War, and
above all, that process of cementing the German Empire with blood and
iron which Bismarck artificially and violently substituted for the
natural development which was leading to the same result in a better
form. The Franco-Prussian War belongs to the same series. It is an
easily intelligible and even an excusable result of the course of German
history that national sentiment in Germany has come half-unconsciously
to treat even peace as if it were a state of suppressed and disguised
warfare, and to feel no security for its national existence and national
development unless the mailed fist is continually shaken in the face of
its enemies in the East and in the West, and unless it is continually
prepared to pounce on them before they can pounce on it. It has now
actually pounced in what is called a preventive war. The temper and
attitude which led to this result is essentially what I found some
thirty years ago generally diffused among the common people of Berlin
and especially among old soldiers of the Franco-Prussian War: men’s
minds were dwelling on the necessity of a reckoning with Russia, and of
a renewed humiliation of France; there was deep hostility to England
mingled with contempt for our ways of thinking and acting and with
jealousy of our undeserved riches and prosperity. This attitude of mind
has in one way had its reward. In the present struggle the Germans
started better prepared for war than their opponents. But for this
advantage they have paid and are likely to pay very dearly. You may be
inclined to say ‘Serve them right’. But if this is taken to imply that
the German people is much worse by nature in this respect than other
peoples I must disagree. I doubt whether under like historical
conditions any people would have done better.
Hatred, we have said, is bad because it is blind; and fundamentally the
blindness consists in failure to recognize the true good of man in
mutual union and co-operation. But there are many other subordinate ways
in which its essential blindness is manifested. To hate is to view the
actions and characters of others through a medium which falsifies and
distorts. To quote Bishop Butler, ‘the whole character and behaviour of
those we hate is considered with an eye to that particular part which
has offended us, and the whole man appears monstrous without anything
right or human in him’. Hatred in fact seeks only its own appropriate
food and disregards or rejects whatever does not sustain its own life
and development. We can see this clearly enough in the attitude of our
enemies towards ourselves. We can see, for instance, how hard it is for
the German mind, at the present moment, to think anything that is good
of England and Englishmen; how hard, for instance, they find it to admit
that we are really patriotic, that our soldiers are anything but
hirelings, actuated by merely mercenary motives, or that they can fight
efficiently, or that even our fleet is anything but a pretentious sham.
But to the reflective observer it is plain enough that a similar
disposition prevails, though not, I hope, in the same degree, among
ourselves. Are we prepared to consider fairly the possibility that the
Germans in entering on the present war were actuated by motives which
were not wholly bad, or that they really feared and believed that the
neutrality of Belgium would be violated by France, or in general that
they feared and believed with what seemed to them good reason that
unless they took the initiative by a preventive war, they themselves
would be attacked and taken at a disadvantage?
Hatred not only blinds us to what may be favourable to the enemy; it
also blinds us to whatever may be wrong in our own feelings and
behaviour towards them. It tends to place the blame all on one side.
This, as we know, is very rarely the case. It is very unlikely to be the
case in a war between great civilized nations. The present war is, I am
fully convinced, most just and necessary. Yet I also believe that faults
on our side have indirectly contributed in some degree to prepare the
way for it.[22]
I shall mention only one more of the manifold ways in which hate leads
to blindness. It shrinks from any serious and impartial endeavour to
trace the evil which offends it to the conditions which may account for
it and render it intelligible. The impulse of hate is not to understand,
but to destroy. To inquire into conditions and to seek an explanation
would only divert and distract it. It prefers, therefore, to concentrate
itself on the persons hated as if they were the sole ultimate sources of
the evil, as if the evil were due merely to their intrinsic and
spontaneous badness. It is this attitude of mind which leads us to turn
away with impatience from any attempt to explain, for instance, the
Belgian atrocities so as to make it intelligible how they could be
committed or condoned by a people who in their original human nature are
not so very different from ourselves. The attempt to explain is treated
as an attempt to explain away, and resented as if it were a
justification or defence or denial of fact.
My general position is that hatred is bad inasmuch as it is blind, and I
am unable to discover anything else which justifies us in treating it as
necessarily evil. The question is whether all sentiments and emotions
partaking of the nature of anger are to be condemned on this account.
Ought we to set before us, as our ideal, freedom from all such emotions
and sentiments, and the substitution of other motives for them? Let us
provisionally suppose that this is the ideal, and examine how it would
work if it were consistently followed. In the first place we must
consider how we should proceed in attempting to realize the ideal. It
may be suggested that we should follow invariably in all cases the rule
‘Overcome evil with good’. Now there may be a sense in which this rule
is universally applicable and ought to be universally applied. But in
the common and obvious interpretation of it, this is plainly untrue. As
commonly interpreted, it means that we ought not to hurt or destroy the
evildoer, and that instead of this we ought to appeal to his better
nature by showing goodwill and kindness towards him. This is, of course,
infinitely the best way where it can be followed effectively and
followed effectively without incurring greater evils than it has any
reasonable chance of curing. But these limiting conditions are very
important. They would clearly apply, for instance, in case of an attack
by scalp-hunting Red Indians on a family of peaceful settlers. In
general, the words ‘Overcome evil with good’ are to be taken as
qualified by the preceding words ‘Be not overcome of evil’. If and so
far as we can overcome evil without being overcome of evil, it is our
duty to do so, otherwise it is not. It may, however, still be maintained
that, though it is admittedly often right and necessary to inflict pain,
hurt, and destruction on evildoers, yet we ought not to do this in the
spirit of anger. We ought rather to act purely out of regard for the
highest attainable good, and we ought to inflict pain and damage on
evildoers only as a necessary means to this end and not out of any angry
emotion we may feel towards them.
This is the general position of Spinoza when he asserts as a universal
principle that all ‘hatred is bad’. It may seem a lofty and noble
position. But it is not enough for a moral ideal to appear lofty and
noble when we contemplate it vaguely in the abstract. It must be in such
direct contact with the actual conditions of human life as to afford
constant practical guidance in dealing with these. Judged by this
standard the proposed principle seems to break down. It requires us in
dealing with the malevolence of human beings to be actuated merely by
love of good, not at all by resentment against the evildoer. Our mental
attitude ought, on this view, to be always that assumed by the Quaker in
_Uncle Tom’s Cabin_ who pushed the slave-driver over the precipice and
explained his action by the words ‘Friend, thou art not wanted here’.
The fundamental objection to this is that love of anything implies and
includes a corresponding feeling of aversion to whatever is recognized
as opposed to what we love or destructive of what we love. The love of
health, for instance, implies and includes aversion to disease wherever
we meet disease and recognize it as such. It does not, of course, imply
that we must be angry with disease, but that is because we do not love
health in the same way as we love what is good in human beings and in
the personal relations of human beings to each other. Just as the
sentiment of love varies in its nature with the nature of its object,
there is a corresponding difference in the aversion which is its
counterpart. Where the evil is malevolence, where it is an evil will
directed to injustice, cruelty, and selfish aggression, the appropriate
correlate of love to the good is some form of anger with the evil. And
this must mean anger with the evildoer. It is not satisfactory to say
that we may feel aversion to what is evil in a man and only kindness
towards the man himself. This is to overlook the central fact that the
evil in this case is an expression of the man’s personal will and
character which cannot be separated from himself. Nor can we substitute
sorrow for anger. Sorrow is appropriate to misfortune, but intentional
injury is not merely a misfortune which happens to befall the person who
inflicts it. To feel towards it as if it were merely a misfortune is to
be more or less blind to its true nature. In consequence, when sorrow
takes the place of anger, it fails to give rise to efficient action; the
tendency is to mourn over the offender where rebuke and punishment are
required by the situation.
In actual life, we find some who, owing either to their nature or to
their circumstances and education, are but little susceptible of angry
emotion; in such persons we find also a corresponding failure to
understand or believe in the malicious attitude of mind in which
intentional injuries have their source. They turn aside from the
evidence or interpret it in their own one-sided way. An extreme instance
is that of Charles Lamb’s friend, George Dyer, who, as Lamb tells us,
could find nothing more severe to say about the worst criminals than
that they must have been very eccentric. So far as I can make out, I
belong myself to this class, though not to the same extent as Lamb’s
friend. I naturally skip such passages in the newspapers as these which
describe German atrocities in Belgium. I refuse to read even official
reports. I put myself off by hoping that in the main they are not true,
or that they are greatly exaggerated, or that they can be explained so
as to cast another light on them. Yet I have been gradually forced to
believe in their reality by evidence which I cannot reasonably resist.
Persons of this type do very well so long as they live a sheltered life,
spent, for instance, in study. But they are unfit to grapple effectively
with certain forms of evil or really to appreciate their nature or fully
to recognize their existence. There are other men who, though they are
by nature fully susceptible of angry sentiments, suppress them on
principle, because they regard them as wrong and especially because they
are afraid of giving way to hatred. So far as concerns those whom they
recognize as their personal enemies or as the enemies of the society to
which they belong, their mental attitude and behaviour tends to resemble
more or less those of the type of men who are naturally deficient in
angry sentiments. But they are likely to differ from these in an
important respect. In their anxiety to be fair and benevolent to
enemies, they are likely to be unfair and harsh to their friends. In
opposing the natural tendency to regard the faults all on one side, that
of the enemy, they tend to run to the opposite extreme and to make out
that it is their own side which is wholly or mainly or at least equally
to blame in cases where an impartial consideration of the evidence would
show the contrary. Thus, with them natural sentiments of anger tend to
creep in, as it were, by a back door. The phrase ‘friends of every
country but their own’ is often most unfairly applied. But there are
cases in which it is more or less applicable; and it applies
appropriately to the type of persons I have described.
My conclusion, then, is that some developed forms of the primitive
emotion of anger are necessary and right. But how are we to determine
what these are? How are we to draw the line between them and these forms
of angry passion which are condemned under the general head of hatred or
malevolence? After the previous discussion, there need be no difficulty
as regards the principle upon which we have to proceed. Hatred is bad
only because it is blind and in so far as it is blind, just as the
weakly amiable spirit is bad for the same reason. On the other hand,
what we call just resentment or righteous indignation, though it is akin
to hatred as being, like it, developed from the primitive emotion of
anger, is good inasmuch as it is enlightened—inasmuch as it is free from
the various forms of blindness which characterize hatred. Here, of
course, the fundamental blindness, which we must do all that in us lies
to avoid, is blindness to the highest good of humanity as consisting in
union and co-operation. Righteous indignation or just resentment, as
felt against the enemy of social order, ought to be merely the obverse
aspect, the necessary counterpart, of the spirit which pursues union and
co-operation as its supreme end. So far as we are willing and able to
follow this principle, we cannot go wrong.
This does not imply that justifiable resentment is necessarily weaker or
less intense than hatred. The distinction is not one of degree.
Justifiable resentment is not a fainter form of hatred. It is not, so to
speak, hatred watered down. So long as it is not blind, there is no
general limit to its strength, persistence, or intensity. This must be
proportioned to the varying conditions. In any case, just resentment
will cease when it is no longer required by the actual situation.
Hatred, on the contrary, tends to persist blindly.
The theoretical principle on which we must proceed may be defined in
this way. But its practical application is, of course, very difficult.
It is hard to ‘be angry and sin not’, to be righteously resentful and
yet to avoid the blindness of hate. Yet, however far we may be compelled
to fall short of our ideal, we should consistently endeavour to keep
this ideal in view as our supreme practical guide and as the measure of
our failure and success. Here a great help ought to be found in prayer
by those who believe in prayer and who realize that in prayer they are
approaching a Being who is completely good and wise. In any case we must
here, as elsewhere, be willing to take risks; and though the converse is
more usual, it may sometimes be better to run the risk of being actuated
by hatred than to run the alternative risk of not feeling due
resentment.
Let us now turn to a question of fact. How far is it true that we hate
the Germans and that the Germans hate us? As regards the Germans there
would seem to be no room for doubt. They loudly tell us that they hate
us and make a parade of their hatred. But it is easy to attach too much
importance to this self-conscious and deliberate working up of an
emotion and theatrical display of it. The best comment is supplied by
the picture in _Punch_ of a German family practising hatred of England
before breakfast with appropriate attitudes and grimaces. The same holds
good for the song of hatred. It is a spirited composition. But I am not
inclined to take very seriously the kind of hatred which finds lyric
expression of this sort. In such manifestoes we come upon the
sentimentality so characteristic of the Germans, the romantic side of
the German character. The more serious forms of hatred are rather those
which do not fully examine and express themselves in this fashion. The
real question is, How far have our angry passions a blinding influence
in practice? Certainly there is abundant evidence that the Germans are
blinded in this way. The belief is widespread among them that the key to
our conduct is throughout to be sought in one master motive, the love of
gain. They charge us with pursuing our ignoble ends by sly and underhand
means, veiled under hypocritical pretence. They are convinced, for
instance, that our horror and resentment at the brutal attack on Belgium
was merely simulated, and that throughout we care for nothing but our
own self-interest. They also charge us as a nation with a failure in the
patriotic spirit which subordinates the interest of individuals and
parties and classes to the good of the whole. They find in us an
irresponsible frivolity and easy-going self-complacency which make us
entirely undeserving of the position which we claim among civilized
nations. On the other hand, they entertain no doubt that in all these
ways in which we come short, they themselves are very strong, and that
they, therefore, have a natural right to supplant us. Now I am far from
saying that there is no foundation for some at least of the bad things
which the Germans believe about us. But the sweeping and utterly
indiscriminate way in which they hold these beliefs is obviously due to
the blinding influence of hatred and kindred sentiments. That we on our
side are similarly blinded admits, I think, of no doubt. We are
convinced, for very cogent reasons, that our enemies deliberately
brought on this war when they might honourably and safely have
maintained peace. I do not believe that we are at all blind on this
point. But our natural resentment does, I think, tend to obscure our
view of the underlying motives for conduct which in any case cannot be
justified. No doubt, a spirit of aggression, fostered by the German
military system and by German traditions, was the most important factor.
But we are apt to overlook the fact that fear also was a strong motive,
fear of rival nations with antagonistic interests falling upon them and
taking them at a disadvantage. Another error to which we are naturally
prone is found in the assumption that what seems evident to us must be
evident to our opponents. To us it is clear that the aggression is on
their side. But the great body of the German people, including the best
men among them, are convinced that it is they who are the victims and we
who are the aggressors. Their natural leaders have assured them that
this is the case, and have so stated the facts as to make it appear so;
and this view found ready acceptance because of that attitude of
suspicious fear to which I have just alluded. The picture which we are
apt to make for ourselves of a whole people rushing to arms merely in
order to make an unprovoked onslaught on its neighbours is certainly a
false one, which we could not entertain unless we were more or less
blinded by hate. I find further evidence of the same blindness in much
of the current talk about the necessity of crushing Germany. So far as
this means that we ought to do our work so thoroughly that it will not
need to be done over again it is fully justified. But if the meaning is
that the best or the only way of effecting this is by destroying the
national existence of Germany, it seems to me that we are being misled
by our passions. However good our case may be in this quarrel, we shall
put ourselves in the wrong if we reduce our adversary to a position in
which it becomes his absolute duty to lose sight of all other
considerations in the bare struggle for existence. Again, I do not think
that we at all realize how much we should miss Germany if there were no
Germany. Omitting other most important considerations, it is very far
from clear that the political situation as regards the balance of power
in Europe would be at all improved by such a change. Besides this, we do
not sufficiently consider whether it lies in our power to crush Germany
in the way proposed, or, if it does, whether the attempt may not cost us
too dear.
In another direction, the blindness of hate finds expression in the
present tendency to depreciate German literature, science, and
philosophy. Some of the things which are now being said on this topic I
largely agree with. I have long held that the value of the German
contribution to literature, science, and even philosophy has been
seriously over-estimated as compared with that of other nations. But
much of the current talk on this subject is hopelessly undiscriminating
and exaggerated. In any case, it is amusing to find men talking in this
vein who would never have thought of doing so if there had been no war.
Our being at war with Germany can scarcely make any difference, one
would think, to the greatness of Goethe or of Hegel.
In conclusion, let me go back to my starting-point. What are we to say
finally concerning the precept ‘Love your enemies’? Is there any sense
in which it is of universal application? I think there may be. It must
not, of course, be taken to mean that we are to love our enemies with
what Bishop Butler calls ‘a peculiar affection’. There are many who are
not our enemies for whom we can feel no peculiar affection. Besides, if
we love our enemies in this sense, what, as Confucius is said to have
inquired, are we to do in the case of our friends? But if we take the
meaning to be—Will good to your enemy rather than evil, the rule may,
under a certain condition, be regarded as universally applicable. If we
accept Plato’s doctrine that it is better for the evildoer himself that
he should suffer punishment than that he should go unpunished, it seems
possible, however difficult in practice, to inflict pain and hurt on him
while retaining goodwill towards him in the very act of doing so. From
this point of view, failure to feel just resentment and express it in
action is an injury to the evildoer himself as well as to others. But is
it always better for the evildoer himself to be punished? If it makes
him a better man, we may agree that this is so. But so far as we can
see, it sometimes has the reverse effect. If we are to justify the
principle in its widest generality, we must go beyond what we can see.
We must postulate a moral order or something equivalent to a moral order
in the universe according to which it is always in some way ultimately
better for the evildoer to be punished than to escape punishment. If
this is Christian doctrine, then Christianity may consistently maintain
the universal application of the maxim, ‘Love your enemies.’
VI
PATRIOTISM IN THE PERFECT STATE