gravest aspect of this matter. It was the cement with which our western
communities were built and by which they were held together. And the
weathering of these centuries and the acids of these later years have
eaten into its social and personal influence. It is no longer a
sufficient cement. And--this is the essence of what I am driving
at--_our modern communities are no longer cemented_, they lack organized
solidarity, they are not prepared to stand shocks and strains, they have
become dangerously loose mentally and morally. That, I believe, is the
clue to a great proportion of the present social and political troubles
of the world. We need to get back to a cement. We want a Bible. We want
a Bible so badly that we cannot afford to put the old Bible on a
pinnacle out of daily use. We want it re-adapted for use. If it is true
that the old Bible falls short in its history and does not apply closely
to many modern problems, then we need a revised and enlarged Bible in
our schools and homes to restore a common ground of ideas and
interpretations if our civilization is to hold together.
Now let us see what the Bible gave a man in the days when it could
really grip and hold and contain him; and let us ask if it is impossible
to restore and reconstruct a Bible for the needs of these great and
dangerous days in which we are living. Can we re-cement our increasingly
unstable civilization? I will not ask now whether there is still time
left for us to do anything of the sort.
The first thing the Bible gave a man was a Cosmogony. It gave him an
account of the world in which he found himself and of his place in it.
And then it went on to a general history of mankind. It did not tell him
that history as a string of facts and dates, but as a moving and
interesting story into which he himself finally came, a story of
promises made and destinies to be fulfilled. It gave him a dramatic
relationship to the schemes of things. It linked him to all mankind with
a conception of relationships and duties. It gave him a place in the
world and put a meaning into his life. It explained him to himself and
to other people, and it explained other people to him. In other words,
out of the individual it made a citizen with a code of duties and
expectations.
Now I take it that both from the point of view of individual happiness
and from the point of view of the general welfare, this development of
the citizenship of a man, this placing of a man in his own world, is of
primary importance. It is the necessary basis of all right education; it
is the fundamental purpose of the school, and I do not believe an
individual can be happy or a community be prosperous without it. The
Bible and the religions based on it gave that idea of a place in the
world to the people it taught. But do we provide that idea of a place in
the world for our people to-day? I suggest that we do not. We do not
give them a clear vision of the universe in which they live, and we do
not give them a history that invests their lives with meaning and
dignity.
The cosmogony of the Bible has lost grip and conviction upon men's
minds, and the ever-widening gulf of years makes its history and its
political teaching more and more remote and unhelpful amidst the great
needs of to-day. Nothing has been done to fill up these widening gaps.
We have so great a respect for the letter of the Bible that we ignore
its spirit and its proper use. We do not rewrite and retell Genesis in
the light and language of modern knowledge, and we do not revise and
bring its history up to date and so apply it to the problems of our own
time. So we have allowed the Bible to become antiquated and remote,
venerable and unhelpful.
There has been a great extension of what we call education in the past
hundred years, but while we have spread education widely, there has been
a sort of shrinkage and enfeeblement of its aims. Education in the past
set out to make a Christian and a citizen and afterwards a gentleman out
of the crude, vulgar, self-seeking individual. Does education even
pretend to do as much to-day? It does nothing of the sort. Our young
people are taught to read and write. They are taught bookkeeping and
languages that are likely to be useful to them. They are given a certain
measure of technical education, and _they are taught to shove_. And
then we turn them out into the world to get on. Our test of a college
education is--Does it make a successful business man?
Well, this, I take it, is the absolute degradation of education. It is a
modern error that education exists for the individual. Education exists
for the community and the race; it exists to subdue the individual for
the good of the world and his own ultimate happiness.
But we have been letting the essentials of education slip back into a
secondary place in our pursuit of mere equipment, and we see the results
to-day throughout all the modern states of the world, in a loss of
cohesion, discipline and co-operation. Men will not co-operate except to
raise prices on the consumer or wages on the employer, and everyone
scrambles for a front place and a good time. And they do so, partly no
doubt by virtue of an ineradicable factor in them known as Original Sin,
but also very largely because the vision of life that was built up in
their minds at school and in their homes was fragmentary and
uninspiring; it had no commanding appeal for their imaginations, and no
imperatives for their lives.
So I put it, that for the opening books of our Bible of Civilization,
our Bible translated into terms of modern knowledge, and as the basis of
all our culture, we shall follow the old Bible precedent exactly. We
shall tell to every citizen of our community, as plainly, simply and
beautifully as we can, the New Story of Genesis, the tremendous
spectacle of the Universe that science has opened to us, the flaming
beginnings of our world, the vast ages of its making and the astounding
unfolding, age after age, of Life. We shall tell of the changing
climates of this spinning globe and the coming and going of great floras
and faunas, mighty races of living things, until out of the vast, slow
process our own kind emerged. And we shall tell the story of our race.
How through hundreds of thousands of years it won power over nature,
hunted and presently sowed and reaped. How it learnt the secrets of the
metals, mastered the riddle of the seasons, and took to the seas. That
story of our common inheritance and of our slow upward struggle has to
be taught throughout our entire community, in the city slums and in the
out-of-the-way farmsteads most of all. By teaching it, we restore again
to our people the lost basis of a community, a common idea of their
place in space and time.
Then, still following the Bible precedent, we must tell a universal
history of man. And though on the surface it may seem to be a very
different history from the Bible story, in substance it will really be
very much the same history, only robbed of ancient trappings and
symbols, and made real and fresh again for our present ideas. It will
still be a story of conditional promises, the promises of human
possibility, a record of sins and blunders and lost opportunities, of
men who walked not in the ways of righteousness, of stiff-necked
generations, and of merciful renewals of hope. It will still point our
lives to a common future which will be the reward and judgment of our
present lives.
You may say that no such book exists--which is perfectly true--and that
no such book could be written. But there I think you underrate the
capacity of our English-speaking people. It would be quite possible to
get together a committee that would give us the compact and clear
cosmogony of history that is needed. Some of the greatest, most
inspiring books and documents in the world have been produced by
Committees: Magna Carta, the Declaration of Independence, the English
Translation of the Bible, and the Prayer Book of the English Church are
all the productions of committees, and they are all fine and inspiring
compilations. For the last three years I have been experimenting with
this particular task, and, with the help of six other people, I have
sketched out and published an outline of our world's origins and history
to show the sort of thing I mean. That _Outline_ is, of course, a
corrupting mass of faults and minor inaccuracies, but it does
demonstrate the possibility of doing what is required. And its reception
both in America and England has shown how ready, how greedy many people
are, on account of themselves and on account of their children, for an
ordered general account of the existing knowledge of our place in space
and time. For want of anything better they have taken my _Outline_ very
eagerly. Far more eagerly would they have taken a finer, sounder and
more authoritative work.
In England this _Outline_ was almost the first experiment of the kind
that has been made--the only other I know of in England, was a very
compact General History of the World by Mr. Oscar Browning published in
1913. But there are several educationists in America who have been at
work on the same task. In this matter of a more generalized history
teaching, the New World is decidedly leading the Old. The particular
problems of a population of mixed origins have forced it upon teachers
in the United States.
My friend--I am very happy to be able to call him my friend--Professor
Breasted, in conjunction with that very able teacher Professor Robinson,
has produced two books, _Ancient Times_ and _Mediaeval and Modern Times_,
which together make a very complete history of civilized man. They do
not, however, give a history of life before man, nor very much of human
pre-history. Another admirable American summary of history is Doctor
Hutton Webster's _History of the Ancient World_ together with his
_Mediaeval and Modern History_. This again is very sparing of the story
of primitive man.
But the work of these gentlemen confirms my own experience that it is
quite possible to tell in a comprehensible and inspiring outline the
whole history of life and mankind in the compass of a couple of
manageable volumes. Neither Browning nor Breasted and Robinson, nor
Hutton Webster, nor my own effort are very much longer than twice the
length of Dickens' novel of _Bleak House_. So there you have it. There
is the thing shown to be possible. If it is possible for us isolated
workers to do as much then why should not the thing be done in a big and
authoritative manner? Why should we not have a great educational
conference of teachers, scientific men and historians from all the
civilized peoples of the world, and why should they not draft out a
standard World History for general use in the world's schools? Why
should that draft not be revised by scores of specialists? Discussed and
re-discussed? Polished and finished, and made the opening part of a new
Bible of Civilization, a new common basis for a world culture?
At intervals it would need to be revised, and it could be revised and
brought up to date in the same manner.
Now such a book and such a book alone would put the people of the world
upon an absolutely new footing with regard to social and international
affairs. They would be told a history coming right up to the Daily
Newspaper. They would see themselves and the news of to-day as part of
one great development. It would give their lives significance and
dignity. It would give the events of the current day significance and
dignity. It would lift their imaginations up to a new level. I say
lift, but I mean restore their imaginations to a former level. Because
if you look back into the lives of the Pilgrim Fathers, let us say, or
into those of the great soldiers and statesmen of Cromwellian England,
you will find that these men had a sense of personal significance, a
sense of destiny, such as no one in politics or literature seems to
possess to-day. They were still in touch with the old Bible. To-day if
life seems adventurous and fragmentary and generally aimless it is
largely because of this one thing. We have lost touch with history. We
have ceased to see human affairs as one great epic unfolding. And only
by the universal teaching of Universal History can that epic quality be
restored.
You see then the first part of my project for a Bible of Civilization, a
rewriting of Genesis and Exodus and Judges and Chronicles in terms of
World History. It would be a quite possible thing to do....
Is it worth doing?
And let me add here that when we do get our New Genesis and our new
historical books, they will have a great number of illustrations as a
living and necessary part of them. For nowadays we can not only have a
canonical text, but canonical maps and illustrations. The old Hebrew
Bible was merely the written word. Indeed it was not even that, for it
was written without vowels. That was not a merit, nor a precedent for
us; it was an unavoidable limitation in those days; but under modern
conditions there is no reason whatever why we should confine our Bible
to words when a drawing or a map can better express the thing we wish to
convey. It is one of the great advantages of the modern book over the
ancient book that because of printing it can use pictures as well as
words. When books had to be reproduced by copyists the use of pictures
was impossible. They would have varied with each copying until they
became hopelessly distorted....
Sec. 2
But the cosmological and historical part of the old Bible was merely the
opening, the groundwork upon which the rest was built. Let us now
consider what else the Bible gave a man and a community, and what would
be the modern form of the things it gave.
The next thing in order that the Bible gave a man and the community to
which he belonged was the Law. Rules of Life. Rules of Health.
Prescriptions--often very detailed and intimate--of permissible and
unpermissible conduct. This also the modern citizen needs and should
have: he and she need a book of personal wisdom.
First as to Health. One of the first duties of a citizen is to keep
himself in mental and bodily health in order to be fit for the rest of
his duties. Now the real Bible, our model, is extremely explicit upon a
number of points, upon what constitutes cleanness or uncleanness, upon
ablutions, upon what a man or woman may eat and what may not be eaten,
upon a number of such points. It was for its times and circumstances a
directory of healthy practice. Well, I do not see why the Bible of a
Modern Civilization should not contain a book of similarly clear
injunctions and warnings--why we should not tell every one of our people
what is to be known about self-care.
And closely connected with the care of one's mental and bodily health is
sexual morality, upon which again Deuteronomy and Leviticus are most
explicit, leaving very little to the imagination. I am all for imitating
the wholesome frankness of the ancient book. Where there are no dark
corners there is very little fermentation, there is very little foulness
or infection. But in nearly every detail and in method and manner, the
Bible of our Civilization needs to be fuller and different from its
prototype upon these matters. The real Bible dealt with an oriental
population living under much cruder conditions than our own, engaged
mainly in agriculture, and with a far less various dietary than ours.
They had fermented but not distilled liquors; they had no preserved nor
refrigerated foods; they married at adolescence; many grave diseases
that prevail to-day were unknown to them, and their sanitary problems
were entirely different. Generally our New Leviticus will have to be
much fuller. It must deal with exercise--which came naturally to those
Hebrew shepherds. It must deal with the preservation of energy under
conditions of enervation of which the prophets knew nothing. On the
other hand our New Leviticus can afford to give much less attention to
leprosy--which almost dominates the health instructions of the ancient
law-giver.
I do not know anything very much about the movements in America that aim
at the improvement of the public health and at the removal of public
ignorance upon vital things. In Britain we have a number of powerful
organizations active in disseminating knowledge to counteract the spread
of this or that infectious or contagious disease. The War has made us in
Europe much more outspoken and fearless in dealing with lurking hideous
evils. We believe much more than we did in the curative value of light
and knowledge. And we have a very considerable literature of books
on--what shall I call it? on Sex Wisdom, which aim to prevent some of
that great volume of misery, deprivation and nervous disease due to the
prevailing ignorance and secrecy in these matters. For in these matters
great multitudes of modern people still live in an ignorance that would
have been inconceivable to an ancient Hebrew. In England now the books
of such a writer as Dr. Marie Stopes are enormously read, and--though
they are by no means perfect works--do much to mitigate the hidden
disappointments, discontents, stresses and cruelties of married life.
Now I believe that it would be possible to compile a modern Leviticus
and Deuteronomy to tell our whole modern community decently and
plainly--just as plainly as the old Hebrew Bible instructed its Hebrew
population--what was to be known and what had to be done, and what had
not to be done in these intimate matters.
But Health and Sex do not exhaust the problems of conduct. There are
also the problems of Property and Trade and Labour. Upon these also the
old Bible did not hesitate to be explicit. For example, it insisted
meticulously upon the right of labour to glean and upon the seller
giving a "full measure brimming over," and it prohibited usury. But here
again the Bible is extraordinarily unhelpful when we come to modern
issues, because its rules and regulations were framed for a community
and for an economic system altogether cruder, more limited and less
complicated than our own. Much of the Old Testament we have to remember
was already in existence before the free use of coined metal. The vast
credit system of our days, joint-stock company enterprise and the like,
were beyond the imagination of that time. So too was any anticipation of
modern industrialism. And accordingly we live to-day in a world in which
neither property nor employment have ever been properly moralized. The
bulk of our present social and economic troubles is due very largely to
that.
In no matter is this muddled civilization of ours more hopelessly at
sixes and sevens than in this matter of the rights and duties of
property. Manifestly property is a trust for the community varying in
its responsibilities with the nature of the property. The property one
has in one's toothbrush is different from the property one has in ten
thousand acres of land; the property one has in a photograph of a friend
is different from the property one has in some irreplaceable masterpiece
of portraiture. The former one may destroy with a good conscience, but
not the latter. At least so it seems to me.
But opinions vary enormously on these matters because we have never
really worked them out. On the one hand, in this matter of property, we
have the extreme individualist who declares that a man has an unlimited
right to do what he likes with his own--so that a man who owns a coal
mine may just burn it out to please himself or spite the world, or raise
the price of coal generally--and on the other hand we have the extreme
communist who denies all property and in practice--so far as I can
understand his practice--goes on the principle that everything belongs
to somebody else or that one is entitled to exercise proprietary rights
over everything that does not belong to oneself. (I confess that
communistic practice is a little difficult to formulate.) Between these
extremists you can find every variety of idea about what one may do and
about what one may not do with money and credit and property generally.
Is it an offence to gamble? Is it an offence to speculate? Is it an
offence to hold fertile fields and not cultivate them? Is it an offence
to hold fertile fields and undercultivate them? Is it an offence to use
your invested money merely to live pleasantly without working? Is it an
offence to spend your money on yourself and refuse your wife more than
bare necessities? Is it an offence to spend exorbitant sums that might
otherwise go in reproductive investments, to gratify the whims and
vanities of your wife? You will find different people answering any of
these questions with Yes or No. But it cannot be both Yes and No. There
must be a definable Right or Wrong upon all these issues.
Almost all the labour trouble in the world springs directly from our
lack of an effective detailed moral code about property. The freedom
that is claimed for all sorts of property and exercised by all sorts of
property to waste or withhold is the clue to that savage resentment
which flares out nowadays in every great labour conflict. Labour is a
rebel because property is a libertine.
Now this untilled field of conduct, this moral wilderness of the rights
and duties and limitations of property, the Books of the Law in a modern
Bible could clear up in the most lucid and satisfying way. I want to get
those parts of Deuteronomy and Leviticus written again, more urgently
than any other part of the modern Bible. I want to see it at work in the
schools and in the law-courts. I admit that it would be a most difficult
book to write and that we should raise controversial storms over every
verse. But what an excellent thing to have it out, once for all, with
some of these rankling problems! What an excellent thing if we could get
together a choice group of representative men--strictly rationed as to
paper--and get them to set down clearly and exactly just what classes of
property they recognized and what limitations the community was entitled
to impose upon each sort.
Every country in the world does impose limitations. In Italy you may not
export an ancient work of art, although it is your own. In England you
may not maltreat your own dog or cat. In the United States, I am told,
you may not use your dollars to buy alcohol. Why should we not make all
this classification of property and the restraints upon each class of
property, systematic and world-wide? If we could so moralize the use of
property, if we could arrive at a clear idea of just what use an owner
could make of his machinery, or a financier could make of his credit,
would there be much left of the incessant labour conflicts of the
present time? For if you will look into it, you will find there is
hardly ever a labour conflict into which some unsettled question of
principle, some unsettled question of the permissible use of property,
does not enter as the final and essential dispute.
V
THE BIBLE OF CIVILIZATION
PART TWO
Sec. 3
In the preceding sections we have discussed Genesis and the Historical
Books generally as they would appear in a modernized Bible, and we have
dealt with the Law. But these are only the foundations and openings of
the Bible as we know it. We come now to the Psalms and Proverbs, the
Song of Songs, the Book of Job--and the Prophets. What are the modern
equivalents of these books?
Well, what were they?
They were the entire Hebrew literature down to about the time of Ezra;
they include sacred songs, love songs, a dramatic dialogue, a sort of
novel in the Books of Ruth and Esther, and so forth. What would be our
equivalent of this part of the Bible to-day? What would be the
equivalent for the Bible of a world civilization?
I suppose that it would be the whole world literature.
That, I admit, is a rather tremendous proposition. Are we to
contemplate the prospect of a modern Bible in twenty or thirty thousand
volumes? Such a vast Bible would defeat its own end. We want a Bible
that everyone will know, which will be grasped by the mind of everyone.
That is essential to our idea of a Bible as a social cement.