In a world of sin, disease and death--death inevitable--what may man do to
drive out sin and cure disease, to the end that, barring accident, old age
shall set the limit on mortal life?
The quack doctor equally in ethics and in physics has played a leading part
in human affairs. Only within a relatively brief period has science made
serious progress toward discovery. Though Nature has perhaps an antidote
for all her poisons many of them continue to defy approach. They lie
concealed, leaving the astutest to grope in the dark.
That which is true of material things is truer yet of spiritual things. The
ideal about which we hear so much, is as unattained as the fabled bag of
gold at the end of the rainbow. Nor is the doctrine of perfectability
anywhere one with itself. It speaks in diverse tongues. Its processes and
objects are variant. It seems but an iridescent dream which lends itself
equally to the fancies of the impracticable and the scheming of the
self-seeking, breeding visionaries and pretenders.
Easily assumed and asserted, too often it becomes tyrannous, dealing with
things outer and visible while taking little if any account of the inner
lights of the soul. Thus it imposes upon credulity and ignorance; makes
fakers of some and fanatics of others; in politics where not an engine of
oppression, a corrupt influence; in religion where not a zealot, a promoter
of cant. In short the self-appointed apostle of uplift, who disregarding
individual character would make virtue a matter of statute law and ordain
uniformity of conduct by act of conventicle or assembly, is likelier to
produce moral chaos than to reach the sublime state he claims to seek.
The bare suggestion is full of startling possibilities. Individualism was
the discovery of the fathers of the American Republic. It is the bedrock
of our political philosophy. Human slavery was assuredly an indefensible
institution. But the armed enforcement of freedom did not make a black man
a white man. Nor will the wave of fanaticism seeking to control the food
and drink and dress of the people make men better men. Danger lurks and is
bound to come with the inevitable reaction.
The levity of the men is recruited by the folly of the women. The leaders
of feminism would abolish sex. To what end? The pessimist answers what
easier than the demolition of a sexless world gone entirely mad? How simple
the engineries of destruction. Civil war in America; universal hara-kiri
in Europe; the dry rot of wealth wasting itself in self-indulgence. Then a
thousand years of total eclipse. Finally Macaulay's Australian surveying
the ruins of St. Paul's Cathedral from a broken parapet of London Bridge;
and a Moslem conqueror of America looking from the hill of the Capitol at
Washington upon the desolation of what was once the District of Columbia.
Shall the end be an Oriental renaissance with the philosophies of Buddha,
Mohammed and Confucius welded into a new religion describing itself as the
last word of science, reason and common sense?
Alas, and alack the day! In those places where the suffering rich most do
congregate the words of Watts' hymn have constant application:
_For Satan finds some mischief still
For idle hands to do._
When they have not gone skylarking or grown tired of bridge they devote
their leisure to organizing clubs other than those of the uplift. There
are all sorts, from the Society for the Abrogation of Bathing Suits at the
seaside resorts to the League at Mewville for the Care of Disabled Cats.
Most of these clubs are all officers and no privates. That is what many of
them are got up for. Do they advance the world in grace? One who surveys
the scene can scarcely think so.
But the whirl goes on; the yachts sweep proudly out to sea; the auto cars
dash madly through the streets; more and darker and deeper do the contrasts
of life show themselves. How long shall it be when the mudsill millions
take the upper ten thousand by the throat and rend them as the furiosos of
the Terror in France did the aristocrats of the _Régime Ancien_? The
issue between capital and labor, for example, is full of generating
heat and hate. Who shall say that, let loose in the crowded centers of
population, it may not one day engulf us all?
Is this rank pessimism or merely the vagaries of an old man dropping back
into second childhood, who does not see that the world is wiser and better
than ever it was, mankind and womankind, surely on the way to perfection?
V
One thing is certain: We are not standing still. Since "Adam delved and Eve
span"--if they ever did--in the Garden of Eden, "somewhere in Asia," to the
"goings on" in the Garden of the Gods directly under Pike's Peak--the earth
we inhabit has at no time and nowhere wanted for liveliness--but surely
it was never livelier than it now is; as the space-writer says, more
"dramatic"; indeed, to quote the guidebooks, quite so "picturesque and
interesting."
Go where one may, on land or sea, he will come upon activities of one sort
and another. Were Timon of Athens living, he might be awakened from his
misanthrophy and Jacques, the forest cynic, stirred to something like
enthusiasm. Is the world enduring the pangs of a second birth which shall
recreate all things anew, supplementing the miracles of modern invention
with a corresponding development of spiritual life; or has it reached the
top of the hill, and, mortal, like the human atoms that compose it, is it
starting downward on the other side into an abyss which the historians of
the future will once again call "the dark ages?"
We know not, and there is none to tell us. That which is actually happening
were unbelievable if we did not see it, from hour to hour, from day to day.
Horror succeeding horror has in some sort blunted our sensibilities. Not
only are our sympathies numbed by the immensity of the slaughter and the
sorrow, but patriotism itself is chilled by the selfish thought that,
having thus far measurably escaped, we may pull through without paying our
share. This will account for a certain indifferentism we now and again
encounter.
At the moment we are felicitating ourselves--or, is it merely confusing
ourselves?--over the revolution in Russia. It seems of good augury. To
begin with, for Russia. Then the murder war fairly won for the Allies, we
are promised by the optimists a wise and lasting peace.
The bells that rang out in Petrograd and Moscow sounded, we are told, the
death knell of autocracy in Berlin and Vienna. The clarion tones that
echoed through the Crimea and Siberia, albeit to the ear of the masses
muffled in the Schwarzwald and along the shores of the North Sea, and up
and down the Danube and the Rhine, yet conveyed a whispered message which
may presently break into song; the glad song of freedom with it glorious
refrain: "The Romanoffs gone! Perdition having reached the Hohenzollerns
and the Hapsburgs, all will be well!"
Anyhow, freedom; self-government; for whilst a scrutinizing and solicitous
pessimism, observing and considering many abuses, administrative and
political, federal and local, in our republican system--abuses which being
very visible are most lamentable--may sometimes move us to lose heart of
hope in democracy, we know of none better. So, let us stand by it; pray for
it; fight for it. Let us by our example show the Russians how to attain it.
Let us by the same token show the Germans how to attain it when they come
to see, if they ever do, the havoc autocracy has made for Germany. That
should constitute the bed rock of our politics and our religion. It is the
true religion. Love of country is love of God. Patriotism is religion.
It is also Christianity. The pacifist, let me parenthetically observe,
is scarcely a Christian. There be technical Christians and there be
Christians. The technical Christian sees nothing but the blurred letter of
the law, which he misconstrues. The Christian, animated by its holy spirit
and led by its rightful interpretation, serves the Lord alike of heaven and
hosts when he flies the flag of his country and smites its enemies hip and
thigh!