* * * * *

This ideal of social reform then seems to be agreed upon between some

men of all nations, that more common action should be taken. It is not a

vague sentiment for the abolition of conflict between states; nor is it

a pious aspiration for peace. It is the clear perception that the state

cannot fulfil its functions in modern life if it continues to act as

isolated or segregated. That for which the state itself stands cannot be

attained even within the frontiers of one state by any state acting

alone.

This is not the place to distinguish those subjects upon which states

should act together from those on which they should act separately. That

is simply the problem as to the limits of political regionalism. The

fact which is sufficient for our argument here is that certain forces,

chiefly economic, have come into existence in recent years, which

disregard state boundaries. In concrete terms, these are international

trusts and international labour interests. But it is increasingly

evident that these cannot be effectively dealt with by any one state

acting separately. The isolated sovereign state of earlier times is

simply helpless before the elaborate world-system of economics; and

control can only be secured by an established world-system of politics.

The states, one supposes, exist for justice and liberty. Divided, they

will perish or become mere playthings in the hands of non-moral economic

'interests'.

To save itself and all it stands for, the state must cease to pose as a

possible opponent to any other state, and must deliberately co-operate

in an increasing number of reforms.

It is better to put into the coldest terms a conception which has too

often hitherto proved futile, because it arose rather from vague

discontent, than from the perception of a definite evil. The fire of

enthusiasm must indeed work upon that conception before any effective

change can be made in the attitude of governments or of peoples. But

enthusiasm will be wasted if we cannot pause to see against what we are

contending.

We are struggling with the greatest of all obstacles to social reform

when we attack the isolation of nations. Unless that is overcome we

shall perhaps patch and prop; but, time and again, we shall be enslaved

to the immensely powerful non-moral forces, in the midst of which

humanity finds its way. I cannot speak more clearly--[Greek: bous epi

glôssê]. The nations face each other in conflict, while death, disease,

violence, bestial indolence and docility corrode every state.

* * * * *

But when war was at its brutish worst Grotius spoke with effect of a

moral bond which survived between men who in physical conflict had been

trying to take their 'enemies' for beasts and stones. And humanity began

once more its long struggle with the beast in man. So now--I leave it to

your imagination.

We have made immense progress by assisting each other across the

frontiers of states in such science as may provide high explosive and

submarine warfare. In these the nations have co-operated. The guns which

kill the English at the Dardanelles were made by Englishmen. There may

yet come a time when high explosives will be out of date, and the state

will use the careful dissemination of disease among its enemies. The

only reason, I think, why it is not now done, is that no group can be

certain of making itself immune from the disease it may spread among

its enemies.

* * * * *

Our conclusion, therefore, is that one of the elements in the present

attitude towards social reform is a tendency to co-operation between

nations. We have seen that this has already had effect in various

details of law and administration; and there is every reason to suppose

that the method will be carried further.

But the problem cannot be left there. Co-operation as a word is a mere

charm, like Evolution. There has been, and there may be co-operation in

doing wrong. That action has become common does not prove that it is

right; and an ideal implies at least some ethical judgement. Therefore,

in every nation there are some few who are convinced of the necessity

for more deliberately moral action in common between men of different

races. If there can be so much co-operation in the making of armaments

or the defrauding of shareholders, there may yet be more co-operation in

the elimination of disease and poverty. And not only may there be such

co-operation, but it must be. The situation no longer exists in which

most of the effects of an evil régime are confined within frontiers. The

social distress of European nations must be dealt with as a whole

because it is a whole. Therefore whatever militates against the unity of

western civilization destroys the possibility of social reform.

Many times before it has been seen that there are nobler conflicts than

the struggle for markets or for the political domination of one clique

or one nation. Many times before it has been felt, at least by a few,

that man is deceived when he imagines that man is his enemy. And many

times when the deliverance seemed near we have been enslaved again by an

evil magic. A hundred years ago, at the end of the Napoleonic wars, the

dreamers imagined that humanity would have done with its false prophets

and lay the ghosts which have haunted it since it began to shake off the

manners of the beasts. But a dismal succession of new falsehoods and new

blind guides appeared. And now, in this so advanced age, we have to face

the same possibility. There is much to excuse a despair; from which

nothing can free us but a new enthusiasm. The evil magic must be

overcome by magic of another kind, and how acute the crisis seems it is

hardly possible to indicate.

The quality of our age was its expectancy. For that reason men of every

nation were moved to desire a transformed society. But perhaps that

quality of expectancy was the quality of youth. For the first time in

history, in the early twentieth century, age was giving place to youth

in the political equilibrium of the generations. Now--I dare not speak

too plainly. The young men of the western world are already, since

August 1914, noticeably fewer. Death may have made no difference to

them. It has made an immense difference to the future. It means that the

eager expectancy of youth, which is the source of so much enthusiasm for

a better world, is being lost. The crisis is here. As yet the common

ideals of civilized nations still survive; but the desire for a better

future is at ebb and flow with a tired acquiescence in the established

order. It is in our hands to decide which shall overcome. No generation

has faced a greater issue. We cannot tell what will be the outcome; but

to hope too much is at least a more generous fault than to despair too

soon.

BOOKS FOR REFERENCE

C.D. Burns, _Political Ideals_. Clarendon Press.

P. Geddes, _Cities in Evolution_. Williams & Norgate.

J.A. Hobson, _Towards International Government_. Allen & Unwin.

P.S. Reinsch, _Public International Unions_. Ginn & Co.

XII

POLITICAL BASES OF A WORLD-STATE

World-state is a term likely to be offensive in its arrogance, if it be

taken to mean the substitution of a single political community and

government for the numerous separate national states which have hitherto

existed. I therefore hasten to say that I intend no such meaning, but

use the term as a convenient expression to cover any body of political

arrangements, to which most of the principal nations of the world are

parties, sufficiently stable in character and wide in scope to merit the

title of international government.

Towards such a possibility the nineteenth century has made three great

contributions. During that century great advances have been made in the

settlement of political government upon a basis of nationality. This

process has been accomplished partly by throwing off the dominion of

some foreign power, as in the case of Belgium, Greece, Montenegro,

Bulgaria, Rumania, and Serbia, and the South American colonies of Spain;

partly by the closer federal union of independent states, as in the case

of Germany and Switzerland; partly by a blend of the two methods as in

the case of Italy; and partly by the peaceful dissolution of an

unnatural union, as with Norway and Sweden. Though much still remains to

be done before the identification of statehood with nationality even for

Europe is completed, and some backward steps have been taken, the

growing acceptance of the conception of nationality as a just and

expedient basis of government is a powerful guarantee for the

persistence of this joint work of liberation and of union. If, as the

result of the settlement following this war, political readjustments are

made which fairly satisfy the remaining aspirations after national

autonomy, the more pacific atmosphere will favour all opportunities for

co-operation between nations.

The second contribution of the nineteenth century towards political

internationalism is of a more positive character. It consists in a

series of inchoate and fragmentary but genuine attempts of the Great

Powers to work together upon critical occasions in the interests of

'justice and order', as they understood those terms, and to embody in

acts or conventions some policy which is the result of their

deliberations. This flickering light, called the Concert of Europe,

first kindled at the Congress of Vienna, has reappeared fitfully

throughout the century. The treaties, declarations, and conventions,

proceeding from these conferences or congresses of the Powers, have

marked important advances, not only in the substance of international

law, but in the method of legislation. For whereas, before the Congress

of Vienna, all the treaties between states which helped to form the body

of international law were the acts of two or, at the most, a small group

of states, since that time law-making treaties of general application

and of world-wide importance have come into being. The most noteworthy

examples of these general treaties are the Final Act of the Vienna

Congress in 1815, the Declaration of Paris in 1856, the Geneva

Convention of 1864, the Treaty of Berlin in 1878, the General Act of the

Congo Conference in 1885, and the two Hague Conferences of 1899 and

1907. Having regard to the general character of many of the rules laid

down at these conferences, as, for instance, the abolition of the slave

trade, the neutralization of certain lands and waters, and the

regulation of the rules of war, it is clear that we have to recognize

throughout last century the existence of a rudimentary organ of

international legislation, very irregular in its operation, very

imperfect in structure and authority, but none the less a genuine

experiment in international government.

Hardly less significant for our purpose has been the prominent assertion

of the principle of federalism in the formation or growth of national

government. The great example of the United States has been followed by

Switzerland and Germany, by Mexico, Argentine, Brazil, and Venezuela,

and by the dominions of the British Empire in Canada, Australia, and

South Africa. I must not in this brief survey even touch upon the

different forms of federalism. It must suffice to remark that, whether

as a a principle of devolution, as in the case of the proposal of Home

Rule for the constituent parts of Great Britain, or as a principle of

closer union, as in the proposal for a federated British Empire,

federalism is very much alive. It furnishes a hopeful mode not only for

reconciling demands for local autonomy with effective central

sovereignty among the provinces or districts of a single national state,

but even for harmonizing the claims of separate nationality with those

of wider racial, linguistic, and traditional sympathy. But even more

important than these distinctively political movements and events, as a

pledge of the coming world-state, is the manifold structure of

industrial and commercial internationalism which has been growing during

the last few generations at an ever accelerating pace. The network of

material, financial, and intellectual communications, connecting all

parts of the developed world, and establishing quick, constant, cheap,

and reliable modes of transport for men, goods, money, and information,

form the actual basis of what may not improperly be called an economic

world-state. Though much of this machinery, with the great work of

international trade and capitalistic co-operation which it assists to

perform, lies outside the sphere of politics, there are innumerable

points of political contact and pressure. The realities of foreign

policy in every state are more and more concerned with issues of trade,

communications, and concessions, and the treaties and other formal

arrangements between states are to a growing extent the instruments and

the expressions of the internationalism of economic interests. The

imperialism and the colonial policy of each great Power, though composed

of various ingredients, are mainly directed by commerce and finance.

Most of the disagreements and conflicts between governments relate to

interferences with the free play of economic internationalism by states

whose policy is still dominated by foolish and obsolescent rules of a

narrowly national economy. An enlightened interpretation of the needs

and interests of modern man demands that all such national economic

barriers be removed and replaced by governmental co-operation to secure,

by free trade and an open door, for capital and labour the fullest and

best development and distribution of the economic resources of the

world.

While, therefore, the most impressive political events of the nineteenth

century have been the expression and the successful realization of

nationalism, many powerful undercurrents of internationalism have been

gathering force. The pressures of civilization have been more and more

towards extra-national activities. Thoughtful men and women in our time

recognize the urgent need of closer international communion for three

related purposes: First, the consolidation, extension, and effective

sanction of the existing body of international law; secondly, the

establishment of peace on a basis of reliable methods for the just

settlement of differences; thirdly, the provision of regular accepted

means for the co-operation of nations in all sorts of positive

constructive work for the human commonwealth.

These general considerations I will ask you to regard as introductory

to the grave practical question which confronts us. Is this essential

work of internationalism consistent with the preservation of the

sovereignty and independence of the present national state, or does its

performance involve some definite cession of these national state-rights

to the requirements of an international government?

The terrible events which are passing to-day ripen and sharpen this

issue. They bring into powerful relief the inherent defects of an

international polity based upon the absolute independence of the several

states, and the futile mechanical balances and readjustments by which

foreign policy has been conducted hitherto. But how far do they offer

assistance or security for the achievement of organic reform? After this

war has come to a close, will the nations and governments be enabled to

lay a sound basis for pacific settlement of disputes and for active

co-operation in the common cause of humanity for the future? No

confident answer to this question is possible. For nobody can predict

the composition and the relative strength of the feelings and ideas

which will constitute 'the state of mind' of the several nations and

their statesmen. As regards immediate or early policy, much will, of

course, depend upon the definiteness of the victory and defeat, and the

consequent distribution and intensity of the passions of elation and

depression, anger and revenge, which peace may leave behind. It is, of

course, part of the fighting strength of every belligerent to persuade

himself that an overwhelming victory for himself affords the best

security of peace and progress in the future. But this conclusion, based

on the prior assumption, equally liable to error, that one's own cause

is entirely right and one's enemy's entirely wrong, is unlikely to be

sound. A peace which brings the least intensity of triumph and

humiliation, the most even distribution of gains and losses, would seem

to give an atmosphere most favourable to the growth of pacific

internationalism. This, of course, will be sharply contested, and those

who contest it will exhibit the usual excessive confidence of those

whose mind moves in a shut oven of heated but unmeaning phrases about

fighting to a finish, crushing German militarism, and 'a war to end

war'. But there is no stronger evidence of the intellectual and moral

havoc of war than the easy acceptance of what Ruskin called 'masked

words' in lieu of thinking.

"There are masked words abroad, I say, which nobody understands, but

which everybody uses, and most people will also fight for, live for, or

even die for, fancying they mean this or that or other of the things

dear to them. There were never creatures of prey so mischievous, never

diplomatists so cunning, never poisoners so deadly, as these masked

words; they are the unjust stewards of all men's ideas; whatever fancy

or favourite instinct a man most cherishes, he gives to his favourite

masked word to take care of for him; the word at last comes to have an

infinite power over him--you cannot get at him but by its ministry." In

war-time this domination of 'masked words' is all-powerful, and is

likely to leave the thinking powers of all Europe seriously impaired

when the war is over.

There are those who hold that sheer exhaustion, nervous and economic,

will compel the nations to seek concerted action against the recurrence

of so shattering an experience, that some sheer instinct of

self-preservation will find expression in adequate political

arrangements. I should be the last to deny the reality of the collective

instinct. But remember that, as an instinct, it works blindly, and is

liable to be diverted and frustrated in a thousand ways by the

conflicting streams of narrow passion amongst which it moves. Mere

exhaustion and a general feeling of insecurity cannot yield a

sufficient motive and directing force for the work of international

construction. It is necessary to rationalize this instinct of

self-preservation and co-operation, in order to make it of effective

service. Here lies the heart of our difficulty. War is the most

intensely derationalizing process, and the long steeping of European

civilization in the boiling cauldron will have twisted and blunted the

very instruments of thought. As Professor Murray points out in a

powerful essay, war rapidly undoes the slow secular process by which

liberty and capacity for individual thought have grown up, and plunges

the personal judgement into the common trough of the herd-mind. It is, I

take it, the recognition of this peril to the human mind, this necessity

of safeguarding the powers of individual thought and personal

responsibility, that brings us here. We seek to fortify the separate

centres of personal judgement, to inform the individual mind, because

the work of making a positive contribution to the unity of civilization

depends upon the vigorous independent functioning of many minds.

This consideration brings me directly to confront the enemy, that is to

say, those who contend that a world-state or any real international

government is now and must always remain an impossibility, an

unrealizable Utopian dream. The process of social evolution on its

political side ends with the national state. It is a final product.

National states cannot, will not, and ought not, to abate one jot or

tittle of their inherent sovereignty and independence, and the

experience of history shows that all attempts at international

federation or union are pre-doomed to failure.

It is evidently quite impossible for me to present here a full formal

refutation of these positions. I will therefore content myself with

brief demurrers. To the argument from social evolution I would reply

that evolution knows no finality of type, and that the presumption lies

in favour of those who hold that the centripetal or co-operative powers,

which have forged the national state out of the smaller social unities,

are not exhausted, but are capable of carrying the organizing process

further. To those who rely upon the authority of history, citing the

collapse of the experiments in federation which followed the Congress of

Vienna as proof that similar experiments will similarly fail to-day or

to-morrow, I reply that this view is based on a false interpretation of

the statement that 'history repeats itself'. A psychological or

sociological experiment is not the same when fundamental changes have

taken place in the psychical and social conditions. We have already

recognized that the nineteenth century has seen a series of vital

changes in the economic and spiritual structure of civilization. The

evidence of 1815 cannot, therefore, be conclusive as regards the

possibilities of 1915. To those who insist on the sovereignty and

independence of the national state as an eternal verity, I will make no

further reply than to say that such language has for me no more meaning

than talk of 'the divine right of kings', 'the natural rights of man',

or any other phrase of the abracadabra of metaphysical politics. The

actual world in which we live knows no such absolutes. Sovereignty and

independence, like all other legal claims, are subject to modification

and compromise. Every bargain made by treaty or agreement with another

state, every acceptance of international law or custom, involves some

real diminution of sovereign independence, unless indeed the liberty to

break all treaties and to violate all laws is expressly reserved as an

inalienable right of nations. Moreover, within the limits of a single

nation, sovereignty is itself divided and distributed. Alike in the

United States of America, the Swiss Republic, and the German Empire, the

constituent states as well as the nations are recognized as sovereign,

possessing certain rights or powers safeguarded by the constitution

against all encroachments of the central or federal government. So again

within the state itself, the sovereignty is often no longer concentrated

in a single person or a single body of persons, but is exercised by the

joint action of several organs, as in Great Britain, where the king and

the Houses of Parliament are the joint administrators of the sovereignty

of the state. Sovereignty thus becomes more and more a question of

degree and of adjustment. International lawyers will doubtless insist

that neither treaties nor international laws involve any derogation of

sovereign powers. But when the substantial liberties of action are

curtailed by any binding agreement, the unimpaired sovereignty is an

idle abstraction.

When, therefore, we ask whether it is not possible to extend and

consolidate the agreements between so-called sovereign states into some

form of effective international government, we broach a proposition less

revolutionary in substance than in sound. If all the separate treaties,

conventions, and other agreements, existing now between pairs of nations

for the performance of specific acts and the settlement of differences,

were modified and gathered into the forms of general treaties signed by

all the treaty-making states; if all international laws and usages were

codified and brought under the surveillance of some single

representative court or council,--we should discover that there existed

already the substance of an international government, not indeed

adequate to our needs, but far ampler than we had suspected. In the

Hague conventions and courts, again, and in certain other

intergovernmental instruments, such as the Postal and Telegraphic

Bureaux at Berne, we already possess the nucleus of the general forms

required. We possess already the beginnings alike of the legislative,

judicial, and administrative apparatus of international government. But

it is slight in substance, fragmentary in its application, and

exceedingly imperfect in its sanctions. Moreover, it has just shown

itself quite inadequate to perform the first function of a government,

viz. to keep the public peace.

The task of converting so feeble a structure of government into an

effective instrument of international peace and progress is evidently

one of great magnitude and difficulty. But it is the task which lies

persistently before us, and upon its performance the safety of

civilization itself depends. It is, therefore, well not to exaggerate

its difficulties, but to measure them as closely as we can. This can

best be done by means of a brief survey of the principal lines of

advance which have been proposed. In this country, in America, in

Holland, and elsewhere, the air is thickening with schemes for obtaining

better international relations after the war. All of them have this, I

think, in common, that they concern themselves primarily not with ideal

or practical plans for the general co-operation of nations in advancing

the welfare of the world, but with methods of preventing future wars and

securing relief against the burden of armaments. All agree that some

general formal arrangements between nations must be substituted for 'the

clash of competing ambitions, of groupings and alliances and a

precarious equipoise', and that only by such stable agreement can

disarmament be got and peace rendered secure. All agree that the

instrument of this international government must be a general treaty to

which a number of states must be parties and that the terms of this

treaty must require them to submit all forms of disputes to some pacific

mode of settlement. Nearly all, moreover, accept the distinction drawn

between justiciable issues, relating to the application or

interpretation of laws or to the ascertainment of facts by means of

legal evidence, which are suitable for settlement by a judicial or

arbitral process, and those which, not being capable of such settlement,

are better suited for a looser process of inquiry and conciliation.

But the proposals differ widely, both as regards the scope they assign

to the work of preventing war, and as regards the measures they advocate

for securing the fulfilment of international agreement. They may be

grouped, I think, in three classes on an ascending scale of rigour. The

first class envisages a general treaty, by which the signatory states

shall undertake to submit all differences between them to processes of

arbitration or conciliation conducted by impartial courts or

commissions, and to abstain from all acts of hostility during the

progress of such investigation. This principle has recently found an

important expression in the treaties signed last year by the United

States with Great Britain and France, and other nations. The first

article of these treaties reads as follows: 'The High Contracting

Parties agree that all disputes between them, of every nature

whatsoever, other than disputes the settlement of which is provided for,

and in fact achieved, under existing agreements between the High

Contracting Parties, shall, when diplomatic methods of adjustment have

failed, be referred for investigation and report to a Permanent

International Commission to be constituted in the manner prescribed in

the next succeeding article; and they agree not to declare war or begin

hostilities during such investigation and before the report is

submitted.' The objects of this method of pacific settlement are three:

first, to provide impartial and responsible bodies for a reasonable

inquiry into all disputes; secondly, to secure a 'cooling off' time for

the heated feelings of the contestants; thirdly, to inform the public

opinion of the world and to make effective its moral pressure for a

sound pacific settlement.

The efficacy of any such arrangement evidently depends upon two

conditions, first, the confidence of the signatory states that each and

all will abide by their undertaking, and, secondly, the uncovenanted

condition that they will accept and carry into effect the awards or

recommendations of the arbitral and conciliation commissions. These

proposals, however, furnish no sanctions or guarantees other than those

of conscience and public opinion for the due performance of the treaty

obligations, and make no attempt to bind the parties to an acceptance of

the decision of the commissions. Moreover, regarded as a means of

securing world-peace and disarmament, all such proposals appear

defective in that they make no provision for disputes between one or

more of the signatory states and outside states which are no parties to

the arrangement.

Such considerations have moved many to seek to strengthen the bond of

the alliance, and to make it available for mutual support against

outside aggression. The vital issue here is one of sanctions or the use

of joint force, diplomatic, economic, or military, to compel the

fulfilment of treaty obligations and the execution of the awards. Many

hold that, while most civilized states might be relied upon to carry out

their undertakings, some powerful state--Germany, or Russia, or

Japan--could not be trusted, and that this want of confidence would

oblige all nations to maintain large armaments with all their attendant

risks and burdens. To obviate this difficulty, it is proposed by some

that the signatories shall pledge themselves to take joint action,

diplomatic, economic, or forcible, against any of their members who, in

defiance of the treaty obligations, makes or proposes an armed attack

upon another member. This is the measure of stiffening added by Mr.

Lowes Dickinson in his constructive pamphlet _After the War_: 'The

Powers entering into the arrangement' are to 'pledge themselves to

assist, if necessary, by their national forces, any member of the League

who should be attacked before the dispute provoking the attack has been

submitted to arbitration or conciliation.' A state, however, by Mr.

Dickinson's scheme, is still to remain at liberty to refuse an award,

and after the prescribed period, even to make war for the enforcement of

its demands. Other peace-leaguers go somewhat further, assigning to the

league an obligation to use economic or forcible pressure for securing

the acceptance of the award of the Court of Arbitration, though leaving

the acceptance of the recommendations of the Conciliation Court to the

free option of the parties. This is the proposal made by Mr. Raymond

Unwin, and by the League of Peace.

Now a definite halt at this position is intelligible and defensible.

While binding by strict sanctions the States to submit all disputes to

the pacific machinery that is provided, to await the conclusion of the

arbitral and conciliatory processes, and even to accept the legal awards

of arbitration, it leaves a complete formal freedom to refuse the

recommendations of the Commission of Conciliation. Yet it must be borne

in mind that most of the really dangerous disputes, involving likelihood

of war, are not arbitrable in their nature, and will come before the

Commission of Conciliation. If no provision is made for enforcing the

acceptance of the recommendations of this body, what measure of real

security for peace has been attained? An incendiary torch, like that

kindled last year in the Balkans, may once again put Europe in flames.

The defenders of the position we are now considering have three replies.

They admit that their proposal still leaves open the possibility of war,

but they contend that if a sufficient cooling-off time or 'moratorium'

is secured, the likelihood of an ultimate recourse to war by rejection

of the award will be reduced to a minimum. They urge that no scheme

which can be devised will preclude the possibility of a strong criminal

or reckless State violating its treaty obligations and seeking to

enforce its will by force. Finally they urge that many self-respecting

States would refuse to abandon the ultimate right of declaring war, in

cases where they deemed their vital interests were affected, and that

any invitation to take this step might wreck the possibility of a less

complete but very valuable arrangement.

Now it would be a considerable advance towards world government, if all

or most powerful States would consent to abandon separate alliances, or

subordinate them to a general alliance binding them to submit all

disputes to a process of impartial inquiry before attempting to enforce

their national will by arms. It may be that this is as far as it is

possible to go in the direction of securing world-peace and

international co-operation in the early future. If States will not carry

their co-operation so far as to agree upon united action to put down all

wars between their members, and to take a united stand against all

attacks from outside, it would be necessary to respect their scruples,

and to rely upon the softening influence of the moratorium and informed

public opinion to render a final recourse to arms unlikely among

civilized States. But, in considering the measure of security thus

achieved, we must remember that we must look to the weakest link in the

chain of the alliance, and ask ourselves how far the plan of

conciliation represented in the recent treaties between the United

States and several friendly European nations can be considered equally

secure in dealing with Germany, Russia, or Japan. If our international

arrangement is to dispense with all forcible pressure in the last

resort, and to rely upon purely moral pressure, it seems evident that

the validity of the arrangement depends upon the degree of confidence

which other States will entertain as to the bona fides and pacific

disposition of the least scrupulous of the powerful signatory States.

For if the opinion held of any one or two powerful States is that under

the stimulus of greed or ambition they would be likely, in defiance of

an award or of the public opinion of other States, to enforce their will

upon some weaker neighbour, such an opinion will keep alive so strong a

feeling of insecurity that no considerable reduction of military

preparations will be possible.

In assessing the early value of all proposals for better international

relations, the best practical test is afforded by the question, 'Will

the proposal lead nations to reduce their armaments?' For it will be

admitted that any settlement or international agreement, which leaves

the claims of militarism and navalism upon the vital and financial

resources of the several nations unimpaired, affords little hope of a

pacific future. A return to the era of competing armaments will destroy

the moral strength of any formal international agreements, however

specious. The importance of this consideration has led many to insist

that an explicit agreement for proportional disarmament should take a

prominent place in any settlement. This proposal, however, seems to me

defective in that it presumes in all or some of the nations a

persistence of the motives which have hitherto led them to strengthen

their fighting forces. Now the primary object of such international

arrangements as we are discussing, is to bring about a state of things

in which the past motives to arm will weaken and tend to disappear. If

nations, actuated either by arrogance or greed or fear, continue to

desire to increase their fighting strength, no arrangements for

proportionate disarmament are likely to be effective. On the other hand,

if the basis of a really valid league or federation can be laid,

precluding the most ambitious State from any reasonable hope of

indulging dreams of successful conquest, while relieving timid States

from the apprehensions under which they have lived hitherto, the natural

play of political forces within each State will favour disarmament. An

international arrangement that meets our requirements must be strong

enough to reverse the motives, aggressive and defensive, which in the

past have caused nations to arm. Nations will not pile up armaments if

they believe that they will have no need or opportunity to use them. To

produce this belief in the uselessness of national armies and navies is

therefore a prime object of international policy. The successful

establishment of this belief involves, however, a change of disposition

among national governments amounting to the process known in religious

circles as conversion. They must be induced to forgo that right of war

which according to past statecraft has been the brightest jewel in the

crown of sovereignty.

Thus we are again brought round to our vital issue, that of the amount

and kind of cession of sovereignty required for an effective

International Government. It may be the case that it will be impossible

to induce a sufficient number of the great States to transfer the

ultimate right of waging war to a representative International

Government, or to cede to such a Government the right to legislate on

international relations with power to enforce obedience to these laws.

There are, however, many of us who hold that these powers are essential

to an international arrangement which shall effectively guarantee the

peace of the world. The abandonment of the sovereign right to make war

is essential for the future security of peace. Legislative and executive

powers for an International Government are essential to obtain by

pacific means those changes in the political and economic relations of

peoples which hitherto have only been attainable by war. No merely

statical settlement will suffice. Great new issues of national

controversy or of economic needs will certainly come up afresh for

settlement, and until some stable method of government is established

with power to determine and enforce the equities and the utilities they

represent, recourse to the arbitrament of war will still be likely.

But granting that national government does not represent a final form of

political structure, and that some federal internationalism is now

practicable, is it possible to hope or to expect that by a single

stride, or by a series of rapid strides, the sovereignty of national

states will submit to so much diminution as is involved in the more

advanced scheme of international government? Most historians, statesmen,

and political philosophers will, I think, hold that so large and rapid a

process of development is impracticable, however desirable in theory it

might be. It will be necessary, they insist, to take one step at a time,

to preserve as closely as possible the principle of continuity, and not

to attempt to move further and faster than circumstances and the

necessities of the time compel.

But do circumstances and necessities always compel us to move slowly and

to take one step at a time? Though normal growth is slow and continuous,

modern science tends to lay increasing stress upon discontinuous and

sudden larger variations in the production of organic changes. Biology

distinguishes these mutations by which new species arise from the normal

process of evolution by insensible gradations. There is, as I understand

it, no real breach of continuity, no miraculous creation, but a sudden

removal from a structural position which by slow accumulation of prior

changes had become unstable, or to a new position of stability,

involving a swift readjustment of organic parts. May not similarly

important mutations occur in the evolution of political institutions,

when a similar stress of circumstances makes itself felt? Nay, we may

further ask, whether the special function of man's reasonable will is

not to bring about these changes in the direction of individual and

collective conduct. The power of making new quick and complex

adaptations to new environments is the essential economy of the human

brain. Freedom of thought and of will are continually producing new

judgements and new determinations for action which contain this quality

of sudden mutation. Quick conversions of thought and will are of the

essence of our conscious life. When they carry important consequences to

our conduct they appear to be, and in fact are, breaches of the normal

conduct of our life which proceeds by custom, repetition, and insensible

modifications.

In politics, as in religion, sudden conversions under the stress of

circumstances are not unknown, and they may be genuine and lasting. And

what holds of individual wills and judgements holds also of the

collective mind. That human nature in its fundaments of thought and

feeling, its primary needs, desires and emotions, will not be

appreciably changed even by this shattering experience of war must be

conceded. But what we may call the general state of mind, or the moral

and intellectual atmosphere, will be profoundly affected. This will be

in part the result of the great economic and political disturbances

which are occurring, and which will have undermined and loosened the old

ideas and valuations in relation to such important institutions as

property, the control of industry, the activities of woman, the party

system, the State itself. But more profound still will be the direct

reaction of sorrow and suffering of war, the revelation of the power of

the organized destructiveness and cruelty, and of the inadequacy of

reason, justice, and goodwill as defences of civilization. The very

foundations of organized religion in the hearts of men will be shaken.

The patent failure of the State to perform its primary function of

safeguarding life and property is likely to feed currents of

revolutionism in every country. The sudden changes produced in the

balance of age and of sex by the destruction of so large a proportion

of the young and energetic men of every nation, will affect all

processes of thought and policy. Some of these changes will seem

favourable to conservatism, timidity, and reaction. Everywhere, at the

close of the war, military and official autocracy will be enthroned in

the seats of power, and the spirit of political authority will be

stoking the fires of fevered nationalism which war evokes. But other

forces will be making for bold political experiments. Not only the fear

of restive and impoverished workmen, who have recently acquired the use

of arms and perhaps the taste for risks, but the havoc wrought upon

industry and commerce, and above all the crushing burden of taxation,

will dispose the controlling and possessing classes to seek alternatives

to a return to the era of competing alliances and armaments. Mild and

conservative measures will be obviously unavailing. During the years of

exhaustion following the war, resolute leaders of public opinion will be

setting themselves everywhere to frame schemes of international

relations which shall yield adequate guarantees of peace. For the first

time in history great reading and thinking communities will give their

chief attention to international politics. They will recognize the

urgency of the work of building the society of nations upon a basis of

genuinely representative government. Behind this reasonable process of

constructive thinking, carried on in every country by politically

convinced individuals and groups, will be the powerful support of the

unthinking, suffering masses, motived by no clear conception of causes

or remedies, but by that collective instinct of self-preservation which

impels the herd to avoid destruction and to follow leaders who point the

way to safety.

BOOKS FOR REFERENCE

_The International Crisis in its Ethical and Psychological Aspects_.

Humphrey Milford.

G. Lowes Dickinson, _After the War_. Fifield.

C.E. Hooper, _The Wider Outlook beyond the World-War_. Watts & Co.

F.N. Keen, _The World in Alliance_. Southwood.

Norman Angell, _Prussianism and its Destruction_. Heinemann.

Allison Phillips, _The Confederation of Europe_. Longmans.

_The New Statesman_. Special Supplement. Suggestions for the Prevention

of War.

J.A. Hobson, _Towards International Government_. Allen & Unwin.

XIII

RELIGION AS A UNIFYING INFLUENCE IN WESTERN CIVILIZATION

The argument of these essays has been to prove that even now, in the

greatest armed conflict of the world, the term 'Christendom' is not

inapplicable to Europe. There is a real unity in Western civilization--a

unity due in large measure to the influence of religious faith and

organization. The mediaeval Church gave the Teutonic peoples of Northern

Europe, and the barbarians who overran the Roman Empire, their first

momentous introduction into the great inheritance formed by the uneasy

blending of Christian faith and literature with Greco-Roman

civilization. The spiritual achievements of Greek and Roman, Jew and

Christian have remained the common possessions of the West, the

foundation of what is still Christendom. In so far as it exists

Christendom witnesses to the formative power of a religious faith: in so

far as it remains a dream, we may suspect it demands the renewed impulse

of a faith enlightened and chastened by all the experience of the past.

If, however, we ask, Is there any likelihood that a common religious

faith and life will contribute to raise Western civilization to a yet

higher unity? modern as contrasted with mediaeval history seems at first

sight to demonstrate the futility of any such inquiry.

Since the Reformation, religion has made for division rather than

co-operation. The modern period of European history begins in

disruption. Not only was Europe rent by the conflict of Catholic and

Protestant, but the dream of an international reformed Church which at

one time floated before the mind of Cranmer was dissipated by the

strength of nationalism and the cleavage in the ranks of the reformers

themselves. In our own country, what is euphemistically termed the

Elizabethan Settlement proved to be the source of further dissension,

and reform appeared as the prolific mother of sects and schisms. The

Protestant Churches were organized on national and state lines. They

ceased to retain any international character in their constitution,

while international intercourse became a diminishing influence. The

Church of Rome in the conflict with Gallicanism found herself at grips

with the spirit of nationalism, and to-day the strength of national

feeling within Roman Catholicism hinders the Pope from exerting a moral

authority over sovereign states that would parallel the judicial

functions successfully asserted by Innocent III. No Christian Church

to-day so rises above the national states of Europe, as to control or

even adequately to criticize the claims of those states. The Churches no

longer serve to embody and express an European conscience.

The break-up of a common ecclesiastical organization was not perhaps the

most serious loss of unifying power which religion in the West suffered

at the time of the Reformation. If it be true that the Bible and the

Greek spirit are the great common factors of Western civilization, then

we must recognize that these two great influences tended to fall apart

and even to oppose each other in the sixteenth and seventeenth

centuries. The humanist element in the Reform-movement grew less and

less, while humanism itself became more definitely secular. The European

mind has ever since been conscious of a disturbing division between

religion and culture. A development of religion which should render to

Western civilization services comparable to those rendered by the

mediaeval Church demands not only a heightened international

consciousness among Christians, which shall be able to find organized

expression, but also some fresh synthesis of religion and culture, some

reunion of the spirit of Hellas, the Greek delight in beauty and faith

in reason, with the moral strength and religious insight of Hebrew

prophecy.

Those who are concerned for the future of our civilization will look

eagerly for signs of any such development in the religious life and

thought of our time. Do recent history and present experience discover

any influences at work which may yet restore a unifying power to

religion? Naturally any answer to such a question will be of a

subjective character. The personal equation cannot easily be eliminated;

we may be duped by our hopes or deceived by our fears. In the last

analysis we cannot safely predict the future of religion. We may,

however, take stock of our present situation, and survey its significant

elements, even if our value-judgements as to their relative importance

will inevitably vary.

While religious divisions have not vanished from the West, and indeed

show no prospect of immediate reconciliation, and while the formation of

new sects, of which the Christian Science Movement offers an example,

has not altogether ceased, there has been an admitted decline of the

dogmatic and sectarian tempers, and this decline has opened the way for

knitting up severed friendships. The revolt against the dogmatic

attitude of mind and even against religious dogma itself is widespread.

The sense of loss involved in the isolation of any sect, and the wish to

pass beyond the limits of any denominational tradition, are both

appreciably affecting the religious situation. In England Matthew

Arnold's somewhat unhappy criticism of Dissent expressed a dislike both

of dogma and sectarian narrowness. His profounder contribution to the

better understanding of St. Paul derives its worth precisely from his

elevation of the mystic and the saint in Paul at the expense of the

doctrinal theologian of Calvinist tradition. The wish to be rid of dogma

continues to find vigorous intellectual expression, of which Mr. Lowes

Dickinson's _Religion, a Criticism and a Forecast_, may be taken as an

example. In another direction the Brotherhood Movement and the Adult

School Movement represent the search, if not for an altogether

undogmatic faith, yet at least for a broader basis of association than

is compatible with the insistence on definite statements of belief. Both

would unite in the prayer

God send us men whose aim will be

Not to defend some outworn creed,

and some members of both entertain the suspicion that all creeds are

outworn.

This dislike of dogma may cloak an unwarranted scepticism as to the

possibility of reaching truth in religion, but it is symptomatic of the

longing for larger sympathy and broader fellowship. It is but the

extreme expression of a temper which has reduced the angularity of those

who are very far from surrendering or belittling definite beliefs and

doctrines. The denominationalist who used to have no hesitation in

claiming a monopoly of the truth for his particular Church, now falters

where he firmly stood. We are more ready to recognize our limitations. A

growing number of thoughtful minds appreciate Lord Acton's position when

he wrote to Mary Gladstone: 'I scarcely venture to make points against

the religion of other people, from a curious experience that they have

more to say than I know, and from a sense that it is safer to reserve

censure for one's own which one understands more intimately, having a

share in responsibility and action.' This more chastened mood opens the

way to fresh understandings in the religious world. Whence does this

change in atmosphere originate?

In tracing out the causes of this new temper in religion, a first place

may legitimately be assigned to the growth of the scientific spirit. In

considering science as a source of unity, it is a mistake to dwell

exclusively on the creation of a body of common knowledge. To know the

same thing may do little to unite men. To attack problems in the same

way, and to share the same spirit of free inquiry, the same reverence

for fact, the same resolute endeavour to surmount prejudice, issue in a

far closer bond of union. Science unites men even more closely by its

spirit than by its achievement. The application of scientific method to

the literary and historical study of the Bible, as well as in the

psychological analysis of religious experience, has called into being in

every Church and every land, groups of people who approach the

subject-matter of their faith from the same angle and under the guidance

of the same mental discipline. As a result of the critical movement a

man finds his foes in his own and his friends in his neighbours'

ecclesiastical household. The study of religion renews international

contact and requires international co-operation as much as any other

branch of science. It is possible to detect differing characteristics in

the scholarship of the leading nations, though it may be doubted whether

these are fundamental differences. The volume of critical work published

in Germany is so considerable as to foster the illusion that it

constitutes a self-sufficing world. Thus it is possible for Dr.

Schweitzer in his brilliant survey of research into the life of Jesus,

to represent the whole inquiry as the work of German genius and as the

endeavour of German liberalism to picture Jesus in accordance with its

own half-unconscious bias. Yet even so the cloven-hoof of international

interdependence makes its appearance, for he has to devote one

unsympathetic chapter to Renan, even if he contrives to ignore Seeley's

_Ecce Homo_. But the debt of English scholarship to Germany is

undeniable, and must not be repudiated in war-time. Nor is the debt

entirely on one side. It is worth recalling that Adolph Harnack, perhaps

the greatest living German scholar in the realm of New Testament

criticism and Church History, derived no little inspiration from the

work of Edwin Hatch. At any rate the acceptance of the critical method

associates scholars in all lands, produces International Congresses for

the study of Religions, and fosters personal friendships which even war

will not destroy.

Beyond the internationalism of scholarship, we must remember the

reaction of criticism on popular religious thought. Slowly but surely

the judgements of believers, lay and clerical, are being permeated with

some sense of historical perspective. The mere attempt to recognize the

literary character of the various books of the Bible has effected a

liberation. The variation of the different parts of the Bible in

literary quality, in evidential value for history and in spiritual

significance, are at last being freely recognized outside the study and

the lecture-room. Men are ceasing to regard the Bible as a series of

legal enactments or common-law precedents of equal authority. This is

leading to a revision of inherited traditions, that were based on a view

of the Bible which is no longer tenable. In general this development

favours a more modest assertion of one's own beliefs and a more

charitable consideration of other people's. When we continue to differ,

we differ with a more sympathetic understanding of those from whom we

differ.

It is impossible to trace here in any detail the influence of the

critical movement on traditional beliefs or even on the conception of

authority in religion. It may, however, be worth while to point out that

the psychological study of religion has tended to broaden sympathy by

promoting the frank recognition of the varieties of religious

experience. More allowance is made for temperament, and there is less

anxiety to force all spiritual life into the same mould or scheme. The

sacramentalist and the non-sacramentalist, the mystic and the

intellectualist, the man of feeling and the man of action, those who

experience sudden changes and those who are the subjects of more gradual

growth--each receives his due, and neither need despise the other. There

are dangers associated with our constant reference to temperament. It is

really a condemnation of a Church to say that its position appeals to a

particular temperament, while it is often no real kindness to an

individual to be excused from attempting to enter into a particular

phase of religious life on the ground that he is temperamentally

disqualified. But it is clearly a gain to challenge an over-rigid

standardization of religious life. It is pathetic to hear people protest

that they have no religious experience, when they are simply blinded by

too narrow an interpretation of the term. In so far as the psychology of

religion throws into relief the manifold appeal of religious ideas to

different minds, it helps to create a new sense of unity in difference.

Accompanying the growth of the scientific spirit and in part stimulated

by it, more distinctly religious and philosophical influences are at

work quickening the desire for wider and deeper fellowship. Considering

first the problem within the borders of the Christian Church, I think we

may claim that there is a growing willingness to co-operate and a

revival of the hope of reunion. We may further claim that certain

advances in thought, in the understanding of Christianity itself, have

already been made, and render co-operation if not reunion less Utopian

than before. Of these I would put first the acceptance of the principle

of toleration as an essential element of Christian faith. It has been

suggested by Mr. Norman Angell that the religious wars of the

seventeenth century came to an end through economic exhaustion and

through rationalism. Toleration was accepted as a state-principle on the

strength of a common-sense calculation as to the uselessness of

repression. I am not disposed to ignore the forcefulness of the

argument, 'You will starve or go bankrupt, if you do not cease to

persecute heretics or fight Protestants,' nor would I underestimate the

influence of common-sense in closing the era of religious wars, but I

cannot help thinking that an intense religious conviction of the duty of

toleration and a kind of philosophic liberalism, though entertained by

few, contributed to the triumph of the principle. For the Christian, the

duty has become clearer through the influence of the gospels. Some of

the Churches have begun to take to heart the rebuke of Jesus to the

disciples who wished to call down fire on the Samaritans. Nor is it a

question of a particular incident. A deep respect for individuality is

found to lie at the centre of the gospel. For the Christian, the

attitude of toleration, the reliance on persuasion, on the appeal to

every man's conscience, has become more and more clearly the

indispensable qualification of the ambassador for Christ. As the

acceptance of the principle of toleration is by no means universal in

the Church, its fuller recognition in some quarters may serve at first

to intensify division. It may emphasize, e.g. the continued necessity

for Protestantism, by bringing into clearer light the moral obstacle to

reunion in the Inquisition and disciplinary methods of the Church of

Rome. But in the long run, this development of thought must make for

better understanding and wider fellowship.

Still confining our survey to the Christian Church, there has been a

significant fastening of attention on those parts of the New Testament

in which the idea of Catholicity is fully developed. The epistle to the

Ephesians and the seventeenth chapter of John are beginning to haunt the

Christian consciousness as never before since the days of the

Reformation. It is clear that the present position of the Church, in

which divisions have crystallized into separate organizations, does not

reflect and envisage the ideal that 'they all may be one'. The unity of

the Church appears to be a condition precedent to the success of its

testimony. The scandal and the impotence of division are more acutely

felt. Unless the Church of Christ can heal herself or find healing for

herself, it is little enough which she will be able to contribute to the

healing of the nations.

There is hope then for closer fellowship within the Church, because the

problem is being more and more definitely laid upon the consciences of

her members. A further advance in thought which makes possible a closer

approximation of the severed fragments of the Christian Church, is to be

found in the process of sifting the essential from the accidental in the

Christian tradition. It would be idle to pretend that the process has

reached its conclusion, or that there is any large measure of agreement

as to what constitutes the essence of Christianity. No one indeed

believes any longer in the whole Bible from cover to cover--not even

those who say they do. The fight for the creeds is more strenuous, while

Rome cannot afford to admit that any article of faith which has been

authoritatively defined may be treated as non-essential. But if I may

venture a personal judgement, I cannot see that even the Apostles' creed

will be able to retain its place as a summary of essential Christianity.

The articles which deal with the Descent into Hades and the Resurrection

of the Body, and perhaps those which deal with the Virgin-Birth and

Ascension of our Lord, are dubious, if not false, and cannot fairly be

regarded as indispensable. If I may attempt to forecast, I would say

that the ultimate cleavage is coming not over particular articles of the

Apostles' Creed, but over the value we set on the history and person of

Jesus. The choice will lie between a conception of God for which the

story and character of Jesus are final and determinative, and a vaguer

spiritual theism for which Jesus has no supreme significance. This is

not even the division between Trinitarian and Unitarian. The ultimate

parting of the ways turns on the question whether a man's faith in God

is Christ-centred or not. The significant cleavage of the future will

come between those who believe that Christianity--the belief in the

Fatherhood of God through Jesus Christ--is the final religion, and those

who hold that Christianity in this sense is destined to be swallowed up

in some still broader faith in God for which other revelations, through

nature and through other figures in history, are as significant as the

creed embodied in a tale in Galilee and on Golgotha nineteen centuries

ago. But whatever cleavage may appear hereafter in the religion of the

West, the search for the essence of Christianity, even when it works

through controversy, will contribute to lop off idle dissensions and

reveal fellowship in fundamentals where men had previously supposed

themselves to be hopelessly divided.

It is a little invidious to choose out any particular movements for

special reference, and in so doing I may merely betray personal bias

rather than critical judgement. Yet it is perhaps permissible to point

out that the genesis of the Adult School movement is the natural

development of the Quaker respect for that of God in every man. It

represents the longing for a religious fellowship which does not force

opinion but offers the most favourable conditions for the formation of

independent judgement and the growth of individual faith. How far the

movement realizes its ideal, I forbear to inquire, but its very

existence affords some evidence of the belief in the positive virtue of

toleration as an essential element of the Christian character. Another

powerful factor making for co-operation and better understanding among

Christians may be found in the Student Christian movement. For this

country its value has been enhanced if not created by the opening of the

older Universities to Nonconformists. The future leaders of all our

Churches are now being educated together, and through the Student

Christian movement, they are educating each other and facing together

old controversies and inherited problems at a time when their judgements

are least hampered either by tradition or responsibility. What this may

mean for the religious life of this country, we cannot yet tell, but it

is certain that a new temper will be brought to bear on our divisions.

The men who learn to appreciate one another through this association,

tend to hold together when they pass out of the Universities into their

life-work. There are springing up through the Student movement new

associations or fellowships which conserve and continue the unifying

impetus of the movement itself. Nor is that unifying power confined to

this country. It forms a world-wide federation whose lines of

communication have not been cut even by the present war. In every land,

the Student movement intends to resume international intercourse at the

earliest possible moment. I think it is not simply the bias of a student

in favour of his own class, which makes me regard the Student Christian

movement as one of the most hopeful developments in the religious life

of our age.

Perhaps the influence of this movement itself may be traced in the

growing demand for co-operation in the missionary task of the Church.

This demand has no doubt arisen in part through the changes in the means

of transport and communication which have made the world a smaller

place. Missionary effort is less sporadic than it was. The Churches are

developing a _Weltpolitik_. The exact proportions of the task before

them are now more clearly grasped. The difficulty of overtaking the task

even when united, and the impossibility of discharging it effectively

while divided are also more apparent. But the demand for unity and the

power of co-operation have also been strengthened by the men and women

who have gone abroad under the influence of the Student Volunteer

Missionary Union. High Churchmen and Nonconformist having learnt to work

together on a Christian Student executive do not find it difficult to

co-operate, where opportunity offers, in India or China. A

half-involuntary revolution of sentiment is proceeding under our eyes.

The strength of the new spirit of co-operation was revealed in the

Edinburgh Conference of 1910. That date will stand out as supremely

significant in the growth of a new Catholicism in the West.

We have so far been concerned with influences making for a deeper sense

of unity within the Christian Church. But if we attempt a wider survey,

we shall discover that religious thought and feeling in the West,

whether definitely Christian or no, possess some common characteristics,

bear the impress of convictions which are ever struggling for

expression.

First among these characteristic features of religious thought in the

West I would place faith in the solidarity of mankind. The origin of

this faith probably passes beyond our analysis. I should suspect that

there is a universal impulse stimulating this belief which I should be

inclined to regard as instinctive. Yet it has certainly found fuller

expression in the West than in the civilization of India or China. It is

possible to point to traditions, to philosophies, and to particular

events which have carried this faith in human solidarity deep into the

consciousness of the West. Dr. Prichard, whose scientific labours, we

were told in an earlier lecture, refuted the heresy of polygenism, was

moved to undertake his inquiries by a desire to maintain the accuracy of

the Mosaic tradition as to the common origin of mankind. It is a little

curious to reflect that illusory anthropology, accepted on the authority

of Moses and of Rousseau, the belief in Adam, and the belief in the free

and happy savage, have perhaps done more than scientific research into

primitive culture to maintain our faith in human brotherhood and

equality. We must not, however, attach too much weight to the story of

Adam. The Western sense of the dignity of ordinary manhood owes much

more to the great Stoic conception of humanity, as Mr. Barker reminded

us in his lecture on the Middle Ages. Perhaps even more significant is

the feeling for humanity engendered by regarding all men as the objects

of a common redemption. The poorest of men have been protected from

their fellows where they have been recognized as brothers for whom

Christ died. It would be worth while, if one had the time and the

knowledge, to follow the growth of this sentiment in modern times, to

trace the influence of the doctrine of Natural Rights, of the French

Revolution, of the philosophy of Comte, and of the Evangelical Revival,

upon its development. But whatever the sources and phases of its growth,

the existence and strength of this faith in humanity are undeniable. It

is this faith which compels us to refuse to think of Western

civilization as merely Western. For we believe that the West holds in

trust for mankind, not only a right knowledge of nature, not only a

correct scientific method, but also an essential conception of the worth

and unity of human life. Whatever we are to gain from the East, this is

one of the gifts we bring to the other half of the world.

In speaking of this faith in human solidarity as Western, I am aware

that I am making broad statements which badly need qualification. I am

far from wishing to suggest that there is no such sentiment of humanity

in the great structures of Asiatic civilization, particularly in the

ethical systems of China. But I am persuaded that there is a broad

contrast between West and East in this respect, and that in particular

there is a significant gulf between the West and Hinduism. In the West,

this often inarticulate faith in humanity has acted as a spring of

progress. It inspires our faith in democracy, it acts as a perpetual

challenge to privilege and oppression, as a constant denial of

permanence to divisions of class, nationality, and race. The very

difficulty which the orthodox Hindu experiences in appreciating the

spiritual meaning of democracy--his feeling that the democratic movement

is an irrational blindly selfish confusing of a divine appointed social

order--discloses the existence of this gulf. It is not for nothing that

the religious traditions of Hinduism trace the four castes back to

divine appointment and regard them as coeval with the race. Nor is it

without significance that India rejected Buddhism--a movement which

challenged caste and whose missionary enthusiasm embodied a broader

sentiment of humanity than has yet been woven into Indian civilization.

The influence of the West is now renewing the attack on caste which

Buddha initiated and failed to accomplish.

Without serious injustice we may claim that this faith in human

solidarity has attained clearer expression and exerts greater influence

in the West than in the East. To detail its influence is impossible. It

underlies our hopes of social reform, it refuses to believe in the

subhuman--at least it refuses to believe in the necessity of his

continued existence. It inspires the religious enthusiasm with which men

embrace Socialism as 'a hope for mankind'. It turns the brotherhood of

man into a 'masked word.' As a character in one of St. John Ervine's

novels puts it, 'Brother'ood of man, my boy--that's my motter.

Brother'ood of man! the 'ole world, see! Not a little bit like England!

the 'ole world! all of us! see? No fightin or nothink! Just peace an'

'appiness! Takes your breath away when you think on it. It do,

straight.' The same religious impulse is at work in that disease of

humanitarianism which distresses Chauvinists--the humanitarianism which

Bernhardi denounces in Germany and Mr. Moreton Fullerton deplores in

France. It is reflected in the religious life alike of Russia and of

France. Paul Sabatier's book is largely concerned with following out the

influence of this sense of solidarity in all philosophic and religious

schools and in all classes in France. He notes, for example, the

anti-clericalism of the French peasant, which does not, however, lead

him to embrace the dogmatic negations of Free-thought. The peasant still

clings to the rites of the Church through 'the perhaps unconscious

desire to perform an act of social solidarity, to meet our fellow-men

elsewhere than on the field of material interests and distractions, to

accept the rendezvous which they offer to us and we to them, that we may

draw together and, more than that--unite and unify'. In another quarter

we may witness a new feeling for humanity resulting from the throwing

together of diverse racial elements in the melting-pot of the United

States. Zangwill's play might be cited as a document of this larger

faith, while Jane Addams has sympathetically described its genesis in

her _Newer Ideals of Peace_. Yet another expression of this instinctive

faith may be discovered in the broad human interest of much of our

modern literature and art. For the standard of orthodoxy in this

connexion requires not only that we respond to a grand conception of

humanity as a whole, but that also in particulars we are loyal to the

Terentian tag, 'Homo sum: humani nil a me alienum puto.' The worthier

side of modern realism has done full justice to this motto.

The expressions of this faith in human solidarity are so various, and

its influence so pervading, that it is not surprising to find some

modern thinkers looking to it as the essence of religion. In the

sociological theory of religion, it is suggested that to become aware of

society and its claims constitutes religion itself. A man is converted

when his soul is 'congregationalized'. There is even a tendency to find

the highest element in religious experience in a strong feeling of one's

unity with one's fellows. Such a feeling of endless sympathy and

tolerance is so large a part of love that it is easily mistaken for the

whole. For this starting-point, we might readily imagine a Western faith

in humanity with Walt Whitman as its prophet. But a second

characteristic of Western thought about religion forbids any

idealization of humanity as we know it, and draws us beyond the

indiscriminate catholicism of 'The Open Road'. This characteristic may

be defined as our faith in the worth of activity and in the reality of

progress. We believe in the unity of mankind much more as a task to be

achieved than as an accomplished or given fact to be enjoyed. Nietzsche

says somewhere, 'if the goal of humanity be wanting, do we not lack

humanity itself?' We look for the ultimate unity of mankind in the

pursuit of a common end. The search for such a goal, and the effort to

achieve it, lend worth to history and to present action.

This faith, often blind and unreasoned, is distinctly Western and

modern. We do not derive it even from Greece. It comes to us through

Christianity and modern science. The absence of any such faith in

activity and progress creates the pessimism of the East. Hinduism and

Buddhism are alike in their bankruptcy on this side. The majestic

religious philosophy of India sees in history only an endless and

meaningless repetition. Thucydides and Plato assume the same view, if I

mistake not. As Eucken says, 'Ancient views of life bore throughout an

unhistorical character. The numerous philosophical doctrines of the

procession of endless similar cycles, which continually return to the

starting-point, were only the expression of the conviction that all

movement at bottom brings nothing new and that life offers no prospect

of further improvement.' When Paul discovered that the law was a

schoolmaster to bring men to Christ, he enunciated a profounder

philosophy of history than Plato ever knew.

The very fact that Christianity sprang out of Judaism means that it

enshrines and suggests the idea of progress in the very circumstances of

its origin. But its hold on the idea is something deeper than its

connexion with Judaism. Christianity claims to be the final religion,

but its claim differs in kind from the parallel claim of Mohammedanism.

The world of Islam is held in mortmain by the prophet. It cannot advance

beyond the forms in which he embodied his message without denying the

claims he made for himself. But to the early Christians the synoptic

gospels were the record of all that Jesus _began_ to do and to say,

while the highest development of Christian experience and reflection in

the New Testament, the gospel of John, contemplates the greater things

which the followers of Jesus shall accomplish and the fuller revelations

which shall come as the disciples are able to bear them. The claim of

Christianity to finality rests on its opening up endless possibilities

of spiritual growth to mankind. To some of us it seems that part of this

fuller revelation has come through modern knowledge and discovery. The

faith in progress which Christians have often held falteringly and have

sometimes denied, appears to be confirmed and clarified by all that we

are learning of creative evolution. In any case, the influence of

modern science has tended to produce a faith in progress in the West--a

faith which some regard as essentially different from the Christian view

of the world and history, but which for others seems more and more to

coalesce with that earlier if in some respects cruder Christian

conviction. No doubt when the facts of evolution were held to point to

gradual and continuous development, they favoured a view of steady

progress which was antagonistic to the Christian belief in the sudden

introduction of new elements into history. But the later advances of

evolutionary theory seem more akin to the early Christian attitude. The

element of apocalyptic is seen not to be so alien from nature as had

been at first supposed.

However it arises and whatever form it takes, this faith in progress is

characteristic of the Western outlook, and gives a positive answer to

the question, Is life worth living? That such a faith is strange to

India may be evidenced by the reception accorded to the poet Tagore in

India itself. Mr. Yeats gives us the judgement of a Bengali who said of

Tagore, 'He is the first among our saints who has not refused to live,

but spoken out of Life itself, and that is why we give him our love.'

Now Tagore's genius is thoroughly Indian, but his originality in this

respect is due directly or indirectly to contact with the influence of

the West. It is our belief in action and in the worth of human

achievement which is voiced in his poems and in his philosophy, and the

note is new in India.

Illustrations of this belief in progress and activity are superfluous,

though I may remind you of the prevalence of this temper in the realm of

philosophy as well as of religion at the present time. Perhaps it is

worth recalling that Harnack's great history of dogma ends with this

significant sentence from Zwingli: 'It is not the part of a Christian

man to be for ever talking grandly about dogma, but always to be

attempting big things in fellowship with God.' This represents as well

as anything our Western insistence on the worth of effort. As an

admirable embodiment at once of the faith in humanity and the faith in

progress, the close of Matthew Arnold's poem 'Rugby Chapel' recurs to

the mind. You remember how he conceives the function of great men to lie

in preserving the union of mankind, and how he conceives the life of

mankind as a journey towards a city that hath foundations.

These two characteristics, faith in the oneness of mankind and in the

reality of progress, do add a sense of common aspiration to the

civilization of the West. But of themselves they do not create a very

close unity. Men may believe in human solidarity and in the worth of

effort, and yet be following divergent ideals and divisive enthusiasms.

These beliefs are surrounded by haze and indefiniteness. In themselves

they scarcely constitute a religion that will satisfy, much less one

that can effectively unite us. However fully we share them, they will

not enable us to meet and surmount the present crisis. So far as I can

judge, these vaguer beliefs in humanity and progress are largely the

deposit of Christian faith, and to be rendered effective they need to be

ever reconnected with the central elements in that faith; in particular,

with the Christian judgement on sin and with the Christian devotion to

the historic Jesus.

The sense of sin has received a peculiar impress in the West. We owe it

largely to the religious experience of the Jew and to the seriousness of

the Latin mind. There is a curious coincidence of the seventh chapter of

Romans with a famous quotation from Ovid. The Latin fathers,

particularly Augustine, have developed, not to say over-developed, the

analysis of sin. The concept of sin never had the same significance for

the Greek, and humanism has always resented the severity of the

tradition that comes from Paul through Augustine and Calvin. Mr.

Holmes's stimulating books on education are inspired by a theological

polemic against the doctrine of original sin. He not unnaturally takes

refuge in Buddhism, for Buddhism makes suffering, not sin, the root

trouble of human life. 'The division between the will and the power, the

struggle of the senses against our better judgement, the falling below

the moral ideal--none of all this comes within the horizon of Buddha.'

Now it may freely be confessed that the Calvinist view of sin led to a

distrust of human nature, and incidentally of child-nature, which had a

not altogether healthy reaction on home discipline and school-life. It

is very difficult to maintain the right balance, and the danger of

morbidity through emphasis on sin is undeniable. Yet it seems to me that

the worst errors of Calvinism and Evangelicalism in this regard have

lain in a tendency to theological formalism and a failure to keep in

touch with real life. In consequence, those who most deplore our waning

sense of sin try us by a perverted or antiquated standard, and fasten

often on changes of sentiment and habit which are by no means

necessarily or largely sinful. They are least conscious of the want of a

sense of sin, in modern society, where that want is most serious. But I

do not doubt that our often old-fashioned friends are right on the main

issue. I do not believe that we shall see the progress we desire, unless

we recover a heightened sense of sin. I hold with Lord Acton that our

internal conflicts are due to indifference to sin and not to a religious

idea. We judge ourselves and our race too lightly. We quench our hope of

progress by a leniency and indulgence towards our failings which involve

an underestimate of our powers and responsibilities. The present crisis

will not issue in a hopeful reaction through regret but only through

repentance.

The sense of sin which Christianity has brought to the West is not, I

think, to be found elsewhere. It only appears where men feel they have

an assured knowledge of God's will. It is intense only where men are

conscious of God's presence. The vision of the Holiest reveals to Isaiah

that he is a man of unclean lips. Such a conviction of sin seems to me

inexplicable apart from contact with the living God. Two things are

required to bring home to men a true estimate of their moral failure,

first a right standard of judgement, and, second, a conviction of the

reality of God. Is it too much to say that we are not likely to reach

either, apart from Jesus of Nazareth? 'It is through Jesus and not from

Adam that we know sin.' It is through Him that men discover their moral

ideal and learn not simply to believe that there is a God, but to say, O

God, Thou art my God even for ever and ever.

Surely there is something providential in the resolute endeavour of the

last century to get back to Christ. The whole movement has succeeded in

disentangling the authority of Christ from that either of Moses or of

Paul. We are almost where the disciples were when they saw no man save

Jesus only. Some things in the traditions remain obscure and baffling.

But we see enough to measure afresh our distance from Him. And when the

peoples of Europe are thoroughly weary of the work of destruction, it

may be they will turn to Him again for the secret of rest, and find that

He alone can guide their feet into the way of peace.

BOOKS FOR REFERENCE

Sabatier, _L'Orientation religieuse de la France actuelle_. Armand

Colin: Paris.

W.K.L. Clarke, _Facing the Facts; or, an Englishman's Religion_. Nisbet.

E.C. Moore, _Christian Thought since Kant_. Duckworth's Studies in

Theology.

XIV

THE GROWTH OF HUMANITY

The preceding chapter has recalled attention to the need of deeper

elements of unity in civilization than can be afforded by any

commercial, financial or political ties. Plans for a political union of

nations, common tendencies in social reform, even the essential unity of

commerce and science, will be of no avail, unless there is a basis in

common sentiments of a religious kind, in the consciousness that we are

all members one of another and can only advance and realize ourselves by

the help and sympathy of other members of the same body. It is to this

point then that we will address ourselves in the concluding section of

the subject. The mechanics of unity need both earnest advocacy and

careful study. But beneath and beyond them a motive force has to be

found in ideals and sentiments by which alone in the end the working of

all such mechanical arrangements is rendered possible. Right sentiments

are not a sufficient safeguard, but they are an essential foundation,

and it is of the first importance to realize the things to which the

mass of mankind are most deeply attached, how they are affected towards

one another, the channels through which the tide of feeling most

naturally flows and is extended. Looked at from this point of view the

problem becomes primarily an educational one. We study mankind as we

find it in order to effect an improvement in the direction which we

desire.

We find then in the first place that men as a rule are most strongly

attached to the localities and the people with whom they are first

brought closely in contact. Here in the family is the first true

microcosm, the first community in which the individual is developed by

association with his fellows. On the value of this earliest social

training there are hardly two opinions, and we need not dwell upon it.

It is at the next stage that divergence, both of definite opinion and

still more of emphasis, begins to be apparent. How far is attachment to

country a valuable thing, how far should it be cultivated, what are the

necessary limitations and controlling ideas? As to the reality of the

sentiment every man can examine himself. We know, most of us, with what

intense satisfaction we return to the country, the district, of our

birth and home. The feeling is one of the strongest and deepest things

in us, even if our reason deprecates and disallows the claim. As

Englishmen, perhaps even more as Scotchmen and Irish, we love with an

indefinable and ineradicable passion our sea-coast, our hills and

valleys, the fields and cottages, even the sometimes sordid, nearly

always ill-assorted, congeries of houses which we have thrown together

as towns. We fight among ourselves, we have more religious, political,

and social differences than any other people. Yet when we need

companionship for work or pleasure, at home or abroad, we would sooner

have an Englishman at our side than any other man. Men and

country--'dear souls and dear, dear land'--these are the elements which

make up the real thing called patriotism and which, in spite of all our

curses and all our self-seeking, lead us in millions to work or die for

our country, and will, while life lasts, bring us home at last.

To those who know the local narrowness, the jealousies and pettiness of

much of our own national life, it will seem a primary duty in education

to present the country as an object of education and service, imperfect

indeed and limited by larger ends, but yet supreme over the selfish

interests of trade, town, or individual. This, with all its terrible

losses, the war is doing for us with mighty and irresistible strokes,

and it is a tragic truth that in our present imperfect social state, it

is only a war, hurling us against other great and really co-operating

communities of men, which can make us bear with comparative ease and

cheerfulness the most serious burdens of loss and suffering. We act

instantly as one people in war, we haggle and hesitate about the most

moderate sacrifices to secure an advance in peace. It is this quality in

patriotism, and in war as its stimulus, which largely and naturally

biases our view. But to the ideal of a united Western civilization or a

united mankind it is only one step. We cannot do without patriotism, but

we must immediately proceed beyond it. We cannot reform the troubles and

conflicts of mankind by attempting to root up some of our most tenacious

passions; we progress by mastering and not mutilating our being. We have

to advance beyond the limits of patriotism by wider sympathy, by seeing

analogies, by recognizing the facts of common interests and co-operation

in the world.

But here again, looking at the question from an educational rather than

an abstract point of view, we have to recognize that actual realization

of the life and services of other nations is a slow, difficult, and, at

best, a limited process. It was really easier for the travelling student

of the Middle Ages to enter into the simple and similar life of

universities abroad than for the modern traveller to grasp the complex

relations of a great foreign city or state. We have therefore, in

practice, to select and concentrate. For the modern Englishman a

knowledge of one or two other countries and languages is as much as the

pressure of life will permit, and it is greatly to be regretted that

poverty and hard work limit even this acquisition to very few. A

_Wanderjahr_ for the working-man would do much to cement the unity of

western civilization.

Until the recent acute rivalry with Germany developed, English

sympathies were fairly evenly divided. Your Liberal, as a rule, was a

Frenchman, and your Conservative a German. George Meredith and John

Morley sang the praises of France, Coleridge and Carlyle would have us

learn from Germany. Now for many years the die is cast. We shall face

the settlement and the dangers of the future side by side with France.

This becomes, then, one of the fixed points in our orientation. History

and geography both dictate it. Just as in the building of our fatherland

and its attendant sentiments, the process is not a purely logical one,

but comes to its completion by most irregular courses, with all sorts of

bypaths due to the odd configuration of our nature and the world we live

in, so in widening out from patriotism to humanity we have to follow a

line given, for the most part, by external facts. The French as our

nearest neighbours have always had a special interest for us. They, like

ourselves, have inherited a mixed race and a mixed civilization, partly

Teutonic, partly Celtic, partly Roman, but with elements variously

combined. To us a more predominantly Teutonic stock and an insular

position have given a more independent and unique character, history,

and constitution. France, as being continental and more central, was

also more completely Romanized, and has at all periods of her history

been more in touch with the general stream of thought than ourselves.

Often she has led it, always she has reflected it more quickly and

perfectly. Our traditional rivalry has been a chivalrous one, marked by

many episodes of real admiration and close friendship. To Elizabeth, to

Cromwell, to the Crusaders of the twelfth and the philosophers of the

eighteenth century, France and England seemed as naturally allied as

they are now in repelling a common aggression on their homes and

liberty. But for the future the strongest links will be the two great

common ideals, self-government and individual freedom at home, and the

community of free peoples abroad. In the practical democracy already

realized at home, and in the ideal of a humanity built up of such

self-governing and co-operating states, France and England stand for the

unity of western civilization in the sense in which it has been traced

in this volume, the only sense which makes it worth the sacrifice of

wealth and toil and life.

ERRATUM.

Page 305, line 14 from bottom

_for_ cannot it abolish _read_ it cannot abolish

_Marvin: The Unity of Western Civilization_.

[** Transcriber's Note: The text below was modified to reflect the

ERRATUM above. The original ERRATUM is left in the document for

historical purposes. **]

The unity of which we believe ourselves to be now the champions must

therefore be a real thing based on freedom and realized by conscious

effort; but it must also be truly comprehensive, not exclusive of any

willing co-operator, not aimed against any one but for the whole. It is

not intended in this volume to discuss any burning questions of the day,

and therefore the briefest indications must be given of how the nucleus

of western culture has been formed and how it must reform itself after

the war. France, Germany, and England have been for many years,

collectively far the most important centres of science and social

progress in the world, and it would have been the ideal policy for them

to give a united lead to the rest of the world. The war has altered

that, but it cannot abolish the fundamental facts on which the

civilization of the West is based, science, power over nature, and

social organization. In these the same three countries will still have a

certain primacy, though the position of the United States will be

enormously strengthened. No peace can, of course, be permanent which

contemplates the excommunication of a leading member of the human

family.

Italy in science, philosophy, and literature, is a worthy colleague, and

Russia makes a great stride forward by allying herself with the forces

of progress and European unity.

Now it is clear that there are two distinct lines of approach to our

goal of a united mankind. We may cultivate for ourselves, as an ideal

based on love and reason, the notion of all men as brothers working

together, helping one another even when unknown, strengthening one

another's powers, and gradually advancing towards a higher goal. This,

though not a complete religion for most people, at least partakes of the

nature of religion. The other line is concerned with the practical task

of reconciling actual difficulties, bringing nations together for

various purposes--arbitration, international trade, boards of

conciliation and the like. This is the slow and thorny path, and on

account of its very difficulty is apt to engross the thoughts and energy

of the best brains which devote themselves to the cause. But the first

line, of self-cultivation and the promotion of a favourable spirit among

others, though open to any one and easy of approach, is apt to be

neglected. Such 'mere idealism', like pure benevolence, runs some risk

of being choked by the multiplicity of details and agencies and

organizations which beset the modern world. Humanity, as an idea, was

perhaps more easily apprehended in the days of Turgot and Condorcet than

it is with us when the implements of a united mankind have been

immeasurably augmented and improved. All the greater, then, the need to

re-integrate the notion. Just as in science the dispersive effect of

specialism has led many thinkers to desire another order of minds

specially devoted to generalism, to knitting together the results of the

detailed investigations of others, so in conduct, morals and politics,

it is more and more imperative to recall men's minds, and, in the first

place, our own, to the large governing ideas by which after all our

lesser rules and objects must stand or fall. For who will dispute that

all our alliances and international action and the war itself can only

be ultimately justified if they are seen to serve the highest interests

of mankind as a whole?

A volume, and a very valuable one, might be written on the evolution of

this idea of Humanity in history. We should need in the first place to

analyse, with some care, in what sense it is in each case used. There is

the simple sense of brotherhood such as we know to be deeply felt among

our allies in Russia. Of this there must have been germs from the

earliest appearance of mankind upon earth. It is one of those most

precious things which the development of wealth and class and

distinctive culture has tended to blunt in more elaborate civilizations.

But when we consider that the full conception of Humanity involves a

knowledge of man's evolution, his growth in power, and organization

throughout history, as well as the simple but indispensable sense of

man's brotherhood, we shall see how long a road the Russian moujik--as

well as multitudes of his fellows in all other lands--must travel before

he comes in view of the goal. In the fuller sense of a self-conscious

and developing being, the idea of Humanity first appears with the

Stoics, after the Greeks had put their leaven of abstract thought into

the world. The whole inhabited world as the City of Man was the Stoic

ideal, and it embraced both the idea of the [Greek: polis] which

Platonic and Aristotelian thought had reached in the fourth century

B.C., and the extension to the rest of mankind which was in the air just

before the Christian era. Christianity affected the conception in a

twofold manner. On the one hand it limited it, for the Stoic City of Man

became the City of God, who was to be sought and worshipped in one

prescribed order. On the other hand it deepened it, for the springs of a

common humanity were found to go beneath the superficial facts of a

citizen life into the depths of souls which have identical relations

with eternal things, with sin and suffering and hopes of the future.

It is not till after the outburst of science in the fifteenth and

sixteenth centuries, after that reawakening of the hopes of human powers

which takes our minds back to the Greeks, that we find the conception of

Humanity appearing in something like the form in which we can now

imagine it. It will have been gathered from our chapter on Science and

Philosophy how essential is the growth of organized thought to the

realization of any unity in a progressive world. For the realm of

thought is the only one in which no distinctions of race or nation are

possible, but it must be thought in which agreement is reached. So long

as men can differ, as they still do, on questions of human affairs,

politics, social arrangements, or even archaeological matters where race

or national predominance is involved, so far science does not exert her

unifying sway. But in mathematics, physics, chemistry, all the matters

in which it is impossible for a man to take another view because he is a

Frenchman or a German--here we reach a haven of intellectual peace; and

these calm waters are spreading over the world, in spite of the

tempests.

To return to the educational point from which we started, we can see now

another line of approach to unity in training our own minds and those of

others. In some respects it is a surer way, though less direct. When

studying the political life and history of other nations, even if we do

so deliberately in order to find out what we owe to them, we are bound

to be arrested here and there by things that we do not like, even among

our best friends. The French may seem frivolous or less self-restrained

than ourselves; they have had their sanguinary outbursts of revolution.

Where they have impeded our own movements, as in colonization, we are

the more conscious of their faults. Or we may feel that Americans have

their materialistic vein. And so on. This with our best friends, who, no

doubt, feel the same about us. But on the other line of approach, the

study of the things on which men now agree without question, which they

have built up steadily with co-operating hands, the mental effect is

quite different. The opening vista leads us on, with growing admiration

and confidence in the unbreakable solidarity of mankind. We know that

Newton who completes Galileo, Maxwell who follows Laplace, Helmholtz who

uses the results of Joule, can have no conflicting jealousies. Here

quite obviously and indisputably all are fellow-workers, and before the

greatness of their work the passions of rival domination in material

things, the differences of national taste and habit, the quarrels of the

past or the future, appear contemptible and insignificant.

They are not insignificant, as we know to our cost. But by dwelling on

the things of greater moment and solidity, we train ourselves and others

to reduce the elements of discord to their true proportion and allay the

storm. The progress of a united mankind is thus an ideal, slowly

realizing itself in time. But its realization is quickened and rendered

wider and more beneficent, the more we think of it and believe in it. A

blow comes, such as the present war, and seems to shatter the whole

picture which so many hands have limned and so many eyes admired. Those

who have followed its growth through the ages, know well that no such

blow can finally destroy a living growth or even go very deep in

injuring its features.

It is surely a commonplace that in proportion as western populations,

from statesmen downwards, are animated by sentiments of comradeship

which arise from considerations such as these, the danger of war must

diminish and the possibilities of fruitful common action increase. Yet

there is probably no country in Europe where any deliberate attempt is

made to instruct the people in ideas which would most surely broaden

their sympathies and lay the foundations of peace.

The argument takes us back for a moment to the essay on education. We

left off there at a point where the old unity based on Greco-Roman

culture was seen to be disappearing in a confused mass of new studies,

partly suggested by modern languages and history, still more by the

growth of science and the application of science to the problems of

contemporary life. It may well be that in this conception of humanity,

the co-operation of mankind in a growing structure of thought, we shall

ultimately find the _idée-mère_ under which all the other subordinate

ideas in education may be grouped and inspired. This might take place if

the notion were grasped in no narrow sense, but so broadly that all

human thought, religion, and philosophy, art as well as science, might

find their justification in it.

The advantage of putting the educational issue first has been already

indicated. We can all get to work on it at once for ourselves, and it is

a far more fundamental and, in some respects, easier thing to introduce

a new idea into the minds of others than to alter the boundaries and

political conditions of States. If we once achieved a general atmosphere

of co-operation and goodwill in the world, the practical problems would

be already more than half solved.

Discussion will take place, with more and more vigour as years go on, as

to the various measures which have been described collectively as the

establishment of a World-State. At what point could it be said that a

World-State is in being? How can such a World-State be reconciled with

the independent sovereignty of the several States comprised in it? What

is to be the sanction imposing the decisions of the larger community on

its constituent members? Such are a few of the problems involved in any

advance towards the Kantian ideal of cosmopolitanism. None of them admit

of a single definite answer. They do not belong to questions of pure

theory, and we shall have to solve them slowly and with difficulty,

seizing every favourable opportunity of a slight advance, avoiding grave

obstacles, compromising with every possible friend.

But for the moment we seem likely to be overwhelmed by unchained

passions which are the practical denial of everything that the ideal of

humanity implies. Instead of co-operation we are faced by schemes of

conquest and domination, and the simplest notion of brotherhood is

limited to comradeship in arms for defence or attack. Many will be found

to ridicule the idea that any real progress in unity has ever been made,

or that the world can ever be envisaged except as an irksome enclosure

of rival armed forces thirsting for the fray. But to those who are not

prepared to accept this as the last word in human association the

argument of this volume may have some weight. It will lead those who

follow it to a quiet but well-grounded belief that the forces tending to

unity in the world are different in quality, incomparably greater in

scope than those which make for disruption. Discord is explosive and

temporary, harmony rises slowly but dominates the final chord.

Like the great common purposes of science, the common tendencies of

human action have in recent years suffered some eclipse through the

bustle of our activity and the multiplicity of its detail. The colours,

too, of a conflict of any kind are so much more vivid and arresting than

the quiet and monotonous tones of a long piece of harmonious and

co-operative work. The labours of such a bureau of international effort

as is described in Chapter X appear to our pressmen and publicists so

little interesting that they are practically ignored, and the results of

scientific congresses, being of a highly specialized kind, are left

perforce to those who can understand them. Yet it is precisely in these

things, if our diagnosis is correct, that the most characteristic

features of the age are to be found. For in them and in similar

movements we see united the two fundamental human traits from which we

started, reason and sympathy: reason winning triumphs over nature,

sympathy realizing itself at last in a community of men devoting their

powers to mutual aid. 'Idle dreams', it will be said, as we hurl more

and more millions of our best youth to destruction by the most highly

developed resources of science. Yes, but the same nations were only

yesterday celebrating the services of Pasteur, Virchow, and Lister to a

common humanity, and will do so again to-morrow or the day after.

It is in truth one of the most poignant features of the tragedy in which

we are manfully and rightly bearing our part, that the community-sense

in the world had never been so highly developed, or found so many

channels in which to diffuse itself, as just at the moment when the blow

fell. The socialist movements in all civilized countries have always had

this as a leading motive; comrades and poor among themselves, these men

have always been eager to stretch out a hand to those of like mind

abroad. And in the last chapter we saw how among Christian communities

throughout the world there has been in recent years a growing

approximation. Neither the cause nor the effects of such forces can die

away. They will reappear when the storm has passed and rebuild the

wreck.

One large aspect of the united action of the western world has received

no notice in this volume, though it might very well be the subject of a

detailed study in itself. This is the relation of the more advanced and

powerful nations of the West towards the weaker and less progressive

peoples. It might, indeed, be treated as the touchstone of our

civilization, just as the education of the young is a good, perhaps the

best, test of the advancement of any single people. For it involves some

joint action of the western nations; it shows how far they are

disinterested and how far skilful in their treatment of the less

advanced.

The record is not a good one, but it confirms, on the whole, the view we

have suggested that a growth of the sense and conception of humanity may

be traced from the time when modern science was born in the sixteenth

century. The Middle Ages hardly furnish us with any examples of the

action of Christendom towards heathen and weaker people until the

Crusades, in which, with rare examples of personal chivalry, the earlier

attitude was one of contempt and hatred of the unbeliever. In the

conquest of the New World, which was to some of its earliest conquerors

a new Crusade, there is the same general savagery marked by rare cases

of Christian kindness, such as Las Casas showed. But after the

Reformation, when the Church itself had been purified and more human

tolerance and care and interest in life prevailed, we find the

enlightened Jesuit missions to China and Paraguay, St. Francis Xavier's

work in India, and the Quaker dealings with Red Indians in the New

World. From the middle of the seventeenth century, slavery, which had

fallen into abeyance during the Middle Ages as a domestic institution,

began to be denounced as a trade. We are on the threshold of the great

humanitarian outburst of the eighteenth century. It is impossible to

believe that this growth of human feeling in dealing with other men is

unconnected with that new gospel of human power which Bacon and

Descartes had just proclaimed. Except for the occasional superman, the

greater the powers a man possesses and the higher he rates human

capacity at its best, the more careful he is to cherish and develop the

germs of humanity in the young and weak.

This was undoubtedly the case with the 'philosophers' of the eighteenth

century; it is equally true of the nineteenth century, an age wonderful

alike for its unexampled development of science and for the rise of

activities, national and international, for the betterment of the race.

Jointly the western nations have in this period put down the slave

trade, and in the Brussels Conference of 1890 we see the highest point

yet reached by the united humanity of the West expressed by the

assembled states in regard to backward people. The point therefore is a

notable one, and Englishmen will be glad to remember that it was Lord

Salisbury, then Foreign Secretary, who took the first step. The previous

Conference at Berlin, in 1884, had secured freedom of trade for the

basins of the Congo and the Niger, and in 1889 Lord Salisbury, through

the Belgian Government, called the Powers together to consider questions

relating to the slave trade in Africa. For Africa, home of the black

race, last exploited of the continents, discovered after the white man

had discovered science, was pre-eminently the part of the world where

the co-operation of leading peoples in civilizing backward races was

most needed and most to be expected. The Congo, the Herreros, Morocco,

Tripoli, Omdurman, offer a blood-stained record in reply.

But the general act of the Brussels Conference is clear and adequate as

to what the purpose of the Powers should be. "To put an end to the

crimes and devastations engendered by the traffic in African slaves, to

protect effectively the aboriginal populations of Africa, to ensure for

that vast continent the benefits of peace and civilization", is in fact

the whole duty of a united western civilization when dealing with the

less civilized. The results achieved may well seem small compared with

the magnitude of the purpose, but those who know most about it do not

despise them. Slave-raiding and tribal wars have been diminished and

some check put on importing arms and spirits.

It is not a topic on which it is easy to keep a cheerful mind. Some

Putumayo will constantly occur to remind us of the fierce brutality of

strength unsupervised and unrestrained. We compare the actual

performance of mankind when free to try their best or wreak their worst

on comparatively defenceless folk, with the noble rivalry which we can

imagine between the nations of the world in leading the weaker people to

develop their resources and themselves, on paths which may tend to the

greatest prosperity and happiness of all, advanced and backward

together: and the comparison leaves us sick at heart. But a sober

judgement will not deny that even here advance is being made. The ideal

has been admitted. The rights of smaller States are being made, as in

the present conflict, the subject of the concern of their strongest

neighbours. Steps are being taken all over the world to preserve and

ameliorate the remnants of primitive people. Horrors when revealed are

more strongly reprobated. Missionaries are pursuing their labours with

more enlightenment and zeal, and in wider spheres. In spite of cynics

and doubters, it is true in this as in the other activities of a united

mankind, _e pur si muove_. And as the work moves on it is seen to

involve the same guiding thoughts that inspire us in the case of the

young and feeble at home--pity for their weakness, love for their

humanity, hope for the future.

BOOKS FOR REFERENCE

_Kant's Perpetual Peace_ (new edition just published).

_International Policy_. Chapman & Hall.

Fayle, _The Great Settlement_. Murray.

_The Leadership of the World_. (Oxford pamphlet.)