--it seems to follow that, if this world is governed by
benevolence, it must be a different sort of benevolence from
that of John Howard.
And I think, if you look closely into the social theory based on the
naturalistic, or let us say the purely economic, view of life, you
will find that beneath its mask of sentimental sympathy the reality
is a face of greed and animal rapacity. According to this theory,
progress is a result of discontent. Because men are discontented
with their present state they push out for something better. And no
doubt in a half-way that is true. But when discontent is associated
with material standards alone, and purchasable comfort, and worldly
opportunity, or, to put the matter in its most favorable light, when
success and the goal of achievement are measured by the pleasures,
however you may refine them, and by the pride of a few brief years
of physical existence, beyond which there is nothing, and when for
failure in these no compensation is held out, no supernatural hope,
no refuge of peace, here and now, such as the world cannot give--when
the driving force of progress is so presented, what is there in the
nature of things to offer in the long run any effective resistance
to the innate desire of power after power that ends only with death?
What equal counterpoise will you set against that instinct of
_pleonexia_ which reaches out for ever more and more?
Philosophy is full of mockeries. These honorable gentlemen who
are teaching a pure naturalism in the schoolroom, who denounce
the content of religion and other-worldly philosophy as a base
acquiescence, who in the restlessness of an itching egotism go out as
missionaries to the people of the far Orient, may deceive themselves
and may try to deceive us; their language may be sleek with the
sentiment of brotherly love, but strip off its disguise, and the
social theory they are proclaiming will leer forth in its true face
as an incentive not to progress but to the anarchy of the jungle.
These men are distilling into society a discontent that knows no
satisfaction, that must engender only bitterness of disappointment
and mutual distrust and hatred, and that in the end, if not checked
by other motives, will bring about internecine warfare and a suicide
of civilization of which the hideous years through which we have just
passed are a warning admonition. And these teachers have the field
to-day. We applaud them for their pretensions of philanthropy, even
when we doubt the utility of their philosophy. We are browbeaten
by the volume of their noisy propaganda. We are mealy-mouthed and
afraid to speak out in open denunciation, even when secretly we burn
with indignation at the baseness of their words. We sulk in silence,
as if we had nothing to say. Meanwhile they have had the field to
themselves, and the world every day is more filled with fear and
disquiet.
There is no danger that by opposing other views of life to this
insolent naturalism we shall put an end to that normal discontent
with material conditions which may be a necessary incentive to
natural and social progress. Certainly, however it may have been
at other times, we need apprehend no such danger now. In a world
manifestly distracted and blown from its moorings, in a society
seething already with envy, it is not the part of wisdom to sow
broadcast words that are calculated to inflame discontent into
passionate hatred or sullen despair. That way leads to madness. What
we need is rather a clearer perception of, and a firmer insistence
on, those immaterial values which it is within the power of every
man to make his own, whatever may be the seeming injustice of his
material condition. We need rather to emphasize the simple truth
that poverty is not the only, or indeed the worst, of mortal evils,
that happiness does not consist mainly in the things which money can
buy, that the man of narrow means may enrich himself with treasures
which only he can give to himself, and which no one can take from
him, that the purest satisfaction is in the sense of work honestly
done and duties well met, and a mind and conscience at ease with
itself. Even to the very poor, if such must be, religion may offer
manifold compensations. "Blessed be ye poor," it was said, "for yours
is the kingdom of God." Shall we say that these words were spoken in
ignorance or jest or mockery? I think not. We for the moment may have
lost the key to their meaning, we may have listened to teachers who
turn them into ridicule; nevertheless, they are true words, rich with
a gift of solid content.
But it is not the less fortunate and the poor alone, or I might even
say chiefly, who need to hear the precepts which the new philosophy
is drowning with its clamorous tongue. If the home of theoretical
materialism is in the lecture-rooms of philosophy, the home of
practical materialism is in the offices of Wall Street. If there is
any truth that needs to be reiterated to-day, it is the simple truth
that a man may heap up riches and increase his power indefinitely,
and command all the visible sources of pleasure, and still be a poor,
mean creature, a mere beggar in the veritable joys and honors of
life. He that has many possessions needs be a strong man to escape
their strangling grip. They wrap him about, they color all his
thinking, they hang like a heavy curtain, as it were, between himself
and his soul. You have heard the saying: "It is easier for a camel
to go through a needle's eye than for a rich man to enter into the
kingdom of God"; that is a hard lesson, but in reality it is only an
Oriental way of expressing what Plato had taught long before in the
Academy: "Neither when one has his heart set on gaining money, save
by fair means, or even is at ease with such gaining, does he then
bestow gifts of honor upon his soul; rather, he degrades it thereby,
selling what is precious and fair in the soul at the price of a
little gold, whereas all the gold on the earth and under the earth
is not equal in value to virtue." That is the invariable lesson of
religion and the idealistic philosophy. Certainly, it is a truth we
shall not recover by listening to the words of the new naturalism. It
is not by a philosophy that preaches social discontent as the means
of progress, and measures content by material values, however it may
disguise the banality of its aims in a sentimental philanthropy--it
is not by such a philosophy that justice and mercy and humility shall
be imposed upon the natural pride of those who have the larger share
of this world's goods.
It is true that religion, or religious philosophy, as its friends and
foes have seen from the beginning, is an alleviator of discontent and
a brake upon innovation; but the content it offers from the world
of immaterial values is a necessary counterpoise to the mutual envy
and materialistic greed of the natural man, and the conservatism it
inculcates is not the ally of sullen and predatory privilege but of
orderly amelioration.
THE TEACHINGS OF JESUS AS FACTORS IN INTERNATIONAL POLITICS, WITH
ESPECIAL REFERENCE TO FAR-EASTERN PROBLEMS