Society suffers from a profound feeling of unhappiness, not so much
when it is in material poverty as when its members are deprived of a
large part of their humanity. This unhappiness goes on smouldering in
the subconscious mind of the community till its life is reduced to
ashes or a sudden combustion is produced. The repressed personality of
man generates an inflammable moral gas deadly in its explosive force.
We have seen in the late war, and also in some of the still more
recent events of history, how human individuals freed from moral and
spiritual bonds find a boisterous joy in a debauchery of destruction.
There is generated a disinterested passion of ravage. Through such
catastrophe we can realise what formidable forces of annihilation are
kept in check in our communities by bonds of social ideas; nay, made
into multitudinous manifestations of beauty and fruitfulness. Thus we
know that evils are, like meteors, stray fragments of life, which need
the attraction of some great ideal in order to be assimilated with the
wholesomeness of creation. The evil forces are literally outlaws;
they only need the control and cadence of spiritual laws to change
them into good. The true goodness is not the negation of badness, it
is in the mastery of it. Goodness is the miracle which turns the
tumult of chaos into a dance of beauty.
In modern society the ideal of wholeness has lost its force. Therefore
its different sections have become detached and resolved into their
elemental character of forces. Labour is a force; so also is Capital;
so are the Government and the People; so are Man and Woman. It is said
that when the forces lying latent in even a handful of dust are
liberated from their bond of unity, they can lift the buildings of a
whole neighbourhood to the height of a mountain. Such disfranchised
forces, irresponsible free-booters, may be useful to us for certain
purposes, but human habitations standing secure on their foundations
are better for us. To own the secret of utilising these forces is a
proud fact for us, but the power of self-control and the
self-dedication of love are truer subjects for the exultation of
mankind. The genii of the Arabian Nights may have in their magic their
lure and fascination for us. But the consciousness of God is of
another order, infinitely more precious in imparting to our minds
ideas of the spiritual power of creation. Yet these genii are abroad
everywhere; and even now, after the late war, their devotees are
getting ready to play further tricks upon humanity by suddenly
spiriting it away to some hill-top of desolation.