The terribly efficient method of repressing personality in the
individuals and the races who have failed to resist it has, in the
present scientific age, spread all over the world; and in consequence
there have appeared signs of a universal disruption which seems not
far off. Faced with the possibility of such a disaster, which is sure
to affect the successful peoples of the world in their intemperate
prosperity, the great Powers of the West are seeking peace, not by
curbing their greed, or by giving up the exclusive advantages which
they have unjustly acquired, but by concentrating their forces for
mutual security.
But can powers find their equilibrium in themselves? Power has to be
made secure not only against power, but also against weakness; for
there lies the peril of its losing balance. The weak are as great a
danger for the strong as quicksands for an elephant. They do not
assist progress because they do not resist; they only drag down. The
people who grow accustomed to wield absolute power over others are apt
to forget that by so doing they generate an unseen force which some
day rends that power into pieces. The dumb fury of the downtrodden
finds its awful support from the universal law of moral balance. The
air which is so thin and unsubstantial gives birth to storms that
nothing can resist. This has been proved in history over and over
again, and stormy forces arising from the revolt of insulted humanity
are openly gathering in the air at the present time.
Yet in the psychology of the strong the lesson is despised and no
count taken of the terribleness of the weak. This is the latent
ignorance that, like an unsuspected worm, burrows under the bulk of
the prosperous. Have we never read of the castle of power, securely
buttressed on all sides, in a moment dissolving in air at the
explosion caused by the weak and outraged besiegers? Politicians
calculate upon the number of mailed hands that are kept on the
sword-hilts: they do not possess the third eye to see the great
invisible hand that clasps in silence the hand of the helpless and
waits its time. The strong form their league by a combination of
powers, driving the weak to form their own league alone with their
God. I know I am crying in the wilderness when I raise the voice of
warning; and while the West is busy with its organisation of a
machine-made peace, it will still continue to nourish by its
iniquities the underground forces of earthquake in the Eastern
Continent. The West seems unconscious that Science, by providing it
with more and more power, is tempting it to suicide and encouraging it
to accept the challenge of the disarmed; it does not know that the
challenge comes from a higher source.
Two prophecies about the world's salvation are cherished in the hearts
of the two great religions of the world. They represent the highest
expectation of man, thereby indicating his faith in a truth which he
instinctively considers as ultimate--the truth of love. These
prophecies have not for their vision the fettering of the world and
reducing it to tameness by means of a close-linked power forged in the
factory of a political steel trust. One of the religions has for its
meditation the image of the Buddha who is to come, Maitreya, the
Buddha of love; and he is to bring peace. The other religion waits for
the coming of Christ. For Christ preached peace when he preached love,
when he preached the oneness of the Father with the brothers who are
many. And this was the truth of peace. Christ never held that peace
was the best policy. For policy is not truth. The calculation of
self-interest can never successfully fight the irrational force of
passion--the passion which is perversion of love, and which can only
be set right by the truth of love. So long as the powers build a
league on the foundation of their desire for safety, secure enjoyment
of gains, consolidation of past injustice, and putting off the
reparation of wrongs, while their fingers still wriggle for greed and
reek of blood, rifts will appear in their union; and in future their
conflicts will take greater force and magnitude. It is political and
commercial egoism which is the evil harbinger of war. By different
combinations it changes its shape and dimensions, but not its nature.
This egoism is still held sacred, and made a religion; and such a
religion, by a mere change of temple, and by new committees of
priests, will never save mankind. We must know that, as, through
science and commerce, the realisation of the unity of the material
world gives us power, so the realisation of the great spiritual Unity
of Man alone can give us peace.