one's backbone. The possession of plenty of backbone is generally held
to be a decided advantage. Emerson may have had special and
transcendental prejudices against strongly fashioned vertebrae.
The freaks of nationalism are as remarkable as the freaks of
internationalism. There is a constant interplay between the two, and the
ascendancy of the one or the other often seems strangely capricious.
Nationalism is weak where it should be strong, and rigid where common
sense would make it fluid. The painful position of most royal families
in time of war is an example of the readiness with which nations submit
to foreign rulership and influence. Thrones, one would think, should
represent the purely national spirit in its more intimate and sacred
aspect. Yet the abundance of crowned rulers, past and present, attached
by solemn selection or marriage, who are not by blood and tradition of
the people, shows the fallacy of this supposition. Napoleon was an
Italian who learnt French with some difficulty, and who was at first
hostile to the French and somewhat contemptuous of their ways. Marechal
Bernadotte--French to his finger-tips--became King of Sweden. Pierre
Loti, interviewing the charming and beloved Queen of the Belgians during
the present war, remembers that the martyred lady before him is a
Bavarian princess. The delicate and painful subject is mentioned. "It is
at an end," says the Queen; "between _them_ and me has fallen a curtain
of iron which will never again be lifted."
Prominent statesmen, who, one would also think, should be bone of the
bone of the nations for which they speak, have often been of alien birth
or of mixed racial composition. Bismarck was of Slav origin;
Beaconsfield was a Jew. The most picturesque example of such
irregularities of the national consciousness is perhaps the presence of
General Smuts in the War Cabinet. Once the alert and brave enemy in arms
against this country, he is now its trusted guide, philosopher, and
friend.
Writers whom posterity classes as typical representatives of the
national genius have often been of mixed racial strain, as were
Tennyson, Browning, Ibsen, Kant, Victor Hugo, Dumas, Longfellow, and
Whitman. The "bastards" of internationalism, so offensive to some
nationalist fire-eaters, are not produced by the simple and natural
processes by which races are mixed. They are self-created, their minds
are set on gathering the varied fruit of all the nations. Genealogically
they may be as uninteresting as the snail in the cabbage-patch,
spiritually they are provocative and arresting. Romain Rolland and
George Brandes challenge and outrage the champions of nationalism by the
very texture of their minds. Joseph Conrad, a Pole, stands side by side
with Thomas Hardy in his mastership of contemporary English fiction.
Conrad in his consummate interpretation of sea-life is, if anything,
more English than Hardy.
The future of internationalism is possibly fraught with greater wonders
than has been the past. The path will certainly not be laid out with the
smoothness which some enthusiasts imagine. The idea and the hope are old
as the hills. Cicero proclaimed a universal society of the human race.
Seneca declared the world to be his country. Epictetus and Marcus
Aurelius declared themselves citizens of the world. St. Paul explained
that there is neither Jew nor Greek. John Wesley looked upon the world
as his parish. "The world is my country, mankind are my brothers," said
Thomas Paine. "The whole world being only one city," said Goldsmith, "I
do not care in which of the streets I happen to reside."
Such complete impartiality is a little too detached for the make-up of
present humanity. It may suit an etherialized and mobile race of the
future. We are dependent on conditions of space and surroundings, we are
the creatures of association and love. The master-problem in
internationalism is the elimination of the forces of prejudice and
ignorance that foster hostility, and the preservation of the precious
characteristics which are the riches of the Soul of the World.
RELIGION IN TRANSITION
The general destructiveness of war is patent to everybody. The
destruction of life, of property, of trade, strikes the most superficial
observer as inevitable consequences of a state of war. At the outbreak
of hostilities most of us foresaw that the uprooting would not stop
short at the sacrifices of livelihood and occupation which were demanded
by military necessities. We expected a sweeping revision of our habits,
our prejudices, our conventions. We have got infinitely more than we
expected. Not only have we made acquaintance with the State--the State
as a relentless master of human fate and service; not only have we
learnt that individualism--philosophic or commercial--is borne like a
bubble on the waters of national tribulation and counts for nothing in
the mass of collective effort demanded from us. Industry, commerce, art,
learning, science, energy, enthusiasm, every gift and power within the
range of human capacity, is requisitioned for the efficient pursuit of
war. Liberty of action, of speech, ancient rights which were won by
centuries of struggle, are taken away because we are more useful and
less troublesome without them. We are made parts of the machinery of
State, and we have to be drilled and welded into the proper shape.
The changes imposed on us from without are thorough and have been
surprisingly many, but the changes taking place within our own souls are
deeper and likely to surprise us more in the end. Everything has been
found untenable. Theories and systems are shaken by the great upheaval.
Civilization has become a question instead of a postulate. All human
thought is undergoing a process of retrospection, drawn by a desire to
find a new and stable beginning. Take down Spencer and Comte or Lecky
and Kidd from your bookshelf and try to settle down to a contented
contemplation of the sociological tenets of the past. You will fail, for
you will feel that this is a new world with burning problems and
compelling facts which cannot be covered by the old systems. Take down
the old books of religious comfort--Thomas a Kempis, or Bunyan, or St.
Augustine, and you feel their remoteness from the new agonies of soul.
But it is not only the old books of piety which fail to satisfy the
hunger of to-day; the mass of devotional writings, especially produced
to meet the needs of the war, are painfully inadequate. Rightly or
wrongly, there is a sense of the inadequacy of the thought of the past
to meet the need of the present. It invades every recess of the mind, it
interposes itself in science as well as in religion; it leaves us no
peace.
There can be no doubt about it: we are blighted by the great
destructiveness. All attempts to keep the war from our thoughts are
destined to fail. Without being struck in an air-raid or torpedoed on
the high seas, there is a sufficiency of destructive force in the daily
events and in our accommodation to live on for them or in spite of them.
Hence the universal demand for reconstruction. It is a blessed word: we
cling to it, we live by it. So many buildings have tumbled about our
ears, so many foundations were nothing but running sand; a whole galaxy
of truths turned out to be lies. Now we must prepare that which is solid
and indestructible. Perhaps some great and wise spirit brooding over our
world, learned with the experience of aeons, of human attempts and
mistakes, smiles at the deadly earnestness of the intention to
reconstruct. I do not care. We have reached a pass when all life and all
hope are centred in this faith: the faith that we can make anew and good
and beautiful the distorted web of human existence.
The war has not taught us what civilization is. But it has taught us
what it is not. We know now that it is not mechanical ingenuity or
clever inventions or commercialism carried to its utmost perfection.
Civilization is not railways or telephones or vast cities or material
prosperity. A satisfactory definition of civilization is well-nigh
impossible. The past has born a bewildering number of different types,
and it is a matter of personal taste where we place the line of
demarcation between barbarism and culture. Our Christian civilization is
passing through catastrophic changes, and it is again a matter of
opinion whether it is in its death-throes or in the pangs of a new
birth. But we feel vaguely, yet insistently, that civilization is a
state of the soul; it is the gentle life towards which we aspire. It is
based on the gradual substitution of moral and spiritual forces for
simple brute force. What is the exact relation of religion to
civilization? The answer has been as variable as the purpose of the
questioners. To some religion is civilization, to others it is merely a
temporary weakness of the human mind, to which it will always be prone
from fear of the unknown and the wish to live for ever. Comparative
studies of the great religions of the world, their past and present
forms, do not support the view that civilization is identical with
religion. Religions have on many occasions ranged themselves on the side
of brute force to the suppression of gentleness and sympathetic
tolerance. It is really all a question of the meaning which we attach to
the word "religion." Do we mean the Church, set forms of worship and
ceremonial, or do we mean the human craving for spiritual truth with the
consequent strife to reach certainty, and, in certainty, peace of soul?
There is a gulf between the two conceptions of religion.
Religion is questioned as never heretofore. The great destructiveness is
passing over the old beliefs. In the clamour for reconstruction we must
clearly distinguish between the wider religious life and mere
denominationalism.
The vast host of rationalists are busy proclaiming the downfall of
religion. The war serves them as material for demonstration. The failure
of Christianity to avert bloodshed, and the horrors under which
Christendom is now submerged, are naturally used as a proof that the
ethic of Christianity is lamentably feeble. The difference between
theoretical Christianity and the social practices which the Church
condones is held to be damning evidence of hypocrisy and falsehood. The
quarrels between sects and divisions, the petty subjects which rouse the
ire of the orthodox mind, the persistent quibbling over insignificant
details of faith and service, have strained rationalistic patience to
the breaking-point. The Church has been found fiddling whilst Rome
burns.
Our little rationalists are right, perfectly right, when they point to
the shortcomings of the Churches. But they confuse the form with the
substance, the frailties of human nature with the irrepressible desire
to find God. They have their small idols and their conventional forms of
worship, which, if put to the great social test, would prove as
ineffective in building the City of Light as the churchgoing of the
past. Their prime deity is Science. We are on the point of developing
intelligence, they tell us; we at last see through the silly theories
about God and the Universe, which deluded the childish and the ignorant
of past ages. Assisted by the sound of guns and the sight of general
misery, we must at last realize that there is no God to interfere in the
troubles of man, and that Churches and creeds are hopeless failures.
Science, we are assured, will take the place of religion.
I am a patient and sympathetic student of the propagandist literature of
rationalism. I have the greatest admiration for the moral and social
idealism which is advocated. I agree that the atheological moral idea is
superior to the mere performance of religious ceremonial. But I cannot
admire the reasoning or the intelligence of those who use a smattering
of science as evidence of the decay of religion. There is something
almost comical in the solemnity with which they contrast the
commonplaces of scientific observation with the vast mysteries of
religion, to the detriment of the latter. "These marvellous researches
of the human eye," writes Sir Harry Johnston in a collection of articles
entitled _A Generation of Religious Progress_, presumably intended to
portray our rationalistic progress, "so far, though they have sounded
the depths of the Universe, have found no God." He is speaking of
astronomical investigation, and he has just emphasized the reliability
of our five senses.
One wonders whether he is simply echoing the well-known phrase of
Laplace, or whether he seriously believes that the non-existence of God
is proved by the inability of the human eye to see Him! Nothing could be
more unscientific--one hates using that hackneyed expression, but there
is no other--than this confidence in the reliability of the senses. It
reminds one of the young man who said he could not believe in God
because he had not seen Him. He could only believe in things which he
could see. "Do you believe you have a brain?" some one asked. The young
man did. "And have you seen it?" was the next question.
I shall be told that though the young man could not--fortunately--see
his own brain, others might by opening his skull, and that no dissection
of brains or examination of stars has ever shown us God. This is exactly
the point where our easygoing rationalist misses the mark. Brains and
stars do show God to those who have developed the faculties wherewith
to perceive Him.
The senses are, after all, very fallible and very variable. A little
opium, a little alcohol, a blow on the head, or some great emotion will
modify their judgment to an incredible degree. Sir Harry Johnston may
not be very representative as an exponent of scientific conclusions
about the existence of God, but he is interesting and typical of much of
the rough-and-ready opposition to formulated religion. I quote the
upshot of his admiration for the feats of the human eye:
Religion, as the conception of a heavenly being, or heavenly
beings, hovering about the earth and concerning themselves
greatly with the affairs of man, has been abolished for all
thoughtful and educated people by the discoveries of science.
Perhaps, however, I should not say "abolished" as being too
final; I should prefer to say that such theories have been put
entirely in the background as unimportant Compared with the awful
problems which affect the welfare and progress of humanity on
this planet.
The honesty of the conviction is not marred by the fact that it is
entirely mistaken. "God is infinitely more remote now (in 1916) from the
thoughts of the educated few than he was prior to 1859," writes Sir
Harry. This statement is not true. Speculation about God, the meaning
of life, the social import of Christianity, was never more rife amongst
educated people. Here I must check myself: what does "educated" mean? To
be able to read and write, and say "Hear, hear" at public meetings? To
have a pretty idea of the positions of Huxley and Haeckel by which to
confound the poor old Bible? If by education we mean the exposition of
some special branch of the physical sciences, the statement may be true.
If we mean men and women with a general knowledge of life and letters,
with a social consciousness and humanitarian sympathies, it is
ridiculously wide of the truth. There is everywhere a hunger for a
satisfying explanation of life. There are restlessness and impatience
with dogma and creed, there is a growing indifference to the old
sectarian exclusiveness, but there is above all a new interest in God.
We need not go to Mr. Bernard Shaw or Mr. Wells for testimony to this
interest. They reflect the religious renaissance which is the essence of
the reconstruction for which men crave. The symptoms are accessible to
the observation of all. Neither priestly intolerance nor rationalistic
prejudice can suppress them.
In _The Bankruptcy of Religion_, Mr. Joseph McCabe develops the case
against religion with the skill of a trained controversialist. Like the
converted sinner in the ranks of the Salvation Army, Mr. McCabe carries
special weight to the lines of rationalists and ethicists. For he was
once a priest and lived in a monastery, and he left the priesthood and
the monastery convinced of the worthlessness of both. He is, therefore,
_persona gratissima_ at the High Court of Reason. "The era of religious
influence closes in bankruptcy," he informs us. He has no patience with
attempts at religious reconstruction; he asks us to shake ourselves free
of the vanishing dream of heaven and to leave the barren tracts of
religion. He exhorts us to abandon the "last illusions of the childhood
of the race":
Linger no longer in the "reconstruction" of fables which once
beguiled the Arabs of the desert and the Syrian slaves of
Corinth, but set your hearts and minds to the making of a new
earth! Sweep these ancient legends out of your schools and
colleges, your army and navy, your code of law, your legislative
houses, and substitute for them a spirit of progress, efficiency,
boldness, and candour!
Fine words, brave words, honest words, but hollow within. Mr. McCabe
is no psychologist. The fables and legends of old times may be
abandoned, the desire for the realities round which fable and legend
grow remains and cannot be extirpated by a rationalistic operation.
Supernaturalism--in the widest sense--is ineradicable. Religion will not
be suspended by the discovery that it is possible to formulate excellent
theories of social equity without the assistance of priests. The hunger
of the human heart for knowledge of God persists though all the old
religious systems may prove illusions.
Our little rationalists imagine that they are hitting the foundations of
religion when they successfully assail the crumbling walls of dogmas.
Religious life escapes their fire. Faith and hope rise above
disillusionment. Love knows instinctively that it is not made of dust.
Through the darkness and the wilderness it calls to God, and lo! God
responds with light and guidance which outlast earthquakes and
massacres. Reject every creed that has been offered as an explanation of
the mysteries of life, forsake all the humiliating, joy-killing penances
for sin, and God will reveal Himself in the beauty of Nature. He will
speak through the impulses of creative art, through music and poetry and
painting. He will attract our thought through philosophy and our
emotion through the impetus to improve the social order. And
science--the greater science, which rejects dogmatism and lies of
self-sufficiency as it rejects the crudities of the Creed--takes us by
circuitous paths to new temples for the worship of God.
The tenet that science and religion are incompatible and antagonistic,
so dear to the hearts of the scientists in the middle of the nineteenth
century, and still repeated with mechanical certainty in every
secularist mission-hall, is likely to undergo a complete revision in the
near future. The antagonism between dogmatic religion and materialistic
science will never be removed. But the signs are apparent everywhere
that religion is shedding its adherence to outer forms and entering into
the freedom of the living spirit, whilst science is turning to problems
which used to lie within the domain of unexplored religion. Religion
will become scientific and science will become religious. The principles
laid down by Darwin and Huxley have lost their power of stifling
religious aspiration; the startling pronouncements in defiant
materialism of Buechner and Haeckel now startle none but the ignorant.
The anxiety to exclude scientific facts disappears with the realization
that all truth, all knowledge, all reason, are subservient to the search
for God. The struggle between the wish to believe and the temptation to
think caused real distress of mind to many thinkers of the nineteenth
century. The choice seemed to lie between atheism and blind submission
to authority. "Let us humbly take anything the Bible says without trying
to understand it, and not torment ourselves with arguments," said
Charles Kingsley. "One word of Scripture is more than a hundred words of
man's explaining." The modern mind does not dread the meeting of science
and religion. It does not labour to reconcile them. It is conscious of
their ultimate identity and their present insufficiency. Hence a new
tolerance which is mistaken for indifference by the zealots on both
sides. Hence the absence of actuality in the fierce denunciations of
Bradlaugh and Holyoake and Ingersoll. They did valiant battle against
religious formalism of the past; they were champions of reason and
science at a time when religionists fought to exclude both.
It is not science which is undermining the future of institutional
religion. There is a new enemy, more subtle and more powerful. It is
the growing consciousness of an intolerable inconsistency between
religious theory and practice. The war thus becomes a stumbling-block to
faithfulness to conventional Christianity, and the glee of the
rationalist is pardonable. I again quote Mr. McCabe:
What did the clergy do to prevent the conflict? In which country
did they denounce the preparations for the conflict, or the
incentives of the conflict? What have they done since it began to
confine the conflict within civilized limits? Have they had, or
used, a particle of moral influence throughout the whole bloody
business? And, if not, is it not time we found other guardians
and promoters of high conduct?
Apart from the fact that the Pope and some lesser religious leaders have
denounced and deplored the conflict, and that a comprehensive answer to
Mr. McCabe's question would somewhat modify the implied moral impotence
of the clergy, we might ask the same questions of the leaders of
secularist morality. What have they done to prevent the conflict? Why
have their intellectual giants failed to impress upon mankind the folly
of war? They have had freedom of speech and action, they have wielded
incisive criticism and strength of invective. They have had many decades
in which to put into practice the theory of the greatest happiness of
the greatest number. But the problem of the persistence of war has
somehow escaped atheists and rationalists, just as it has eluded
theologians and revivalists.
We may admit that the clergy are more blameworthy than the orators of
rationalism. If the teachings of Jesus Christ are to be applied to the
art of war, then the art of war is doomed to extinction. If the Church
be an international society, based on mutual love and peace, then the
perpetration of war on members of the Church is clearly wrong. If the
ideals of the Christian life be charity, gentleness, forgiveness,
non-resistance to evil, then all war is a violation of the faith. The
question is not unimportant. It is not a subject which you can toy with,
or put aside as having no immediate bearing on life and duty. If the
literal application of the teaching of Christ to social and political
life be impossible, then the rationalists are right when they urge us to
drop a religion which we profess on Sunday and repudiate on Monday. If
the fault lies not in the teaching itself but in the feebleness of the
Church, then the Church must clearly be counted a failure. If the cause
of the discrepancy is to be found merely in the slowness and obstinacy
of the human soul in following the path of righteousness, the practical
realization of the Christian ideal will be but a question of time and
effort.