influence of organization carried to the _n_th power. No nation was ever
more highly organized than this modern State. Physically, intellectually
and spiritually it had become a highly developed machine. Its dominating
mechanical spirit so submerged the individual that, in 1914, the paradox
was observed of an enlightened nation that was seemingly destitute of a
conscience.
What was true of Germany, however, was true--although in lesser
degree--of all civilized nations. In all of them, the individual had
been submerged in group formations, and the effect upon the character of
man has been destructive of his nobler self.
This may explain the paradox of so-called "progress." It may be likened
to a great wheel, which, from the increasing domination of mechanical
forces, developed an ever-accelerating speed, until, by centrifugal
action, it went off its bearings in 1914 and caused an unprecedented
catastrophe. As man slowly pulls himself out of that gigantic wreck and
recovers consciousness, he begins to realize that speed is not
necessarily progress.
Of all this, the nineteenth century, in its exultant pride in its
conquest of the invisible forces, was almost blind. It not only accepted
progress as an unmistakable fact--mistaking, however, acceleration and
facilitation for progress--but in its mad folly believed in an immutable
law of progress which, working with the blind forces of machinery, would
propel man forward.
A few men, however, standing on the mountain ranges of human
observation, saw the future more clearly than did the mass. Emerson,
Carlyle, Ruskin, Samuel Butler, and Max Nordau, in the nineteenth
century, and, in our time, Ferrero, all pointed out the inevitable
dangers of the excessive mechanization of human society. The prophecies
were unhappily as little heeded as those of Cassandra.
One can see the tragedy of the time, as a few saw it, in comparing the
first _Locksley Hall_ of Alfred Tennyson, written in 1827, with its
abiding faith in the "increasing purpose of the ages" and its roseate
prophecies of the golden age, when the "war-drum would throb no longer
and the battle flags be furled in the Parliament of Man and the
Federation of the World," and the later _Locksley Hall_, written sixty
years later, when the great spiritual poet of our time gave utterance to
the dark pessimism which flooded his soul:
"Gone the cry of 'Forward, Forward,' lost within a growing gloom;
Lost, or only heard in silence from the silence of a tomb.
Half the marvels of my morning, triumphs over time and space,
Staled by frequence, shrunk by usage, into commonest commonplace!
Evolution ever climbing after some ideal good,
And Reversion ever dragging Evolution in the mud.
Is it well that while we range with Science, glorying in the Time,
City children soak and blacken soul and sense in city slime?"
Am I unduly pessimistic? I fear that this is the case with most men who,
like Dante, have crossed their fiftieth year and find themselves in a
"dark and sombre wood."
My reader will probably subject me to the additional reproach that I
suggest no remedy.
There are many palliatives for the evils which I have discussed. To
rekindle in men the love of work for work's sake and the spirit of
discipline, which the lost sense of human solidarity once inspired,
would do much to solve the problem, for work is the greatest moral force
in the world. But I must frankly add that I have neither the time nor
the qualifications to discuss the solution of this grave problem.
If we of this generation can only recognize that the evil exists, then
the situation is not past remedy; for man has never yet found himself in
a blind alley of negation. He is still "master of his soul and captain
of his fate," and, to me, the most encouraging sign of the times is the
persistent evidence of contemporary literature that thoughtful men now
recognize that much of our boasted progress was as unreal as a rainbow.
While the temper of the times seems for the moment pessimistic, it
merely marks the recognition of man of an abyss whose existence he
barely suspected but over which his indomitable courage will yet carry
him.
I have faith in the inextinguishable spark of the Divine, which is in
the human soul and which our complex mechanical civilization has not
extinguished. Of this, the world war was in itself a proof. All the
horrible resources of mechanics and chemistry were utilized to coerce
the human soul, and all proved ineffectual. Never did men rise to
greater heights of self-sacrifice or show a greater fidelity "even unto
death." Millions went to their graves, as to their beds, for an ideal;
and when that is possible, this Pandora's box of modern civilization,
which contained all imaginable evils, as well as benefits, also leaves
hope behind.
I am reminded of a remark that the great Roumanian statesman, Taku
Jonescu, made during the Peace Conference at Paris. When asked his views
as to the future of civilization, he replied: "Judged by the light of
reason there is but little hope, but I have faith in man's
inextinguishable impulse to live."
Happily, that cannot be affected by any change in man's environment! For
even when the cave-man retreated from the advance of the polar cap,
which once covered Europe with Arctic desolation, he not only defied the
elements but showed even then the love of the sublime by beautifying the
walls of his icy prison with those mural decorations which were the
beginning of art.
Assuredly, the man of to-day, with the rich heritage of countless ages,
can do no less. He has but to diagnose the evil and he will then, in
some way, meet it.
But what can man-made law do in this warfare against the blind forces of
Nature?
It is easy to exaggerate the value of all political institutions; for
they are generally on the surface of human life and do not reach down to
the deep under-currents of human nature. But the law can do something to
protect the soul of man from destruction by the soulless machine.
It can defend the spirit of individualism. It must champion the human
soul in its God-given right to exercise freely the faculties of mind and
body. We must defend the right to work against those who would either
destroy or degrade it. We must defend the right of every man, not only
to join with others in protecting his interests, whether he is a brain
worker or a hand worker--for without the right of combination the
individual would often be the victim of giant forces--but we must
vindicate the equal right of an individual, if he so wills, to depend
upon his own strength.
The tendency of group morality to standardize man--and thus reduce all
men to the dead level of an average mediocrity--is one that the law
should combat. Its protection should be given to those of superior skill
and diligence, who ask the due rewards of such superiority. Any other
course, to use the fine phrase of Thomas Jefferson in his first
inaugural, is to "take from the mouth of labour the bread it has
earned."
Of this spirit one of the noblest expressions is the Constitution of the
United States. That Magna Charta has not wholly escaped the destructive
tendencies of a mechanical age. It was framed at the very end of the
pastoral-agricultural age and at a time when the spirit of
individualism was in full flower. The hardy pioneers who, with their
axes, made straight the pathway of an advancing civilization, were
sturdy men who need not be undervalued to us of the mechanical age. The
"prairie schooner," which met the elemental forces of Nature with the
proud challenge: "Pike's Peak or bust," produced as fine a type of
manhood as the age which travels either in Mr. Ford's "fliver" or the
more luxurious Rolls-Royce.
The Constitution was framed in the period that marked the passing of the
primitive age and the dawn of the day of the machine. Watt had recently
discovered the potency of steam vapour as a motive power; but its only
use at first was for pumping water out of the mines.
When the framers of the Constitution met in high convention in
Philadelphia in the summer of 1787, a Connecticut Yankee, John Fitch,
was then also working in Philadelphia upon his steamboat; but twenty
years were to pass before the prow of the _Clermont_ was to part the
waters of the Hudson, and nearly a half century before transportation
was to be revolutionized by the utilization of Watt's invention in the
locomotive. Of the wonders of the steamship, the railroad, the
telegraphic cable, the wireless, the gasoline engine, and a thousand
other mechanical miracles, the framers of the American Constitution did
not even dream.
The greatest and noblest purpose of the Constitution was not alone to
hold in nicest equipose the relative powers of the nation and the
States, but also to maintain in the scales of justice a true equilibrium
between the rights of government and the rights of an individual. It did
not believe that the State was omnipotent or infallible, and yet it
proclaimed its authority within wise and just limits. It defended the
integrity of the human soul.
In other governments, these fundamental decencies of liberty rest upon
the conscience of the legislature. Under the American Constitution,
they are part of the fundamental law, and, as such, enforceable by
judges sworn to defend the integrity of the individual as fully as the
integrity of the State.
When did a nobler "vision" inspire men in the political annals of
mankind? Without that vision to restrain each succeeding generation of
Americans from the tempting excesses of political power, the American
Commonwealth, with its great heterogeneous democracy, would probably
perish.
That vision still remains as an ideal with the American people and still
leads them to ever-higher achievements, for in all the mad changes of a
frenzied hour, they have not yet lost faith in or love for the
Constitution of the Fathers! That vision will remain with them as long,
and no longer, as there is in their hearts a conscious and willing
acquiescence in its wisdom and justice. Obviously, it can have no
inherent vigour to perpetuate itself. If it ceases to be of the spirit
of the people, then the yellow parchment whereon it is inscribed can
avail nothing. When that parchment was last taken from the safe in the
State Department, the ink in which it had been engrossed nearly 134
years ago was found to have faded. All who believe in constitutional
government must hope that this is not a portentous symbol. The American
people must write the compact, not with ink upon parchment, but with
"letters of living light"--to use Webster's phrase--upon their hearts.
Again the solemn warning of the wise man of old recurs to us:
"Where there is no vision, the people perish; but he that keepeth the
law, happy is he."