The Unity of Western Civilization Part 16

There is hope then for closer fellows.h.i.+p within the Church, because the problem is being more and more definitely laid upon the consciences of her members. A further advance in thought which makes possible a closer approximation of the severed fragments of the Christian Church, is to be found in the process of sifting the essential from the accidental in the Christian tradition. It would be idle to pretend that the process has reached its conclusion, or that there is any large measure of agreement as to what const.i.tutes the essence of Christianity. No one indeed believes any longer in the whole Bible from cover to cover--not even those who say they do. The fight for the creeds is more strenuous, while Rome cannot afford to admit that any article of faith which has been authoritatively defined may be treated as non-essential. But if I may venture a personal judgement, I cannot see that even the Apostles' creed will be able to retain its place as a summary of essential Christianity.

The articles which deal with the Descent into Hades and the Resurrection of the Body, and perhaps those which deal with the Virgin-Birth and Ascension of our Lord, are dubious, if not false, and cannot fairly be regarded as indispensable. If I may attempt to forecast, I would say that the ultimate cleavage is coming not over particular articles of the Apostles' Creed, but over the value we set on the history and person of Jesus. The choice will lie between a conception of G.o.d for which the story and character of Jesus are final and determinative, and a vaguer spiritual theism for which Jesus has no supreme significance. This is not even the division between Trinitarian and Unitarian. The ultimate parting of the ways turns on the question whether a man's faith in G.o.d is Christ-centred or not. The significant cleavage of the future will come between those who believe that Christianity--the belief in the Fatherhood of G.o.d through Jesus Christ--is the final religion, and those who hold that Christianity in this sense is destined to be swallowed up in some still broader faith in G.o.d for which other revelations, through nature and through other figures in history, are as significant as the creed embodied in a tale in Galilee and on Golgotha nineteen centuries ago. But whatever cleavage may appear hereafter in the religion of the West, the search for the essence of Christianity, even when it works through controversy, will contribute to lop off idle dissensions and reveal fellows.h.i.+p in fundamentals where men had previously supposed themselves to be hopelessly divided.

It is a little invidious to choose out any particular movements for special reference, and in so doing I may merely betray personal bias rather than critical judgement. Yet it is perhaps permissible to point out that the genesis of the Adult School movement is the natural development of the Quaker respect for that of G.o.d in every man. It represents the longing for a religious fellows.h.i.+p which does not force opinion but offers the most favourable conditions for the formation of independent judgement and the growth of individual faith. How far the movement realizes its ideal, I forbear to inquire, but its very existence affords some evidence of the belief in the positive virtue of toleration as an essential element of the Christian character. Another powerful factor making for co-operation and better understanding among Christians may be found in the Student Christian movement. For this country its value has been enhanced if not created by the opening of the older Universities to Nonconformists. The future leaders of all our Churches are now being educated together, and through the Student Christian movement, they are educating each other and facing together old controversies and inherited problems at a time when their judgements are least hampered either by tradition or responsibility. What this may mean for the religious life of this country, we cannot yet tell, but it is certain that a new temper will be brought to bear on our divisions.

The men who learn to appreciate one another through this a.s.sociation, tend to hold together when they pa.s.s out of the Universities into their life-work. There are springing up through the Student movement new a.s.sociations or fellows.h.i.+ps which conserve and continue the unifying impetus of the movement itself. Nor is that unifying power confined to this country. It forms a world-wide federation whose lines of communication have not been cut even by the present war. In every land, the Student movement intends to resume international intercourse at the earliest possible moment. I think it is not simply the bias of a student in favour of his own cla.s.s, which makes me regard the Student Christian movement as one of the most hopeful developments in the religious life of our age.

Perhaps the influence of this movement itself may be traced in the growing demand for co-operation in the missionary task of the Church.

This demand has no doubt arisen in part through the changes in the means of transport and communication which have made the world a smaller place. Missionary effort is less sporadic than it was. The Churches are developing a _Weltpolitik_. The exact proportions of the task before them are now more clearly grasped. The difficulty of overtaking the task even when united, and the impossibility of discharging it effectively while divided are also more apparent. But the demand for unity and the power of co-operation have also been strengthened by the men and women who have gone abroad under the influence of the Student Volunteer Missionary Union. High Churchmen and Nonconformist having learnt to work together on a Christian Student executive do not find it difficult to co-operate, where opportunity offers, in India or China. A half-involuntary revolution of sentiment is proceeding under our eyes.

The strength of the new spirit of co-operation was revealed in the Edinburgh Conference of 1910. That date will stand out as supremely significant in the growth of a new Catholicism in the West.

We have so far been concerned with influences making for a deeper sense of unity within the Christian Church. But if we attempt a wider survey, we shall discover that religious thought and feeling in the West, whether definitely Christian or no, possess some common characteristics, bear the impress of convictions which are ever struggling for expression.

First among these characteristic features of religious thought in the West I would place faith in the solidarity of mankind. The origin of this faith probably pa.s.ses beyond our a.n.a.lysis. I should suspect that there is a universal impulse stimulating this belief which I should be inclined to regard as instinctive. Yet it has certainly found fuller expression in the West than in the civilization of India or China. It is possible to point to traditions, to philosophies, and to particular events which have carried this faith in human solidarity deep into the consciousness of the West. Dr. Prichard, whose scientific labours, we were told in an earlier lecture, refuted the heresy of polygenism, was moved to undertake his inquiries by a desire to maintain the accuracy of the Mosaic tradition as to the common origin of mankind. It is a little curious to reflect that illusory anthropology, accepted on the authority of Moses and of Rousseau, the belief in Adam, and the belief in the free and happy savage, have perhaps done more than scientific research into primitive culture to maintain our faith in human brotherhood and equality. We must not, however, attach too much weight to the story of Adam. The Western sense of the dignity of ordinary manhood owes much more to the great Stoic conception of humanity, as Mr. Barker reminded us in his lecture on the Middle Ages. Perhaps even more significant is the feeling for humanity engendered by regarding all men as the objects of a common redemption. The poorest of men have been protected from their fellows where they have been recognized as brothers for whom Christ died. It would be worth while, if one had the time and the knowledge, to follow the growth of this sentiment in modern times, to trace the influence of the doctrine of Natural Rights, of the French Revolution, of the philosophy of Comte, and of the Evangelical Revival, upon its development. But whatever the sources and phases of its growth, the existence and strength of this faith in humanity are undeniable. It is this faith which compels us to refuse to think of Western civilization as merely Western. For we believe that the West holds in trust for mankind, not only a right knowledge of nature, not only a correct scientific method, but also an essential conception of the worth and unity of human life. Whatever we are to gain from the East, this is one of the gifts we bring to the other half of the world.

In speaking of this faith in human solidarity as Western, I am aware that I am making broad statements which badly need qualification. I am far from wis.h.i.+ng to suggest that there is no such sentiment of humanity in the great structures of Asiatic civilization, particularly in the ethical systems of China. But I am persuaded that there is a broad contrast between West and East in this respect, and that in particular there is a significant gulf between the West and Hinduism. In the West, this often inarticulate faith in humanity has acted as a spring of progress. It inspires our faith in democracy, it acts as a perpetual challenge to privilege and oppression, as a constant denial of permanence to divisions of cla.s.s, nationality, and race. The very difficulty which the orthodox Hindu experiences in appreciating the spiritual meaning of democracy--his feeling that the democratic movement is an irrational blindly selfish confusing of a divine appointed social order--discloses the existence of this gulf. It is not for nothing that the religious traditions of Hinduism trace the four castes back to divine appointment and regard them as coeval with the race. Nor is it without significance that India rejected Buddhism--a movement which challenged caste and whose missionary enthusiasm embodied a broader sentiment of humanity than has yet been woven into Indian civilization.

The influence of the West is now renewing the attack on caste which Buddha initiated and failed to accomplish.

Without serious injustice we may claim that this faith in human solidarity has attained clearer expression and exerts greater influence in the West than in the East. To detail its influence is impossible. It underlies our hopes of social reform, it refuses to believe in the subhuman--at least it refuses to believe in the necessity of his continued existence. It inspires the religious enthusiasm with which men embrace Socialism as 'a hope for mankind'. It turns the brotherhood of man into a 'masked word.' As a character in one of St. John Ervine's novels puts it, 'Brother'ood of man, my boy--that's my motter.

Brother'ood of man! the 'ole world, see! Not a little bit like England!

the 'ole world! all of us! see? No fightin or nothink! Just peace an'

'appiness! Takes your breath away when you think on it. It do, straight.' The same religious impulse is at work in that disease of humanitarianism which distresses Chauvinists--the humanitarianism which Bernhardi denounces in Germany and Mr. Moreton Fullerton deplores in France. It is reflected in the religious life alike of Russia and of France. Paul Sabatier's book is largely concerned with following out the influence of this sense of solidarity in all philosophic and religious schools and in all cla.s.ses in France. He notes, for example, the anti-clericalism of the French peasant, which does not, however, lead him to embrace the dogmatic negations of Free-thought. The peasant still clings to the rites of the Church through 'the perhaps unconscious desire to perform an act of social solidarity, to meet our fellow-men elsewhere than on the field of material interests and distractions, to accept the rendezvous which they offer to us and we to them, that we may draw together and, more than that--unite and unify'. In another quarter we may witness a new feeling for humanity resulting from the throwing together of diverse racial elements in the melting-pot of the United States. Zangwill's play might be cited as a doc.u.ment of this larger faith, while Jane Addams has sympathetically described its genesis in her _Newer Ideals of Peace_. Yet another expression of this instinctive faith may be discovered in the broad human interest of much of our modern literature and art. For the standard of orthodoxy in this connexion requires not only that we respond to a grand conception of humanity as a whole, but that also in particulars we are loyal to the Terentian tag, 'h.o.m.o sum: humani nil a me alienum puto.' The worthier side of modern realism has done full justice to this motto.

The expressions of this faith in human solidarity are so various, and its influence so pervading, that it is not surprising to find some modern thinkers looking to it as the essence of religion. In the sociological theory of religion, it is suggested that to become aware of society and its claims const.i.tutes religion itself. A man is converted when his soul is 'congregationalized'. There is even a tendency to find the highest element in religious experience in a strong feeling of one's unity with one's fellows. Such a feeling of endless sympathy and tolerance is so large a part of love that it is easily mistaken for the whole. For this starting-point, we might readily imagine a Western faith in humanity with Walt Whitman as its prophet. But a second characteristic of Western thought about religion forbids any idealization of humanity as we know it, and draws us beyond the indiscriminate catholicism of 'The Open Road'. This characteristic may be defined as our faith in the worth of activity and in the reality of progress. We believe in the unity of mankind much more as a task to be achieved than as an accomplished or given fact to be enjoyed. Nietzsche says somewhere, 'if the goal of humanity be wanting, do we not lack humanity itself?' We look for the ultimate unity of mankind in the pursuit of a common end. The search for such a goal, and the effort to achieve it, lend worth to history and to present action.

This faith, often blind and unreasoned, is distinctly Western and modern. We do not derive it even from Greece. It comes to us through Christianity and modern science. The absence of any such faith in activity and progress creates the pessimism of the East. Hinduism and Buddhism are alike in their bankruptcy on this side. The majestic religious philosophy of India sees in history only an endless and meaningless repet.i.tion. Thucydides and Plato a.s.sume the same view, if I mistake not. As Eucken says, 'Ancient views of life bore throughout an unhistorical character. The numerous philosophical doctrines of the procession of endless similar cycles, which continually return to the starting-point, were only the expression of the conviction that all movement at bottom brings nothing new and that life offers no prospect of further improvement.' When Paul discovered that the law was a schoolmaster to bring men to Christ, he enunciated a profounder philosophy of history than Plato ever knew.

The very fact that Christianity sprang out of Judaism means that it enshrines and suggests the idea of progress in the very circ.u.mstances of its origin. But its hold on the idea is something deeper than its connexion with Judaism. Christianity claims to be the final religion, but its claim differs in kind from the parallel claim of Mohammedanism.

The world of Islam is held in mortmain by the prophet. It cannot advance beyond the forms in which he embodied his message without denying the claims he made for himself. But to the early Christians the synoptic gospels were the record of all that Jesus _began_ to do and to say, while the highest development of Christian experience and reflection in the New Testament, the gospel of John, contemplates the greater things which the followers of Jesus shall accomplish and the fuller revelations which shall come as the disciples are able to bear them. The claim of Christianity to finality rests on its opening up endless possibilities of spiritual growth to mankind. To some of us it seems that part of this fuller revelation has come through modern knowledge and discovery. The faith in progress which Christians have often held falteringly and have sometimes denied, appears to be confirmed and clarified by all that we are learning of creative evolution. In any case, the influence of modern science has tended to produce a faith in progress in the West--a faith which some regard as essentially different from the Christian view of the world and history, but which for others seems more and more to coalesce with that earlier if in some respects cruder Christian conviction. No doubt when the facts of evolution were held to point to gradual and continuous development, they favoured a view of steady progress which was antagonistic to the Christian belief in the sudden introduction of new elements into history. But the later advances of evolutionary theory seem more akin to the early Christian att.i.tude. The element of apocalyptic is seen not to be so alien from nature as had been at first supposed.

However it arises and whatever form it takes, this faith in progress is characteristic of the Western outlook, and gives a positive answer to the question, Is life worth living? That such a faith is strange to India may be evidenced by the reception accorded to the poet Tagore in India itself. Mr. Yeats gives us the judgement of a Bengali who said of Tagore, 'He is the first among our saints who has not refused to live, but spoken out of Life itself, and that is why we give him our love.'

Now Tagore's genius is thoroughly Indian, but his originality in this respect is due directly or indirectly to contact with the influence of the West. It is our belief in action and in the worth of human achievement which is voiced in his poems and in his philosophy, and the note is new in India.

Ill.u.s.trations of this belief in progress and activity are superfluous, though I may remind you of the prevalence of this temper in the realm of philosophy as well as of religion at the present time. Perhaps it is worth recalling that Harnack's great history of dogma ends with this significant sentence from Zwingli: 'It is not the part of a Christian man to be for ever talking grandly about dogma, but always to be attempting big things in fellows.h.i.+p with G.o.d.' This represents as well as anything our Western insistence on the worth of effort. As an admirable embodiment at once of the faith in humanity and the faith in progress, the close of Matthew Arnold's poem 'Rugby Chapel' recurs to the mind. You remember how he conceives the function of great men to lie in preserving the union of mankind, and how he conceives the life of mankind as a journey towards a city that hath foundations.

These two characteristics, faith in the oneness of mankind and in the reality of progress, do add a sense of common aspiration to the civilization of the West. But of themselves they do not create a very close unity. Men may believe in human solidarity and in the worth of effort, and yet be following divergent ideals and divisive enthusiasms.

These beliefs are surrounded by haze and indefiniteness. In themselves they scarcely const.i.tute a religion that will satisfy, much less one that can effectively unite us. However fully we share them, they will not enable us to meet and surmount the present crisis. So far as I can judge, these vaguer beliefs in humanity and progress are largely the deposit of Christian faith, and to be rendered effective they need to be ever reconnected with the central elements in that faith; in particular, with the Christian judgement on sin and with the Christian devotion to the historic Jesus.

The sense of sin has received a peculiar impress in the West. We owe it largely to the religious experience of the Jew and to the seriousness of the Latin mind. There is a curious coincidence of the seventh chapter of Romans with a famous quotation from Ovid. The Latin fathers, particularly Augustine, have developed, not to say over-developed, the a.n.a.lysis of sin. The concept of sin never had the same significance for the Greek, and humanism has always resented the severity of the tradition that comes from Paul through Augustine and Calvin. Mr.

Holmes's stimulating books on education are inspired by a theological polemic against the doctrine of original sin. He not unnaturally takes refuge in Buddhism, for Buddhism makes suffering, not sin, the root trouble of human life. 'The division between the will and the power, the struggle of the senses against our better judgement, the falling below the moral ideal--none of all this comes within the horizon of Buddha.'

Now it may freely be confessed that the Calvinist view of sin led to a distrust of human nature, and incidentally of child-nature, which had a not altogether healthy reaction on home discipline and school-life. It is very difficult to maintain the right balance, and the danger of morbidity through emphasis on sin is undeniable. Yet it seems to me that the worst errors of Calvinism and Evangelicalism in this regard have lain in a tendency to theological formalism and a failure to keep in touch with real life. In consequence, those who most deplore our waning sense of sin try us by a perverted or antiquated standard, and fasten often on changes of sentiment and habit which are by no means necessarily or largely sinful. They are least conscious of the want of a sense of sin, in modern society, where that want is most serious. But I do not doubt that our often old-fas.h.i.+oned friends are right on the main issue. I do not believe that we shall see the progress we desire, unless we recover a heightened sense of sin. I hold with Lord Acton that our internal conflicts are due to indifference to sin and not to a religious idea. We judge ourselves and our race too lightly. We quench our hope of progress by a leniency and indulgence towards our failings which involve an underestimate of our powers and responsibilities. The present crisis will not issue in a hopeful reaction through regret but only through repentance.

The sense of sin which Christianity has brought to the West is not, I think, to be found elsewhere. It only appears where men feel they have an a.s.sured knowledge of G.o.d's will. It is intense only where men are conscious of G.o.d's presence. The vision of the Holiest reveals to Isaiah that he is a man of unclean lips. Such a conviction of sin seems to me inexplicable apart from contact with the living G.o.d. Two things are required to bring home to men a true estimate of their moral failure, first a right standard of judgement, and, second, a conviction of the reality of G.o.d. Is it too much to say that we are not likely to reach either, apart from Jesus of Nazareth? 'It is through Jesus and not from Adam that we know sin.' It is through Him that men discover their moral ideal and learn not simply to believe that there is a G.o.d, but to say, O G.o.d, Thou art my G.o.d even for ever and ever.

Surely there is something providential in the resolute endeavour of the last century to get back to Christ. The whole movement has succeeded in disentangling the authority of Christ from that either of Moses or of Paul. We are almost where the disciples were when they saw no man save Jesus only. Some things in the traditions remain obscure and baffling.

But we see enough to measure afresh our distance from Him. And when the peoples of Europe are thoroughly weary of the work of destruction, it may be they will turn to Him again for the secret of rest, and find that He alone can guide their feet into the way of peace.

BOOKS FOR REFERENCE

Sabatier, _L'Orientation religieuse de la France actuelle_. Armand Colin: Paris.

W.K.L. Clarke, _Facing the Facts; or, an Englishman's Religion_. Nisbet.

E.C. Moore, _Christian Thought since Kant_. Duckworth's Studies in Theology.

XIV

THE GROWTH OF HUMANITY

The preceding chapter has recalled attention to the need of deeper elements of unity in civilization than can be afforded by any commercial, financial or political ties. Plans for a political union of nations, common tendencies in social reform, even the essential unity of commerce and science, will be of no avail, unless there is a basis in common sentiments of a religious kind, in the consciousness that we are all members one of another and can only advance and realize ourselves by the help and sympathy of other members of the same body. It is to this point then that we will address ourselves in the concluding section of the subject. The mechanics of unity need both earnest advocacy and careful study. But beneath and beyond them a motive force has to be found in ideals and sentiments by which alone in the end the working of all such mechanical arrangements is rendered possible. Right sentiments are not a sufficient safeguard, but they are an essential foundation, and it is of the first importance to realize the things to which the ma.s.s of mankind are most deeply attached, how they are affected towards one another, the channels through which the tide of feeling most naturally flows and is extended. Looked at from this point of view the problem becomes primarily an educational one. We study mankind as we find it in order to effect an improvement in the direction which we desire.

We find then in the first place that men as a rule are most strongly attached to the localities and the people with whom they are first brought closely in contact. Here in the family is the first true microcosm, the first community in which the individual is developed by a.s.sociation with his fellows. On the value of this earliest social training there are hardly two opinions, and we need not dwell upon it.

It is at the next stage that divergence, both of definite opinion and still more of emphasis, begins to be apparent. How far is attachment to country a valuable thing, how far should it be cultivated, what are the necessary limitations and controlling ideas? As to the reality of the sentiment every man can examine himself. We know, most of us, with what intense satisfaction we return to the country, the district, of our birth and home. The feeling is one of the strongest and deepest things in us, even if our reason deprecates and disallows the claim. As Englishmen, perhaps even more as Scotchmen and Irish, we love with an indefinable and ineradicable pa.s.sion our sea-coast, our hills and valleys, the fields and cottages, even the sometimes sordid, nearly always ill-a.s.sorted, congeries of houses which we have thrown together as towns. We fight among ourselves, we have more religious, political, and social differences than any other people. Yet when we need companions.h.i.+p for work or pleasure, at home or abroad, we would sooner have an Englishman at our side than any other man. Men and country--'dear souls and dear, dear land'--these are the elements which make up the real thing called patriotism and which, in spite of all our curses and all our self-seeking, lead us in millions to work or die for our country, and will, while life lasts, bring us home at last.

To those who know the local narrowness, the jealousies and pettiness of much of our own national life, it will seem a primary duty in education to present the country as an object of education and service, imperfect indeed and limited by larger ends, but yet supreme over the selfish interests of trade, town, or individual. This, with all its terrible losses, the war is doing for us with mighty and irresistible strokes, and it is a tragic truth that in our present imperfect social state, it is only a war, hurling us against other great and really co-operating communities of men, which can make us bear with comparative ease and cheerfulness the most serious burdens of loss and suffering. We act instantly as one people in war, we haggle and hesitate about the most moderate sacrifices to secure an advance in peace. It is this quality in patriotism, and in war as its stimulus, which largely and naturally biases our view. But to the ideal of a united Western civilization or a united mankind it is only one step. We cannot do without patriotism, but we must immediately proceed beyond it. We cannot reform the troubles and conflicts of mankind by attempting to root up some of our most tenacious pa.s.sions; we progress by mastering and not mutilating our being. We have to advance beyond the limits of patriotism by wider sympathy, by seeing a.n.a.logies, by recognizing the facts of common interests and co-operation in the world.

But here again, looking at the question from an educational rather than an abstract point of view, we have to recognize that actual realization of the life and services of other nations is a slow, difficult, and, at best, a limited process. It was really easier for the travelling student of the Middle Ages to enter into the simple and similar life of universities abroad than for the modern traveller to grasp the complex relations of a great foreign city or state. We have therefore, in practice, to select and concentrate. For the modern Englishman a knowledge of one or two other countries and languages is as much as the pressure of life will permit, and it is greatly to be regretted that poverty and hard work limit even this acquisition to very few. A _Wanderjahr_ for the working-man would do much to cement the unity of western civilization.

Until the recent acute rivalry with Germany developed, English sympathies were fairly evenly divided. Your Liberal, as a rule, was a Frenchman, and your Conservative a German. George Meredith and John Morley sang the praises of France, Coleridge and Carlyle would have us learn from Germany. Now for many years the die is cast. We shall face the settlement and the dangers of the future side by side with France.

This becomes, then, one of the fixed points in our orientation. History and geography both dictate it. Just as in the building of our fatherland and its attendant sentiments, the process is not a purely logical one, but comes to its completion by most irregular courses, with all sorts of bypaths due to the odd configuration of our nature and the world we live in, so in widening out from patriotism to humanity we have to follow a line given, for the most part, by external facts. The French as our nearest neighbours have always had a special interest for us. They, like ourselves, have inherited a mixed race and a mixed civilization, partly Teutonic, partly Celtic, partly Roman, but with elements variously combined. To us a more predominantly Teutonic stock and an insular position have given a more independent and unique character, history, and const.i.tution. France, as being continental and more central, was also more completely Romanized, and has at all periods of her history been more in touch with the general stream of thought than ourselves.

Often she has led it, always she has reflected it more quickly and perfectly. Our traditional rivalry has been a chivalrous one, marked by many episodes of real admiration and close friends.h.i.+p. To Elizabeth, to Cromwell, to the Crusaders of the twelfth and the philosophers of the eighteenth century, France and England seemed as naturally allied as they are now in repelling a common aggression on their homes and liberty. But for the future the strongest links will be the two great common ideals, self-government and individual freedom at home, and the community of free peoples abroad. In the practical democracy already realized at home, and in the ideal of a humanity built up of such self-governing and co-operating states, France and England stand for the unity of western civilization in the sense in which it has been traced in this volume, the only sense which makes it worth the sacrifice of wealth and toil and life.

ERRATUM.

Page 305, line 14 from bottom

_for_ cannot it abolish _read_ it cannot abolish

_Marvin: The Unity of Western Civilization_.

[** Transcriber's Note: The text below was modified to reflect the ERRATUM above. The original ERRATUM is left in the doc.u.ment for historical purposes. **]

The unity of which we believe ourselves to be now the champions must therefore be a real thing based on freedom and realized by conscious effort; but it must also be truly comprehensive, not exclusive of any willing co-operator, not aimed against any one but for the whole. It is not intended in this volume to discuss any burning questions of the day, and therefore the briefest indications must be given of how the nucleus of western culture has been formed and how it must reform itself after the war. France, Germany, and England have been for many years, collectively far the most important centres of science and social progress in the world, and it would have been the ideal policy for them to give a united lead to the rest of the world. The war has altered that, but it cannot abolish the fundamental facts on which the civilization of the West is based, science, power over nature, and social organization. In these the same three countries will still have a certain primacy, though the position of the United States will be enormously strengthened. No peace can, of course, be permanent which contemplates the excommunication of a leading member of the human family.

Italy in science, philosophy, and literature, is a worthy colleague, and Russia makes a great stride forward by allying herself with the forces of progress and European unity.

Now it is clear that there are two distinct lines of approach to our goal of a united mankind. We may cultivate for ourselves, as an ideal based on love and reason, the notion of all men as brothers working together, helping one another even when unknown, strengthening one another's powers, and gradually advancing towards a higher goal. This, though not a complete religion for most people, at least partakes of the nature of religion. The other line is concerned with the practical task of reconciling actual difficulties, bringing nations together for various purposes--arbitration, international trade, boards of conciliation and the like. This is the slow and th.o.r.n.y path, and on account of its very difficulty is apt to engross the thoughts and energy of the best brains which devote themselves to the cause. But the first line, of self-cultivation and the promotion of a favourable spirit among others, though open to any one and easy of approach, is apt to be neglected. Such 'mere idealism', like pure benevolence, runs some risk of being choked by the multiplicity of details and agencies and organizations which beset the modern world. Humanity, as an idea, was perhaps more easily apprehended in the days of Turgot and Condorcet than it is with us when the implements of a united mankind have been immeasurably augmented and improved. All the greater, then, the need to re-integrate the notion. Just as in science the dispersive effect of specialism has led many thinkers to desire another order of minds specially devoted to generalism, to knitting together the results of the detailed investigations of others, so in conduct, morals and politics, it is more and more imperative to recall men's minds, and, in the first place, our own, to the large governing ideas by which after all our lesser rules and objects must stand or fall. For who will dispute that all our alliances and international action and the war itself can only be ultimately justified if they are seen to serve the highest interests of mankind as a whole?

A volume, and a very valuable one, might be written on the evolution of this idea of Humanity in history. We should need in the first place to a.n.a.lyse, with some care, in what sense it is in each case used. There is the simple sense of brotherhood such as we know to be deeply felt among our allies in Russia. Of this there must have been germs from the earliest appearance of mankind upon earth. It is one of those most precious things which the development of wealth and cla.s.s and distinctive culture has tended to blunt in more elaborate civilizations.

But when we consider that the full conception of Humanity involves a knowledge of man's evolution, his growth in power, and organization throughout history, as well as the simple but indispensable sense of man's brotherhood, we shall see how long a road the Russian moujik--as well as mult.i.tudes of his fellows in all other lands--must travel before he comes in view of the goal. In the fuller sense of a self-conscious and developing being, the idea of Humanity first appears with the Stoics, after the Greeks had put their leaven of abstract thought into the world. The whole inhabited world as the City of Man was the Stoic ideal, and it embraced both the idea of the [Greek: polis] which Platonic and Aristotelian thought had reached in the fourth century B.C., and the extension to the rest of mankind which was in the air just before the Christian era. Christianity affected the conception in a twofold manner. On the one hand it limited it, for the Stoic City of Man became the City of G.o.d, who was to be sought and wors.h.i.+pped in one prescribed order. On the other hand it deepened it, for the springs of a common humanity were found to go beneath the superficial facts of a citizen life into the depths of souls which have identical relations with eternal things, with sin and suffering and hopes of the future.

It is not till after the outburst of science in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, after that reawakening of the hopes of human powers which takes our minds back to the Greeks, that we find the conception of Humanity appearing in something like the form in which we can now imagine it. It will have been gathered from our chapter on Science and Philosophy how essential is the growth of organized thought to the realization of any unity in a progressive world. For the realm of thought is the only one in which no distinctions of race or nation are possible, but it must be thought in which agreement is reached. So long as men can differ, as they still do, on questions of human affairs, politics, social arrangements, or even archaeological matters where race or national predominance is involved, so far science does not exert her unifying sway. But in mathematics, physics, chemistry, all the matters in which it is impossible for a man to take another view because he is a Frenchman or a German--here we reach a haven of intellectual peace; and these calm waters are spreading over the world, in spite of the tempests.

To return to the educational point from which we started, we can see now another line of approach to unity in training our own minds and those of others. In some respects it is a surer way, though less direct. When studying the political life and history of other nations, even if we do so deliberately in order to find out what we owe to them, we are bound to be arrested here and there by things that we do not like, even among our best friends. The French may seem frivolous or less self-restrained than ourselves; they have had their sanguinary outbursts of revolution.

Where they have impeded our own movements, as in colonization, we are the more conscious of their faults. Or we may feel that Americans have their materialistic vein. And so on. This with our best friends, who, no doubt, feel the same about us. But on the other line of approach, the study of the things on which men now agree without question, which they have built up steadily with co-operating hands, the mental effect is quite different. The opening vista leads us on, with growing admiration and confidence in the unbreakable solidarity of mankind. We know that Newton who completes Galileo, Maxwell who follows Laplace, Helmholtz who uses the results of Joule, can have no conflicting jealousies. Here quite obviously and indisputably all are fellow-workers, and before the greatness of their work the pa.s.sions of rival domination in material things, the differences of national taste and habit, the quarrels of the past or the future, appear contemptible and insignificant.