The Soul of Democracy Part 1

The Soul of Democracy.

by Edward Howard Griggs.

I

THE WORLD TRAGEDY

We are living under the shadow of the greatest world tragedy in the history of mankind. Not even the overthrow of the old Roman empire was so colossal a disaster as this. Inevitably we are bewildered by it.

Utterly unantic.i.p.ated, at least in its world extent, for we had believed mankind too far advanced for such a chaos of brute force to recur, it overwhelms our vision. Man had been going forward steadily, inventing and discovering, until in the last hundred years his whole world had been transformed. Suddenly the entire range of invention is turned against Man. The machinery of comfort and progress becomes the enginery of devastation. Under such a shock, we ask, "Has civilization over-reached itself? Has the machine run away with its maker?" The imagination is staggered. We are too much in the storm to see across the storm.

When the War began, it was over our minds as a dark cloud. It was the last conscious thought as we went to sleep at night, and the first to which we awakened in the morning: wakening with a dumb sense of something wrong, as if we had suffered a personal tragedy, and then as we came to clear consciousness we said, "O yes, the War!" The days have pa.s.sed into weeks, the weeks into months and years: inevitably we become benumbed to the long continued disaster. It is impossible to think deaths and mutilations in terms of millions. Even those who stand in the immediate presence of it and suffer most terribly become calloused to it: much more must we who stood so long apart and have not yet felt the brunt of it. Even our entrance into the whirling vortex, drawing ever nearer our sh.o.r.es, has failed to waken us to a realizing sense of it. Nevertheless, these years through which we are now living are the most important in the entire history of the world. It is probable that the future will look back upon them as the years determining the destiny of mankind for ages to come.

How this terrible fact of War falls across all philosophies! Complacent optimisms, so widely current recently, are put out of court by it. The pleasant interpretations mediocrity formulates of the universe are torn to tatters. There is at least the refreshment of standing face to face with brute actuality, though it crash all our "little systems" to the ground. Philosophy must wait. The interpretations cannot be hastened, while the facts are multiplying with such bewildering rapidity. The one certainty is that an entirely new world is being born--_what_ it will be, no one knows.

Nevertheless, we have gone far enough to recognize that all our thinking will be transformed under the influence of the struggle. It will be impossible for us, after the War, to do what we have done so widely hitherto: proclaim one range of ethical ideals and standards, and live to something widely different in practice. Either we shall have to abandon the standards, or bring our conduct measurably into harmony with them. We shall be unable longer to hold unconsciously in solution Christianity and the gospel of brute force. One or the other must be rejected, or both consciously reconstructed. The effect on the thought life of the world will be even greater--vastly greater--than that of the French Revolution. The twentieth century will differ from the nineteenth more than that did from the eighteenth. The effect on the relations of different social groups throughout the world will be so far-reaching that possibly the democracy and socialism of the nineteenth century may look like remote historic phenomena, such as the Athenian tribal system or mediaeval feudalism.

Thus our whole social philosophy will have to be remolded. We Americans are still in the patent medicine period of politics, trusting to political devices on the surface for the cure of any evils that arise.

All across the country, like an epidemic of disease has gone the notion --if anything is the matter with us, just pa.s.s another law. Thus we are suffering under an ill-considered ma.s.s of legislation, while blindly trusting to it to solve all problems. Legislation is no solution for moral evils. It is possible, to some extent, to suppress vice by legislation, but not to create virtue. Virtue can be developed only by conduct and education. You cannot drive men into the kingdom of heaven with the whip of legislation; and if you could, you would so change the atmosphere of the place that one would prefer to take the other road.

If our democracy is to survive, we must think it through; carrying it down, from these superficial political devices, into our industry and commerce, still so largely dominated by feudal ideas of the middle age, into our science and art, far more completely into our education, into our social relations.h.i.+p, and beyond all else, into our fundamental att.i.tude of mind. Democracy is, at bottom, not a series of political forms, but a way of life.

Thus the War will be the supreme test of democracy. The question it will settle is this: can free men, by voluntary cooperation, develop an efficiency and an endurance which will make it possible for them to stand and protect their liberties against the machinery and aggressive ambitions of autocratic empires where everything is done paternally from the top? If they can, then democracy will survive and grow as the highest form of society for ages to come; if not, then democracy will pa.s.s and be succeeded by some other social order.

That is why this War has been our war from the beginning, though we have entered it so late. As we look back upon the struggle of Athens and the other free Greek cities with the overwhelming hordes of Asia, at Marathon and Salamis, as the conflict that saved democracy for Europe and made possible the civilization of the Occident, so it is probable that the world will look back upon this colossal War as the same struggle, multiplied a thousand times in the men and munitions employed, the struggle determining the future of democracy and civilization for generations, perhaps for all time.

II

THE CONFLICT OF IDEAS IN THE WAR

The world has been confused as to the issue in this War, because of the mult.i.tude of its causes and of the antagonisms it involves; yet under all the national and racial hatreds, the economic jealousies, certain great ideas are being tested out.

Apologists for Germany have told us, even with pride, that in Germany the supreme conception is the dedication of Man to the State. This was not true of old Germany. Before the formation of the Prussian empire, her spirit was intensely individualistic. She stood preeminently for freedom of thought and action. It was this that gave her n.o.ble spiritual heritage. Goethe is the most individualistic of world masters.

Froebel developed, in the Kindergarten, one of the purest of democracies. Luther and German protestantism represented the affirmation of individual conscience as against hierarchical control.

It was this spirit that gave Germany her golden age of literature, her unmatched group of spiritual philosophers, her religious teachers, her pre-eminence in music.

Nevertheless, the Prussian state, autocratic from its inception, received philosophic justification in a series of thinkers, culminating in Hegel, who regarded the individual as a capricious egotist, the state, incarnate in its sovereign, as the supreme spiritual ent.i.ty. He justified war, regarding it as a permanent necessity, and practically made might, right, in arguing that a conquering nation is justified by its more fruitful idea in annexing the weaker, while the conquered, in being conquered, is judged of G.o.d. Here is the philosophic justification of that Prussian arrogance which in Nietzsche is carried into glittering rhetoric. Thus the Prussian state from afar back was opposed to the general spirit of old Germany.

Since 1870, it must be admitted, that spirit is gone. With the formation of the Prussian empire and for the half century of its existence, every force of social control--press, church, state, education, social opinion--was deliberately employed to stamp on the German people one idea--the subordination of the individual to the state, as the supreme and only virtue. How far has the policy succeeded?

Apparently absolutely. To the outside observer the old spirit seems utterly gone. How far this policy has been helped by the cultivation of the fear of the Slav, one cannot say. Looking at the map of Europe, one sees that the geographical relation of Germany to the great Slavic empire is not unlike the relation of Holland to Germany. Thus the deliberate fostering of fear of the vast empire of the East has done much to strengthen the hands of the Prussian regime in its chosen task.

Nevertheless, when one recalls the spiritual heritage of Germany: when one thinks of Herder, Schiller and Goethe; Tauler, Luther and Schleiermacher; Froebel, Herbart and Richter; Kant, Fichte and Novalis; Mozart, Beethoven and Wagner; one feels that something of the old German heritage must survive. When the German people find out what has happened to them and why, that heritage surely ought to show in some reaction against the present autocratic regime, after the War closes, if not before, perhaps even to the extent of making Germany a republic. That would be some compensation for the waste and destruction of the War.

Meantime Germany stands now, ruthlessly, for the dedication of Man to the State.

One can understand why a Prussian minister forbade the teaching of Froebel's ideas in Prussia during the latter period of the educator's life. So one understands the hatred of Goethe because he refused allegiance to a narrow nationalism and remained cosmopolitan in his world-view. Similarly Hegel, with his justification of absolute monarchy and his theory of the German state as the acme of all spiritual evolution, was the acclaimed orthodox philosopher of Prussia, while the individualist, Schopenhauer, was neglected and despised.

One must have lived in Germany to realize the absolute control of the State over the individual--the incessant surveillance, the petty regulations, the constant interference with private life. It was to escape just this vexatious control, with the arduous militarism in which it culminates, that so vast a mult.i.tude of Germans left their native land and came to the United States--not all of whom have shown appreciation and loyalty to the free land that welcomed them.

III

THE IDEAS FOR WHICH THE ALLIED NATIONS FIGHT

In contrast to the idea for which Germany now stands, the Anglo-Saxon instinctively and tenaciously believes in the liberty and initiative of the individual. We, of course, are no longer Anglo-Saxon. When De Tocqueville in 1831 visited our country, surveyed our inst.i.tutions and, after returning home, made his trenchant diagnosis of our democracy, he could justly designate us Anglo-Americans. That time is past; we are to-day everything and nothing: a great nation in the womb of time, struggling to be born.

Nevertheless, Anglo-American ideas still dominate and inspire our civilization. It is, indeed, remarkable to what an extent this is true, in the face of the mingling of heterogeneous races in our population.

As English is our speech, so Anglo-American ideas are still the soul of our life and inst.i.tutions.

This is evident in the jealousy of authority. We resent the intrusion of the government into affairs of private life, and prefer to submit to annoyances and even injustice on the part of other individuals, rather than to have protection at the price of paternalistic regulation by the state. We resent any law that we do not see is necessary to the general welfare, and are rather lawless even then. This shows clearly in our reaction on legislation in regard to drink. The prohibition of intoxicating liquor is about the surest way to make an Anglo-Saxon want to go out and get drunk, even when he has no other inclination in that direction. In Boston, under the eleven o'clock closing law, men in public restaurants will at times order, at ten minutes of eleven, eight or ten gla.s.ses of beer or whiskey, for fear they might want them, whereas, if the restriction had not been present, two or three would have sufficed.

Not long ago we saw the very labor leaders who forced the Adamson law through congress, threatening to disobey any legislation limiting their own freedom of action, even though vitally necessary to the freedom of all.

The general behavior under automobile and traffic regulation ill.u.s.trates the tendency evenmore clearly. Thinking over the list of acquaintances who own automobiles, one finds it hard to recall one who would not break the speed law at a convenient opportunity. Even a staid college professor, who has walked the walled-in path all his life: let him get a Ford runabout, and in three months he is exultant in running as close as possible to every foot traveler and in exceeding the speed limit at any favorable chance. These are not beautiful expressions of our national spirit, but they serve to ill.u.s.trate our instinctive individualism.

Especially are we jealous of highly centralized authority. De Tocqueville argued that we would never be able to develop a strong central government, and that our democracy would be menaced with failure by that lack. That his prophecy has proved false and our federal government has become so strong is due only to the accidents of our history and the exigency of the tremendous problems we have had to solve.

The same individualistic spirit is strong in England. It has been particularly evident, during the War, in the resentment of military authority as applied to labor conditions. The artisans and their leaders dreaded to give up liberties for which they had struggled through generations, for fear that those rights would not be readily accorded them again after the War. It must be admitted that this fear is justified. The same spirit was evident in the fight on conscription.

This att.i.tude has been a handicap to England in successfully carrying on the War, as it is to us; but it shows how strong is the essential spirit of democracy in both lands.

In France, the Revolution was at bottom an affirmation of individualism --of the right of the people, as against cla.s.ses and kings, to seek life, liberty and happiness. The great words, _Liberty, Equality, Fraternity,_ that the French placed upon their public buildings in the period of the Revolution, are the essential battle-cry of true democracy,--as it is to be, rather than as it is at present.

Through her peculiar situation, threatened and overshadowed by potential enemies, France has been forced to a policy of militarism, with a large subordination of the individual to the state. The subordination, however, is voluntary. That is touchingly evident in the beautiful fraternization of French officers and men in the present War. With our Anglo-Saxon reserve, we smile at the pictures of grave generals kissing bearded soldiers, in recognition of valor, but it is a significant expression of the voluntary equality and brotherhood of Frenchmen in this War. The reason France has risen with such splendid courage and unity is the consciousness of every Frenchman that complete defeat in this War would mean that there would be no France in the future, that Paris would be a larger Stra.s.sburg, and France a greater Alsace-Lorraine. While the subordination has been thus voluntary, surely the French soldiers, man for man, have proved themselves the equal of any soldiers on earth.

The anomaly of the first two years of the War was the presence of the vast Russian autocratic empire on the side of the allied democracies.

For Russia, however, the War was of the people, rather than of the autocracy at the top, and one saw that Russia would emerge from the War changed and purified. What one could not foresee was that, under the awakening of the people, Russia could pa.s.s, in a day, through a Revolution as profound in its character and consequences as the great explosion in France. It would be almost a miracle if so complete a Revolution, in such a vast, benighted empire, were not followed by decades of recurrent chaos and anarchy. If Russia avoids this fate, she will present a unique experience in history. The tendency to abrogate all authority, the spectacle of regiments of soldiers becoming debating societies to discuss whether or not they shall obey orders and fight, are ominous signs for the next period. Emanc.i.p.ated Russia must learn, if necessary through bitter suffering, that liberty is not license, that democracy is not anarchy, but voluntary and intelligent obedience to just laws and the chosen executors of those laws. Meantime, whatever her immediate future may be, Russia's transformation has clarified the issue and justified her place with the allied democracies. However long and confused her struggle, there can be no return to the past, and, in the end, her Revolution means democracy.

Thus, in democracy, the State exists for Man. Other forms of society seek the interest or welfare of an individual, a group or a cla.s.s, democracy aims at the welfare, that is, the liberty, happiness, growth, intelligence, helpfulness of _all the people_. Under all the welter of this world struggle, it is therefore these great contrasting ideas that are being tested out, perhaps for all time. What is their relative value for efficiency, initiative, invention, endurance, permanence; beneath all, what is their final value for the happiness and helpfulness of all human beings?

IV

MORAL STANDARDS AND THE MORAL ORDER

There is only one moral order of the universe--one range of moral as of physical law. For instance, the law of gravitation--simplest of physical principles--holds the last star in the abyss of s.p.a.ce, rounds the dew-drop on the petal of a spring violet and determines the symmetry of living organisms; but it is one and unchanging, a fundamental pull in the nature of matter itself. So with moral laws: they are not superadded to life by some divine or other authority. They are simply the fundamental principles in the nature of life itself, which we must obey to grow and be happy.

If the moral order is one and unchanging, man does change in relation to it, and moral standards are relative to the stage of his growth.

History is filled with ill.u.s.trations of this relativity of ethical standards.

For instance: human slavery doubtless began as an act of beneficence on the part of some philanthropist well in advance of his age. The first man who, in the dim dawn of history, said to the captive he had made in war, "I will not kill you and eat you; I will let you live and work for me the rest of your life": that man inst.i.tuted human slavery; but it was distinctly a step upward, from something that had been far worse.

Homer represents Ulysses as the favorite pupil of Pallas Athena, G.o.ddess of wisdom: why? Baldly stated, because Ulysses was the shrewdest and most successful liar in cla.s.sic antiquity. If Ulysses were to appear in a society of decent men to-day, he would be excluded from their companions.h.i.+p, and for the same reason that led Homer to glorify him as the favorite pupil of the G.o.ddess of wisdom. Thus what is a virtue at one stage of development becomes a vice as man climbs to higher recognition of the moral order.