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THE PROBLEM
OF
HUMAN PEACE
BY THE SAME AUTHOR.
CATHOLICISM AND THE MODERN MIND
A Contribution to Religious Unity
and Progress.
London : EDWARD ARNOLD.
" We commend a perusal of this book to all thoughtful
Catholics .” — Catholic Herald,
“ This book is a system of theology. Theological
students of all sorts might well be advised to study it.”—
Church Timet.
“ In a masterly fashion the needs of the age are
revealed, the claims of Catholicism analysed, criticized
and justified, and the Catholic faith restated in the light
of modern thought — restated without giving up a single
essential .” — The Christian Commonwealth.
“ One who studies this singular pronouncement as a
whole, whether from the point of view of a devout
Catholic or of a scientific agnostic, may come to the
conclusion that it is the most drastic — certainly the most
intelligible — and perhaps the most rational form of that
‘ Modernism,’ the task of which is to show how current
Christianity can be brought into a line with modern
thought.” — Frederic Harrison in the English Review.
HUMAN PEACE
STUDIED FROM THE STANDPOINT
OF A SCIENTIFIC CATHOLICISM
BY
MALCOLM ''QUIN
Author of ** Catholicism and the Modern Mind,”
“ Aids to Worship,” etc.
" Agnus Dei, qui iollis peccala mundi, dona
nobis pacem.”— C anon of the Mass.
" Agir par affection, el penser pour agir .” —
Auguste Comte.
NEW YORK
E. P. DUTTON AND COMPANY
681 FIFTH AVENUE
1917
Printed i;
Great Britain
[All rights reserved]
PREFACE
It may prevent misapprehension with regard to the
following work if I say at once that it is not concerned
with any merely special and temporary questions,
commanding and urgent as they may seem in them-
selves, arising out of the present European war^ — as,
for instance, the causes which may be held to have
immediately led to it, or the conditions of peace by
which it ought to be followed. Before this treatise
appears in print the war may conceivably be ended,
and these particular questions will have lost their
importance. But questions still greater will remain —
the question of how far it may be possible to prevent
the recurrence of such a war, and maintain the
lasting peace of the world ; the question of the bearing
of so stupendous an event upon man’s conception of
himself and his destiny, under the conditions of
modern thought and life. These questions are not a
mere problem of politics, or statesmanship, in the
ordinary view of them. They are not questions only
for a particular country, or a particular class, or a
particular party — questions to be decided by the vic-
tories of the soldier, or by the resolutions of a Par-
liament or Congress, or by exercises in journalism, or
by increasing the number of voters, or by strengthen-
ing what is vaguely called the ‘‘ democracy.” They
are fundamental and universal questions— in every
sense of the word, catholic questions^ — of man’s mind
and fate. As such, they are questions for the scien-
tific thinker and teacher, extending the scope and
processes of science, as they must now be extended—
and as since the time of Comte it has been possible to
extend them — to the spheres of man’s social and
religious life.
VI
PREFACE
It is from this point of view that I have endeavoured
here to treat them, and it is for this reason that I have
studied the Problem of Peace as the problem of a
“ Scientific Catholicism.” This world-wide and appal-
ling war hashad among its other great consequences this
— that it has caused a large number of serious minds
to ask themselves what must be the effect of such a
catastrophe on our ordinary conceptions of Chris-
tianity, and what ought naturally to be the part of a
religion of vision and prevision in the promotion of
peace. Some have answered this question in one
way, and some in another. Some have professed to
believe that the war would revive and deepen men’s
religious convictions, according to our traditional
Christianity ; others have openly and frankly said
“ this war has made us atheists.” My own answer
to this question will be found in the following pages.
I am sure that a religion which cannot show man,
with the certainty and breadth of science, his real
place and needs in the universe, and which, as a
consequence, is powerless to give him a right inspira-
tion and practical direction in his life on earth — I am
sure that such a religion, whatever its claims for
itself, will eventually be dismissed from the human
mind. I am sure, too, that Christianity, in all its
forms, has, throughout the nineteen hundred years
of its existence, exhibited this intellectual and social
incapacity, and never more signally than in regard
to the present war. But I am equally sure that in
Catholicism — the religion of man in his highest spheres
of development, following after his noblest ideals—
there is a positive and permanent content of goodness,
beauty and truth, which, scientifically understood and
completed, may carry him on in his pursuit of his own
perfection, and, as a consequence, towards the attain-
ment of a Human Peace.
That is the subject of the present work. It is
naturally a two-fold subject. It calls, first, for an
exposition — so far as the limits of this work allow, and
PREFACE
Vll
relatively to the question of peace — of those religious
conceptions which I here denote by the expression
“ a Scientific Catholicism.” Secondly, it involves a
statement of the principles of international policy
derived from this Catholicism, which would, as I
hold, in their complete, continuous application, estab-
hsh a Human Peace. Many of those who cherish the
ideal of such a peace will probably say that to make
it dependent, as I have done, on the scientific trans-
formation and completion of Catholicism, is to indefi-
nitely postpone its reahzation. They do not believe
in the possibility of such a change. And in the
absence of it they consider it useless to appeal to
CathoHcism or to Christianity in any form for the
purposes of peace.
If, however, we are not to look to “ the Church,”
in any conception of it, for a Human Peace, from
what are we to expect it ? Some look for it to some
international understanding, or to the increased power
of what they call “ the democracy,” or to the spread
of Socialism, or perhaps even to some form of “ inter-
national Government.” Now, these various expec-
tations rest on one of two assumptions — either, first,
that from the unchanged human mind, which, during
three thousand years, has continually given forth the
forces of war, the force of a universal peace is now
somehow suddenly to proceed ; or, secondly, that a
change has actually been wrought in it which at last
makes such a peace possible.
The first of these assumptions we need not discuss.
Is there, in the history of mankind as a whole, or in ■
the special history of the last hundred years, anything
which warrants the second ? That period is the period
which separates us from the Battle of Waterloo. It
has been the age — if there has ever been such an age
— of the democracy. It has seen the extension of
universal suffrage in almost every country of Europe.
It has been a time of widespread education, lower and
higher. It has witnessed an unexampled develop-
PREFACE
viii
ment of international trade, and a growth of human
intercourse such as never before existed. It has, too,
seen the spread of Socialism throughout the world.
Yet it has also seen almost every civilized nation,
European and American, repeatedly at war, and it
has ended with a war vaster in its range, and more
monstrous in its processes and carnage, than any that
has ever been waged.
We are driven back, then, to this — that the estab-
lishment of a Human Peace demands a profound and
lasting change in the mind of man. A change so
great requires a power of corresponding greatness to
bring it about — not a short-sighted and shifting states-
manship, subject to the conflicts and oscillations of an
anarchic public opinion, and concerned at most for the
exclusive interests of competing nationalities, but an
international Spiritual Providence, the voice and guar-
dian of an undivided Humanity, capable of giving
counsels of inspiration and guidance throughout the
world, and of breathing forth influences of reconcilia-
tion and co-operation in every country, and in every
sphere of the life of man. Such a work cannot be the
work of the politician ; it is the natural task of the
Catholic Church, with the Pope at its head, risen out of
a sectarian exclusiveness into a right realization of
its own universahty, boldly freeing itself from the
trammels of nationality, class and party, and under-
standing its doctrines and its human mission in the
light of science and the fully-developed Modern Mind.
Malcolm Quin.
CONTENTS
Preface
Religious Introduction
CHAP.
I. Science and the Problem of Peace
II. The Meaning of a Human Peace
III. The Good of a Human Peace
IV. Catholicism and a Human Peace
V. War and the Spiritual Life
VI. War and Political Life
VH. Industrial Imperialism .
VIH. Catholicism and Imperialism
IX. A Catholic Policy of Peace
X. The Republic of Peace .
V
II
64
79
lOI
125
154
172
190
209
226
252
THE PROBLEM OF
HUMAN PEACE
RELIGIOUS INTRODUCTION
I
One consequence of the stupendous and awful war
through which the world is passing is that it has
inspired a deeper and wider interest in what may
be called, broadly and generally, the Problem of
Peace. When the word “ peace ” is used in this
absolute way it means, we may suppose, what through-
out the following pages is called a Human Peace — the
universal and permanent peace of mankind. It is
peace in this sense, however vaguely conceived, that
has long been, for a certain number of serious minds,
an ideal, a great cause and hope, to which patiently
and faithfully they have dedicated themselves.
Commonly, indeed, when men speak of peace as a
good, and war as an evil, they are understood to
imply that peace is a permanent good, and war is an
evil, for humanity as a whole, and not merely for
some particular portion of it.
By “ peace,” therefore, in this treatise, I mean not
a temporary or partial peace, such as, in all experience
hitherto, has followed after every war, but a Human
Peace, world-wide and continuous. It is the Problem
of Peace in this sense that I have proposed to myself
12 THE PROBLEM OF HUMAN PEACE
to study. In studying such a problem we are called
upon to do something more than rest in a state of
sentimental enthusiasm. Sentimental enthusiasm in
regard to any good, or supposed good, of man does not
carry us very far, although, as a preliminary state of
mind, it may be indispensable and beneficent. It is
not enough for us, as individuals, to say simply that
we “ love peace,” or that peace, a human and enduring
peace, is a beautiful and inspiring ideal, to which the
energies of mankind should be directed. We have,
in relation to a Human Peace, to show, first, what it
is that we precisely and practically mean by it. We
have, in the second place, to show that it is possible.
We have, in the third place, to show that it is desir-
able — desirable, that is to say, in reference to some
fundamental interest of man, which, as a civilized
and developed being, and in a full conception of
himself and his destiny, he cannot disavow. We
have, in the fourth place, to show that, being desir-
able, it is also possible. We have, lastly, assuming,
or proving, its possibility, to indicate the means
necessary for its attainment.
I have, in the following pages, discussed these
various aspects of a Human Peace. In this Intro-
duction I propose to myself to make somewhat clearer
than I have there done the standpoint from which I
approach it. I here assume, that is to say, what I
afterwards make some attempt to prove — that a
Human Peace, in that general view of it which I have
now indicated, is a high common good of mankind. I
assume, too, its possibility — that man is not, by some
RELIGIOUS INTRODUCTION
13
insuperable power acting upon him or within him,
prevented from pursuing and attaining it, any more,
for example, than we suppose him to be prevented, by
such a power, from pursuing and attaining an ideal
chastity or sobriety, or from following after and
realizing health and beauty. Assuming these two
things in regard to a Human Peace, I limit myself
now to considering the means at our disposal for
bringing it about.
This is a question of science — using the word
“ science ” here to represent the spirit and methods
which men have successfully employed — in so far as
they have mastered the truths of system and action —
in the interpretation of experience in Nature and life.
Science, so understood, is, so far as ordered explana-
tion is concerned, our supreme resource in the fields of
social and moral conduct, as it is in the fields of
physics, chemistry, and biology ; for science, so
understood, means the developed mind of man, dis-
passionately and faithfully examining his situation
and himself, and bringing all orders of positive know-
ledge and all the powers of human reason to bear on
the construction of a stable synthesis. It is for
science in this complete sense, and for nothing else, to
determine what it is that we mean by a Human
Peace, how far such a peace is a great good of man,
to be followed after and attained, as health or chastity
is, and what are the right means to be adopted for
its attainment. Science, in this conception of it,
speaks as a master. Against its judgments, when they
have once been surely delivered, neither ecclesiastical
14 THE PROBLEM OF HUMAN PEACE
authority, nor national prejudice, nor political par-
tizanship, nor the claims of class, can be pleaded. The
sphere of science is universal truth, and the good to
which, in its universality, it points us — if it points us
to a good at all — is the good of humanity.
II
Considering the Problem of Human Peace in the
temper and from the standpoint of science, I come to
the conclusion that the great natural instrument for
its attainment and maintenance is the Catholic
Church, bringing to bear on the organization and
direction of human life a Scientific Catholicism. It
is necessary that these important terms should be
precisely and clearly understood. By the expression
“ the Catholic Church ” I mean, to begin with, the
Church of Rome — its doctrine, its worship, its insti-
tutions, including, of course, the Papacy. These
things constitute Catholicism. I mean by it also,
however, for the purposes of the present work, all
other Christian Churches, in proportion as they
actually contain within themselves Catholicism and
wield its force. All of them contain something of it —
some of them much, some little. All of them, in
principle at least, exist to bring that ideal, or Divine,
Humanity which was given to the world by Christ
into the life of man ; all of them, in degree, and in
whatever form, employ in doing this a system of
teaching, a system of worship, a system of discipline,
or life. The non-Catholic Churches are in this sense
Catholic, The true Catholic, or Roman, Church is
RELIGIOUS INTRODUCTION
15
the whole of which the different non-Catholic bodies —
Anglican, Lutheran, Presbyterian, and other — are
separated and unrelated parts, holding varying por-
tions of the total truth of Catholicism. It may be
considered that it would be better, instead of “ Catholic
Church ” and “ Catholicism,” to use the words
“ Christian Church ” and “ Christianity.” That,
however, is not so. In a strict scientific sense there
is no such thing as “ the Christian Church,” considered
as an organic, unified religious society. In the same
way, there is no such thing as “ Christianity,” con-
sidered as a definite, uniform system of belief, repre-
senting all who call themselves Christian. We cannot
reason scientifically with such terms, which con-
stantly change their meaning according to changing
points of view. We can reason scientifically with the
term “ Catholic Church,” understood as representing
the Church of Rome, and we can reason scientifically
with the word “ Catholicism,” understood as denoting
the doctrine, worship, and discipline of that Church.
Further, having before us in Catholicism this definite
type, or order, of religious theory and practice, we can
see how far the non-Catholic bodies are in relation
with it and represent it. For the sake of simplicity
and convenience, therefore, I shall generally through-
out this treatise use the words “ Catholic Church ”
and “ Catholicism ” as indicating the Church of Rome,
considered, not exclusively, but as representing the
non-Catholic Churches, in proportion to their actual
correspondence with it. It follows that what I have
to say of the Catholic Church, in its strength and
1 6 THE PROBLEM OF HUMAN PEACE
weakness, applies, mutatis mutandis, to the non-
Catholic Christian bodies.
The explanation which I have given of my use of
the word “ Catholicism ” sheds a natural light upon
the expression “ a Scientific Catholicism.” Accord-
ing to a conception which I have elsewhere more
fully unfolded,* the religious synthesis which is to
direct the future of mankind will be formed by the
transforming operation of the Modern Mind upon the
whole content of Catholicism — its theology, its
liturgy, its morals and social policy, its ecclesiastical
order. That transforming operation will be, in
a positive sense, at once critical, preservative, and
developmental. It will demand an effort of both
analysis and construction. It is, as I hold, to
this transformed, developed, and completed Catholi-
cism that we must look as the great instrument for
bringing in and maintaining a Human Peace. Such a
Catholicism I shall, for purposes of simplicity and
convenience, here call a Scientific Catholicism. This
expression, however, standing alone, might be mis-
leading. It might suggest some wholly new Catholi-
cism — supposing such a thing to be possible — sud-
denly springing into existence, and consciously and
deliberately systematic throughout its entire range.
It is necessary to guard against such a misapprehen-
sion. By science, in one view of it, we mean a precise
and orderly interpretation of experience, in its various
categories, expressing itself in verifiable statements,
* “ Catholicism and the Modern Mind ” : London, Edward
Arnold.
RELIGIOUS INTRODUCTION
17
and subserving, in the field of action, the ends of
practice. It is evident, however, that experience —
man’s observant and discriminating relation to the
order of Nature, including the facts of his own sensi-
bility and consciousness — precedes the formal scien-
tific interpretation of it, and expresses itself intuitively,
empirically and symbolically before it can express
itself analytically and systematically. An unculti-
vated mother, nursing her children, has no formal
theory of love, or of parental duty, or of the various
physical processes which she employs, but her experi-
ences, outer and inner, are, within their range, real,
and her intuitive and empirical expressions of them
have the value of aU spontaneous utterance concerning
the known facts of life. The biologist and the moralist,
dealing afterwards with such expressions analytically
and systematically, determine how far they are an
accurate representation of real experiences, and, for
their own purposes, substitute for them their own forms
of statement. Science, as Huxley said, and as Comte
had said before him, is only systematized common sense.
By the expression “ a Scientific Catholicism,”
therefore, I do not mean a whoUy new Catholicism ;
I mean the persisting positive contents of historic
Catholicism — the actual experiences of Nature and
human nature which it has intuitively, empirically,
and symbolically expressed — discerned, and incor-
porated for practical purposes into a full synthesis of
human knowledge, according to the developed powers
of the Modern Mind and the systematic methods of
science. It is for science, become mature and com-
1 8 THE PROBLEM OF HUMAN PEACE
plete — embracing the total experiences of man’s
social and moral life, as well as the phenomena of the
external world — to determine how far Catholicism
represents real experience, and to correct and supple-
ment it where it fails to do so. In this special rela-
tion, and for the practical purposes of human life,
science — the ordered manifestation of the Modern
Mind — is, as I have elsewhere said, sovereign, and
Catholicism is subordinate. We may express this
canonically by saying that Catholicism, throughout
its whole extent, — in doctrine, worship, and discipline
— must live or die according to its ratification by
modern science. If we were to assume that the
verdict of science — the tested experience and mind
of man — would be ultimately against Catholicism,
then we should have to conclude that Catholicism,
including aU forms of Christianity, would disappear,
as ancient European “ Paganism ” disappeared. It
is, however, upon the contrary supposition that I am
now proceeding. I hold that there is, by reasonable
presumption, a universal positive content in Catholi-
cism, spontaneously expressed in empirical and sym-
bolic forms. Upon this content — an order of mind —
science, in its completeness, can operate, precisely as
it operates upon the order of Nature ; and in the one
case, as in the other, it will accept in order to operate,
and operate to interpret and supplement.
Ill
It is, then, neither to Catholicism, as it exists in
contemporary life, or as it has shown itself in history.
RELIGIOUS INTRODUCTION
19
nor to some wholly new Catholicism, that we must
look as the great instrument of a Human Peace, but,
once more, to a Scientific Catholicism, both con-
tinuous and progressive. As this principle is funda-
mental and governing in the following pages, it is
necessary to set it in a clear light, and to consider not
only what may be said for it, but what may be said
against it.
And, first, as to historic or unscientific Catholicism
— using the word “ unscientific ” to denote, not some-
thing in which there is no content of experience and
reason, but something in which that content has not
been verified and systematized, according to the pro-
cesses of the Modern Mind. What is it that we mean
by this Catholicism, in a positive and practical con-
ception of it — such a conception of it as admits of
being demonstrated and rationally discussed, as we
demonstrate and discuss any proposition of astronomy
or biology ? We mean by Catholicism, in this posi-
tive conception of it, a continuous and organized
attempt, individual and social, to realize in the life
of man an ideal, or type, of Perfection, considered
as being given and symbolized in Christ, either as He
is represented in the New Testament poems, or as He
had established Himself, a fixed yet developing
Image, in the early Christian minds which produced
those poems. Such an attempt demanded — ^what
religion for its purposes always demands — -a system
of doctrine, a system of worship, a system of conduct,
or life. The threefold system which we call Catholi-
cism — and which was called Catholicism for no other
20 THE PROBLEM OF HUMAN PEACE
reason than because it eventually won for itself a
certain relative “ universality ” — was a slow and pro-
gressive construction of the human mind, operating
with a limited knowledge of the world and man, with
imperfect and untested methods of investigation and
proof, and in accordance with the then existing state
of intelligence.
It is to the constructive human mind, occupied
with the thought of Christ — a “ human mind ” con-
stituted by a co-operation, conscious and unconscious,
of men and women of every degree of capacity and
incapacity, of knowledge and ignorance — that we
owe, first, the Christian Scriptures, and the establish-
ment of their relation with the Jewish Scriptures ;
secondly, the conception of Christ as God, and the
consequent development of the idea of the Trinity ;
thirdly, the creeds, the elaboration of Christian
theology, the exaltation of the Blessed Virgin, the
doctrine of Heaven, Hell, and Purgatory, the venera-
tion of the Saints, the Mass, the Sacraments, the
growth of the Christian life, the organization of the
Church, and the order of the Catholic Hierarchy,
under the supremacy of the Pope.
The foundation of this great construction — a con-
struction of various minds, of various countries, of
various ages — was, of course, the conception of
Christ as God. The word “ God,” as is obvious, does
not represent an outward constant physical fact, such
as we may see with our eyes, or hear with our ears. It
immediately represents an inner image of man’s social
mind — an image which feeling, reason, imagination,
RELIGIOUS INTRODUCTION
21
and will, in relation to human experience, external
and internal, all co-operate in creating. This image
varies with varying stages of culture and mental
development. The Jews had one such image ; the
Greeks, Romans, and other “ Gentile ” nations a
number of different ones. The immediate outward
foundation of it may be a river, or a tree, or the sun
and moon, or an animal, or a human being, or the
infinite universe, including man as at once a con-
stituent and interpreter of it. Whatever the nature
of its foundation, that foundation is a fact of experi-
ence, external or internal, transformed by the shaping
mind of man, according to its progressive knowledge
and development, anthropomorphically conceived of
as a being of intelligence, feeling, and power, and
invested with the name, or symbol, “ God.” Man,
who is the lord of language, calls things what he will,
and thinks of them in virtue of such capacity of thought
as he possesses, in the different stages of his mental
evolution. Catholicism, scientifically and historically
speaking, owes its existence to the fact that at a
given point in time man, who had called many things
and many beings “ gods,” named with the name of
God, and invested with the attributes of a God, the
image of the Man Jesus Christ which had progressively
and in different ways established itself in his mind.
From this root sprang the living, widespread tree
which we call ChristendonL
Christ, who is God according to Catholicism, is, as
we say, an Image of Perfection — of a perfect man, and,
as a consequence, of a perfect human society. Man,
22 THE PROBLEM OF HUMAN PEACE
who gives to words their meanings, gives its meaning
to the word “ perfection,” as to the word “ God.”
It means what he decides that it shall mean, and what
he decides that it shall mean depends upon his own
variations in experience and culture. It certainly
lies within his capacity to form a conception — a
progressive conception — of a perfect human being,
transcendently complete and beautiful in physical
form, in love, in intelligence, in will, and in the
capacity to accomplish his ends, external and internal.
He may if he pleases — and he frequently does — take
any one constituent of this many-sided Perfection and
concentrate special attention upon it, to the tem-
porary exclusion, or subordination, of the others.
He may, in this way — and he frequently does — thus
concentrate attention upon moral, or intellectual, or
practical perfection, and yield to it a predominant
homage. For a complete perfection of personal
humanity, however — and, therefore, for a complete
social perfection — what is necessary is the due develop-
ment of all the distinctive sides of human nature in an
active co-operation and harmony, determined by the
subordination of the lower to the higher. This ideal
harmony, or unity, is never actually and absolutely
realized by man, but it is always pursued by him. It
is the character of the Divine, or God-like. It rests
on a synthesis of feeling, knowledge, and action. In
other words, it rests on religion, in which man proposes
to himself an ideal Perfection, and follows after it —
more or less consciously and with more or less fidelity
and power — in worship, doctrine, and discipline.
RELIGIOUS INTRODUCTION
23
Now Christ is, in Catholicism, God. That is to
say. He is an Image and Symbol of Divine, or com-
plete, Perfection — a coalescent, transcendent per-
fection of Love, Wisdom, Will, and Power — ^held in
the mind of man to establish a corresponding type of
humanity, individual and social. The chief external
presentation of this Image is contained in the New
Testament poems, and Catholicism, in its historic
working, is the continuous and developing attempt,
individual and social, to convert this Image into an
order of mind and life. In relation to this Image, in
relation to the representation of it in the New Testa-
ment poems, and in relation to Catholicism, as an
attempt to bring man into correspondence with it,
the Modern Mind — -let us say the mind of Western
humanity in the twentieth century, complete in
experience and culture — occupies a position of sove-
reign authority. It can, if it pleases, decide not to
have a “ religion ” at all — that is, not to follow after
an ideal Perfection by the way of a systematic doc-
trine, worship, and discipline. A very large number
of men and women in the modern world have, as we
know, in this sense, ceased to be “ religious.” A stiU
larger number may conceivably follow their example.
Again, the Modern Mind may decide that it will still
follow after Perfection, and, therefore, remain “ reli-
gious,” but that it can no longer accept Christ as its
God, or as the Image and Symbol of Perfection. It
is as free to do this as were the Jews, Greeks, and
Romans of primitive Catholicism to turn from the
ancient conceptions of the Divine, and embrace a
24 THE PROBLEM OF HUMAN PEACE
new conception. As a matter of fact, a considerable
number of persons at the present time occupy exactly
this position. They are “ religious ” ; they follow,
in their own way, after an ideal Perfection ; but they
say that Christ no longer represents it. In other
words. He has, for them, ceased to be “ God.”
But, again, the Modern Mind may hold that Christ
still remains for it an eternal Image and Symbol of
transcendent and complete Perfection — that He is
still its “ God ” — but that the historic conception and
realization of that Image are defective, and that a
new conception and realization are called for. Such
a view may find expression in the rejection, or sup-
posed rejection, of Catholicism, and the adoption of
some form, or modification, of “ Protestantism,” or
in the acceptance of Catholicism itself, subject to its
scientific interpretation and development, throughout
its whole domain, by the Modern Mind. Another
view, again, rejecting all the doctrinal principles of
all historic religions, may find, or endeavour to find,
for itself expression in entirely new symbols — such,
for example, as Comte constructed in his “ Religion
of Humanity.” What is of fundamental importance,
in connection with these and other similar alternatives,
is to recognize that the Modern Mind, in the fulness of
its experience and culture, has a natural freedom and
sovereignty. It summons all the religions of mankind
to its judgment seat. It sees in all of them modes of
representing and pursuing an ideal of human per-
fection, personal and social. It compares one with
another, just as it compares creations in poetry and
RELIGIOUS INTRODUCTION
25
art, schools of philosophy, national literatures, or
methods of industrial production. It has its own
indefeasible power of deciding for itself which of
them is in most complete relation to the ideal of per-
fection which it is the business of religion to pursue,
and how far each has failed in pursuing it. It can,
in principle, dismiss them one and all much more
completely than ancient Paganism was dismissed
from the mind of Christianity, for it has a fuller and
surer knowledge of itself, a wider social and historic
outlook, and more accurate instruments of rejection
and selection than the early Christians possessed.
But it can also decide that one or other out of the
various religions of mankind has, by its conceptions,
doctrines, modes of worship, and practical institutions,
made the greatest contribution to human perfection,
and that progress towards a fuller perfection wiU
best be accomplished by correcting that religion where
it needs correction, and completing it where it needs
completion.
It may be said that in this view of the relation of
the Modern Mind to the different systems of religion
there is an implication that man has a natural power
to choose his God, or to choose whether he shall have
a God at all. Undoubtedly there is, and undoubtedly
he has. As a matter of fact, in this region of ideas,
men, from the beginning of recorded history to the
present time, have done little else than choose their
gods. There are many things that they do not and
cannot choose. They do not choose their own
earth, or their own sun and moon, or the sea and sky.
26 THE PROBLEM OF HUMAN PEACE
or whether fire shall burn, or water wet, or whether
they shall eat and drink and propagate their species —
supposing they decide, what they certainly have the
power to decide, that they shall live rather than die.
But there are also many things which they can
choose. Amongst them is whether they will have a
God, and if so, what kind of a God it shall be. The
early Christians exercised this power when they
passed from “ Paganism ” or Judaism and chose
Christ as their God. Christian missions at the present
day depend on no other principle than the power of a
Hindu, or Buddhist, or Confucianist, or Mohammedan
to choose one God rather than another. The creeds
of Catholicism are, in one view of them, formulas of
religious choice. When we say “ I believe ” we say
“ I choose.” Further, for the individual mind, in
relation to the social mind— or the mind of the
Church — such a declaration means, to begin with, not
the construction of an Image of God for itself, but
the acceptance of an Image proposed to it. Simi-
larly, the recital of a historic creed in any one age
means that that age continues to accept the Image
proposed to it by the past. The early Christians, as
is well known, had to defend themselves against a
charge of “ atheism,” and this because “ belief in
God ” then practically meant, as it always means,
acceptance of some dominant social Image of God,
and “ unbelief ” rejection of that Image.
We come back, then, to this obvious principle —
that the mind which says “ I believe ” can also say
“ I do not believe,” or that the mind which says “ I
RELIGIOUS INTRODUCTION
27
choose ” can also say “ I refuse.” The Modern Mind
— the mind of Western man in the twentieth century —
is no more bound to continue to worship Christ than
the mind of the first century was bound to continue
to worship Jehovah or Apollo. That Mind, moreover,
unlike the mind of antiquity, is free to decide whether
it will worship a God or not, and what kind of a God —
that is, to say what kind of an Image of Perfection —
if any, it shall choose for itself. The modern “ Theist,”
or Unitarian, dismisses, or supposes himself to dismiss,
the Divinity of Christ, but he clothes Divinity in
some way with an image of his own. The religious
Positivist similarly shapes a new symbol for Per-
fection, and calls it, not “ God,” but “ Humanity.”
I proceed here, however, upon the assumption that
the Modern Mind, in the exercise of this its indefeasible
power and freedom, will continue to choose Christ
as its God, and Catholicism — the doctrine, worship,
and discipline of the Roman Church — as the indi-
vidual and social fulfilment of Christ. But it will do
this according to its own development and culture,
and for its own practical ends. The Modern Mind, as
I here conceive it, is, in a complete sense, scientific.
It is consciously and systematically synthetic. While,
therefore, it has the same freedom as was possessed
by the ancient world when it rejected Apollo and
accepted Christ, it will not make the same use of its
freedom. The rise of Christianity was a revolution.
It was, in principle — although, of course, not in
practice — the subversion of the existing religious
order. The Modern Mind — according to the view
28 THE PROBLEM OF HUMAN PEACE
of it which I am endeavouring to establish — does not
aim at a revolution but at an evolution. It sees in
Catholicism an order not to be subverted, but to be
developed. It brings to bear on it principles of
criticism and comparison, of rejection and acceptance,
as it brings them to bear on any other religion, or on
any other product of culture. It sees it in its relation
to the total mind and life of man, and, finding in it
truth amidst error, goodness amidst evil, weakness
amidst strength, ugliness amidst beauty, and acquisi-
tion of real experience and reason expressed spon-
taneously and symbolically, it exercises its own
analytic and constructive power to discern, to pre-
serve, and to complete. In other words, it “ chooses ”
to retain Catholicism, but chooses also to make it
scientific.
IV
We come now to consider the bearing of such a
Catholicism upon a Human Peace. By a Human
Peace, once more, we mean a peace universal and
continuous — not such a temporary cessation of strife
as comes at the end of every war, and as is due to
victory in arms, or to the common exhaustion of all
the combatants, or to mere weariness of bloodshed.
By a Human Peace we mean a peace deliberately
chosen and planned, as a common good of mankind,
and maintained through policy and co-operation by
the predominant nations of the world. Now, assum-
ing such a Peace to be possible at all — possible, that
is, in view of man’s situation and continuous nature —
RELIGIOUS INTRODUCTION
29
what reason, it may be asked, have we to suppose
that it can be brought in and upheld by the Catholic
Church, in any conception of it ? An answer to this
question must be found, and it must be given not
according to the methods of ecclesiastics and theo-
logians — ^who commonly limit themselves to affirming
propositions which they cannot prove and denouncing
evils which they cannot prevent — but according to the
methods of science, which at least confesses its ignor-
ance when it does not know, and acknowledges its
incapacity when it is powerless to act.
First, if a Human Peace — defined as I have defined
it — is, as we assume, a great human good, it is a good
which does not stand by itself, out of relation with
the various other ends which man, as a being of
affection, reason, and will, living in the social state,
proposes to himself. It is plain, for example, that so
long as we have nations following after what they
consider some good of the “ State ” — such as indus-
trial ascendency, or territorial expansion, or dynastic
aggrandizement, or political overlordship — ^we cannot
have a Human Peace. It is plain, too, that these
common causes of war are in close connection with
the ordinary needs and desires of men and women in
their physical, intellectual, and moral life. Stating
the same truth more generally, but not less obviously,
man is a complex whole, and the various parts of his
nature act and react one upon another. If, then, we
are to consider a Human Peace as a good, and as a
good to be brought about and maintained by choice
and policy, it is a good which enters into that con-
30 THE PROBLEM OF HUMAN PEACE
tinuous but developing ideal of Perfection, individual
and social, which, as we have seen, it is the business of
religion — or of man as a religious being — to pursue.
Secondly, Catholicism, scientifically considered, is
a continuous organized effort, individual and social,
to realize in the life of man the Divinity, or Perfection,
of Christ. But Catholicism is not an accomplished
Perfection. It is the pursuit of an ideal ; it is not its
fulfilment. By “ Catholicism,” practically under-
stood, we simply mean a continuous company of
human beings, a succession of generations, following
after a certain end, according to their conception of
it, and with such instruments and methods as, at
given stages of their progress, they have thrown up.
But of the end itself which they pursued — Perfection
in Christ — Catholics, being ordinary men and women,
have had only an imperfect conception. This was
inevitable. Catholicism — the acknowledgment of
Christ as “ God,” the confession of His Perfection as
a rule of life — arose in an age when it was not possible
for men to have an orderly and complete view of the
universe in which man lives, and of man in relation
to that universe. They had, some of them, great
gifts — intuitions of genius, imagination, poetic sensi-
bility and power, an instinct for moral beauty, a
right feeling for what was noble in man and woman,
a sense of the greatness and mystery of human
life, moments of profundity, moments of spiritual
ardour, moments of ecstasy, a capacity for subtle
dialectic and metaphysical refinement, and also a
power of heroic self-sacrifice and religious effort.
RELIGIOUS INTRODUCTION
31
They had, however, along with these high qualities,
ignorance of many things that are now commonly
known— of the earth, of its inhabitants, of its history,
of the solar system into which it enters, of the physical
and vital forces which surround man, and of man
himself, in his nature, powers, limitations, and destiny.
Further, an immense proportion of the men who
became “ Catholics ” — ^who in some sense and degree
received into their minds the Image of Christ — were
rude, barbaric, violent, superstitious, sensual, and
selfish — or perhaps raised only a little above mere
animal torpor ; and this great persisting social body
constituted a predominant force, which told not only
upon the practical fulfilment of the Divine Perfection,
but also upon the conception of that Perfection.
This is all elementary. Catholicism — either as we
see it in history, or as it shows itself in contemporary
life — does not represent a perfection perfectly realized,
or even a perfection perfectly understood. Intel-
lectually considered^ — allowing for individual intuition
and genius— it represents something infantile, imma-
ture, empiric, incomplete^ — a vague and limited view
of man and his universe, and therefore of “ God,” or
Perfection ; practically considered, it represents, along
with a partial empirical success, both the failure
necessarily resulting from the want of science and the
failure due to the pressure of passions and inclina-
tions antagonistic to the Perfection confessed. With
this latter kind of failure we are not here immediately
concerned. It is, in varying degree, inevitable, and
would, in a certain measure, remain inevitable even
32 THE PROBLEM OF HUMAN PEACE
if Catholicism became, what it is necessary for it to
become, scientific. Men who are dishonest or drunken
or unchaste commonly sin in this way, not because of
their want of “ science ” — because they are unaware,
for example, that drunkenness and dishonesty are
evils, and carry with them certain evil consequences —
but because of the strength of their lower inclinations,
and the absence, or relative weakness, of the higher.
This ordinary failure of men to come into correspond-
ence with an ideal, or law, which they yet acknow-
ledge must be allowed for in any just historic estimate
of Catholicism, on its practical side.
What we are now concerned with, however, is not
the failure of Catholicism to realize its own vision of
Perfection, such as it has been, but its failure in
vision itself — its failure, in other words, in science and
motive, in the capacity to represent to man the true
nature of the order of things in which he is placed,
and his own nature, as an active, modifying con-
stituent of that order. This failure in science and
motive of course has in part been compensated for
by intuition, genius, common sense, and empirical
wisdom, learning from its actual discharge of the
tasks of life. Nevertheless, it has been a failure, and
one of a fundamental character, the effect of which
has been necessarily felt not only in the region of
theory, but in the region of practice also. This is
what the Modern Mind — the mind of a fuller experi-
ence, of a complete development, constituted by the
religions, the sciences, the arts, the industry, the
social expansion of the whole of humanity — is now
RELIGIOUS INTRODUCTION
33
able to see. It recognizes that in its conception of
Perfection — that is to say, of God in Christ, and conse-
quently in its scriptures, doctrines, creeds, sacraments,
system of worship, and system of conduct — Catholi-
cism has largely been the expression of a human
nature ignorant, immature, untrained, misconceiving
itself, and its world in relation to itself. By
Catholicism we here mean the whole order of the
Catholic Church, theoretic and practical, from the
earliest apostolic age to the Council of Trent and the
subsequent definitions of the Vatican Council. This
whole order, we say, rests on spiritual intuition, on
religious genius, on empirical wisdom, on a partial
experience, inner and outer. It represents, spon-
taneously and symbolically, a provisional and incom-
plete synthesis — the synthesis of undeveloped but
developing man. It must be converted into a com-
plete synthesis — the conscious and systematic syn-
thesis of developed man. Once more, it must
become, what it may become, scientific. It must no
longer remain the religion merely of the ancient mind,
or of the medieval mind, but must become the religion
of the Modern Mind, entering into the ancient and
medieval minds, understanding them, interpreting
them, and making all their positive acquisitions its
own. It is not for the less developed to impose its
law on the more developed ; it is for the more
developed to follow its own law and impose it on the
less developed.
The central point of Catholicism, scientifically con-
sidered, is, of course, its conception of God — that is
H.P»
C
34 the problem OF HUMAN PEACE
to say, of ideal or transcendent Perfection — in Christ.
In simpler terms, it is its conception of the Divinity of
Christ. By the Divinity of Christ, positively under-
stood, we mean a Perfect Humanity, personal and
social. Man has it in his capacity to form an image of
himself as a complete Humanity — complete, and com-
pletely unified, in feeling, knowledge, and power. For
the realization of this Perfect Humanity what is needed
is a synthesis — not only full and right knowledge, or
science, but love and will working in accordance with
science. Catholicism, as it has existed in history, has
not constituted such a synthesis. It has not even con-
ceived it. It has been an intuitive, partial, tentative,
and empirical movement towards it. It is for the
Modern Mind, in its natural, indefeasible freedom and
sovereignty, to dismiss Catholicism, as Catholicism
itself dismissed “ Paganism,” or to convert it into a
real synthesis. I here assume that it will do the latter.
V
There are five cardinal and connected points in
Catholicism — and, of course, in all other forms of
Christianity in proportion as they are “Catholic” — on
which the modern interpretation of it, and therefore
the modern transformation of it, must turn. They are,
first, the conception of Christ as Divine, or as a
norm of human Perfection ; second, the consequent
conception of “ this world ” in relation to the “ next ” ;
third, the conception of miracle ; fourth, the con-
ception of sin ; fifth, the conception of prayer.
RELIGIOUS INTRODUCTION
35
These connected points are all of fundamental
importance in relation to a Human Peace.
If Christ is to remain, for the Modern Mind, a type,
or ideal, of Perfection — in other words, if He is to
remain its God — then His Perfection must be under-
stood as the perfect nature and state of man, indi-
vidual and social, living under the demonstrable con-
ditions, or laws, of the world which we know. It must
be the Perfection of Humanity as science sees it, in
relation to a Universal Order of which science,
according to its progressive capacity, unfolds the
constitution and forces. The word “ God ” has always
represented an Image of the constructive and trans-
forming mind of man, operating upon its experiences,
either of external nature, or of its own inner nature, in
relation to the external world. In other terms, it has
symbolized the whole Order of things, cosmic, vital,
and human, visible and invisible, in so far as that
Order was apprehended and understood. It will, to
the Modern Mind, as I conceive it, continue to repre-
sent this Order, according as it is apprehended and
understood by science in its maturity and complete-
ness. God in Christ, however, or Christ as God, con-
denses and symbolizes this Universal Order as an
Order of Human Perfection, personal and social ; and
just as man’s conception of the cosmic order has
become more complete and exact in the degree in
which his powers, intellectual and practical, have
expanded, so his conception of the human order,
personal and social, symbolized by Christ, has de-
veloped also. The doctrine, or science, of this twofold
C 2
36 THE PROBLEM OF HUMAN PEACE
order, of the world and man, is ever becoming a
larger body of ascertained truth, a fuller synthesis —
in other words, a Greater Catholicism ; but its
symbols — God, Christ, His Holy Spirit, the Trinity,
the Blessed Virgin, the Creeds, the Sacraments —
remain, by the choice and will of the Modern Mind,
the same.
By the Perfection, or Divinity, of Christ, therefore
— which is painted for us in the poems of the New
Testament as it was conceived, according to their
varying capacity, by its various writers — a Scientific
Catholicism understands a Perfect Humanity, per-
sonal and social. It means by it man with his
characteristic nature and powers — physical, moral,
ntellectual, practical — fully developed and har-
moniously ordered by the continuous predominance
of what is higher in him over what is lower. It means
man, with his capacity for bodily order and health,
with his capacity for unselfish love, with his sense of
goodness, his sense of beauty, his sense and pursuit
of truth, his genius for social organization, his indus-
trial mastery, and his command over the forces of
Nature — it means man, so considered, in the com-
plete expansion and many-sided unity of his total
being, ever fulfilling himself and fulfilling himself more
completely, individually and socially, throughout the
ages. It means, too, as one condition sine qua non of
the pursuit and attainment of this Perfection
— the establishment and maintenance of a Human
Peace.
RELIGIOUS INTRODUCTION
37
VI
This modern Catholic conception of God in Christ —
a conception in which the Divinity of Christ sym-
bolizes a Perfect Humanity, personal and social, sum-
ming up in its own order the Universal Order, visible
and invisible— this conception, in proportion as it is
attained, serves as a natural criticism of what, for
purposes of distinction, we may call the traditional
and unscientific idea of God in Catholicism. I use
the word “ criticism,” of course, not as equivalent to
mere hostility or disparagement, but as representing
the reasoned judgment of a mature intelligence upon
the ideas of an intelligence immature.
The Modern Mind which I am here supposing to
consciously and deliberately hold within itself the
ancient and medieval minds, for the purposes of a
religious synthesis — the Modern Mind, so constituted,
looks at the whole humanity of the past precisely as
it looks at the solar system, or at the phenomena of
physics and chemistry, with a dispassionate recog-
nition, informed by the aims of practice. It sees
that when the traditional conception of Christ’s
Divinity was shaped the sciences were not formed ;
history, as we now understand it, was almost non-
existent ; industry was in an infant condition ; our
European social order had not yet come into being ;
vast parts of the earth and a vast part of mankind
were unknown ; and the immense majority of men
and women were steeped in barbaric ignorance and
superstition.
38 THE PROBLEM OF HUMAN PEACE
These conditions, in their fundamental character,
governed the minds not merely of what we should
now call the “ common people,” but of the various
founders and thinkers of Catholicism — including, of
course, the writers of the New Testament. To them
God — like the Jehovah of the Jews, the Zeus of the
Greeks, the Jupiter of the Romans — was “ a magnified
and non-natural man,”* “ the Father,” seated on a
throne in the sky. With this image Catholicism
associated “ the Son,” sitting at the right hand of the
Father, the “ Holy Spirit,” “ proceeding ” from the
Father and the Son, and the Mother of God, exalted
and glorified. Along with these images there grew
up the conceptions of Heaven, Purgatory, and Hell —
“ the next world,” taking the place of similar Pagan
ideas. There can be no doubt, too, that to the early
Christians “ this world ” was a region soon to dis-
appear, and “ the next ” was a “ place ” or “ state ”
soon to come. Such ideas and expectations are
stamped visibly upon the New Testament writings,
and whatever these writings are, or are not, they are
certainly a witness to the state of mind of those who
composed them, and to the social and intellectual con-
ditions under which they arose. Those who founded
Catholicism — considered as a vast, persisting system
of doctrine, worship, and policy — founded it uncon-
sciously, and because they were forced, by the nature
of man’s life upon earth, to convert their apocalyptic
visions, their fanciful eschatology, their moral ideal-
ism, their spiritual ecstasy, and their metaphysical
* Matthew Arnold : “ Literature and Dogma.”
RELIGIOUS INTRODUCTION
39
bewilderment into something that might serve as a
rule of action, wide enough for the needs of man. The
“ Kingdom of Heaven,” they learned, was not to be
in the sky, and to proceed from a sudden catastrophe,
but was to be — if ever it was to be — a slow creation of
man’s mind and will, painfully, reluctantly working
upon Nature and human nature, and inspired by a
progressive sense of Perfection.
VII
A scientific and historic estimate of Catholicism
cannot, of course, be drawn from any one of its ages
exclusively, or from its popular mind alone, without
taking account of its learned mind, or from one school
of theology by itself, without taking account of others.
We are on sure ground, however, when we say that
Catholicism, throughout all its ages, and in all its
schools — at any rate, since its development into a
dogmatic and organic system — ^has rested on the
conceptions and instruments which I have just
enumerated — its conceptions of God in Christ, of the
New Testament as an “ inspired Revelation,” of the
Trinity, of the Blessed Virgin, of Heaven, Hell, and
Purgatory, and of “ this world ” and “ the next.”
It is, of course, true that these terms are not, in
themselves, positive and definite, and that while
there has been a common agreement, within the
Church, to accept and use them, it has never been
possible to exactly measure the state of mind which
corresponded with them. It is, for example, of the
essence of such a symbol as the Nicene Creed that
40 THE PROBLEM OF HUMAN PEACE
it is built up of a number of statements to which any
individual mind may pledge itself, and which a number
of persons may consent to rehearse in common, but
to which none of those who repeat them may be able
to attach any precise and practical significance. A
whole society of men and women may go on saying “ I
believe in God the Father, Maker of Heaven and
Earth ” without in the least knowing what they mean
by “ belief,” or by “ God,” or by God as “ the
Father,” or, in such a connection, by “ Maker,” or by
“ Heaven.” The one word in this sentence which they
can so use as to understand it themselves, and to com-
municate their understanding of it to others, is the
word “ Earth,” and this they can thus use because a
positive and common experience enlightens them, and
because this common experience has been invested by
science with the authority of exactness and proof.
Now, we may say, quite simply and broadly, that
the general principle which the Modern Mind applies
to Catholicism, in its pursuit of religious continuity
and development is this — that just as it is possible to
attach a demonstrable and practical meaning to
such a word as the word “ Earth ” in the Nicene
Creed, and in other theological statements, so it must
become possible, in degree, to attach a similar meaning
to such terms as “ God,” the “ Trinity,” “ Heaven,”
“ Hell,” “ Purgatory,” “ the future life,” “ the Scrip-
tures,” the “ Sacraments,” and “ the Church.” In
so far as no such meaning — a meaning of proof and
use — can be attached to these terms, they will pass
from the speech of man, as the verbal symbols of
RELIGIOUS INTRODUCTION
41
“ Paganism,” except for historic and literary pur-
poses, have passed from it, and Catholicism or
Christianity will, therefore, cease to have a social
importance. This cardinal principle of a Catholic
“ modernism ” — if we are to use a somewhat objec-
tionable word — is, of course, one which ordinary
ecclesiastics and theologians, affirming propositions
which they cannot prove, and denouncing evils which
they cannot prevent, may, at first, dislike and reject.
But they must end by accepting it. They cannot
help themselves. The movement of the human mind,
continuous, unified, and universal, is not to be
arrested. The modern man is not the medieval man,
or the ancient man. He is himself. He is the heir
of the Past ; he is not its slave. If he elects to remain
Catholic he will remain Catholic in his own way —
according to his new vision, his new needs, his new
powers — and any Catholicism, or “ Christianity,”
representing simply the vision, needs, and powers of a
former age will necessarily become a lapsed creed.
In the light of this controlling principle of a
Scientific Catholicism — not a negative principle, which
simply disallows and rejects, but a positive principle,
which transforms and uses — it is easy to determine its
attitude towards such fundamental conceptions as
those of “ the other world,” “ miracle,” “ sin,” and
“ prayer.” All of these related conceptions, as it is
hardly necessary to say, have a bearing upon the
problem of a Human Peace, for this problem cannot
rightly be dissociated from man’s view of himself and
his life. According to the official doctrine of Catholi-
42 THE PROBLEM OF HUMAN PEACE
cism, or “ Christianity,” in any of its organic forms,
“ this world ” is, in principle, of importance only as
a prelude to “ the next.” It is a vale of tears. It is a
state of trial and probation. In itself it is worthless
and contemptible, whether we consider it in its
character, or in its duration. For the human species
as a whole it means an indefinite period of misery and
disappointment, to be ended by a general confla-
gration, in which the whole of the visible universe
will, somehow, be resolved into nothing. For the
individual man or woman it means a brief season of
life on earth — varying from a few seconds to, perhaps,
a hundred years — followed by “ eternal life ” in a
place of torment called “ Hell,” or in a place of
felicity called “ Heaven,” to be reached, as a rule,
after a longer or shorter sojourn in another place of
torment called “ Purgatory.” During this life of
man on earth — the continued, indefinite Hfe of the
human species, the limited life of individual men and
women — God, the “ magnified and non-natural Man,”
sits as a spectator on His throne in “ Heaven,” with
“ the Son ” and the ‘‘ Holy Spirit ” and the Blessed
Virgin in indissoluble association with Him, for ever
watching the play of human affairs, listening to the
prayers of men, for ever judging individual “ souls ”
as they “ ascend ” to Him at death, and waiting for
that indefinite time when He shall cause a trumpet to
be sounded for the general judgment, and the total
annihilation of the universe.
Now, first, we may say that, assuming such a con-
ception of a future Hfe,” or of the “ next world,” to
RELIGIOUS INTRODUCTION
43
be in any sense thinkable, it has no necessary relation
to that end which Catholicism, according to the
Modern Mind, proposes to itself. That end is a many-
sided, positive, human Perfection, individual and
social, symbolized, inspired by the transcendent Per-
fection, or Divinity, of Christ. The traditional con-
ception of a future life has a relation to merely one
side of perfection — its moral side — and this only in an
exclusive and limited sense. Certainly, moral per-
fection is the most important of all, and, rightly
understood, is the basis and condition of all others.
It is for this reason especially that Christ is confessed
as God. In Him we see the whole order of things
summed up and typified in a human and personal
order, constituted by the ascendency of a spiritual and
self-sacrificing love. From this point of view moral
perfection may be said to contain within itself the
total perfection of man, for it means his highest
nature — what is Divine in him — ruling and ordering
throughout the complex unity of his being, emotional,
intellectual, practical, and this not merely by a
suppression of the bad, but by an expression of the
good. For practical purposes, however, we have to
recognize a distinction between moral perfection and
intellectual and practical perfection, and to say that
the ideal, or perfect, man is the man whose many-sided
nature is full-flowering, unified, and consummate in
the social state.
With this positive conception of perfection the
conception of a future life, as it is contained in our
traditional Catholicism, has no assignable relation.
44 the problem OF HUMAN PEACE
According to that conception, man is a “ sinner.” He
is a sinner as soon as he is born — before even he can
shape a thought or perform an action. He is “ saved ”
from this congenital sin — or, rather, from the penal-
ties due to it — by the magic of the baptismal rite, in
the absence of which he will be punished by being
excluded eternally from “ Heaven.” When he grows
up he is a sinner by his own conscious will and act.
By “ sin ” is meant the contravention of certain
elementary moral commands, or the neglect of certain
ecclesiastical ordinances — as, for example, the obliga-
tion to hear Mass. Man is inevitably throughout
life, in varying degree, in this sense a sinner, and,
therefore, deserving of punishment in a future life.
However much and however long he may sin, never-
theless, he can escape the eternal punishment, and
limit the temporal punishment, due to him in a future
life by repentance, confession, and absolution, and by
virtue of the principle of indulgences. The wickedest
of human beings, in fact, being contrite, is, by means
of the Sacrament of Penance and a Plenary Indul-
gence completely exempted from the consequence of
all sin, both original and personal, and, if he dies in
this “ state of grace,” goes straight to Heaven, and
becomes immediately the associate of saints and
angels.
Such a conception of a future life has, as is evident,
no connection with a positive idea of perfection — the
pursuit and realization of a beautiful humanity,
individual and social — even if we think only of moral
perfection, in a distinctive and exclusive sense. Still
RELIGIOUS INTRODUCTION
45
less has it any bearing upon Perfection in its total
significance — the harmonious manifestation of a full-
fiowering humanity, physical, moral, intellectual,
practical, individual, and social. The “ salvation of
the sinner ” — that is to say, escape from the just
punishment of sin, and the attainment, in spite of it,
of eternal felicity in “ another world ” — is not the
same thing as the Divine spirit of man, ruling itself,
and realizing itself in every sphere of his being. The
“ sinner ” who is “ saved ” and goes to Heaven may
be, in everything except contrition, utterly worth-
less — in morals depraved, in intelligence stupid and
ignorant, in his social and civic conduct incapable
or inefficient. He may be ugly, deformed, brutal,
drunken, profligate, useless in the family, useless in
the State, useless in the workshop, useless in the
school, with no feeling for the arts or sciences, with
no sentiment of worship, with no power of practical
service — and yet in “ Heaven ” he is at once magically
transformed and becomes a friend and companion of
God. From such a point of view what we call the
evils or imperfections of human life are of no import-
ance — disease, ugliness, ignorance, poverty, crime,
war ; and even sin, in principle the greatest of evils,
is not so much an evil in itself as in its personal
chastisement, from which escape is easily possible
by a moment of sufficient contrition and the perform-
ance of a ritual act.
But while this traditional conception of a “ future
life ” is thus out of relation with any positive ideal
of perfection, the greater consideration remains. The
46 THE PROBLEM OF HUMAN PEACE
conception itself, in any merely objective and external
interpretation of it, has ceased to have meaning and
validity for the Modern Mind — except such a historic
and relative meaning as attaches, for example, to the
Elysium of the ancient Greeks, or to the Valhalla of
the Scandinavians. Upon this subject, from the
point of view of science, discussion is both impossible
and useless. It is, from this point of view, impossible
and useless because we know nothing whatever of the
Catholic “ future life ” — Heaven, Hell, and Purgatory
— and, in the total absence of knowledge with regard
to it, are not even able to assign a rational objective
meaning to these three terms. They are symbolic
terms of the human mind ; they are not terms of the
external and visible cosmos. They are terms of inner
experience ; they are not terms of outer experience.
This is acknowledged, quite plainly and unequivocally,
by Catholicism itself. It does not profess to “ know ”
anything of Heaven, Hell, and Purgatory — “ what ”
they are, or “ where ” they are. These ideas, it
admits, do not lie within the region of reason or
demonstration. They are “ of faith.” They are
not to be understood ; they are to be received, and
received on no other ground than that “ the Church ”
affirms them.
To the Modern Mind, however, faith and reason are
not antithetic. Faith to it is not a mystic process of
apprehending occult truths which lie wholly outside
the sphere of experience and demonstration ; it is
an attitude of mind and will — one of extreme value
and importance — ^which is as much capable of a
RELIGIOUS INTRODUCTION
47
positive explanation and designation as any other,
and which has an assignable relation to knowledge and
life. The Modern Mind, therefore, does not recognize
a fundamental and perpetual distinction between the
things of “ faith ” and the things of experience and
reason. Its Catholicism — the only Catholicism which
it will accept — is in doctrine scientific, and its terms
or statements must, therefore, in a last resort, be
subject to the ordeal of proof and use. This does not,
of course, necessarily mean that the Catholic concep-
tion of Heaven, Hell, and Purgatory is to be dismissed
from the Modern Mind, although that mind, in the
exercise of its natural, indefeasible sovereignty, has
undoubtedly the power to dismiss it ; it means that
the sense and use of these expressions, as of all Catholic
ideas and terms, are to be determined by the Modern
Mind itself and not by the medieval mind. It means,
too, that the value assigned to them must be such as
is capable of entering into a synthesis of positive and
demonstrable truths, and of visibly contributing to
the ideal and pursuit of human perfection.
What is true of the traditional Catholic conception
of a future life is, of course, true also of the traditional
ideas of miracle and prayer. In a modern scientific
Catholicism — occupied with the pursuit of a positive
human perfection, individual and social, symbolized
by Christ — miracle has no place. It is not necessary
to discuss it, any more than it is necessary to discuss
the Elixir of Life, or the processes of witchcraft,
except in connection with the history of the human
mind. It does not, in fact, lie within the region of
48 THE PROBLEM OF HUMAN PEACE
rational discussion. Perfection, positively understood,
means man ruling himself and fulfilling himself, in-
dividually and socially. It means love, goodness,
health, beauty, wisdom, power, a mastery of natural
forces, a right distribution of material wealth, a
prescient and high direction of human life towards
universal peace and concord. In relation to these
ends religion in the modern world must declare itself
and test itself. The only Catholicism that can
now live is a Catholicism consciously and intention-
ally directed towards them, and judging all its con-
ceptions and instruments by their capacity to con-
tribute to their fulfilment.
Now perfection, in all its spheres — in love, good-
ness, health, beauty, knowledge, power, in social order,
in industry, in art, in science — is the result of a con-
tinuous effort, individual and social. This effort
entails sacrifice of certain things and the pursuit of
others. It requires prescience, will, and courage. It
is maintained from age to age of human life. It
demands the co-operation of successive generations.
It is subject to hindrances. It meets with dis-
couragement. It is apparently often interrupted and
frustrated. It has its heroes and martyrs. It has
its seasons of sorrow and despair, as of joy and hope.
This effort, in fact, is the life of man, as we see it in
history. In that life, according to the conception of
a Scientific Catholicism, miracle has no place. Miracle
does not till the fields, or procure for men warmth,
clothing and housing, or compose a poem, or paint a
picture, or build a church, or construct a science, or
RELIGIOUS INTRODUCTION
49
promote education, or maintain the family life, or
organize and direct a nation. It adds nothing to the
force of love ; it gives no new power or range to
reason. It removes no difficulty from the path of
man. It does not exalt his inner nature ; it does not
enlarge his outer capacity. If he is wretched, dis-
eased, poor, ignorant, and helpless, miracle brings him
no permanent resource, and in a world of war miracle,
in its evident impotence, is incapable of pronouncing
the word of peace.
Those, therefore, who in the modern world, invoke
the power of miracle in reference to any of the con-
tinuous aims of human life — physical, moral, intel-
lectual, industrial, or social — are as much out of
relation with the sanity of their age as was Don
Quixote when he donned the helmet of Mambrino, or
attempted the restoration of chivalry by an encounter
with a windmill. They are, in this respect, as a
consequence, in proportion to their influence upon
the minds of men, an actual hindrance to social order
and development, since — allowing for their value and
excellence in other respects — they tend to confuse and
misdirect the human spirit, and prevent it from under-
standing itself, the nature of its fundamental aims,
and the right means of their attainment. The
greatest single instrument of perfection is prayer, for
in prayer, according to a scientific and ideal conception
of it, man consciously renews in his mind an Image
of Perfection, a Divine Ideal, acknowledges its beauty
and lordship, measures himself in relation to it, con-
fesses his shortcomings, invokes, by a process of
HtP.
50 THE PROBLEM OF HUMAN PEACE
spiritual imagination and will, the power necessary
for its realization, and prepares himself, in feeling, in-
telligence, and action, to come into practical corre-
spondence with it. Prayer, therefore, is a first form
of spiritual effort. It is an exercise in religious life.
It is an act of vivifying and renovating communion
with the Supreme Good, comparable with the act by
which we deliberately place ourselves in relation with
some spectacle of beauty in Nature, or some visible
nobleness in humanity, or some great creation in art,
and undergo its influence of inspiration and renewal.
But in prayer, according to this scientific conception
of it, miracle — the suspension or subversion of the
natural order, cosmic or human — ^has no place.
Prayer, therefore, in all its forms — ^whether in private
or public worship, in the baptismal rite, in the conse-
crations of the Holy Eucharist, in the ordination of
priests, in the marriage service, or in any other sacra-
ment — has no magical force. It is the acknowledg-
ment and instrument of an ideal Humanity, and it
has a value proportioned to the rational apprehension
of that ideal, and to the degree in which it actually
calls forth in men the forces of feeling, intelligence,
and active will essential to its realization.
VIII
We are now — sufficiently for our present purpose —
in a position to understand what it is that we mean
by a Scientific Catholicism. We do not mean by it
a new sect, or a “ new religion,” or some arbitrary
construction of an individual thinker. We mean by
RELIGIOUS INTRODUCTION
51
it, first, that the Modern Mind, being synthetic —
holding within itself the powers, experiences, and
acquisitions of a total humanity, past and present —
is of sovereign authority, and that to this mind it
now falls to determine the sense of such words as
“ God,” Christ, the Trinity, sin, the Scriptures, the
“ future life,” the creeds, prayer, the sacraments, and
the Church. We mean by it, secondly, that to the
Modern Mind Catholicism, throughout its entire range,
is the confession and pursuit of an ideal perfection,
individual and social — a perfection continuously
centred and symbolized in Christ as God, but not to be
limited by the conception of His Divinity proper to
any one age or stage of Catholic development.
It is to Catholicism in this sense that we are to
look for the installation and maintenance of a Human
Peace. To a merely traditional or unscientific
Catholicism — to a Catholicism representing an imma-
ture condition of the human mind — ^we cannot so
look. The reasons for this may be simply assigned.
They follow from all that we have now said. Catholi-
cism has never, in fact, been able to give to man a
right representation of himself and of the universe in
relation to himself. It has given him a representation
intuitive, conjectural, imaginative, incomplete, ex-
pressing itself in metaphysical statements lying beyond
the region of proof or disproof, and having no direct
application to life and conduct. This provisional
synthesis of things has not been, by its own nature —
considered as a theory or theology — practical and
social, but has been rendered, in some degree, prac-
52 THE PROBLEM OF HUMAN PEACE
tical and social by the active mind of man, pursuing
his destiny in presence of the actual conditions and
needs of his nature. In proportion as he has done
this — in proportion as he has gained the experiences
and acquisitions characteristic of a developed and
complete humanity — he has tended to outgrow the
CathoHc synthesis, in what we may call the unscientific
or infantile conception of it. It is now, in this con-
ception of it, the synthesis of children, or of ignorant
and incapable minds. No rational being now believes
— if any rational being ever really believed — that
there is “ a God,” in the sense of a “ magnified and
non-natural man,” sitting somewhere on “ a throne ”
in the sky, or “ beyond ” the infinite visible universe^
and eternally occupied, in this infinite universe, in
watching the affairs of our little planet, and “ judg-
ing ” the “ souls ” of its inhabitants as they indi-
vidually “ ascend ” to Him at death. No rational
being believes — if any rational being ever really
believed — in any objective and literal sense, in the
Catholic Heaven, Hell, and Purgatory as places or
“ states ” “ somewhere ” and “ sometime ” to be
discovered. These, we now see, are symbolic, or
poetic, conceptions and terms, representing a spiritual
reality. They have exactly the value which the
human mind, in its progressive capacity and know-
ledge, chooses to assign to them ; and the mind which
now gives them their meaning — disallows them alto-
gether, or uses them in its own way, and for its own
purposes — is the synthetic, sovereign Modern Mind,
self-conscious, self-scrutinizing, analytic, practical.
RELIGIOUS INTRODUCTION
53
The place of a merely traditional, or immature,
Catholicism, relatively to the mind and life of man
— and relatively, therefore, to the problem of Human
Peace — is shown by its actual position in our con-
temporary world. That position is at once a fulfil-
ment and representation of historic Catholicism, con-
sidered on its practical and social side. Catholicism
in itself — as a “ supernatural ” doctrine, and apart
from the practical construction and use of it upon
which man has been forced by his continuous needs —
has never shown man how to do the things which,
for the purposes of his life on earth, he has been
compelled to do. It is science — ^including that com-
mon-sense empiricism which precedes and supple-
ments formal science — which has done this. One
consequence of this has been that men have more
and more ceased to appeal to Catholicism as such, or
to Christianity in any shape, in relation either to the
acquisition and communication of knowledge, or to
the practical conduct of human life. At the present
time no responsible man ever thinks of turning to
CathoHcism or Christianity — in other words, to pro-
fessed Christian teachers, as such — for guidance either
in international relations, or in domestic national
policy, or in industrial concerns, or in the arts and
sciences, or in education. All these great fields of
human effort have passed from the control of “ the
Church ” as such, in so far as they were ever under it,
to the control of “ the State ” — the secular mind of
man, working in a neutral sphere of social need, and
according to the dictates of practical reason. Even
54 the problem OF HUMAN PEACE
in the domain of personal morals — the special and
supreme domain, as was once supposed, of “ the
Church ” — it is now the State, the organ of “ believer ”
and “ unbeliever ” alike, which decides and shapes
things. It regulates, or attempts to regulate, the
drinking habits of society. It legislates on questions
of sex. It deals with the smoking mania. It modi-
fies, or abrogates, the law of the Church as regards
marriage and divorce. It controls, or tries to control,
industrial morality. In France it has ostentatiously
dismissed religion from public life, and where it has
not been thus openly and systematically dismissed, it
is dismissed by implication and indifference.
Catholicism, therefore, — and once more, in such a
connection, I mean Christianity in all its forms — has
come, actually and practically, to occupy the position
which Comte contemptuously proposed to it more
than sixty years ago. It has become exclusively the
religion of the “ next world ” ; it has ceased to be the
religion of “ this.” It has, in fact, worked out its
own metaphysic. From the point of view of the
“ next world,” which is Eternity, it does not, as we
have seen, much matter whether in “ this world,”
which is Time, man is diseased or healthy, ugly or
beautiful, sane or insane, ignorant or instructed,
stupid or wise, steeped in abject poverty, or a master
of material resources, versed in the arts and sciences
or utterly illiterate, a lord of industry and civil
policy or a helpless barbarian, in a state of social
peace, or perpetually involved in a bloody and waste-
ful war. It does not, from this standpoint, even
RELIGIOUS INTRODUCTION
55
matter whether man is or is not a “ sinner,” provided
only that he makes use of the means which the Church
holds out to him for escaping the eternal punishment
of sin and securing “ salvation.” The “ next world ”
will put everything right that is wrong in “ this
world,” and, in fact, it is only “ the world ” which
we do not know that is “ real,” while the world which
we know is “ unreal.” This “ next world ” is a fairy-
land of supernatural enchantments, to come somehow
into “ existence ” when the infinite universe has been
resolved into nothing, but which somehow, neverthe-
less, “ exists ” already ; and in it the vilest or most
abject of men, being “ penitent,” is at once magically
transformed into an inconceivable something incon-
ceivably noble and beautiful.
A second consequence of the scientific incapacity of
Catholicism, or Christianity — its inability to rightly
represent to man himself and the universe in relation
to himself — is that in our modern world it has been
deliberately and openly rejected as a synthesis of
things by an immense number of thinking minds.
They are confessedly agnostics or atheists. A third
consequence is that Catholicism has never been really
Catholic, in the sense of being a universal religion of
mankind. It is now certain that, in the traditional
conception of it, it will never become this. The non-
Christian religions of the world, doctrinally considered,
rest, in principle, as Catholicism itself rests, on a
number of metaphysical conceptions and statements
lying beyond the region of proof or disproof. They
are, as our traditional Catholicism is, unscientific.
56 THE PROBLEM OF HUMAN PEACE
Catholicism, as a metaphysical theology, has nothing
to offer the adherents of these non-Christian religions
but its own indemonstrable affirmations in exchange
for theirs. It can no longer claim for these affirmations
that they have the authority of the mind and life of
civilized Christendom. Civilized Christendom, as we
see, not only rejects or neglects them, in practice, in
its own social life, but, in an ever-increasing degree,
deliberately dismisses them from its mind. The
missionaries of the Western world are now proposing
to the East a religion which has ceased to be the
religion of the Western world.
IX
From what I have called a traditional or unscientific
Catholicism, therefore, we have no grounds for expect-
ing a Human Peace. It is, as a religion of social order
and progress, now practically disregarded or theoreti-
cally rejected in the chief theatre of its own develop-
ment. This is so true that to most independent
thinkers it will doubtless seem absurd to connect an
argument for the peace of the world with Catholicism,
or Christianity, in any conception of it. The prac-
tical mind, occupied with the living interests and
causes of man, looks to “ the State,” or the Govern-
ment, as its expression and instrument, or to some
special social agencies acting outside the sphere of
“ the Church.” The priest — here using this word to
embrace the Protestant minister as well as the
Catholic — -is now, speaking generally, a Sunday officer
RELIGIOUS INTRODUCTION
57
only. That is the day of the “ next world.” It is on
that day especially that he works his miracles, or
offers up his prayers, or sets forth his metaphysical
doctrine of “ sin ” — the only doctrine that in any
sense belongs to him. On the other days of the week
— the days in which men labour, or learn, or teach,
or heal disease, or occupy themselves with the arts
and sciences, or live their social life, or engage in the
great affairs of citizenship and policy — on these other
days, the priest, as such, has no place or function,
allowing for what may be called his ceremonial and
philanthropic activities.
It is for this reason that many minds — especially
among those who have actually to bear the burdens
and do the work of the world — are beginning to ask
themselves whether the priest, or religious minister,
is not now a mere incubus or parasite, maintained
by the active life of man, but contributing nothing
whatever to its nourishment or guidance. The
Catholic priest is, of course, the representative priest
of the world. He works miracles — the sacramental
miracles, for example, of baptism, transubstantiation,
ordination, absolution. The practical, honest minds
of the present day, however, comparing one thing
with another, do not see that the Catholic priest, who
is miraculously “ ordained ” to work miracles, is in
any way intellectually superior to the men who have
not been so ordained. They know, in fact, that he is
frequently inferior to them. They see, too, that
even in the priest himself a certain secular education
and, perhaps, a university degree are of more prac-
58 THE PROBLEM OF HUMAN PEACE
tical importance than that “ gift of the Holy Spirit ”
which is the priest’s special distinction — that in the
absence of such an education, indeed, this magical
gift, even in the estimation of the Church which
makes an exclusive claim to it — counts for just
nothing at all. In the same way the practical,
honest minds of the present day, using their eyes, and
seeing things as they are, do not find that the average
man or woman who attends mass in the Catholic
Church, or who receives the Blessed Sacrament, or
who goes to confession is — judged by any recognized
moral, intellectual, or practical test — in any way
superior, for example, to the average Quaker, who
does none of these things. So, too, these honest,
practical minds recognize that in the Catholic Church,
which insists that matrimony is a “ sacrament,” and
which condemns a formal divorce, the marriage tie
has not, in fact, been more sacred than in non-
Catholic bodies, and the realities of divorce are as
common as elsewhere.
To the honest, practical mind, therefore, the
Catholic priest, or Protestant minister, in the tra-
ditional or unscientific conception of his office —
working miracles that do not matter, or affirming
propositions which he cannot prove, or offering up
prayers which have no assignable relation to the
knowledge and life of man, or denouncing evils which
he does not prevent — makes a smaller contribution
to the real good of the world than the humblest
labourer in the fields, actually facing the forces of
Nature, and bringing to bear on them the transform-
RELIGIOUS INTRODUCTION
59
ing power of a human mind and will. From such a
point of view it may seem useless, and even fantastic,
to invoke Catholicism, or Christianity, as the instru-
ment of a Human Peace. Catholicism, or Chris-
tianity, has not, in fact, from the age of Constantine
to the present time, been a power of peace. It has
not even aimed at the prevention of war. It has
sanctioned and blessed all wars as they arose — even
the wickedest and most stupid. It has frequently
been a cause of war itself. The priest, with rare
exceptions, has been, and is, the subservient apologist
of the soldier or the ruler. He has been wanting
in spiritual courage, as he has been destitute of
social insight and prevision. Throughout its sixteen
centuries of official ascendency Catholicism, or Chris-
tianity — meaning by this especially its theological doc-
trine and directing hierarchy — ^has complacently pre-
sided over a long succession of wars ; and to-day, in
presence of the bloodiest catastrophe in the life of
man, the “ Christian Church ” exhibits itself to the
world as a discredited company of helpless and
wrangling sects, excluded, by common consent, from
every real sphere of thought and action, and impo-
tently occupied in disputing about conceptions and
terms to which they are wholly unable to assign a
practical meaning. This, as it is hardly necessary to
say, is not due to any merely personal defects of
priests and ministers, many of whom are devoted
social servants, of a noble spiritual seriousness and
high intellectual quality. It is the inevitable effect
of a theological doctrine which, in the traditional
6o THE PROBLEM OF HUMAN PEACE
interpretation of it, has ceased to be in practical
correspondence with the mind and life of man, and
which, therefore, among those who are called upon
to profess it, gives to the capable an effect of
incapacity, and to the honest an appearance of dis-
honesty, while largely nullifying the positive beauty
and truth of Catholicism itself.
X
In face of these conclusions — conclusions which
find their proof in the social history of Christianity,
and in its visible position in our contemporary world —
it may appear useless to appeal to Catholicism, or
“ Christianity,” as the inspiration and directing mind
of a Human Peace. To many, indeed, it will seem
that the Catholic Church — embracing under this
expression, for our immediate purpose, all Christian
Churches — is now, in degree, an atheistic Church. The
earliest Christian apologist, as we have seen, had to
defend his co-religionists against a charge of atheism.
That was natural. What we call “ belief in God ”
means simply the acceptance of some particular con-
ception of Divinity, or connotation of the word
“ God,” which happens, at a given time, to be nomin-
ally and officially ascendant in the world. Our Lord
Himself was, to the Scribes and Pharisees who cruci-
fied Him, an atheist, or blasphemer. In the same way
Justin Martyr’s Christian contemporaries were, to the
Pagan mind, atheists, for the obvious and sufficient
reason that they rejected conceptions of the Divine
which were, in substance, practically universal in the
RELIGIOUS INTRODUCTION
6i
ancient world. The early Christians had, as we now
see, a good answer to this charge. They were, it is
true, subverting — or they had the intention to subvert
— all the religious beliefs of antiquity, but they were
bringing in a new and nobler belief. They were
actually “ atheists ” relatively to the Pagan concep-
tions of the Divine, but they were setting forth a
higher and more beautiful conception, and, in presence
of this conception, it was the Pagan world itself,
resting in lower views of Divinity, and denying the
higher, which was atheistic.
In exactly the same way we may say that at the
present day it is the Catholic Church — with all
Christian Churches in proportion as they are Catholic
— ^which is in danger of becoming atheistic. The
word “ God,” in its abstract and continuous meaning,
stands for the Infinite Controlling Order, or Reality,
visible and invisible — including the Order of Humanity
— ^with which man is in progressive relation, according
as that Order is conceived and interpreted by
his developing mind. In the modern world it is
the Modern Mind — not a mind disruptive or revo-
lutionary, but a mind evolved and synthetic — ^which
gives its meaning to the word “ God.” That meaning
is a meaning of science. The rejection of this meaning
is as much, 'pro tanto, atheism as was the rejection of
Christ’s Divinity by ancient Paganism. In other
words, it is the assertion of a lower and lapsed con-
ception in presence of a higher and living conception.
It is the denial of Truth, which can never mean any-
thing else than the continuous, progressive, and
62 THE PROBLEM OF HUMAN PEACE
tested affirmations of man’s social mind concerning
the sum of his real experiences, outer and inner —
affirmations which are subject, in the last resort, to
the criterion of practice and use. The denial of
science, the denial of the conception of God following
upon the development of science, is, therefore, in our
modern world, atheism.
We come back, then, to the principle — the funda-
mental principle governing the following pages — that
for the installation and maintenance of a Human
Peace what is needed is a Scientific Catholicism. A
Scientific Catholicism, once more, will not be a
wholly “ new ” Catholicism. It will not maintain
the relation to our historic and traditional Catholicism
which that Catholicism, in principle, maintained to
the faiths of the ancient world. We can see now that
our common Christian criticism of those faiths is as
absurd and ungrateful as it is devoid of historic
truth — that the essential foundations of religion were
broadly and deeply laid, whether by Judaism or
Paganism, long before Christianity arose, and that
what we call “ Paganism ” — to say nothing of
Judaism — was a thing of noble spiritual seriousness,
of a many-sided intellectual vitality, of a spacious
artistic beauty, and of a vast social and practical
power, which has continued to govern the mind and
life of Humanity down to the present hour. We see
that a later age in the progressive life of man rests
upon its earlier ages. The Modern Mind brings this
principle to bear on our traditional Catholicism itself.
It is not the first nor the last. In so far as it claims
RELIGIOUS INTRODUCTION
63
to be this it is a denial of science ; it is atheistic. The
Modern Mind builds upon it consciously, intention-
ally, and systematically, as a primitive Christianity
built unintentionally and spontaneously upon the
religions of the ancient world. The Modern Mind
enters into the whole positive truth of Catholicism — in
scripture, doctrine, creed, worship, sacrament, and
institutions — and reinforces it with truths which an
atheistic Catholicism has denied, or neglected, or been
incapable of incorporating in its own synthesis. The
old, continuous purpose of Catholicism remains — Per-
fection, according to the Divinity of Christ, the King-
dom of Heaven. Heaven to the Modern Mind is not
“ a place ” of magic and enchantment in the sky, or
beyond the visible universe, with “ God,” as a magni-
fied and non-natural man, seated on a throne, and
looking “ out ” or “ down ” upon the life of mankind
on earth, and upon illimitable hosts of men and
women, suffering the pangs of Hell and Purgatory.
The Kingdom of Heaven to the Modern Mind, as to a
Mind which we are not accustomed to consider modern,
is within us, and, being within us, it will flow out upon
the whole life of Humanity, individual and social, as
a concord of goodness, beauty, truth, and power, of
which a Human Peace is a first and indispensable
condition.
CHAPTER I
SCIENCE AND THE PROBLEM OF PEACE
The question which we are to consider in this
essay is not the question — important as that, at a
given time, may be in itself — of the special settle-
ment, or “ terms of peace,” which may follow from
a particular war : it is the question, far-reaching and
fundamental, of the maintenance of a permanent
peace among all the nations of mankind. Such a
peace we may call a “ Human Peace ” — a peace
embracing in its continuing concord the whole
external life of humanity, from one age to another.
After every war there is a peace of some sort — longer
or shorter, and involving, frequently, certain terri-
torial rearrangements. This we may describe as a
politician’s or diplomatist’s peace. It is more or less
satisfactory to those concerned in it. It is imposed
by the victors upon the vanquished, or, where there
is something like a balance of forces, is the result of a
compromise ; and, in all human experience hitherto,
it has been followed after a time by another war, to
be succeeded in its turn by a similar peace. Speaking
broadly, it may be said that such an ebb and flow of
peace and war has characterized the life of mankind
for three thousand years. It may seem, therefore,
that, given the essential continuity of human nature,
we may reasonably expect the same state of things
SCIENCE AND THE PROBLEM OF PEACE 65
to continue indefinitely in the future, and that,
consequently, it is useless to discuss such a problem
as that of a permanent Human Peace. Nevertheless,
as men, differing though they do, in their conception
of “ goodness,” still, in some sort, continue to pursue
it, notwithstanding their failures to realize it, and as
they do not cease to follow after beauty and truth,
although, throughout aU history, man has been con-
tinuously involved in ugliness and error, so we may
say that the peace of the world, the continuous Human
Peace, is an ideal — ^if an ideal we are to consider it —
which, after all, and in spite of all, we must ever put
before ourselves, as a Paradise, or a heaven upon
earth, still somehow, and at some time, to be gained.
For the Modern Mind — a mind conscious of itself,
and resting, in its full development, upon the accumu-
lated experience of mankind — the question of a
Human Peace is a question of science, to be studied
and discussed just as any problem of mathematics,
physics, and biology is studied and discussed. The
Modern Mind, so understood, may, of course, deceive
itself and be deceived, but its wish is to see things
as they are — to know what the universe actually is,
in so far as this admits of being known, and what are
man’s place and power in it. To see things as they
are, to know what is to be known, to recognize what
is unknown and unknowable, to act where action is
possible, to resign ourselves where it can be shown
to be impossible, to investigate with patience and
exactness, to infer with sobriety and care, to com-
pare and verify, and to bring all conclusions
66 THE PROBLEM OF HUMAN PEACE
eventually to the test of experience and practice — this
in its essential spirit and methods, is science ; and as
it is science in this sense that has given us all the sure
knowledge of external nature which we actually
possess and use, so it will give us such sure knowledge
as is possible of man, as an individual and social
being, in relation to the universe. If there is any way
to a Human Peace, it is the way of science — showing
us what we are, where we are, what we can do, and
how to do it.
To this truth — a truth sovereign and unassailable
amidst all the distractions and uncertainties of the
Modern Mind~-it is, however, necessary to add certain
others. First, we must recognize that science — ^in
other words, the developed reason of man, resting on
the sum of human experience, outer and inner, and
interpreting that experience by definite methods —
can, from the nature of the case, only solve the prob-
lem of peace, in one way or another, when it is itself
complete. Science must become the Science of
Humanity, in a full sense-— the science of man as a
social and moral being, Hving in dependence upon
the Universal Order — before it can exhibit to us the
real nature of that problem and open to us the way
of its solution. To the lower sciences of inorganic and
organic nature we must add the higher sciences of
human nature — the sciences of sociology and morals
— if we are to bring into a right relation aU the
elements that enter into the question of peace, and
decide whether such a thing as a Human Peace is
possible. This was conclusively shown more than
lENCE AND THE PROBLEM OF PEACE 67
half a century ago by Auguste Comte, who, in spite
of his inevitable failures and mistakes, remains to-day,
what he was then, the greatest of social thinkers, and
who more than any other man has brought to bear
on our perplexed modern world that full synthetic
survey which is indispensable to its right apprehension
and direction.
In the second place we must recognize — ^what also
Comte ought to have the credit of having shown —
that science alone, however much we may elevate and
complete it — is, while it is indispensable, insufficient
to solve the problem of a Human Peace. Science is,
in one view of it, tested and ordered knowledge, and,
in another view of it, the temper and method by
which we reach such knowledge. On any view of it,
however, it is merely an intellectual exercise or
acquisition. It represents, by itself, only one of the
three constituents of human nature — feeling, intelli-
gence, and will. It enables man to understand — in so
far as they admit of being understood — his nature,
his situation, his powers, his duties, but it does not,
by itself, decide whether he is to follow one or another
of the various conflicting purposes of human life. It
exhibits to him the character and antagonism of his
different desires, but it does not, in doing so, deter-
mine whether he is to live his life under the domina-
tion of a high desire or a low. The drunkard has at
least so much “ science ” as to know that drunkenness
involves him in physical and moral degradation, and
imperils his social life ; but his mere knowledge of
this does not, by itself, cause him to remain sober,
68 THE PROBLEM OF HUMAN PEACE
although it may be a powerful inducement to him to
become so. The profligate is “ scientific ” to the
extent of understanding that his vices are a dissi-
pation of his best forces and an injury to other human
beings, but this does not suffice to make him moral.
The thief is commonly aware that he is breaking a
social law, and exposing himself to punishment, but
this does not cause him to become honest, either in
intention or in fact. The Christian knows, or believes,
that a certain line of conduct will procure him
“ eternal felicity,” and a certain other line “ eternal
damnation,” but this does not prevent him from
following the latter. Theology is, as has been con-
sidered to be, a science. It is the Science, or Doc-
trine, of God — unfolding to men the nature, the
laws, the will of the Supreme Being, in relation to
man — according to such conceptions of Him as have
established themselves in the human mind at given
stages of its development. But this science, by
itself, is far from having brought men into conformity
with what they have supposed to be the Divine Will,
and has, indeed, failed to do so, even when associated
with all the powers of worship and discipline.
While, therefore, it is true that science — science
become complete enough to embrace the social and
individual life of man — must open up to us the way
of peace, it is also true that it can, by itself, do no
more than this. It cannot cause men to pursue that
way, any more than a mere knowledge of the laws, or
conditions, of physical health can cause a glutton or
a drunkard, or a sensualist to abandon an immediate
SCIENCE AND THE PROBLEM OF PEACE 69
and easy gratification, and follow after a difficult and
distant good. Up to the present, indeed, it may be
said that science — at any rate the science of inorganic
nature — ^has been the handmaid of war rather than
of peace. From the date of the invention of gun-
powder to the date of the invention of the machine-
gun and the submarine, the genius of science has been
dedicated more to the construction and perfection of
instruments of slaughter than to the promotion of
pacific aims, as such. Even such scientific creations
as might, in themselves, have seemed favourable to
human concord^ — the art of printing, the mariner’s
compass, the steamship and locomotive, the electric
telegraph — are far from having brought peace to
mankind, and it is in an age of the greatest scientific
development that the world has seen the greatest
and most awful of wars. Science in itself, in fact,
is like a mercenary soldier. It is the servant of any
cause. It is man’s reason, wrought into an instru-
ment of high efficiency, but ministering with equal
readiness and effect to what is low in him and what
is high. It may be the sword of Justice, but it may
also be the dagger of the assassin. It nails the thief
to the Cross, but side by side with him it places the
Saviour.
Nevertheless, it is by the power of science — the
developed and disciplined reason of man, resting upon
the sum of human experience, knowing himself, and
therefore knowing the world with which he is in
relation — that a Human Peace, if there is ever to be a
Human Peace, is to be brought about. Our reason
70 THE PROBLEM OF HUMAN PEACE
for saying this is plain. It is true that science, by
itself, is not necessarily a force of good. It may be,
and often is, a force of evil. But whether it is a force
of good or of evil, it is a force. It is as the sun shining
on the just and on the unjust, but it is still a sun.
Science, whether it ministers to a good purpose or a
bad, yet, in proportion to its sureness and develop-
ment, accomplishes the aims to which it is directed.
If our object is to measure the planets and determine
their course, it enables us to do this. The physicist
puts steam and electricity into our hands and shows
us how to command them. The chemist does not
merely indulge in vague speculations about causes
and effects, but gives us the hands of Briareus, with
which we can work upon the forces of Nature and
make them subservient to human arts. The biologist
opens up the world of life to us, as far as it can ever be
opened up, and enables us to see the structure and
activities of living beings, from those of the humblest
of microscopic organisms to those of man himself. In
a word, in science there is hope, because in science
there is light and power. Science knows things and
does things. It is, of course, incomplete. Its last
word is not yet spoken. It has left problems unsolved
and insoluble. It is still face to face with tasks unat-
tempted or impossible. But what we actually know
we know because of science ; what we have actually
done we have done through the power of science ; and
what is still unknown and undone we may hope to
know and to do through the instrumentality of science
— the developed, disciplined reason of man, resting on
SCIENCE AND THE PROBLEM OF PEACE 71
the sum of his experiences and achievements — -in so
far as human capacity extends, The means by
which he has unveiled the laws and mastered the forces
of what we call “ Nature ” — the world of inorganic
matter and of the vegetable and animal kingdoms —
are the means by which he may reasonably expect to
gain understanding and lordship in the world of his
own nature as an individual and social being. The
power and methods of mind which have built up the
positive sciences from mathematics to biology will
also build up the positive sciences of sociology and
morals ; the science which, serving the impulses of
destruction and slaughter, has given new arms and a
new force to war will also, serving the purposes of
construction and concord, prepare the way for the
victories of peace.
There are two main means by which it will do this :
First, science, become completely human, will, in its
application to the question of peace, deliver us from
the confusion of mind resulting from the clash of
national passions, and from the struggles of classes,
sects, and parties within the nation. Science, as
such, is international, and it lifts us out of the nar-
rowness of any exclusive social interest. Its concern
is to discover forces and laws — the real relations of
things, in their constancy and recurrence. It is
international alike in its temper, its processes, and
its results. It is not English, French, German, or
Russian. It is human and universal. If, therefore,
we study the problem of peace — of a peace world-
wide and enduring — according to the disposition and
72 THE PROBLEM OF HUMAN PEACE
methods of science, we are, by that very fact, placed
at a point of view which is common to men of every
country — in so far as they are scientific ; and any
conclusions at which we arrive will have as much an
international validity as those of physics and biology.
We may put the same truth in a different way by
saying that science is essentially Catholic — that it
brings to bear on the mind and life of man exactly
the same breadth and dispassionateness, the same
capacity to lift men out of what is partial and tem-
porary into what is universal and eternal, as the
Roman Catholic Church would exhibit, if it were
completely in fact what it is in principle, a living
international spiritual authority. Upon this natural
affinity between science and Catholicism we have
elsewhere commented.* It is of high importance,
and it is nowhere of greater importance than in
relation to the problem of peace which we are now
discussing.
In exactly the same way, science, as such — always
understanding by this word not merely the pro-
visional sciences of external nature, but also the final
sciences of human nature, dominating and co-ordinat-
ing all others — delivers us from the standpoint of
party, sect, and class in the national economy. It is
neither “ Conservative ” nor “ Liberal,” neither aris-
tocratic nor democratic, neither monarchical nor
republican. Its object is to discover — assuming it
to be possible to discover — some way of ordering the
life of the nation which may bring to bear on it the
* “ Catholicism and the Modern Mind,” p. 205.
SCIENCE AND THE PROBLEM OF PEACE 73
whole high experience of mankind, with a view to its
pacific and harmonious advance in future. In the
pursuit of this inquiry it does not assume that either
what is called “ aristocracy ” or what is called
“ democracy ” is, absolutely and exclusively, a right
word of social order and progress, or that it represents
some final form of national organization. One of its
tasks, indeed, is to clarify these terms themselves — to
give to them a definite and fixed significance, so that
they may become serviceable in scientific reasoning.
When this has been done it may be possible to deter-
mine how far, for example, what we vaguely call
“ democracy ” is in consonance with a sound science
of political organization, and how far it may be neces-
sary to bring in some other term and a different con-
ception of a rightly-directed State.
The second important service which science will
render in relation to the question of peace will be in
exhibiting its connection with other great questions
of man’s mind and life. If we suppose it to be suc-
cessfully carried into the regions of man’s social and
moral nature — if, in other words, we place ourselves
at the point of view of what may be broadly called a
Science of Humanity — then it is clear that we shall
survey the whole life of man in the light of a complete
synthesis. This synthesis will exhibit to us man, or
humanity, as a conscious and self-conscious being,
placed in a Universal Order of which he is both a con-
stituent and an interpreter, which is external to him
and yet contained in him, and which he is able, with-
out him and within him, to modify while yet he is
74 the problem OF HUMAN PEACE
dependent upon it. It is clear that from the point
of view of this synthesis such a question as the
question of peace is in inseparable connection, imme-
diate or remote, with a number of other questions
presenting themselves for solution. It is evidently
in such a connection, for example, with questions of
morals or religion, with questions of education, with
questions of industry, with questions of class con-
flict, with questions of general domestic politics. No
fundamental treatment of the problem of peace is,
therefore, possible which sets aside and disregards the
other great problems of humanity, and treats it as
a sort of isolated political problem, to be solved by
itself.
We may say generally, in short, that the question
of peace is a part of the supreme, eternal question of
the aim of man’s life upon earth. That question,
once more, is, intellectually considered, a question of
science, but of science in a complete sense, as repre-
senting the ordered, ordering reason of man, looking
out upon his world, looking in upon himself, and
bringing to bear upon humanity the whole of human
experience, tested and interpreted according to those
methods which have given to us our inheritance of
sure and exact truth. It is for science, in this sense, to
determine for man his conception of himself, and of
the governing aim of his life upon earth. Stating the
same truth in other words, we may say that it is for
the Modern Mind — the Modern Mind, at any given
time, being simply man in his highest and fullest
development — to determine what is the nature, place,
SCIENCE AND THE PROBLEM OF PEACE 75
and destiny of humanity, and to order all human
activities with a view to its fulfilment. What, by
contradistinction, we may call the ancient mind and
the medieval mind could not, and cannot, do this,
great as have been their contributions to the sum of
truth. Man’s conception of himself is necessarily
determined by the totality of his experiences, outer
and inner. He cannot dispossess himself of his pos-
sessions, or nullify his acquisitions, or unthink his
developed thoughts, any more than he can abrogate
the sun and moon. His view of the heavens cannot
now be what it was in the pre-Copernican period ; his
view of the earth cannot be what it was before the
discovery of America and Australia ; his indus-
trial processes and his modes of locomotion cannot
be the same as before his mastery of steam and elec-
tricity.
What is true of the mind of man in relation to what
we may call the Natural Order is necessarily true
of it also in relation to the Human Order — the
order of man’s mind itself and of his social and moral
life. Here also his thinking is conditioned by the
sum of his experiences. It is conditioned by these
great commanding facts, among others — first, that
there has grown up, in the ages, a vast body of positive
science, inclusive of the whole history of humanity,
which helps to determine both the actual contents of
the human spirit and its modes of investigating and
ascertaining truth ; second, that human industry has
developed on an immense scale, both in its processes
and in its results, and has come to depend on a world-
76 THE PROBLEM OF HUMAN PEACE
wide and complex co-operation ; third, that as a con-
sequence of this industrial development the mass of
the workers — what we now call the proletariat — is
becoming the predominant class in the social con-
sensus, ever rising high and higher in its consciousness
and in its aims ; fourth, that all the various nations
and races of mankind — Western and Eastern, black,
yellow, and white, Christian, Mohammedan, Hindu,
Buddhist, Confucian — have at last been brought into
a close companionship, so that just as man now looks
out and measures the solar system, with its central,
unifying force, and looks out and measures the whole
of his earth, so he also looks out and measures a
single undivided humanity, the various constituents
of which, by processes of mind and matter — by science,
religion, industry, politics — are ever being brought
into a more intimate and organic relationship.
The mind which enters completely, and with a right
power of observation and inference, into all these
orders of experience, seeing them in their distinctness
and as a whole, and in their organic dependence upon
one another — such a mind is a Modern Mind, developed
and mature ; the mind which is unable to do this —
whether it is the mind of an individual man or of a
statesman shaping the policy of a nation, or of an
ecclesiastic, giving forth the oracles of a Church — is a
mind incomplete and undeveloped, which may repre-
sent the view of an exclusive individualism or of an
exclusive sect, or of an exclusive class or party, or of
an exclusive people, or of an age that is past, but which
cannot represent the reason and the needs of a modern
SCIENCE AND THE PROBLEM OF PEACE 77
humanity, pressing forward, consciously and delibe-
rately, to the fulfilment of a foreseen destiny. To
such a mind, therefore, we cannot go for a conception
of the aim of man’s life on earth — that conception
which sheds an indispensable light on the problem of
Human Peace. That problem would have presented
itself in one way, if present at all, to the ancient mind ;
it would have presented itself in another to the
medieval mind ; it necessarily presents itself in still
another to the Modern Mind. The Modern Mind,
holding within itself all the experiences, all the
acquisitions, all the culture of mankind, is face to face
with a known universe, with a known earth, with a
known humanity. It is in reference to these that it
shapes, and must shape, its conception of the end of
life. It is in reference to these that it determines the
meaning of a Human Peace, its desirability, and its
possibility ; and it is in virtue of a synthesis of
truths and an assemblage of powers which never
before existed in the world that it looks to the solution
of a problem which has never yet been solved. There
is no sure ground of hope in relation to this old
problem except in the possession of a new power.
This new power now exists, and it is exactly the
power which was needed for the solution of the prob-
lem. It is the power of completeness — the power of
science become synthetic, the power which man has
gained from having measured the solar system and
measured his earth, and measured humanity, and
from having brought these great contents of his
experience into a unity. The peace of the earth
78 THE PROBLEM OF HUMAN PEACE
must come, if it is ever to come, from the peace of
the directing human soul, illumined by its conception
of the Perfect Good ; and this peace of the soul — its
right survey of its world and of itself — ^has been pre-
pared by thirty centuries of moral expansion, of
intellectual development, and of practical sacrifice
and achievement.
CHAPTER II
THE MEANING OF A HUMAN PEACE
By a “ Human Peace,” as we have seen, we here
understand, in general terms, a peace universal and
continuous, conceived of as ultimately embracing all
the nations of mankind. The office of science in rela-
tion to such a peace, is, first, to determine, exactly and
practically, what it is that we mean by it ; secondly, to
consider how far it may be held to be desirable ;
thirdly, to discuss its possibility ; and, lastly, having
assumed or shown that it is both desirable and pos-
sible, to examine our means for bringing it about and
maintaining it.
The word “ peace ” is, as we all know, used in
different senses. To the statesman or diplomatist
it has one meaning and to the moralist or religious
thinker another ; while it is also a term of industry,
of the relations of social classes within the nation,
and of the family life. What we are immediately,
and in the first instance, concerned with is peace
according to the conception of it common among
statesmen and diplomatists, although it will after-
wards be necessary to consider how far any one of its
meanings, in a fundamental discussion of the Human
Peace, can rightly be separated from others — how far
the peace of the individual human soul, or of the
various social classes, or of industrial life, inevitably
8o THE PROBLEM OF HUMAN PEACE
enters into the question of what, for the purposes of
distinction, may be called a diplomatic, or inter-
national peace.
By a diplomatic peace we do not here mean, how-
ever, as has already been said, such a peace, good or
bad, shorter or longer, as necessarily follows after
every war. We mean a permanent peace, in the
widest political sense of the word, brought about and
maintained by the deliberate policy and co-operation
of the various countries of the world. Such a peace
would be a Human Peace. We may, on a full con-
sideration of it, decide that it is undesirable or
impossible, but before we can accept it or reject it we
must understand, exactly and practically, what it is.
A state of peace — such a peace as statesmen and
diplomatists have in view— may be defined, to begin
with, in negative terms. It may be said to be con-
stituted simply by the absence of war. A state of
peace, in this sense, existed in Europe, for example,
from 1871 to 1914. With a peace of this kind, how-
ever, whatever its character and advantages, we are
not now concerned, and this for two reasons : First,
this was a peace — like all others which have hitherto
existed — following upon a war, and due, not to the
avowed intention or policy of a Human Peace, but
to the absence of some sufficient immediate cause
of conflict ; secondly, it was what is commonly called
an “ armed peace ” — a state of things in which almost
all the nations of Europe live in the expectation and
apprehension of war, and are burdened with the
weight of vast naval and military preparations. In
THE MEANING OF A HUMAN PEACE 8i
such a situation there is, of course, peace in the sense
of the mere absence of war. It must be allowed, too,
that something at least of the good of peace it secures,
and some of the evils of war it avoids.
But by a Human Peace we do not, once more, mean
a peace following, as a sort of unavoidable and tem-
porary consequence, upon war, or a peace due merely
to the absence of any immediate cause of conflict, or
an armed peace, securing, perhaps, something of the
good of peace, but characterized also by some of the
disadvantages of war ; we mean a peace brought
about and upheld by the foresight and consent of the
chief nations of mankind — a peace inspired by the
common conviction that international concord is a
human good, and a good so universal and commanding
that its pursuit and maintenance ought properly to
control all other objects of policy. From the presence
of this common conviction, passing into and directing
national action, certain great practical results would
necessarily follow. First, it would involve the accept-
ance of a given international status quo, such as it
might be, as one not to be subject to possible dis-
turbance ; secondly, it would bring about a general
disarmament ; thirdly, it would carry with it the
determination, on the part of the various nations
concerned in it, not for themselves, or in their own
supposed interest, to prosecute purposes contrary, in
their inevitable consequences, to the international
good of peace.
Whether a Human Peace, in this conception of it,
is possible we cannot at present determine, but we are
B.F.
82 THE PROBLEM OF HUMAN PEACE
entitled to say, scientifically speaking, that it is
impossible for it ever to be established unless these
specific conditions are realized, and realized in their
right combination. It is clear, however, that such a
realization of them presents difficulties so stupendous
that they may naturally seem to be insuperable. Let
us take the first of them first. What we are funda-
mentally concerned with, of course, is the state of
the human mind as it expresses itself in national
action. If we are believers in a world-wide peace, in
that general conception of it which we have now
elucidated, and are desirous of furthering it, we have,
to begin with, to bring in such a state of the human
mind that the promotion and maintenance of that
peace may become the great controlling motive of
national policy — a motive so evidently and incon-
testably supreme that in comparison with it all other
motives, valid and high as they may seem in them-
selves, ought to be held subordinate to it. This
disposition of the human mind must be brought in,
not in one country alone, but in all — or at any rate in
all the great, predominant nations. It must be
brought in, too, not merely as a beautiful and attrac-
tive ideal — a platonic confession of peace as an
ultimate good which somehow and at some time is to
come to mankind. It must be brought in as a con-
tinuing, prevailing condition of thought and will, of
such inherent and persisting strength as to be capable
of giving a steady direction to national policy, amidst
all the disturbing and resisting forces to which it may
be^subject.
THE MEANING OF A HUMAN PEACE 83
Such a state of the human mind has, as we say, to
be “ brought in ” or created. We cannot assume that
it already exists. We must, from a scientific point
of view, assume the contrary. We are, in fact, not left
to any mere conjecture or hypothesis in the matter.
What the state of the human mind is in regard to
peace and war we know from experience — the experi-
ence of three thousand years, given in history. Those
three thousand years have seen peace following upon
war, and war following upon peace, in every age, in
every country, savage and civilized, under all religious
beliefs — Christian and non-Christian, under all con-
ditions of culture and education, amongst all the
races of mankind, white, yellow, black, and red, in
every state of industry, under every form of military
organization, and under every mode of government,
imperial, monarchical, republican, aristocratic, and
democratic. War has, in fact, been one of the most
persistent, or persistently recurrent, of all social
phenomena. It has changed in its methods and
instruments, but it has remained essentially the same
in its processes and results, from the age of bows and
arrows — to go no further back — to the age of the
machine gun and the submarine. Poets, from the
time of Homer to the time of the versifiers of the
twentieth century, have sung its praises. The priests
of almost every faith have given it sanction and
consecration, even when they have not actually
caused it. Rulers and peoples alike have applauded
it. It has opened up to men the shortest way to
honour and ascendency ; and down to the present
84 THE PROBLEM OF HUMAN PEACE
moment those nations which are universally styled
the “ Great Powers ” of the world are great precisely
because, actually or potentially, they are held to be
masters in war.
It is plain, then, that so far as the life of mankind
has proceeded up to the present, there is nothing in
human experience to warrant the supposition that
the desire for peace, as such — considered simply as
the absence of war — is in itself of such a nature and
inherent strength in the human mind as to be capable
of mastering the motives of war. On the contrary, all
history — ancient, medieval, and modern — shows that
nothing has ever been so easy as for a Government,
whatever its character or purposes, to carry a people
into war ; and while there have often been insurrec-
tions and revolutions, from one cause or another,
there is, perhaps, not a single instance of a nation’s
having refused to participate in a war, or even of its
having successfully opposed a policy on the part of its
rulers which was visibly carrying it towards war. If,
therefore, the coming of a Human Peace is dependent,
as it is, upon the existence of a deliberate and con-
tinuing choice of it, as a supreme, indisputable good,
in the mind of man, it is clear that this choice, this
controlling disposition and policy of peace, has yet to
be created and maintained. Upon this point it is —
if we are believers in a Human Peace — of the first
importance that we should not deceive ourselves. Our
study of the problem to be solved must be, in the
strictest sense of the word, scientific. We must see
things as they have been, and as they are, if we wish
THE MEANING OF A HUMAN PEACE 85
to see them as they are to be, or may be. If we are
ever to bring in — supposing it to be desirable and
possible to bring in — a state of enduring international
concord, we must dismiss, as an illusion of meta
physical sentiment, the assumption that there is i
the human mind some instinctive horror of war, some
inherent love of peace, as peace, which in itself is
sufficiently strong and constant to preserve us from
bloodshed.
What, in relation to peace and war, history shows
us — as it shows us in relation to all the other high
interests of man — is that in the human mind there is
a constant conflict of motives. Just as, in the moral
and social spheres, men alternate between selfishness
and unselfishness, between love and hatred, between
passion and purity, between temperance and excess,
between energy and indolence, between the desire for
knowledge and the disinclination to sustained mental
effort, so in the sphere of international policy — ^in so
far as this can be separated from the other spheres
of man’s reason and will — they alternate between the
motives which carry them into war and the motives
which would maintain them in peace. If history
shows us war as a persistent or persistently recurrent
phenomenon, it shows us also that — from the ages '
of the Old Testament, Homer, and Virgil, down to the
present time — peace, considered simply as external
concord, as the absence of strife and bloodshed, has
always been a human ideal. The spiritual problem
of man — as a conscious and self-conscious being,
exercising his mind and will upon himself, and
86 THE PROBLEM OF HUMAN PEACE
deliberately shaping his action, amidst the play of
external and internal forces, for the attainment of
certain foreseen ends — consists precisely in this con-
flict of motives. In its absence there would be no
such problem. It is for this reason that, as we have
seen, there can be no fundamental discussion of a
Human Peace — as distinguished from the merely
diplomatic peace that inevitably follows after every
war — which does not connect it with the problem of
the commanding, co-ordinating aims of man’s life
upon earth. What we have to determine is whether
it is possible to so change the human mind as it
enters into national policy — or to so alter the balance
of its characteristic forces — that peace, which has
always been one of its ideals, may become a command-
ing, practical purpose, strong and constant enough to
impose a uniform direction upon international action.
This problem, once more, is a scientific problem.
It is for science, in the high and complete sense — the
right reason of developed man, resting upon the sum
of his experiences and exactly representing to himself
the forces of Nature and human nature — to unfold
to us its true character, and to point us to such a
solution of it as is possible. Now, the disposition of
human nature, in relation to peace and war, being
given in history, it is, as we have seen, scientifically
certain that a universal peace will never be estab-
lished unless we can secure either a new and more
efficacious action of the forces which have hitherto
made for peace, or bring in the operation of some new
force, surer and more potent than any which has
THE MEANING OF A HUMAN PEACE 87
worked in the past. If we are to have a new hope,
grounded on reason, it must be based on our posses-
sion of a new power — either the surer exercise of one
which has always existed or the fresh controlling
energy of a new one. On the more effective action
of an old force, just as it was or is, we cannot, scien-
tifically speaking, count. What has constantly failed
before we may reasonably expect to fail again. On
the other hand, what has succeeded before we may
expect to succeed again. The thing which has, in
human experience, succeeded is science, in its various
degrees. It hits the mark. It accomplishes its aims,
whether they are, morally considered, good or bad.
It is, therefore, science that must open up to us the
way of peace, if such a way there is. Science, of
course, is not a wholly new thing. It is a thing of
slow growth and development. It is, however, in
this sense new, that, in its full synthetic, modern
form, it gives to us a measure of man, and of the
universe in relation to man, such as belongs properly
to our own age and has belonged to no other. It is
from science, in this complete conception of it, that
we may gain the power of a Human Peace.
Now the question of peace is, once more, a question
of the mind of man as it passes into national and
international action. A nation is made up of cities
and families, and, from another point of view, it is
composed of different social classes, and sometimes
of different races. When, for our present purposes,
we use the word “ nation ” we must be understood as
employing it to denote a distinct political aggregate.
88 THE PROBLEM OF HUMAN PEACE
a sovereign State, occupying its own territory, and
possessing an independent co-ordinating Government.
We do not use it, as it is often sentimentally and
inaccurately used, to describe, for example, such
lapsed or subordinate nationalities as Scotland,
Ireland, and Wales, which, for political purposes,
and especially for international purposes, have long
been absorbed into the dominant nationality, “ Eng-
land,” or into the composite nationality, “ United
Kingdom.”
The question with which we are occupied is the
question of bringing in such a state of the human
mind, as it passes into national action, that the
predominant countries of the world may concur in
promoting and maintaining a Human Peace as a
supreme good for mankind, and concur in it, first, by
accepting a definite international status quo as one
not to be subject to forcible disturbance ; secondly,
by a common disarmament ; thirdly, by refraining
from the adoption of such national action, whatever
its apparent justification, as would tend to bring
about war, and by the consistent adoption of a policy
of peace. It is, however, not by the fulfilment of
any one of these conditions alone, but by the fulfil-
ment of them all, in a right combination, that the
Human Peace can be constituted. Even if we
suppose such a change in the mind of man to have
been wrought that the desire for peace — the dis-
inclination to conflict and bloodshed — has become
stronger than the desire for war, still it will be neces-
sary for such a change to take practical effect at some
THE MEANING OF A HUMAN PEACE 89
given moment, and in some given international
situation. By a Human Peace we do not mean an
ideal peace, in the sense of such territorial and political
arrangements among the various nations of the
world as would be absolutely and finally satisfactory
to them aU. For the purposes of a Human Peace
we must, to begin with, if the paradox is permissible,
be satisfied with something unsatisfactory. We must
move towards a higher state by way of a lower. The
Human Peace, in other words, must be based on the
common acceptance of the principle that the main-
tenance of a given status quo, evil as in certain
respects it may be, is not so great an evil as would
be its disturbance by war — or, stating the same
principle differently, that the general good to be
derived from the preservation of international peace
is greater than any particular good to be gained by
war. It may conceivably be impossible to bring
about an international acceptance of this principle,
and the adoption of the practical measures and
policy involved in it. What is certain, however, is
that so long as this is impossible a Human Peace is
impossible, and that we can have at best such a
peace, longer or shorter, as inevitably follows upon
a war, and is due, not to the rise of a new foresight
and will in the human mind, but to the old, recurrent
processes of victory and defeat.
The acceptance of this principle — the decision to
base the Human Peace on some specific status quo —
would be, in certain respects, as is obvious, only an
application to the international order of mankind of
90 THE PROBLEM OF HUMAN PEACE
opinions which have long been acknowledged and
operative within the limits of the national order.
There is, throughout the civilized world, a general
agreement that the continuous preservation of domes-
tic peace — in the limited sense of the mere avoidance
of physical strife and bloodshed — is a great good.
We all hold it to be for the common advantage that
causes of personal dispute should be decided by courts
of justice rather than by private encounters, and that
our political and industrial conflicts should take the
form of continual controversy and of appeals to the
electors rather than of civil war. This does not mean
that we necessarily consider that the national order,
as it exists at any given moment, is a perfect order.
It does not mean, even, that we believe that absolute
justice is always represented by the decisions of a
judge, or that the struggle of classes, sects, and
parties in the national economy is the wisest con-
ceivable way of bringing about political changes. As
a matter of fact, we know that, within what may be
called the national peace, there exists every evil which
afflicts mankind, except the one evil of war itself,
considered simply as a process of physical conflict and
bloodshed. Peace, as it prevails within the nation,
does not represent a high ideal. It stands merely for
a certain ordered outward calm — for the absence of
such a chronic unsettlement and violent disturbance
as would make the conduct of life impossible. Duelling
in England and some other countries has now fallen
into desuetude, and its discontinuance has always
been considered to be a social good. No one would
THE MEANING OF A HUMAN PEACE 91
say, however, that the causes which once provoked
duelling — ill-temper, quarrels, slanders, jealousy, per-
sonal affront, and the like — are no longer operative,
or even that they are necessarily less operative than
before. All that has happened, in this particular
connection, is that men have ceased to seek satis-
faction for wounded honour or reputation in a
physical encounter, and that in the case of serious
injuries they now look for redress to the law courts.
When, however, we say that the establishment of a
Human Peace would involve the application to the
international order of principles which are already
operative within the national order, it is necessary to
bear in mind two important considerations. In the
first place, we must recognize that the preservation
of domestic peace itself — in so far as it is maintained
by the temporal power of government, as distinguished
from the spiritual power of feeling and opinion — is
dependent, in the last resort, upon the use of exactly
the same means as are employed in a war of nations.
It is dependent upon the use of the police and, in
certain cases, of the military. Behind the statutes of
a Parliament, or the decisions of a judge, there is
always the armed force of the State, and to this
force, as it is hardly necessary to say, an appeal has
often to be made — as, for instance, in the case of
criminals resisting capture. Again, it sometimes
happens that the conflict of classes and parties within
the nation becomes so intense as to break down the
whole system of domestic order and to take the form
of civil war. Even in a country like England, which
92 THE PROBLEM OF HUMAN PEACE
has a longer experience of “ constitutional ” and
“ democratic ” methods than any other, there has
recently, as we all know, on more than one occasion
been a near approach to this state of things. Under
such circumstances a Government — ^which is not only,
within the political sphere, a co-ordinating authority,
organizing the national consensus, but also an enforc-
ing authority, concerned to make the will of the
social whole prevail against the will of its resistant
parts — is bound to act, within the national sphere, in
proportion as the need arises, precisely as it would
have to act in a war against a hostile nation. In
other words, the internal peace of the nation — in so
far as it rests on a purely governmental or temporal
foundation — depends ultimately upon processes of
war, potential or actual, ranging from those by which
an ordinary criminal is arrested and made amenable
to the law to those needed for the suppression of some
dangerous industrial disorder, or for victory in some
actual civil strife. When a given Government ceases
to be capable of discharging these functions — ^when it
no longer represents the national consensus and wields
the predominant national force — it has to give way
to a new Government, and there is, in one form or
another, a revolution.
In the second place, it is necessary to bear in mind,
what by advocates of peace is often forgotten, that
the international order — the permanent pacific rela-
tions of the various countries of the world — is, by its
inherent character, different from the national order,
and that this difference between them cannot, by the
THE MEANING OF A HUMAN PEACE 93
nature of things, be abrogated. A nation, as we have
here defined it, is an independent social unity, with
its own territorial situation, and its own Government,
acting, within the sphere of practical politics, as the
organ of a consensus and as a co-ordinating and
enforcing authority. It is free and sovereign. To
use a single, simple word, the nation is an order
dependent internally upon law — upon a body of per-
manent social agreements, implicit and explicit, with
recognized instruments of interpretation and applica-
tion. The international order, in so far as it exists,
rests on a different foundation. It is true that we
are accustomed to use the expression “ international
law,” and that many elaborate treatises have been
written upon the subject. There is, however, in
reality, no such thing. It is a metaphysical figment.
Where there is no Government, no recognized co-
ordinating and enforcing authority, there is, for
practical purposes, no law. We could only have inter-
national law if we had an international Government ;
and international government— to say nothing of
its practical impossibility — is incompatible with the
principle of nationality itself. It is a contradiction
in terms.
In the absence of law, in the strict sense, inter-
national relations rest on custom, usage, human good-
will, intellectual community, reciprocal convenience,
industrial advantage, and a number of specific con-
ventions and treaties, more or less permanent. These
conventions and treaties, however, have, for practical
purposes, exactly the validity and duration which
94 the problem OF HUMAN PEACE
are voluntarily given to them by the various countries
entering into them. A nation is, within the limits of
its actual force, a law unto itself. It may refuse to
have any relations whatever with other countries. It
may decline to admit within its own borders either
their inhabitants or their commodities, or to admit
them except under certain specific conditions and
restrictions. This, as it is hardly necessary to say, is
a right which is actually at the present time main-
tained and exercised, in varying degree, by every
civilized nation in the world. In many of them it
has, of late years, been exercised in an increasing
degree. A nation, so long as it preserves a real
independence and is free and sovereign, may have its
own language, its own religion, its own moral code,
its own political institutions, its own social customs,
just as it has its own territory and its own physical
characteristics. If it ceases, in whatever degree, to
maintain its freedom, it may, of course, have the
ideas and customs of some other country — within
certain limits at least— imposed upon it ; but this
simply means that it has then lost, to that extent, its
independence, and become subject to an enforcing
authority other than its own. In other words, it is
no longer a nation.
These, undoubtedly, are elementary considerations,
but it is none the less indispensable to recall them for
the purposes of anything that may deserve to be
called a scientific study of the Human Peace. It is
the more necessary to do this because some advocates
of peace at the present time overlook this funda-
THE MEANING OF A HUMAN PEACE 95
mental distinction between the national order and the
international order, and speak as if peace could
somehow be brought about by an indefinite exten-
sion of law and government, in the true senses of
these words, throughout the world, or as if the
expression “ international law ” represented a prac-
tical, administrative reality, instead of being, what it
is, an illusory phrase of metaphysic. Even within
the national order — the sphere of law, in the strict
sense — the power of government, its capacity to act
as an enforcing authority, is, as we have seen, depen-
dent upon its continuing to represent an active and
predominant consensus ; and at a given moment, in
given states of the public mind, it may lose that
power. In such circumstances law, which is a sort
of indirect, pacific, and symbolic expression of force,
ceases to be operative, and there is a direct appeal to
the arbitrament of war. In the international order,
where the range and variety of conditions and in-
terests is vastly greater than in any single country —
where numberless differences of climate, situation,
proximity, race, language, religion, morals, political
traditions and institutions, social customs, and indus-
trial development have all to be taken into account — -
it is clear that the difficulty of securing anything like
a permanent, active consensus, with a common co-
ordinating and enforcing authority, is so great as to
be insuperable.
The problem of the Human Peace, then, is, in the
strict sense of the word, an international problem.
It is the problem of securing continuous agreement
96 THE PROBLEM OF HUMAN PEACE
and co-operation in the absence of an enforcing
authority, among a number of independent nation-
alities, each remaining free and sovereign, this agree-
ment and co-operation being directed to specific and
limited practical ends. It is, in other terms, the
problem of maintaining a certain state of the human
mind, in feeling, opinion, intention, and will, as that
mind enters into national action and governs inter-
national relations. Further, the purpose of peace,
taking shape as an ordering policy, must, as we have
seen, proceed by the acceptance of a given status quo,
good or bad, just as the maintenance of domestic
peace rests on the acceptance of an internal status quo,
not because it is in itself considered to be ideally
good, but because its evils are less than would be the
evil of its forcible disruption, or are evils which
would not be remedied by such a disruption. But,
for the installation of the Human Peace, this accept-
ance must carry with it a consequence of common and
voluntary disarmament, by land and sea. In the
absence of such an agreement this disarmament
would, of course, be inconceivable, but, conversely,
in the absence of the disarmament the agreement
would be unreal and have no effect. The disarmament
must, in fact, be regarded both as an indispensable
sign and proof of the agreement, and as a consequence
following from it of almost infinite practical import-
ance. This is self-evident, but it becomes increas-
ingly clear in proportion as we consider the question
of the good of peace — the motives and aims which
may conceivably, in the present stage of human
THE MEANING OF A HUMAN PEACE 97
development, lead to its international establishment
and maintenance.
But the establishment and maintenance of a
Human Peace demands something more even than
the conditions which we have already specified —
first, a change in the human mind by which the
motives of peace dispossess the motives of war ; and,
secondly, such a consequent acceptance of a given
status quo that disarmament may follow from it :
it demands also that national policy be brought per-
manently under the control of these conceptions —
that the predominant nations of mankind, especially,
concur in so ordering their action as to make it sub-
servient to the common concord. It is not, perhaps,
impossible to conceive of the chief European and non-
European States as coming, at a given moment, under
the impulse of a high and disinterested choice of
peace, to some understanding favourable to its pro-
motion, and as adopting certain consequent measures
of disarmament. Even, however, so great a change
as this in disposition and policy would not by itself
suffice to maintain peace, although it might be sup-
posed sufficient to institute it. So long as what we
now call nationality exists in the world — a number
of independent sovereign States, living and expanding
— it will be necessary for those States, if peace is to
be preserved, to make its preservation a deter-
mining purpose of policy, rather than the satisfaction
of their own exclusive aims. It is obvious that
relations between human beings, few or many, which
proceed from the growth of a certain reciprocal state of
98 THE PROBLEM OF HUMAN PEACE
mind, are dependent for their continuance on the con-
tinuance of that state of mind. A man and woman
entering into marriage commonly carry into it a dis-
position of community and co-operation, but it is a
matter of ordinary experience that this disposition
sometimes breaks down, and gives place to fatal
estrangement and antagonism. In the same way, the
various races, classes, parties, and sects composing
the peace of a nation may for hundreds of years live
and work together in an orderly citizenship, and yet
at the end of that time they may be involved in civil
war.
It is clear, therefore, that even international dis-
armament, brought about by the common adoption
of a policy of peace, and following upon the acceptance
of a given status quo, would not, by itself, be a
guarantee of a Human Peace, a peace universal and
continuous. War, as we all know, existed before the
rise of standing armies and conscription, and might
conceivably break out again even if all the military
and naval establishments of the world were abolished
to-morrow. A nation does not cease to be, in a
military sense, “ great ” simply because it is unarmed.
It is great, in this sense, by its numbers, its territory,
its natural resources, its physical situation and inde-
pendence, its industry, its temper and intelligence,
its place in the scale of civilization. If all the coun-
tries of the world were suddenly placed, in regard to
arms, on a footing of equality, this would neither
make them equal in power, nor would it necessarily
prevent a powerful country from entertaining and
THE MEANING OF A HUMAN PEACE 99
prosecuting hostile designs against its neighbours.
Nothing is so easy as for a strong man or a strong
people to procure weapons, of whatever kind, with
which to prosecute a quarrel. We cannot have a
greater security for international peace than we
already have for peace within the internal economy
of a nation ; and, as we have already said, and as a
quite recent experience in England has shown, such
a peace itself may, in the clash of social classes or
political interests, be in danger of giving way to
civil war.
We come, then, to this conclusion, that a Human
Peace, such as we are here considering, can, if it is
ever to be possible, only become possible under
certain conditions. It demands, first, that at a
given moment the purposes of such a peace should,
in the predominant nations of mankind, displace and
supersede the motives of war ; secondly, that their
common adoption of a policy of peace should take
effect by the acceptance of a given international
status quo, whatever its character, as one not to be
subject to a forcible disturbance ; thirdly, that this
acceptance should, as a necessary practical conse-
quence, carry with it a general disarmament ; lastly,
that the state of the human mind, relatively to
national action, which has led to the establishment
of the Human Peace should be afterwards main-
tained, so that every nation may continue to order its
own life, external and internal, with a view to securing
the persistence of international concord. A Human
Peace, so conceived, may seem to us a thing impos-
100 THE PROBLEM OF HUMAN PEACE
sible, or a thing so remote and contingent, that we
ought, for the present at least, to dismiss it from our
minds as a dream or Utopian ideal. In that case we
must content ourselves for an indefinite future with
what we have had throughout the past — a given
peace, shorter or longer, following after a given war,
and due, not to any high intention and prescience of
international concord, but to processes of victory and
defeat in the conflict of arms. We are here, however,
proceeding on the assumption that a Human Peace,
difficult as it may be of attainment, is yet not impos-
sible ; and we are proceeding upon this assumption
because, in our modern world, man has at last gained a
new power and a new hope — the power and the hope
of science become developed and complete, showing
him himself, his situation, his strength, his limitations,
the nature and greatness of his aims upon earth, and
the capacity which he naturally possesses to so con-
sciously order and direct himself as to give to these
aims unity and persistence. Whether this assumption
will prove to be justifiable, not prophecy, but experi-
ence alone, can determine.
CHAPTER III
THE GOOD OF A HUMAN PEACE
The problem of bringing about and maintaining a
Human Peace turns, as we have seen, in the first
instance, on the fundamental question of whether it is
possible to so change the mind of man, as it enters into
national action, that such a peace may seem to it, and
continue to seem, a supreme good which ought, by its
own nature, to control and direct that action. Now,
this question is one which is evidently in a high degree
intricate and far-reaching. Whether a Human Peace
would be a human good — so great a good as to be
entitled to give order and purpose to the life of man-
kind — this, of course, cannot be determined by any
individual mind, occupied with a vision, or ideal, of
social perfection ; it must be determined by the mind
of humanity, in its fullest extent. An individual
mind may be, or may suppose itself to be, prophetic.
It may be the mind of a dreamer of dreams. What
we are now concerned with, however, is the science
of things ; and although the science of things — the
science especially of the mind and life of humanity —
must certainly take account of dreams and prophecies,
it recognizes that they only acquire a practical
importance in proportion as they pass into the life
of man and keep their place there.
Consequently, the problem to be solved is not
102 THE PROBLEM OF HUMAN PEACE
whether the conception of peace as a supreme good can
be made the conception of a particular religious sect or
a school of thought, but whether it can be so fixed in
the mind of man as to become an overmastering
motive of national policy. This question, we say,
calls for a certain limitation. It is, in its full extent,
too complex, too vast, for treatment here. By the
mind of man,” in this connection, we mean the
mind of humanity, since it is all the nations of the
world — Western and Eastern, Christian and non-
Christian, civilized and uncivilized — that are ulti-
mately concerned in a Human Peace, and since,
indeed, unless they are all in some way brought into
it, it cannot exist at all. We may, however, for
both scientific and practical purposes, simplify the
problem, to begin with, by drawing the obvious dis-
tinction between those nations which constitute what
we call “ The West ” and those which lie outside it.
This distinction, broadly speaking, is equivalent to
the distinction between Christendom and non-Christen-
dom. It is true that Russia and some other Christian
countries are not, properly considered. Western, and
this is a fact of great social and political importance,
since into many of the dominant interests and tra-
ditions of Western Europe Russia, for example, has
scarcely entered. Allowing, however, as it is essen-
tial to allow, for this fact, we may, for the sake of
scientific precision and convenience, use the term
“ The West ” as if it were equivalent to Christendom.
The amount of correction which such an assumption
needs it will not be difficult afterwards to supply. It
THE GOOD OF A HUMAN PEACE 103
might conceivably be such an amount as would make
it necessary, for certain specific practical purposes,
to consider Russia as lying wholly outside the
Western order.
Our problem, then, is, in the first place, to bring
into the “ mind of man ” — that is, into the mind of the
West, or Christendom, including Russia — a concep-
tion of peace, as a supreme international good, such
that all external national action must be considered
subservient to its promotion and maintenance. If
this is possible, a Human Peace is possible ; if it is
not, then the attainment of such a peace, if it is ever
to be attained, must be held to belong to some remote,
indefinite future, for which, in the present, we can
only prepare. Our reason for saying this is a reason
of science — a plain reason of history and experience.
If we place ourselves at the point of view of military
force and ascendency — and where questions of peace
and war are concerned such a standpoint is naturally
predominant — it is clear that, in the relations of
West and East, the West, or Christendom, has pre-
vailed, and the East, or non-Christendom, has suc-
cumbed. In Asia, in Africa, in America, in Aus-
tralasia, Christendom — using this expression for the
moment rather as an expression of political or social
than of religious distinction — has, in its encounter
with non-Christendom, conquered. In other terms,
the higher civilization has prevailed against the
lower, or against barbarism. We are not now, of,
course, discussing the ethics, or wisdom, which has
entered into the action of the developed nations of
104 the problem of HUMAN PEACE
the world— of the West, or Christendom — upon the
undeveloped. That is an independent question. We
are simply ascertaining the facts of history ; and
history shows us that the fuller and higher develop-
ment has, in the field of force, mastered the lower.
The most conspicuous example of this, as is obvious,
■is the rule of the English in India, where three hundred
millions of persons, in a vast continent, are held
subject by a small number of aliens, coming from
an island in the West. The result of the Russo-
Japanese war may be said to be an example to the
contrary. First, however, it must be admitted that
it is too soon to base any permanent conclusions on
what may have been an exceptional event ; secondly,
Russia, although, from a certain point of view, we
have to include her in the West, is yet not, in any
high sense. Western. The final issue of the Crusades,
again, may be said to represent a failure of the West
as against the East, but the Crusades were the action
of a Europe still only incompletely developed, and
certainly not completely united.
If, further, we place ourselves at the point of view
of culture and progress — a point of view which is
also essential in our argument—it is not less clear
that the West, in the broad sense, as compared with
the East, is the power predominant and victorious in
the sphere of mind, as in the sphere of arms. In
religion, in art, in literature, in science, in industry,
in social and civic organization, the West, Christen-
dom — allowing for unimportant exceptions — teaches
and leads ; the East follows and learns. The West
THE GOOD OF A HUMAN PEACE 105
is in fact, developed humanity, carrying the East
itself in its expanding consciousness and vitality ;
the East, the non-European, the non-Christian, is
humanity in an arrested development, waiting for
some quickening, directing, co-ordinating force from
without to lift it into the high plane of the world’s
movement.
Whether, therefore, we place ourselves at the point
of view of the temporal power or the spiritual — at the
point of view of military force, or at that of the force
of mind which ultimately governs and directs it — ^we
come to the same conclusion : the peace of the world,
the Human Peace, if there is ever to be such a peace,
must proceed, in the first instance, from the concord
of the West — from the order of nations constituting
Christendom, or Christian civilization. It is there
that that change in the mind of man is first to be
wrought — assuming it to be possible to effect it —
which is the essential condition precedent of this
peace. If we assume it to be so wrought — if we
assume the predominant Powers of the West to have
reached a static concurrence and co-operation in
regard to a Human Peace, then they will have no
serious difficulty in permanently imposing peace on
the world, supposing it to be ever challenged, beyond
the sphere of their governing authority. They can
impose it and maintain it both by the force of arms
and the force of mind. The problem of a Human
Peace, then, is essentially a problem of Christendom,
or the West.
We are, consequently, in the first instance, con-
io6 THE PROBLEM OF HUMAN PEACE
cerned with the mind of man as it passes into national
action within the limits of the West. Within those
limits themselves, however, it is obvious that we are
only called upon — at any rate to begin with — to
consider the case of those countries which we call
the Great Powers. They represent both the mind
of the West and its predominant force. If they were
actually, in intention and practice, concordant in
regard to peace — concordant, that is to say, in recog-
nizing and accepting those essential conditions of
peace which we have specified — then the peace of the
West, and therefore the peace of the world, would be
secured. Now, the mind of man, as it passes into
national action in Western Europe — and in the
Great Powers of Western Europe especially — is not,
of course, a mind wholly separate and different
from what we find it to be elsewhere. It is in
West and East, in Christendom and non-Christen-
dom, fundamentally the same mind, only differing in
situation, in power, in the range and complexity of
its interests, in development. In the West, as in the
East, for example, man is moved by certain primary
persisting instincts — amongst others, the instinct of
nutrition, the instinct of sex, the instincts of destruc-
tion and combat. These instincts, indeed, are not
human only — they are animal ; but they are found
at work in the lowest barbarism as in the highest
civilization, in the most ignorant and undeveloped
man as in the master of religion and science. They
are part of the common stock of a universal human
nature.
THE GOOD OF A HUMAN PEACE 107
When we are considering the possibility of bringing
in not a politician’s peace, wrought as a temporary
interlude, in war and confusion, but a Human Peace,
accomplished by the concurrent powers of the mind
of man in the exercise of its lordship over itself,
then we are bound to take these primary governing
instincts into account. Whether such a peace will
seem desirable and possible will depend partly —
although certainly not exclusively — upon the opera-
tion of these instincts, and upon the degree in which
they can be brought under the control of other forces
of human nature. We cannot, scientifically, discuss
the “ good of peace ” as if peace — the mere absence of
physical conflict and bloodshed — were an absolute
and unrelated thing. We must, from the standpoint
of science, seeing things as they are, when we speak
of the good of peace, recognize that in a given temper
or in a given situation, or from a given point of view,
war may seem the greater good. That there is in
human nature an instinct for destruction and a joy
in combat hardly needs to be demonstrated. All
history shows these forces at work. They are such
that when men have not actually been at war their
greatest delight has been in the shows and pastimes of
war. Games of war, poems of war, the music of war,
pictures of war, romances of war, have been the joy of
every age of man and every order of society, from the
time of Homer, or of the Roman gladiatorial en-
counters, or of the medieval tournament, down to the
time of the Spanish bull-fight or the modern English
boxing arena. At the present day, after nineteen
io8 THE PROBLEM OF HUMAN PEACE
centuries of Christianity, quite the easiest thing a
statesman can do is either to plunge a nation into
war, or to prevail upon it to load itself with a vast
and continuous preparation for war. A change in
domestic policy commonly requires many years of
controversy and agitation to bring it about ; a war
between two great countries, whatever its immediate
pretexts may be, is resolved upon almost without
consideration or discussion. Conscription — under
which every man becomes liable to lose his life for a
cause of which few are able to judge, and to which
he commonly gives less attention than he would
bestow upon the purchase of a suit of clothes — belongs
to the age of the “ democracy,” the last hundred
years, and was the immediate outcome of the French
Revolution.
In so far, then, as men are mastered by this in-
stinct for destruction and this joy in combat, latent
or vigorously active, war, as war — an occasion or
theatre of military glory — will seem to them the
greater good, and peace, which demands the sup-
pression of these propensities, the smaller good, even
if a good at all. There is, in fact, nothing to which
religion has always been so ready to give its conse-
cration, and which the civic spirit has been so eager
to applaud, as mastery in war, and this quite irre-
spectively of the causes for which it has been waged.
The mind of man, however, although it contains these
military instincts, as they may perhaps be called, is
also worked upon by other forces. It is, for example,
moved by the instincts of nutrition and sex, and by
THE GOOD OF A HUMAN PEACE 109
the nged for clothing, habitation, heat, and light, as
well as by those higher needs which enter into our
Western civilization — the needs of religion, affection,
domestic and civic life, art, literature, and science.
The question of whether peace or war is the greater
good is not, once more, an absolute question ; it is
a question relative to the greater or less ascendency
of any of these motives, or interests, in the complex,
continuous human mind, as that mind enters into
national action. If war is, or is supposed to be, sub-
servient to some need which, in a given situation,
is predominant, then war becomes the chief good
and peace a hindrance. On the other hand, if peace
appears to promise satisfaction to some controlling
purpose, peace, in its turn, becomes the good.
We are not now, of course, occupied with a merely
historic or archaeological problem. History is, for
our present purpose, only important because it is the
book of human nature, exhibiting it to us in its
persistent, developing forces. We need not, there-
fore, consider how far the various wars of the world,
ancient and modern, have, each in its turn, sprung
from the operation of particular instincts. What we
are concerned with is the present and the future —
the possibility, in the first place, of bringing the policy
of the chief Western nations, they being what they
are, under the control of motives making for peace.
Now, the social composition, or structure, of all
these nations — including, for our present purpose and
for the time being Russia — is essentially similar. It
is a composition which represents, in varying degrees,
no THE PROBLEM OF HUMAN PEACE
the governing propensities and aims of the human
mind, lower and higher, from the instincts of nutri-
tion, sex, and combat to the noblest purposes of
social, civic, intellectual, and religious life. The
working classes and employees of whatever kind ;
the capitalist classes — landowners, agriculturists,
manufacturers, merchants, shopkeepers, bankers, ship-
owners, and railway proprietors ; the military class,
including the police ; the intellectual classes — artists,
men of letters, scientists, teachers, lawyers, doctors,
and religious ministers — these, being agents and
functionaries of the social economy, are also instru-
ments of the human mind, as it aims at the satis-
faction of its own distinctive needs, or the needs of
the body. It is out of these co-operating classes and
functionaries, with women as the chief organs of
domestic life, that the national order is built up as a
developing vitality. In the political sphere its co-
ordinating and regulating authority is the Govern-
ment, strictly so-called ; in the industrial sphere it
is, at present, the capitalist ” ; in the spiritual
sphere it is the Church. As need hardly be pointed
out, however, each of these main authorities is, in
practice, supplemented by other agencies.
Beneath them all, and in them all, works what we
have called the “ mind of man ” — our common intel-
lectual nature. There is, of course, not one nature
of the capitalist classes and another of the working
classes, or one nature of “ the Church ” and another
of “ the State.” This is a truth elementary to the
point of being a truism, but as it is commonly over-
THE GOOD OF A HUMAN PEACE in
looked in religious and political discussion it is neces-
sary to reaffirm it. The difference between one social
class and another is a difference of situation, interest,
function, degree, and development ; it is not a funda-
mental difference of human nature. This principle
is for our present purpose important ; because our
present purpose is to consider whether, among the
various motives working in human nature as it passes
into national action, it is possible for the motives
which make for peace to gain, and maintain, pre-
dominance. That this is not a mere question of
classes it is easy to show, although the question of
classes may be, on other grounds, one which it is
necessary to take into account. There is, for example,
in all the nations of Western Europe, among other
classes, a permanent military class — a body of men
whose special business it is to protect the country
against its foes, and to wage war when this becomes
desirable or inevitable. We may, if we please, say
that this class represents the military instincts — to
say nothing, for the moment, of other things which it
may represent — in the social economy. This is
true, but it is only true because the military instincts
are not peculiar to the military class. The soldier is
a vicar, or delegate. He is a representative man,
chosen and trained to fight, in our modern specializa-
tion of functions, because others must be occupied
with other offices. He is, in fact, doubly represen-
tative — first, because he is a social voice and func-
tionary ; secondly, because the army is formed from
all classes of the community. If, therefore, there is
1 12 THE PROBLEM OF HUMAN PEACE
such a thing as “ militarism,” it is not confined to the
military. It is found, in varying degrees of activity
and manifestation, in the intellectual and industrial
classes, and amongst workmen as amongst capitalists,
as well as amongst soldiers. It is found, too, as it is
hardly necessary to say, among women, who, if they
have not been actually fighters, have been the first
to give honour and applause to soldiers, and who, in
their own way and according to their own methods,
often exhibit the same instincts and temper of combat
as constitute the military mind.
What is true of the military class and its relation
to the general social mass is, as is obvious, true of
other special classes. There would, for example, be
no priesthood — in the broad sense of this term — if
there were not, in the great body of society, the
instincts and needs which we call religious. The
priest has sometimes been spoken of, by fantastic,
shallow commentators upon human life, as if he in
some miraculous way sprang into existence and im-
posed himself upon men, irrespectively of their
nature and needs. He is, of course, what he is
because of their nature and needs. He is, as is the
poet, the musician, the painter, the architect, the
physician, or the lawyer, a minister of man, dependent
absolutely for his existence upon the extent to which
his office corresponds to some felt and continuous need
of the human spirit. All our special social classes
are, in fact, organic expressions, bodyings forth, of
the common mind of man. The soldier, as such — the
fighting man — exists as an articulate, distinctive
THE GOOD OF A HUMAN PEACE 113
order, because the soldier is in the soul ; and he is
as much in the soul of a workman as of a capitalist,
and of an Englishman or Frenchman as of a German.
An even more important instinct than the military
instinct, in the permanent order and activities of
human society, is, of course, the nutritive instinct,
and it is important also in its bearing upon the causes
and motives of war. As this primary instinct works
in man it gives rise to the desire for material wealth,
although it is evidently by no means the only force
which begets that desire. Instead, however, of
speaking of the mere nutritive instinct as such, we may
speak broadly of that desire for wealth of which
this instinct is only the first and most potent feeder.
The desire for wealth finds its social and organic
expression in all Western nations in what we call the
capitalist class. That class represents this desire in
two ways — first, because it is especially devoted to
directing the production and distribution of wealth ;
secondly, because it is itself, as a whole, pre-eminently
characterized by the pursuit and possession of wealth.
From both these points of view, however, this special
class of capitaKsts, like the military or priestly class,
stands for a common and continuous mind. It is
only because the common mind~the mind of man —
is animated by the same desire for wealth, and con-
sents to a certain mode of organizing its production
and distribution, that the capitalist class exists.
There is, in regard to the possession of wealth, no
essential difference between the richest of capitalists
and the poorest of his workmen except this — that
1 14 THE PROBLEM OF HUMAN PEACE
the capitalist desires it and possesses it while the
workman desires it and does not possess it. There
are other differences between them in other respects —
differences of situation, capacity, power, and function
— but so far as the desire for wealth is concerned they
are both in the same plane of human nature. What
we may call industrial Socialism, considered strictly
as such, proceeds upon a recognition of this truth,
and aims at satisfying, by its own methods, this
common desire for wealth in the non-capitalist classes.
The desire for wealth is, of course, to be distinguished
from the use of wealth. Two capitalists, or two
workmen, may be animated by an equal desire for
wealth, but they may have very different desires in
other respects, and, therefore, very different opinions
as to the uses of wealth. Industrial Socialism is, as
such, not a doctrine of human perfection. It is, in
itself, only an economic doctrine, advocating what it
conceives to be a juster distribution of material
resources, irrespective of the uses which may be
made of them.
What is true of the three special social classes which
we have now considered — the military class, the
priestly class, and the capitalist class — is true also
of what we may call the governing class. We cannot
draw a line of demarcation between these special
functional classes and society as a whole, as if there
were, on one side of this line, one kind of human
nature, on the other side another. These special
functional classes are social classes. They are thrown
up and maintained by the working of certain forces
THE GOOD OF A HUMAN PEACE 115
in the human soul. They represent its different
persisting desires or propensities. When we speak
of the military class we commonly, no doubt, mean
most of all the officers of an army, because they are its
directing and organizing heads ; but an army is
drawn from the people, and is maintained out of the
purse of a whole nation. A workman, again, is only
a capitalist in petto. In exactly the same way, the
governing classes are, on a fundamental view of them,
representative, and this whether or not what we call
a “ representative government ” exists in a given
country. By the governing classes we mean especially
the classes which possess wealth and leisure. They
stand, in relation to the nation as a whole, as the officer
stands in relation to the army, or the priest in relation
to the Church, or the capitalist in relation to the
general body of workers. The Government of a
country is the organ, for political purposes, of the
total social consensus. It is the co-ordinating
authority of the nation, as such. It is the voice and
instrument of its patriotism. By patriotism, as is
plain, we do not mean the temper or disposition of the
Government, or governing classes, only. It is a
feeling or sentiment, such as it may be, animating, in
one way or another, the whole community. Patriot-
ism, we commonly say, is a love of one’s country.
Such a love, however, may show itself in various ways.
It may give rise to a heroic defence of national
freedom, but it may also give rise to a not less heroic
attack upon the freedom of some other nation. It
may inspire a policy of self-preservation, or a policy
ii6 THE PROBLEM OF HUMAN PEACE
of conquest and empire. A man may be said to love
his country both when he fights to prevent it from
becoming subject to a foreign Power and when he
fights to enable it, as a foreign Power, to make a
weaker people subject to itself. In either case we
call him a patriot, and should commonly pronounce
him unpatriotic if, while willing to die in defence of
his own country, he were not also willing to die in a
war of aggression and usurpation against some other
nation. Of patriotism, in both these forms, the
Government is the central organ. It does not stand
outside the national life and impose itself upon it
from above. On the contrary, it springs from that
life and is sustained by it. It is an expression and
instrument of the mind of man as it passes into
national action.
We see, then, that whether peace — and above all
such a Human Peace as we are now considering — is a
supreme good is a question of its relation to other
motives of the mind of man, common and continuous,
which find for themselves expression and organization
in great distinctive social classes, but which are
nevertheless not peculiar to those classes. Amongst
these motives we have considered, as most important
for our present purpose, four — the military instinct,
the religious instinct, the desire for wealth, and the
national instinct, or patriotism, whether as it inspires
the defence of one’s own country or, in its impe-
rialistic form, as it dictates its aggrandizement by the
subjugation of other peoples. As it is hardly neces-
sary to say, among the innumerable wars which the
THE GOOD OF A HUMAN PEACE 117
world has seen each of these four instincts, or interests,
has played a part. They have been the chief motives
of war in the past, and, if war is to continue, some of
them at least will be its chief motives in the future.
They are the more potent as causes of war because
they seldom work singly. They work, in fact, in
a greater or lesser degree, in combination. In almost
every war that is waged the military instinct, as such
— the passion for destruction and combat — finds itself
in a sort of natural alliance with the desire for wealth
and the desire for national preservation and aggran-
dizement ; while every nation, whatever the alleged
cause for which it enters into war, is sure of the
sanction of “ the Church,” the Church — considered
especially as a body of ecclesiastics — being of the
same essential social stock as that out of which the
various articulated portions of the community are
shaped. It may be said, therefore, that, although of
a given war any one of these four instincts or interests
may conceivably be the immediate or predominant
motive, the action of any one of them commonly
brings all the others into play.
It is, however, necessary to recognize that what
is at one time a motive of war may at others be a
motive of peace. Of these four governing instincts —
in spite of the fact that they have been the most
important causes of war— there is only one which
of necessity, by its native character and effect, brings
about war, and this only when it undergoes a special
development, or transformation. That instinct is the
instinct, or interest, of patriotism or nationalism, con-
ii8 THE PROBLEM OF HUMAN PEACE
sidered in its imperialistic form. Patriotism, under-
stood simply as the love of country, may of course
exist and work in a time of peace, exhibiting itself, in
a hundred ways, as social self-sacrifice and devoted-
ness. Patriotism and imperialism, however — not the
love and service of one’s own country, but the desire
for its indefinite aggrandizement, to be brought about
and maintained by its forcible lordship over other
peoples — this is by its own nature and consequences
inevitably a cause of war. It brings it about in two
ways — first, because war is needed to effect the
conquest of an unwilling people ; secondly, because
the imperialism of one nation almost necessarily pro-
vokes the imperialism of its rivals, and produces com-
petition and collision amongst them. Such an im-
perialism may, of course, be considered to be a good.
It may be held to advance the interests of religion, or
civilization, or culture, or trade. It may beheld, too,
that although a people which is conquered by England,
Germany, or Russia loses its national identity and
liberty it still gains the advantage of coming under
the government of that Power, and that within the
limits of a particular empire peace at least — so long
as the empire holds together — is secured. A nation
being, as we have said, a law unto itself, may hold
that it is entitled to impose its law on others. We are
not, however, for the moment, considering either the
good or evil of empire. We are considering one
inevitable effect of imperialism ; and of imperialism
it may be said scientifically that so long as it con-
tinues to operate as a motive and policy the Human
THE GOOD OF A HUMAN PEACE 119
Peace is impossible. That is, of course, not neces-
sarily a condemnation of imperialism. It may be
held that the advantages which a Human Peace
would bring in would not be such that they ought to
outweigh the good following from imperialism. It
is plain, however, that we cannot have both the good
of imperialism — if it is a good — and the good of a
Human Peace.
Of the other instincts, or propensities, which we
have ranked among the motives of war it may be
said that they differ from imperialism in this respect,
that they do not necessarily give rise to war. Even
what we have called the specific military instincts —
the passion for destruction and the joy of combat —
may find a large and beneficent satisfaction without
actual strife. They may be called up and exercised
in a strenuous encounter with the “ enemies of man ”
— the physical, intellectual, and moral evils which
afflict him. They may be transformed into a source of
generous emulation in the ways of peace. They may
be content, as in fact they ordinarily are, with the
mere shows and representations of conflict in pas-
times or in the arts. Religion, again, which almost
always blesses war when it is actually in progress,
and commonly does nothing to prevent it, is yet often
found putting forward a certain ideal, or conception,
of peace. Lastly, the desire for wealth, and for such
advantages as depend upon its possession, while it
is sometimes a motive of war may also be a motive of
peace — peace, of course, in this connection being
understood simply as the absence of destructive
120 THE PROBLEM OF HUMAN PEACE
material conflict and bloodshed. If we suppose men
to be so dominated by the desire for wealth that other
motives of action become for them of subordinate
importance, then they will naturally choose war or
peace according as one or the other seems most
favourable to the satisfaction of that desire. It has
frequently been said — as, for example, by some recent
English political and industrial authorities — that
“ the trade follows the flag.” This principle has been
by others condemned as unsound. Those who hold
it to be valid have, however, as is evident, an indus-
trial ground for imperialism and war, while those who
reject it regard commerce as one at least of the
sanctions of peace. We may repeat, then, that while,
as all experience shows, we may have religion, or the
pursuit of goodness, without war, and trade, or the
pursuit of wealth, without war, and while even the
instincts of destruction and combat admit of a certain
pacific transformation and satisfaction, we cannot
without war have imperialism, since by imperialism we
mean, first, the forcible predominance of one country
over another, brought about and upheld by arms ;
secondly, the consequent competition and conflict of
rival States, all pursuing a similar policy. Impe-
rialism and war, in other words, stand necessarily in
a relation of cause and effect, while religion and war, or
industry and war, do not. It follows that if in the
mind of man the motives of international concord are
ever to gain a lasting supremacy, bringing it in and
maintaining it, this can only be, on the one hand, by
a total elimination of the motive of empire, and, on
THE GOOD OF A HUMAN PEACE 12 1
the other, by the ascendency of such a conception of
the aim of man’s life upon earth that the military
instinct, the religious instinct, and the various personal
and social purposes which enter into the acquisition of
wealth, may become subservient to a Human Peace.
It is a corollary from this conclusion, and from the
various considerations by which we have been led to it,
that the Human Peace, assuming it to be desirable,
cannot be brought about simply by transferring
political power fron one social class to another, even
if we hold that this is in other respects desirable. It
is true that the various special classes — the official
military class, the capitalist class, the ecclesiastical
class, and the governing classes, considered as such —
have their own distinctive interests to promote, as
well as those general functional interests which may
be said to be the concern of the whole community-
A great military class, for example, although it has
been thrown up as a social organ, in the interests of
the national security or expansion, may naturally find
its own advantage in encouraging the temper and
poHcy of war, and in promoting expenditure on war.
Such a class, too, may, in given circumstances, be in
a sort of natural alliance with the other special
classes — capitalists, ecclesiastics, the secular pro-
fessions, and “ the Government.” They form together
what we call the “ upper classes ” — the classes of
wealth, leisure, education and ascendency — in con-
tradistinction to the “ lower.” All these classes are,
in certain respects, in a relation of intimate solidarity,
and they have therefore a tendency to secure and
122 THE PROBLEM OF HUMAN PEACE
increase such advantages as they possess in common
even at the expense of the general good.
While this is true, however — and is a truth of great
practical importance — it does not affect the principle
that these distinct and separate classes are classes of
social organization and direction, which, so long as
they continue, are in greater or less correspondence
with the social mind — the mind of man. We cannot,
therefore, for example, bring in a Human Peace
simply by substituting what we call a “ democracy ”
for an “ aristocracy ” in the government of all the
Western nations. Such a substitution may con-
ceivably be on other grounds desirable, but it would
not, of itself, put an end to war. There has never
been a period when the “ democracy ” — if by the
democracy we mean the “ lower classes,” the great
social mass — had so much apparent power in Europe
as at the present time, and yet the present is an age
of almost universal conscription — a form of slavery —
and it has seen the vastest and bloodiest war in
history. Again, the mere abolition of the “ capi-
talist class,” and the substitution for it of a Socialist
industrial directorate, would not bring in a Human
Peace, so long as in any given country the need for
wealth, or the need for empire, still served as motives
for aggressive action against other countries. There
has been prosecuted in England for one hundred and
fifty years at least a steady and progressive pohcy
of imperialism — a policy which has been necessarily
a cause of aggression and bloodshed. During the
greater part of that time the power of the English
THE GOOD OF A HUMAN PEACE 123
“ democracy,” the lower classes, has continuously
increased, and has sufficed to win from the upper
classes, one after the other, a number of important
concessions within the field of domestic affairs.
Against the policy of empire, however — which as
we have seen, is inevitably a policy of war and blood-
shed — this democracy has raised no protest. It has
sanctioned it, applauded it, co-operated in it, made
it possible, and indeed helped to make a contrary
policy impossible. The few voices which have, from
time to time, been raised against it have been silenced
by the clamours of an angry people. An English
Government has never been so certain of the con-
currence of the great body of the nation — upper
classes, lower classes, capitalists and workmen, priests
and people, teachers and taught, men and women —
as when entering into war, or prosecuting a policy
involving war. And, of course, what is true of the
English Government is true of all the principal
Governments of Western Europe.
The reason for this we have seen. The great
special social classes are expressions and organs of
the mind of man. They are man in his social mani-
festation, as he is moved by the military instincts, the
religious instincts, the desire for wealth, and the
things which wealth procures, the desire for national
expansion and domination. Militarism is not the
creation of a military class ; religion is not the
creation of a priestly class ; the desire for wealth is
not the creation of a wealthy class ; the desire for
national expansion and domination is not the creation
124 the problem of human peace
of a governing class. It is these desires, on the
contrary, seated in the social mind, which have
thrown up and maintained these various classes. It
is not the soldier who produces war ; it is the instincts,
temper, purposes, and policy of war which produce
the soldier. If, therefore, there is ever to be a Human
Peace, the foundations of that peace must be laid,
where the foundations of war are to be found, in the
soul of man. The motives of peace must, by some
natural and effective process, be so developed and
strengthened that they may exercise a continuous
lordship over the motives of war ; and this, in the
first place, among those predominant Western nations
which, in international policy, decide the fate of the
world. In the absence of such a change, we are so
far from having a scientific guarantee against inter-
national conflict that we have not even, as we have
seen, a guarantee against civil war. A nation is only
an individual soul writ large ; and just as for an
individual soul — either within itself or in its relations
with others — peace is impossible except through the
harmonizing ascendency of some master motive, so
for a nation, within itself, and in its relations with
other nations, there can be no permanent peace unless
the purposes which make for it become supreme and
the purposes which make against it become con-
tinuously subordinate. If there is ever to be a
Human Peace — even in the limited sense of the mere
absence of strife and bloodshed — it must be recognized
throughout Europe to be the indispensable condition
of a common and supreme good.
CHAPTER IV
CATHOLICISM AND A HUMAN PEACE
There is, as we have seen, only one sufficient reason
for supposing that a Human Peace, which has never
yet existed in the world, can, by an international
exercise of forethought and co-operation, be brought
in and secured. That reason is to be found in the
growth of science, science being understood to be the
mind of man in its complete development, resting on
the sum of human experiences and acquisitions, and
so become capable at last of gaining a true measure
of itself, and of the universe in relation to itself. The
office of science, in regard to international relations,
is to make known the forces of war as they exist and
work in the mind of man, and to show how that
mind, in the fulfilment of its spiritual lordship over
itself, may so master those forces as to make possible
the attainment and maintenance of a Human Peace.
The mind of man will gain this power of self-
command and self-direction — for the purpose of peace
as for all other purposes — through the ascendency of a
Scientific Catholicism. By a Scientific Catholicism
we mean the full experience and powers of the human
past brought to bear, in an order or synthesis of con-
ceptions, consciously employed, on the movement of
mankind towards the future. Neither the word
“ Catholicism ” by itself, out of relation with science
126 THE PROBLEM OF HUMAN PEACE
or in opposition to science, nor the word “ science ”
by itself, and out of relation with Catholicism, repre-
sents a sufficient synthesis of human ideas and forces.
The two words taken together, however — each in its
fullest extension and each positively understood —
properly stand for such a synthesis. If it can ever
establish itself in the human spirit, a peace world-
wide and enduring — which, up to the present, neither
Catholicism nor science, by itself, has been able to
give to us — may at last become possible.
When, however, we say that it is from the stand-
point of a scientific Catholicism alone that we can
gain the right conception and power of a Human
Peace, it is necessary to employ both the term
“ Catholicism ” and the term “ science ” in a definite
and fixed sense, and to determine the relations of the
conceptions which they represent. By Catholicism
we here mean the doctrine, worship, discipline, and
organization of the Roman Church, including, of
course, the Papacy, considered in principle, or in their
ideal character — that is, apart from their actual
imperfections or abuses in practice at any given time,
and regarded as the social embodiment and fulfilment
of Christ. When we so use the word “ Catholicism,”
however, we do not, of course, mean that outside the
Roman Church none of the religious conceptions and
powers are to be found which this word represents.
Many of them are to be found in the Greek Church
and in the various Protestant bodies, including
Anglicanism. Some of them are to be found in
non-Christian and pre-Christian communions. It is
CATHOLICISM AND A HUMAN PEACE 127
because of this that the Roman Church is, as we
have tried elsewhere to show,* pre-eminently the
Catholic Church, carrying in its life the whole religious
vitality of man, representing, directly or indirectly,
the religions of the East and of the West, of the past
and of the present, and standing even — so far as their
positive character is concerned — for the various sects
which have broken away from it. This Church is, in
fact, the spiritual mistress and voice of the world—
never to be dethroned or subverted unless religion
itself, in every conception of it which has hitherto
prevailed, passes from the being of humanity. It
follows that any conclusions which we may reach as
to the nature and powers of a Scientific Catholicism
wiU be conclusions which will apply, with varying
degrees of force, to non-Catholic religions, and espe-
cially, of course, to the various Christian communions
which have separated from Catholicism. Where, in
an intellectual and practical sense, the Catholic Church
is weak the other Christian Churches are weak also,
but where the Catholic Church is strong its strength
is largely its own. Its special ground of strength, of
course, is its possession of the Papacy, as the symbol
and organ of its continuous unity and its inter-
national life.
But if we say that Catholicism, scientifically under-
stood and completed, is to be the great power of a
Human Peace, we are the more bound to take account
of the various facts which seem to make against this
view — to take account of them and set them in a clear
* “Catholicism and the Modern Mind,” p, 282.
128 THE PROBLEM OF HUMAN PEACE
light. We are considering the problem of peace from
the standpoint of science, in its application to the
mind and life of humanity. From this standpoint,
and in the interests of the very problem which we are
concerned to solve, it is indispensable that we should
see things as they are, allowing their full natural force
to such considerations as appear to go counter to the
principle which we are seeking to establish, or the
end which we desire to gain. Now, the peace which
we are supposing it to be desirable to bring in is the
peace of mankind, and it is evident that if such a peace
is to come it can only come by the concurrence, or
acquiescence, of all the countries of the world. But
Catholicism — although, as we have seen, it is, directly
and indirectly, the representative faith of humanity
— is, in its direct confession and acknowledgment,
actually the religion of merely a minority of the human
race. Judaism, Mohammedanism, Hinduism, Bud-
dhism, and Confucianism — to take only the greatest
of the world’s religions — lie beyond its jurisdiction.
Further, in Christendom itself, Catholicism — the
Catholicism which has, as its chief interpreter and
voice, the Pope — has no administrative authority over
the Greek Church and the various Protestant bodies.
Lastly, in Christendom — throughout all those pre-
dominant nations of the West in which, as we have
said, the controlling mind of peace must first be
brought in — there have now for hundreds of years
been manifest two great increasing movements bear-
ing upon the power and claims of Catholicism. One
of these, to use a single significant word, is a move-
CATHOLICISM AND A HUMAN PEACE 129
ment of conscious and avowed atheism, directed not
against Catholicism alone, but against every form of
Christianity ; the other has been a movement, not
of open and explicit unbelief, but of what may be
called secularism— a movement of unbelief latent
and implicit, tending to take all the great concerns
and interests of human life — education, literature,
history, the arts, the sciences, the marriage laws,
politics, national and international, and industry — out
of the hands of all definite and organic religion, and into
the hands of what, for want of a better name, we may
call the State. Both of these great movements, indeed,
have now been so long continued, and are so univer-
sal, that it will probably seem to the vast majority of
thinkers and politicians that the very authority which
we are here invoking on behalf of Catholicism— the
authority of science — is one which is naturally and
decisively against it.
But it is not enough to say even this. It is to
Catholicism, become completely scientific, that we
are looking to give to the mind of man the prescience
and the will of peace. When we go back upon the
history of the world, however, we see that Catholicism
has not, up to the present, been a power of peace. If
we date its ofiicial status and authority from the
time of Constantine, we are bound to recognize not
only that it has never, in fact, prevented war, but
that it has not even attempted to do so. It would
hardly be an exaggeration to say that it has been on
the side of all the wars that have ever been waged in
Christendom, and has itself caused some of them to
H«P.
1
130 THE PROBLEM OF HUMAN PEACE
be undertaken. This is true, of course, not only of
medieval Catholicism — the Catholicism of the undi-
vided Western Church — but of the Catholicism of
the Greek Church and the Protestant bodies. The
Christian Churches have, one and all, with the excep-
tion of the Quakers, been Churches of war. The
reason of this is, as we have already said, plain.
Catholicism does not stand, as an unrelated magical
power, outside the circle of human nature, compelling
it somehow, and in varying degree, into a passive
conformity to itself. It lies, in what it is or in what
it represents, within human nature, and is one, but
only one, of its working forces. If we say that it
stands for a high and constant instinct, or desire, of
man, that instinct has still as its companions others —
among them the instinct of destruction and the joy
of combat, the desire for wealth, the desire for national
expansion and predominance. Assuming, therefore,
that man, as he has hitherto expressed himself in
Catholicism, has had a right vision and conception of
a Human Peace — which, in fact, would be an unwar-
ranted assumption— it would still remain true that
in the practical pursuit of this ideal he has been
hindered and arrested by the operation of other
influences within him which have been antagonistic
to it.
The fact that Catholicism has, as a power of peace,
failed is, however, in itself, no right reason for dis-
missing it absolutely from our minds — assuming that
we have the power to do this — so far as the realization
of a Human Peace is concerned. We are trying, once
CATHOLICISM AND A HUMAN PEACE 131
more, to consider this problem as a problem of science.
Now, from the standpoint of science we are bound to
ask ourselves what alternative we have to Catholicism,
considered as a principle of peace, supposing we dis-
miss it from our minds. We need not concern our-
selves with the non-Catholic forms of Christianity —
the Greek Church and the various Protestant sects.
They live, in so far as they live at all, with the life
of Catholicism, and if Catholicism dies they will die
also. If, therefore, we suppose ourselves called upon
to dismiss Catholicism from the argument of peace,
what is left to us ? That also is a question of science.
We are not entitled to assume that the word
“ science,” by its own natural and proper force,
necessarily represents the antithesis of Catholicism.
The word “ science ” represents the mind of man in its
full development, resting upon the sum of human
experiences and acquisitions, consciously scrutinizing
things external and internal, and possessing, so far
as its faculties allow, a complete measure of itself
and of the universe in relation to itself. From the
standpoint which science gives to us, therefore, we
are called upon to examine not only Catholicism, but
anti-Catholicism, or the alternatives to Catholicism.
Science shows to us our world and ourselves to our-
selves. This being so, it shows us how we should
stand, relatively to the question of peace, if all men
were to do what many have actually done — dismiss
from their minds Catholicism, and proceed as if it
were a thing extinct or dying.
We should then be left with atheism — either in its
132 THE PROBLEM OF HUMAN PEACE
open and avowed forms, or in its implied and latent
form as secularism — the elimination of Catholicism,
in practice, from aU the great concerns of human life.
Now, atheism has, as such, no necessary bearing upon
peace at all, any more than upon gluttony or licen-
tiousness. As it is quite easy to show from experience,
when a war breaks out, some atheists in a given
country are in favour of it and some are against it.
In this respect their position is exactly the same as
that of Catholics. Further, when it is a question
not so much of whether a particular war is right or
wrong, but of whether peace, in itself, is an ideal
good, which may be pursued and realized in a definite
way, it is evident that atheism as such — the dismissal
or neglect of Christ and Catholicism — has no view
which is proper to it, or which follows from it, although
individual atheists may possibly have such a view.
Again, what we have called secularism finds its expres-
sion and organ in “ the State,” or “ the Government ”
— a power not creating or diffusing opinion, but
giving effect to it, in degree, in proportion to its actual
force, by certain processes of co-ordination and
organization. The State or the Government, how-
ever, has not, any more than the Church, been a
power of peace. It is the voice and instrument of the
passions and interests which, at a given time, are
dominant. It waged war before it was Catholic ;
it waged war when it was, or was supposed to be.
Catholic ; and it wages war now that it is increasingly
secularist.
If, therefore, we suppose ourselves to be in the
CATHOLICISM AND A HUMAN PEACE 133
position to make a deliberate choice between Catholi-
cism and atheism, we have no reason, so far as a
Human Peace is concerned, from the point of view
of science, to choose atheism. It is plain that
atheism as such — the rejection, or disallowance, of
Christ and Catholicism — does not change the basic
contents of human nature — its instinct of nutrition,
its instinct of sex, its instinct of destruction, the joy
of combat, the desire for wealth, the desire for national
expansion and domination. If there are in man
certain continuing passions and propensities which
tend to urge him into war, they are, in themselves,
after the substitution of atheism for Catholicism,
exactly what they were before. Our recognition of
this, of course, is, in a scientific sense, neither a proof
of Catholicism not a disproof of atheism. The
instincts and passions of men existed before Catholi-
cism, as such, arose in the world, and at that time,
as afterwards throughout the history of Catholicism,
sometimes there was peace and sometimes war. In
the same way, if we suppose Catholicism to die out as
completely as the “ Paganism ” of Greece and Rome
has done, human nature, so far as its primary con-
stituents and forces are concerned, will still be a
persisting identity. Man, then, as now — no other
change in him having been effected — ^will eat and
drink. He will propagate his species. He will be
moved by the instinct of destruction and the joy
of combat. He will strive for wealth and pre-
dominance. He will sometimes make war and some-
times peace. He cannot, indeed, whatever his view
134 the problem OF HUMAN PEACE
of himself and his world, remain perpetually in a
state of conflict. He is a subject being, under the
discipline of an outer and inner necessity. He must
eat and drink, nourish and protect his offspring,
clothe himself, house himself, and warm himself ;
and in the stage of development which he has now
reached, although he may conceivably dismiss from
his mind Catholicism, together with all other forms
of religion, it is not probable that he will be able to
extirpate all those needs of comfort and luxury,
knowledge and art, which enter into an advanced
culture and civilization. The more such needs
become multiplied and common, the less will it be
possible for men to devote themselves to the merely
destructive operations of war. Nevertheless, in so
far as war might seem a means to a desirable end,
man after Catholicism, as before it, and during its
continuance, would tend from time to time to be
carried into it. Against this atheism, in itself,
would be no security.
In spite, therefore, of the failure of Catholicism,
relatively to the aim of peace, we have, relatively to
that aim, no ground, in science, for rejecting
Catholicism and choosing atheism. Atheism, in itself,
scientifically considered, is no more a thing of illu-
mination and promise relatively to the aim of peace
than it is, for example, relatively to the ideals of love
and purity, if these things are still to continue ideals.
Our hope is in science, illuminating and completing
Catholicism — the developed mind of man, resting on
the sum of his experiences and acquisitions, and
CATHOLICISM AND A HUMAN PEACE 135
seeing himself and things in relation to himself as
they have been and are. The mind of man, thus
developed, is able to look at Catholicism, as it looks
at any other thing or thought — at the heavenly
bodies, at the air, at the sea and earth, with their
forms of vegetable and animal life, at the movement
of mankind in the ages, at the differing types of
religion and civilization, at the arts and sciences, at its
own consciousness, emotions, conceptions and ideals.
There is a sense, of course, in which man, the man of
any given generation, is inevitably the subject of his
own past, with a vitality nourished upon it, with a
mind enlarged by it, with a wiU and power penetrated
and confirmed by it. But there is also a sense in
which, because of his development and his possession
of a full view and measure of things, the modern man is
necessarily the master of his past, looking back upon
it and summoning it before his judgment-seat. It is
thus that he looks back upon, or out upon, Catholi-
cism. It is a part of himself — an expression of his
unchanged but developing identity. He sees the
world when Catholicism was not, and he sees it
when Catholicism came. He sees how Catholicism
grew and developed — how the ancient civilization,
with its religions, arts, philosophies, sciences, and
modes of life entered into it ; how the order of the
Middle Ages, in mind and policy, was shaped and
maintained ; how, in the six centuries of modern
history, there has, in the Western world, been a vast,
many-sided expansion of genius and power. He sees
how Catholicism stands to-day — its relation to the
136 THE PROBLEM OF HUMAN PEACE
non-Christian religions, its relation to the Greek
Church, Protestantism, and unbelief, its relation to
the sum total of human culture, its relation to the
social and practical life of the world, including inter-
national action and the problems of peace and war.
Seeing these things, science — ^the developed and
synthetic mind of the modern man- — recognizes that
what atheism, as such, does not do, and cannot do,
Catholicism, as such, does and has always done.
Catholicism, as such, scientifically and positively
considered, proposes to man a supreme aim in life —
an aim continuous and universal, which, in its essen-
tial character, is not of one age alone, but of all ages,
and not of one nation alone, but of all nations, and
which by its proper nature is such that it may serve
to give to all his other aims meaning and unity. This
aim is an aim of developing personal and social per-
fection, according to the Perfection, or Divinity, of
Christ. We may characterize this aim in other
terms, and call it — as it has been called by one of the
forlorn and distracted spirits of the modern revo-
lution — a “ slave morality.” This is, although chosen
with an intention of contempt and rejection, a right
and happy designation. Catholicism is, indeed, a
slave morality — a morality which, finding man a
slave either to his own inner passions, or to the despot
classes which have risen into ascendency from their
working, offers to him freedom and lordship. This
slave morality aims at making the slave a master.
It pronounces words of freedom and light. Its
purpose is not to take from the few, but to give to
CATHOLICISM AND A HUMAN PEACE 137
the many. It exists not to bring down the high to
the low, but to raise the low to the high. Where
there is an anarchy of animal passion it would bring
in a human order and calm. Where there is ignor-
ance it would bring in knowledge. Where there is
weakness it would bring in strength. Catholicism —
which, of course, is only man at a given stage of his
being, and in a given degree, recognizing himself, and
the Order to which he is subject, expressing himself,
commanding himself, and directing himself, according
to a Vision which has come to him — ^has been a
“ slave morality ” which has been a morality of
masters liberating slaves, and of slaves risen to the
dignity of masters. It has been the morality of
apostles, martyrs, saints, artists, philosophers,
thinkers, heroes, and rulers, as well as of the obscure
and uninstructed, during almost two thousand
years. The modern developed and synthetic mind,
science, sees it to represent within its own sphere
what is as much an order of forces, controlling and
beneficent, as is the solar system itself, or as are the
recurrent phenomena of the vegetable and animal
kingdoms, or the accomplished conquests of the arts
and sciences. In the presence of this order, as in the
presence of any other, man is strong when he submits
and uses, but weak when he revolts and repudiates.
In denying and rejecting what is positive and great
in Catholicism he denies and rejects what is greatest
in himself. He disowns the Divinity within him, and
turns his back upon his own noblest achievements.
It is because Catholicism, considered from the point
138 THE PROBLEM OF HUMAN PEACE
of view of science, is what it is — an emanation and
expression of the mind of man, proposing to himself,
and pursuing, a master ideal — that it has a natural
bearing on the question of peace, while atheism, as
such, has no such bearing. Therefore, if we wish to be
delivered from war — assuming it to be possible for
us to be so delivered — ^we cannot turn to atheism to
deliver us. On the other hand, Catholicism, just as
it has been and is, cannot deliver man from war.
This history shows us. Catholicism, in spite of its
proclamation of an ideal of perfection, has, in fact,
made almost no direct contribution to the peace of the
world, and has, indeed, almost invariably sanctioned
and blessed its wars, whatever they were. In pre-
cisely the same way science — to which we are now
making our appeal — has not brought in peace. The
age greatest in applied science has been the age of the
greatest of wars. It may seem, therefore, that we
are helplessly involved in a vicious circle, since,
neither Catholicism, nor atheism, which is the anti-
thesis of Catholicism, nor science, which pre-eminently
stands for the Modern Mind, has apparently in it any
promise of peace. Nevertheless, it is to the union
of two things which, relatively to war, singly have
failed — Catholicism and science — that we look for
the power of concord. What Catholicism by itself,
apart from science, and science by itself, apart from
Catholicism, cannot do, the two together may do,
for the two together represent the developed, unified
mind of man, knowing itself, and knowing the world
in relation to itself.
CATHOLICISM AND A HUMAN PEACE 139
It does not fall within the scope of this work to
determine the full meaning of a Scientific Catholicism.
The sense to be attached to this expression we have,
in part, attempted elsewhere to elucidate. We are
here concerned with that meaning only in so far as it
bears on the question of a Human Peace. Now, that
question is a great question of practical life. As such
it is representative. It is, moreover, not exclusive.
It does not stand by itself. It is one of a vast
number of interdependent questions of man’s mind
and life — questions so inseparably and closely con-
nected together that if we were to suppose Catholi-
cism, as a system of thought and conduct, to really
and finally fail in regard to any one of them, it would
fail in regard to them all. We see, in fact, as we go
back upon the history of Christendom, that Catholi-
cism, which has failed as a power of international
peace, has also failed — failed continuously, and on a
vast scale — as a power of personal conduct or morals.
We may, therefore, properly consider the question of
peace as a sort of test question in relation to Catholi-
cism — a question bringing it naturally to the judg-
ment-seat of the Modern Mind, and submitting it,
as it ought properly to be submitted, to the ordeal
of practice, or life.
It is not from Catholicism, just as it is, nor from
science, just as it is, but from a scientific Catholicism,
that we are to expect such a solution of this question
as is possible, and this, as we have said, because it is
a practical question of man’s life upon earth. The
general effect of the application to Catholicism of
HO THE PROBLEM OF HUMAN PEACE
science — the developed, synthetic mind of the modern
man — may be quite simply and broadly stated. In
so far as Catholicism enters into the domain of explana-
tion on the one hand, and the domain of practice on the
other, it enters into the sphere of science and becomes
subject to its jurisdiction. There may be things in
Catholicism which lie wholly outside one or other of
these two domains — statements to which no scientific
meaning is to be attached, precepts of conduct for
which no scientific reason can be given. As to this
we need here say nothing. What we are at present
concerned with is the relation of Catholicism to man’s
life, inner and outer, on earth ; and in relation to
this Catholicism, in so far as it professes to explain
things, or proposes to men to do things, comes within
the province of science, and must submit to its
authority. It follows from this that the whole of
Catholicism, considered as an explanatory and prac-
tical system — its terminology, its conceptions of God
and man, of earth and heaven, of the human soul,
of “ this world ” and “ the next,” of Our Lord and
Our Lady, of the Scriptures and the Church, together
with its principle of prayer, its creeds, its sacraments,
and its organization — is as much subject to science,
the ordered, ordering reason of developed man, as
are any of the phenomena of external nature, or any
of the constructions of the arts and sciences. Science
is not, as some have supposed it to be, atheism.
Science is explanation. It no more necessarily rejects
Catholicism because, in the degree in which this is
possible, it explains it, than it rejects the solar system,
CATHOLICISM AND A HUMAN PEACE 141
or the other great forces of inorganic and organic
matter, because, in the investigation and interpreta-
tion of these things, it has thrown up astronomy,
physics, and biology. What it says, however — and
the more plainly and openly this can be said the
better — is that in the present state of the human
mind, and relatively to the practical ends of life, the
statements of ecclesiastics or theologians in regard
to Catholicism have no other significance and value
than that which is given to them by the experience
and reason of a developed humanity. Catholicism,
of course, may, in a sense, be accepted, as we say,
“ on faith,” without question or reservation. An
individual mind, that is, may be moved, by its con-
ception of its own good, and the good of mankind,
to submit itself to the living, authoritative Catholic
Church, saying simply what it orders to be said,
doing simply what it orders to be done, and entering,
according to its power, into the inheritance of its
spiritual life. This, with regard to the Catholic
Church, is, for certain men and for certain purposes, a
perfectly natural thing to do, although with regard
to any other Church in the world it would be impos-
sible. What we are now concerned with, however, is
a Catholicism which, among other great things, is
to be capable of giving peace to mankind. Such a
Catholicism must be the Catholicism of developed
man. It must be, for the purposes of explanation
and action, scientific.
It is such a Catholicism — no other, and nothing
else — that can now give to man that conception of a
142 THE PROBLEM OF HUMAN PEACE
supreme end of life the pursuit of which makes a
Human Peace not only desirable but indispensable.
This end of life is not a new end. It is the same end
as Catholicism has always proposed to the world —
Perfection according to the Perfection of Christ. It
is the Kingdom of Heaven. It is the growth and
full-flowering of an ideal humanity. A scientific
Catholicism, however, conceives Christ, God in Man,
and therefore man himself, as an unscientific Catholi-
cism could not do. By a Perfect Humanity we mean
man with all the characteristic sides of his nature
developed, fulfilled, and wrought into a unity under
the presidency of a high master motive. What man
is, as an intellectual and social being, we do not learn
from the introspection of metaphysicians, engaged
in a microscopic analysis of themselves, and each
pouring contempt upon the conclusions of all the
others, while claiming certainty and authority for
his own. We learn what man is from his manifesta-
tion of himself in history — from language, from
religion, from the arts, from philosophy, from science,
from social manners and organization, from political
institutions, and from industry. These are man’s
witnesses of himself, and not the shifting subtleties of
psychologists, losing themselves in interior darkness
while the sun of revelation shines without.
From these witnesses we see that man — ^wherever
and whenever we behold him — is a continuous and
identical being, moved, in different degrees, by
various desires, and exercising certain powers. In
regard to our capacity for naming and distinguishing
CATHOLICISM AND A HUMAN PEACE 143
these desires and powers we are dependent upon an
order of language, which has grown up in the ages,
and which we cannot subvert. We are not beginning,
and are powerless to begin, the process of human
evolution d,e novo. It has produced us ; we cannot
reproduce it. We live, feel, think, speak, and act
by entering into a Power which is ourselves and yet
not ourselves. Man, therefore, we may say, is a
being in whom there are instincts of nutrition and
sex, instincts of destruction and construction, a
tendency to love his fellow-beings, but a tendency
also to hate them, a sense of right and wrong, a sense
of beauty and ugliness, a power of imagination, a
discernment of truth and untruth, a capacity for
observation and inference, and a genius for effecting
great and difficult constructions in art, philosophy,
science, social organization, and industry. We may,
if we please, name all these things differently, and we
may resolve them aU, or suppose ourselves to resolve
them, into some ultimate impalpable material pro-
cesses, but when we have done this the things them-
selves remain, with persisting characteristics — uni-
form relations of resemblance and difference — recog-
nizable by the ordinary sane mind. A human being
and a pig, a star and a tree, a man and a woman, are
not, outside a lunatic asylum, the same thing, any
more then good and evil, or beauty and ugliness, or
disease and health, or sanity and insanity.
Our conception of the End of life, therefore, must
be based on our knowledge of man as he has been
and is, a moral, intellectual, and active organism, a
144 the problem OF HUMAN PEACE
conscious and self-conscious, unified whole, living in
the social state, and in a relation of action and reaction,
on every side of his nature, with what presents itself
to him as a Universal Order, at once external and
internal. If, consequently, we say that the End of
Man is Perfection in Christ — perfection according to
a Divine Image, or Exemplar — this statement must
be understood in a sense relative to man’s many-
sided persisting and developing nature, and to the
continuing conditions imposed upon his mind and
life. Man has, as his basic needs, air, light, heat,
activity, rest, food, health, the association of the
sexes, paternity, clothing, shelter ; he has the higher
needs of love, society, self-control and self-direction,
beauty, knowledge, imagination and worship, and
all that constitutes what we call culture and civiliza-
tion. When we speak of what “ man ” needs we are
not entitled to take as our type the lowest of men,
or the least developed. We ought, on the contrary —
and this especially when we have set out with such
an expression as “ Perfection in Christ ” — to take
the highest and most developed. The most developed
stands where the least developed may conceivably
come to stand. This is the principle of what we have
called the “ slave morality.” It is the principle of
that End of Life which we are supposing a Scientific
Catholicism to contain within itself and put forward.
If it is true that Catholicism has proposed to men,
and must continue to propose to them. Perfection in
Christ, this Perfection must be understood — and is,
in fact, by Catholicism, in principle, always under-
CATHOLICISM AND A HUMAN PEACE 145
stood — as a thing not for a privileged class, or a
particular nation, but for all men and aU nations.
The first task of a Scientific, or modern, Catholicism
is to give to this expression a meaning relative to the
actual nature and needs of man, under the con-
tinuing conditions of his life upon earth. From this
point of view, it must re-examine and test its tra-
ditional statements and formulas. It is not sufficient
simply to repeat them. In simply repeating them,
without making any attempt to give them a practical
meaning and effect, we only exhibit our incapacity,
or perhaps our dishonesty. In the Lord’s Prayer
we say “ Give us this day our daily bread.” That
is a perfectly intelligible expression of need. It is
unequivocal. Bread is the first of man’s needs. He
needs it now, he needs it always. But all his other
real needs — needs, that is, which spring from his
characteristic and continuous nature, developing and
fulfilling itself — are in this respect precisely similar
to this basic and elementary need of bread. He does
not live by bread alone. His other needs are, once
more, and broadly speaking, the association of the
sexes, love, goodness, paternity, and the family life,
clothing, habitation, light, heat, health, beauty,
knowledge, a right social order and companionship.
These needs, like the need for bread, are needs for
“ this day,” this hfe, this earth. So far as our
present capacity extends, we are not in the least able
to say whether a single one of them would be needs
of man in some other “ life ” than this, “ lived ”
under some whoUy inconceivable conditions. To
146 THE PROBLEM OF HUMAN PEACE
the word “ Heaven,” as the symbol of a perfect state,
according to the only conception of such a state
which we are able to form, it is quite possible to attach
a definite meaning, but to the word “ Heaven ” as
dependent for its objective significance on the abroga-
tion of the infinite universe, including man as we
know him, it is not possible to attach any significance
at all. It is, so used, as Catholicism teaches, not a
word of knowledge, but a word of faith. It is quite
necessary that all ecclesiastics, theologians, and meta-
physicians in the twentieth century — all men claiming
to take any part in the actual direction of human
affairs — should, in the present stage of the world’s
development, deal honestly with themselves and their
fellow-beings in regard to this, and practise a religious
sincerity in their statements. The time is past for
deception and self-deception in these respects. It is
above all indispensable to set aside all evasions and
illusions, all verbal subterfuges and mystification,
when we are considering the awful tragedy of war and
the good of peace ; but if with this great question,
then with all others bearing upon the actual being
and fate of humanity. Man lives in a mystery tem-
pered by knowledge, but the recognition of mystery
is not the same thing as the possession of knowledge.
A Catholic conception of the End of Life — that
conception in the light of which it becomes possible
to prosecute Peace as a Human Good — must, then,
be stated in positive terms of man’s nature and
situation. It is, for example, not enough to conceive
of man as an inevitable “ sinner ” and to say that
CATHOLICISM AND A HUMAN PEACE 147
Catholicism exists to save him, not from sin, but from
some eternal, unimaginable “ punishment ” of sin
in a future state of which we are powerless to form
any idea. It is not enough, again, to say that by
Perfection in Christ we mean, not a terrestrial, but a
“ celestial ” perfection. The word “ Heaven,” if it
is to have a place in a Rule of Life, cannot be
suffered to remain a merely negative expression,
meaning only “ not earth,” “ not man,” “ not ex-
perience,” “ not knowledge,” “ not action.” It
must not be simply a symbol of human ignorance and
incapacity — ^like the expression “ God knows,” mean-
ing that no man knows, or “ God help us,” meaning
that no man can help us. The words “ heaven ” and
“ earth,” or “ this world ” and “ the next,” must not
be used as terms of antithesis and total antagonism.
They have, of course, never in Catholicism been
uniformly so used, but in so far as there has been
a tendency to place what we call “ the supernatural ”
and “ the natural,” the “ Divine ” and the “ human,”
in a relation such that the first is regarded as a
mere negation of the second, it has inevitably
nullified Catholicism as a Rule of Life. Such a
tendency, as is evident, goes counter to the Incarna-
tion, in which we see Perfection, the Divinity,
clothed with flesh, become Human and Personal, and
moving as a Model on the earth. It goes counter,
too, to the organic Catholic Church, which is simply
that Perfection realized, in degree, as a continuous
individual and social life. It goes counter, further,
to the Lord’s Prayer, for, unless the words “ Thy
148 THE PROBLEM OF HUMAN PEACE
will be done on earth as it is in heaven ” are to be
supposed devoid of all intelligible and practical
significance, they must, for man who uses them, mean
that a high ideal of himself which he is, in a measure,
able to shape in his mind is somehow to be realized
in the world of which he is actually an inhabitant.
We cannot, therefore, say that Perfection in Christ
consists in escaping the eternal punishment of sin in
a future “ life,” or even in being “ sinless ” — in the
negative sense of never contravening certain elemen-
tary moral precepts ; or in entering finally into some
endless, inconceivable “ supernatural ” felicity, as a
consequence of having thus refrained from “ sin,”
or obtained absolution for it. We cannot, again,
say that such a perfection consists simply in “ renun-
ciation,” or in taking up the Cross, leaving all things
and following Christ. These are all great and beautiful
poetic words, which are not likely to lose their
spiritual meaning and value so long as man, being
what he is, proposes to himself a high and difficult
end to which certain impulses within him urge him
forward, and from which certain others hold him
back. When he has advanced only so high in the
scale of humanity as never to be a liar, a thief, or a
murderer he may begin to talk of dispensing with the
Ten Commandments ; and when he has cast the
words “ love ” and “ selfishness,” “ passion ” and
“ purity,” out of his vocabulary because, in his
accomplished and undisturbed perfection, he no
longer needs them, then, perhaps — provided he con-
sents to forget the price that has been paid for his
CATHOLICISM AND A HUMAN PEACE 149
elevation in the ages of sacrifice — he may be free to
take down the Crucifix from its place.
We are not, at present, called upon to discuss such
a state of things, in which “ joy will be its own
security ” and Eden will have come again. We are,
for the purposes of this treatise, concerned with only
such an elementary and preliminary good as that men
should refrain from killing one another. It is, from
this point of view, essential that the Crucifix, which
is the symbolic summary of Catholicism, should be,
as we have elsewhere said,* regarded, not as the sign
of a negative, repressive, or punitive process, but as
an Image of spiritual conquest — of a Victorious
Humanity, subjecting the lower, indeed, but also
liberating and fulfilling the higher. It must be held
to be, what by the principle and intention of Catholi-
cism it has always been, a symbol, not of death, but
of life, of a transcendent Perfection, in which the
New Adam restores the Old. In other words, it
must cease to be a negative symbol and become a
positive symbol, denoting, not merely feelings to be
suppressed and thoughts to be rejected and actions
to be avoided, but a many-sided humanity, indi-
vidual and social, developing and accomplishing itself.
Further, it must not represent despair as the word for
“ this life ” and hope as the word for “ the next,”
or renunciation as the word till death and possession
as the word after death. Man is called upon to
repress the lower, but only as one condition of
possessing the higher. If we are to use the traditional
* “Catholicism and the Modern Mind,” p. 184.
150 THE PROBLEM OF HUMAN PEACE
symbolism, he renounces the devil, but only that he
may embrace Christ ; and Christ is not the absence
of evil, but the presence of a Beautiful Good.
We must come back, then, to this — that Catholicism
proposes to men, as the End of Life, Perfection in
Christ, and that Perfection in Christ means the satis-
faction and fulfilment of man’s nature in its complete-
ness, as it has been given to him by God, and in a
situation in which God has placed him. Man’s nature
is physical, moral, intellectual, practical, individual,
and social. It needs “ bread ” — food, clothing, habi-
tation, air, light, warmth, health, the association of
the sexes, parentage, love, domestic life, civic and
national sympathies, beauty, knowledge, the worship
and pursuit of things Divine, a high social activity,
and such an ordered mastery over itself and the
world external to itself as may make the attainment
of these things possible. The possession of these
things, in a right relation and harmony — with what
is highest in them controlling and animating all that
is lower — this is Perfection in Christ. Its pursuit
is the pursuit of Perfection. That pursuit is Catholi-
cism. Christ’s “ Kingdom ” is the Catholic Church,
conceived of as an ideal society of human beings.
Into this society, however, not one man, but all
men, and not one nation but all nations, are, in
principle, to be brought. It is to be social, inter-
national, universal, continuous.
We may dismiss from our minds the conception of
such a society as a mere chimera, but if we do not
so dismiss it — if we hold it to be, what it is, in degree
CATHOLICISM AND A HUMAN PEACE 15 1
at least, an attainable end — then, in a scientific view
of it, we can see that a Human Peace is an essential
condition of its realization. On a certain view of
Catholicism, it may be admitted that peace, in the
sense of the mere absence of war, is not for man an
indispensable good. If man is to be conceived of
only as a “ sinner ” — ^who is by nature bound to
break, and in practice continually breaks, certain
elementary moral commandments, and who achieves
eternal fehcity after death simply as a result of the
“ remission ” of sin — then, it is clear, whether there
is peace or war in the world is of comparatively small
importance. Whether this “ sinner,” man, dies at
twenty or at seventy, in bed or in the battlefield,
slaughtering or being slaughtered — this does not
really matter much. The essential thing is that he
should profess repentance for his sins and be absolved.
If he does this, he is sure ultimately of an eternal
heaven ; and if he is fortunate enough to be able to
take advantage of a plenary indulgence, he goes
there at once. This view of man, moreover, is one
which concerns the individual only. Nations and
Governments, as such, come under no moral rule.
They are neither “ sinners ” nor “ saints.” They
enter no confessional. They receive no absolution.
They do not, collectively, reach hell or heaven. No
statesman, even, is supposed to be “ damned ” by
his bad policy or “ saved ” by a good one, although
his bad policy may ruin a people, and his good one
may protect and ennoble it. In the same way, no
individual citizen, as such, is understood to be called
152 THE PROBLEM OF HUMAN PEACE
to account for the misgovernment which he has
sanctioned, or for the unnecessary bloodshed in
which he has willingly taken part. The word “ sin ”
in short, has no political significance — ^has no mean-
ing for governing or governed, as such ; and two
nations may decimate each other in the battlefield
without its being possible for any recognized authority
to declare that anyone is morally responsible for
such a result. They cannot, as nations, be judged,
or judge one another. They can only fight and
recriminate.
We are, however, now only concerned with a Scien-
tific Catholicism, and with its relation to a Human
Peace — a Scientific Catholicism being conceived of as
one which, pursuing its ancient aim of Perfection
in Christ, understands this aim as the positive and
religious fulfilment of the total nature of man,
physical, intellectual, moral, individual and social,
national and international. Such a Catholicism will
bring its central and transcendent aim to bear upon
the whole economy and policy of human life. It will
consider the problem of peace, therefore, in the light
of that aim. It will become completely and syste-
matically, what spontaneously and in a certain degree
it has always been, both spiritual and practical. It
wiU be a voice and law for man the thinker, or man
the citizen, or man the worker, as for man “ the
sinner.” It will be this, and do this, in virtue of its
being scientific and “ modern ” — in other words,
because of its capacity to represent the developed
mind of man, resting on the sum of human experiences.
CATHOLICISM AND A HUMAN PEACE 153
and so able to see himself and his world in their
true nature and relations. Such a Catholicism, in
its continuing, luminous universality, will deliver
men from the limits of individualism, nationalism,
party, class, and sect. It will be an authority on
the one hand, for all who are Catholics, pursuing the
Perfection of Christ as a living and expanding ideal,
and on the other, for all who acknowledge the claims
of science, the obligation to see things as they are.
If we are Catholics we must wish Catholicism to
possess the light and the power of science — man’s
mind in its fullest development ; and if we are scien-
tific, seeing man as he is, in relation to his world as he
knows it, we must recognize that in his confession of
Christ he confesses an indestructible ideal of himself,
as an individual and social being, which it is the task
of the Catholic Church — that is, humanity, ordering
itself for Perfection — to progressively realize. It is
from these two standpoints become one— the stand-
points of Catholicism and science — that the right
conception and pursuit of a Human Peace become
possible.
CHAPTER V
WAR AND THE SPIRITUAL LIFE
According to the conceptions of a Scientific
Catholicism, such as we have now attempted to
define it, the problem of a Human Peace becomes a
part of the larger problem of bringing the Perfection
of Christ into the life of man. In other words, it
ceases to be an isolated political problem, and
becomes, in the full sense of the word, a religious
problem. It is a problem of the Catholic life. In its
general application to the Catholic life, in the modern
world, the office of science is twofold. First, it
indicates its actual nature in terms of practice ;
secondly, it makes clear the conditions of its realiza-
tion. It is in this way that science may be said to
be, by its own native character, religious and Catholic.
It is a form of honesty. It does not permit us to
deceive ourselves. It sees things and shows things
as they are. If the Holy Spirit, in the language of
the Gospel poems, is the Spirit of Truth, then it is
this Spirit that has built up all our great positive
sciences, from mathematics to morals ; and the
scientific thinker, patiently and exactly unfolding to
us the Universal Order, which is God, is more a voice
of the Holy Ghost than is an ordinary ecclesiastic
or theologian, giving forth unsupported and indemon-
strable statements concerning things visible and
WAR AND THE SPIRITUAL LIFE 155
invisible. The sacrament of holy order, therefore,
has a symbolic value in proportion as it represents the
communication of this real power of the Holy Spirit,
the power of truth or science — the power which
enables man to see things as they are, without
deceiving himself, and to order his life accordingly.
It is from this point of view that we are able to
understand — what in relation to the Problem of
Peace it is most important that we should under-
stand — the nature of prayer, as an instrument of
Perfection in Christ. Prayer is, in Catholicism, a
thing of central significance. If it is not scientific,
Catholicism cannot be scientific. Prayer is, of course,
the expression of a need, but it is also a prelude to
action. In the Lord’s Prayer we say “ Give us this
day our daily bread.” That is the expression of a
need, but it is also a prelude to action. We ask for
bread, but we do not in the least expect it to be
“ given ” to us. We know that we must work for
it. We know also that we must work for it according
to science — that is to say, according to our experience
of natural operations and our knowledge of the pro-
cesses of agriculture. Lahorare est orare. But what
is true of the petition for bread is true also of every
other petition in the Lord’s Prayer — as, for instance,
when we say “ Lead us not into temptation.” Here
again we have an expression of need which is also
a prelude to action. We are not to place ourselves in
a position of temptation, and if we are in it we are to
withdraw from it. That is the science of prayer.
“ Prayer,” says Auguste Comte, “ is the ideal of life.
156 THE PROBLEM OF HUMAN PEACE
for it is at once to feel, to think, and to act.” “ The
good man,” says Thomas a Kempis, “first lays out
inwardly the things which he is to do outwardly.”
When, therefore, we pray for peace our prayer is of
no value unless it is scientific — or, to use an equiva-
lent expression, unless we pray according to a right
theology. Peace is no more “ given ” to us, as
passive and receptive beings, than bread is so given
to us. In prayer we must not deceive ourselves.
If we are to pray effectually for peace, we must have
a sure conception and vision of peace in our minds,
and be prepared to take the steps — a right ordering
of ourselves and of national policy — ^which the
establishment of such a peace demands. Our prayer
for peace — and most of all for a Human Peace, uni-
versal and continuous — must be a prelude to action,
and to action in accordance with science. If it is
not, it will be, what so many prayers for peace are,
only a futile expression of a vague yearning — a mere
ritualistic rigmarole — or an exercise in self-deception,
compatible in practice with a recurrent surrender to
all the passions and illusions of war. It is a common
and wholesome saying of Catholic preachers that
“ God alone cannot save men.” This is only the
theological statement of the biological principle that
life is the action and reaction of organism and
environment, which, again, is equivalent to the
Pauline sentence that “ in Him we live and move
and have our being.”
The master aim of a Scientific Catholicism, con-
sidered as a living, shaping, human power, is to
WAR AND THE SPIRITUAL LIFE 157
promote Perfection in Christ, and this in a positive
and practical sense, as a fulfilment of all the sides of
human nature, in a harmonious order, constituted by
the subordination of its lower forces to the higher.
This aim is, in the widest sense, social. It embraces
all humanity, national and international. It is true
that there are now in Christendom, in “ the West,”
a large number of men and women who are, by pro-
fession, or by want of profession, non-Catholic or
non-Christian, and that for such men and women the
problem of peace is, or may be, one of importance.
It is true, too, that our European statesmanship is,
as we have said, implicitly atheistic or secular, setting
aside Catholicism, or Christianity, in any form, in its
common arguments and action. It may seem, there-
fore, that the standpoint of a Scientific Catholicism,
Perfection according to Christ, is not one which is, in
our modern world, sufficiently representative, either
of the non-European or of the European world, for
the purposes of international action. First, however,
^t must be borne in mind that, by a principle which we
have already established, it is from Christendom that
the power of a Human Peace must proceed ; secondly,
that a Scientific Catholicism, in the degree in which
it is really scientific, will, in relation to actual social
and practical interests, be able to appeal to a secular
citizenship and statesmanship, and even to those
who, for want of a better name, are classed as
agnostics, or unbelievers. It may be admitted that,
even within the circle of European civilization,
Catholicism, or Christianity, does not now, for the
158 THE PROBLEM OF HUMAN PEACE
purposes of either thought or action, give us a common
or social standpoint. Science, however, does give
us such a standpoint. It has a sure universality. Its
demonstrated truths and its methods of investigation
are accepted by Christians and non-Christians. They
prove themselves by practice. In so far, therefore,
as Catholicism is scientific and practical, it will be
representative even of those who may not call them-
selves Catholics.
The dominant aim of life being, according to a
Scientific Catholicism, Perfection in Christ — the
ordered fulfilment of human nature — it is, in relation
to the problem of peace, necessary to convert this
abstract statement into statements concrete and
practical. The governing needs of man we have
already, in general terms, enumerated. In deter-
mining those needs we take, as our type of human
nature, not the lowest man, or even the “ average ”
man, but the highest man given in experience — the
complete, or completely-developed man. When we
speak of the general and permanent needs of “ man ”
it is such a man that we naturally have in view.
Now man, so understood, needs, as we have said,
food, clothing, habitation, health, air, light, heat,
locomotion, the association of the sexes, paternity,
love, domestic and social life, religion, beauty, know-
ledge, and the freedom and power to so act that he
may satisfy these various requirements of his nature.
Let us, for the sake of simplicity and convenience,
express the same truth in terms of institutions, and
say that man for Perfection in Christ, needs the home,
WAR AND THE SPIRITUAL LIFE 159
the Church, the school, the workshop, the theatre,
and the State — using the word ‘‘ theatre ” as a com-
prehensive symbol for the various presentations of the
arts, and the word “ State,” similarly, for all forms of
political administration. These institutions, or instru-
ments, of his many-sided continuous nature man does
not need casually or intermittently. He needs them
always and everywhere for the fulfilment and satis-
faction of his total being. We may, in the interest
of perfect accuracy and explicitness, admit, once
more, that a large number of men now profess to have
no need of the Church. To that extent, therefore,
the Catholic ideal of Perfection — Perfection in Christ
— does not represent them. In other respects, how-
ever, it does, for although they might wish to strike
out the Church from the list of representative human
institutions, they would, for the most part, and in
some form, retain all the others which we have
mentioned. In regard to them, at least, they would
have common ground with a Scientific Catholicism.
Putting ourselves, however — as in this work we
have throughout done — at the point of view of such a
Catholicism, we may take the six representative
institutions which we have specified as emanations
of the nature of man and as instruments satisfying
his continuous needs. They are, therefore, institu-
tions and instruments of Perfection in Christ. They
are, further, social in the widest sense, national and
international. Now, it is plain that for the main-
tenance of these institutions — that is to say, for the
realization of the Catholic life — man is dependent on
i6o THE PROBLEM OF HUMAN PEACE
what he can get from the earth. It is as certain
that he gets the Church and the State, the home and
the theatre, from the earth as that he gets his bread
from it. He gets them, one and all, by labour.
The whole life of man, in its highest as in its lowest
forms, rests, as is obvious, ultimately upon agri-
culture — using this word for all modes of industrial
action, direct and indirect, upon the earth. That is
a truth, simple and palpable as it is, of which,
amidst the complexities of a developed civilization,
we frequently lose sight. It is, nevertheless, a truth
basic and controlling. It is no paradox to say
that Perfection in Christ, the complete Catholic
life, rests upon prayer and agriculture — on prayer
because in prayer man renews in his mind an
image of a Divine Humanity, individual and social,
which it is his will to realize in himself ; on agri-
culture because it is from the earth that all men,
from the savage to the saint, must get the material
means of life. Agriculture, therefore — that is to say,
the whole of our industrial action — gains meaning and
nobility from the fact that it is an indispensable
means to an end — the highest that man, in his
continuous and developed nature, proposes to himself.
It is from this standpoint that we are able, accord-
ing to a Scientific Catholicism, to gain a right view
of a Human Peace and of the policy to be adopted
for its establishment. Whether we consider a Human
Peace to be a good depends, as we have seen, on our
conception of the End of Life, or of the means to be
adopted for its attainment. The End of Life, as a
WAR AND THE SPIRITUAL LIFE i6i
Scientific Catholicism understands it, is Perfection
in Christ — the ordered fulfilment of a many-sided
humanity — a Perfection demanding, as its institu-
tions, the home, the Church, the school, the workshop,
the theatre, and the State, or Government, and
resting ultimately upon the earth, and what man, by
his industrial action, can obtain from it. Now,
whether peace, regarded simply as the absence of
war, is, relatively to this end, a good depends, of
course, on the nature of war, and what it is that it is
in its power to accomplish. War is a good if it can
be shown to be, in some indispensable way, sub-
servient to Perfection in Christ, according to that
practical and social conception of it which we have
now elucidated ; it is an evil, and therefore a serious
evil, if it frustrates or hinders that Perfection.
When we thus speak of war as good or evil we are,
as is obvious, considering it as a thing to be chosen
or rejected by deliberate policy. Such a choice or
rejection may in part be due to the strength or
weakness of certain primary human passions — as, for
instance, the instinct of destruction and the joy of
combat — but, in our modern world at least, questions
of international action are questions of statesmanship,
and before the Government of any country enters on
a war, or prosecutes a policy carrying with it the
risks of war, it has usually come to the decision that
such a war, evil as it may be in certain respects, is
yet, for some definite purpose, necessary.
What we have therefore to consider is whether war,
regarded as a definite mode of human action, and
i 62 the problem of HUMAN PEACE
being conceived of as lying within the sphere of
deliberate choice, is, in our modern world, indis-
pensable to the preservation of those high permanent
interests of man which we have summed up in the
words “ Perfection in Christ,” or the Catholic life.
This is, once more, not a historic question ; it is a
question of the present and the future. It may be
true that war, in various periods of the past, and
relatively to the then existing conditions, was some-
times a good, and yet that, relatively to existing con-
ditions, it is an evil. Again, we are not concerned to
discuss the question of whether war, being admitted
to be an evil, is yet an evil out of which good may
come. There is hardly any form of evil — a pesti-
lence, poverty, a shipwreck, an earthquake, a flood,
a famine, a conflagration, a persecution — ^which may
not afford occasions for the display of some high
quality of human nature. No sane man, however,
would propose that such occasions should be
deliberately created in order to give rise to such a
display. It is the ultimate purpose of Catholicism,
stated in traditional and symbolic language, to enable
men to get to “ Heaven,” where, as is supposed, they
will be exempt from every form of evil and suffering,
and enjoy eternal “ felicity.” We are not, therefore,
called upon to consider whether evil is good and good
evil, or whether war, being an evil, may not give rise
to an exercise of heroic patriotism, noble personal
devotedness, and beautiful charity. What we are
concerned with is the Catholic ordering of human life
for the ends of Perfection — or, if such a statement be
WAR AND THE SPIRITUAL LIFE 163
preferred — man, in communion with Christ, exercising
his spiritual sovereignty for the fulfilment of a positive
ideal of himself. Relatively to such a purpose, a
good is only a good if it is a means indispensable to
its accomplishment, or such as, being free, we should
deliberately choose.
Now, the six representative institutions of the
Catholic life are, as we have seen, the home, the
Church, the school, the theatre, the State, and the
workshop, using each of these terms in a comprehen-
sive and symbolic sense. For the sake of simplicity
and convenience we may group together, on the one
hand, the first four of these institutions, and on the
other, the last two. The first four we may call
institutions of the spiritual and the last two insti-
tutions of the temporal life. Such an arrange-
ment and terminology must, of course, in many
respects, be arbitrary. The Catholic life, the life of
man, is a unity. All its parts, or factors, are inter-
dependent. Church and State, workshop and home,
act and react upon one another. This being recog-
nized and allowed for, however, there is still a certain
advantage, for our immediate purpose, in the double
grouping which we have suggested. The four
spiritual institutions, as we have called them, spring
especially out of four persisting moral and intellectual
needs of human nature — ^its craving for social love,
its craving for goodness, its craving for beauty, its
craving for knowledge or “ truth.” The two tem-
poral institutions are more directly concerned with
man’s need for action, or practical power, whether
i 64 the problem OF HUMAN PEACE
politically, in the organization of the State, or indus-
trially, in his operations upon the earth.
Understanding, then, by the “ spiritual life ” of
man the life in which he is more especially occupied
with the interests of love, goodness, beauty and
knowledge, and by his temporal life, that in which
he is more directly concerned with action in the
State and in industry, it is possible to determine the
relation of war, in the modern world, to these two
chief ends of his being. War is, of course, a perfectly
definite mode of human action. A European states-
man or citizen in the twentieth century has, as he
enters into war, a full consciousness of what it is and
what it implies. It is a special application of material
force, and is comparable, therefore, in certain respects,
with the processes of agriculture or shipbuilding. In
its essential immediate results war, of course, does
not differ in the twentieth century from what it was
in the age of Homer. It only differs in scale and
method — in being more deliberate, more systematic,
and better organized, in carrying with it a fuller
human science and prescience, in resting on a wider
and more adequate preparation, in employing a more
effective apparatus of slaughter, and, like industry,
in largely substituting mechanical agencies for the
direct and individual action of man. In other
respects, however, war is, at the end of three thousand
years, substantially what it was at the beginning. Its
immediate, or purely military, purpose is to kill men
and destroy human constructions ; its ultimate, or
political, purpose is to compel some one people either
WAR AND THE SPIRITUAL LIFE 165
to accept the rule of another, or to surrender to it a
part of its territory and population, or its material
wealth, or to act, or refrain from acting, in a certain
way, according to the demands of the victor.
It is, then, for a Scientific Catholicism to deter-
mine, in the first place, how far war, being what it is
in its processes and objects, is demonstrably and
indispensably subservient to the Catholic life, which
is, on its spiritual side, a life of love, goodness, beauty,
and truth. Now, it is not necessary, so far as our
modern world is concerned, to say much upon this
subject. Within the limits of Christendom, at least,
wars are not now waged, and are not likely to be waged,
in the immediate interests of the spiritual life — the
interests of the home, or of the Church, or of the
school, or of the arts. To a great extent the interests
of Christendom in these respects, allowing for sub-
ordinate differences, are common, as are also the
conceptions and practical methods brought to bear
upon them. In so far as disagreement exists with
regard to them, although it may be a cause of dislike
and estrangement, it is not a cause of actual conflict.
In other words, no one, in our modern world, and so
far as Christendom is concerned, supposes that mere
differences in regard to religious belief, or in regard
to education and the arts, are likely, in themselves,
to be a motive of international war. There are
various reasons for this — one obvious reason being
that religious behef in Christendom is not now settled
and serious, another that Governments are, as we
have said, no longer organs of definite religious
i66 THE PROBLEM OF HUMAN PEACE
opinions, but of a sort of neutral secularism. But
whatever its explanation, the fact itself is certain.
When we get beyond Christendom — to the relations
of Western Powers with non-Western peoples, or of
the higher civilizations with the lower — this is no
longer, to the same extent and in appearance, true,
although even here it remains true in essentials. A
Christian missionary, going from a powerful country
to a non-Christian people, may possibly bring about
war, if his preaching proves unpalatable to the
natives, and they actively molest him in the exercise
of it. Even in such a case, however, the armed
support that is given to him by his Government is
given not so much on religious as on political grounds.
He is supported, if at all, not as an agent of Christ,
but because he is a representative of his country, and
it is held to be necessary to enforce respect for him
as such. It is, in fact, from the political point of
view, often an advantage to his Government to give
him such support, as in doing so it commonly gains an
opportunity of interfering in the internal afiFairs of
the uncivilized people, and thus of creating for itself
a fresh sphere of interest, imperial or commercial,
and ultimately, perhaps, of annexing a new territory.
So far as the missionary is concerned, it limits itself
to affording him personal protection. It has no
concern with the special religious opinions which he
may represent. Missionaries are, of course, of all
creeds and schools, and wherever they go they carry
with them the domestic conflicts and doubts of
Christendom. They stand, in greater or less degree,
WAR AND THE SPIRITUAL LIFE 167
for the European mind, in its present state of uncer-
tainty and disorder. Consequently, although, in a
given situation, a European Government may wage
war against a non-Christian people for the support of
a missionary, it still acts, as it acts in the sphere of
domestic politics, rather as a secular than as a
religious agency.
There are other obvious reasons why, in the future,
a war for the direct and avowed purpose of advancing
Christianity is not likely to be entered upon. One of
these reasons is to be found in the fact that some
non-Christian peoples — as, for example, the Japanese
— ^have recently proved themselves to be capable of
becoming so far “ Western ” as to adopt the Western
methods and machinery of war. This does not, as
we have said, afford ground for the supposition that
the West will lose its intellectual and practical lord-
ship in regard to the East, but it certainly gives to
the East a greater power of resisting encroachment.
Another, and perhaps more potent, reason is to be
seen in the alliances between Christian and non-
Christian peoples which have been a remarkable
characteristic of later European policy. Such alliances
have gone far, in a most important sphere of human
effort, to abrogate the distinction between Christianity
— ^in so far as Christianity, in any sense, now enters
into State action — and, for instance, Mohammedanism,
or what we have hitherto called the “ Pagan,” beliefs
of India and Japan. As “ misery makes men
acquainted with strange bedfellows,” so war, in the
wide world of our modern cosmopohtanism, has for
1 68 THE PROBLEM OF HUMAN PEACE
its own purposes reduced all the religions of mankind
to a common level, and made Hindus and Moham-
medans the companions of European Catholics,
Protestants, and atheists in Western battlefields in
the operations of slaughter and destruction. It has
of course, in the same way, and within the same
limits, gone far to abolish the difference between
what we have been accustomed to call “ barbarism,”
on the one hand and “ civilization ” on the other. It
has set up a sort of international “ secularism,” in
which even the profoundest differences of belief and
morals have apparently lost their importance, in
comparison with what are considered to be the
exigencies of State and national expansion.
While, however, it is true, for these and other
reasons, that war, for the avowed purpose of promot-
ing Christianity, or the interests of the spiritual life,
is not now likely to be waged by Western nations,
it is still necessary to recognize that it cannot, in any
case, be regarded as directly and indispensably
auxiliary to that life. There is a sense, as we shall
presently see, in which it may be held to be, in given
circumstances, indirectly essential to its maintenance
and progress, but what we are now concerned with is
its immediate bearing on Catholicism, as a mode of
realizing Perfection in Christ— as a mode of exalting
and unifying in man the power of social love, the
power of goodness, the power of beauty, and the
power of truth. Now the life in Christ, the Catholic
life, is, as we say, spiritual. It is above all, and in the
first place, interior. It is a life of feeling, thought,
WAR AND THE SPIRITUAL LIFE 169
imagination, finding its first outward expression in
prayer and worship, and passing afterwards into
action. In what way, it may be asked, are the
processes of war, as such~a special application of
material force, directed to the destruction of human
life and constructions—directly and indispensably
subservient to this interior life ? Whether what we
are concerned with is the maintenance and reinforce-
ment of domestic love, or the communication of the
Image and worship of Christ or Our Lady, or the
diffusion of ideas and principles in art or science, or
the presentation of the conceptions and creations of
the beautiful, it is clear that there is no relation
between the operations of war and the attainment
of these ends. We may take, as a high typical
instance of aU spiritual methods, the action of a
missionary proclaiming Christianity in a non-Christian
country. His task is to communicate to another
mind a conception, or image, which is in his own, and
so to communicate it that it may give rise to a new
love, a new insight, and a new life. This is a spiritual
task. In other words, it is a task of mind operating
upon mind—a task of education. For the accom-
plishment of such a task there are no means available
except sympathy, intelligence, a right use of language,
and the testimony of personal conduct, exemplifying
the rehgion that is being preached. War, or the
menace of war, has no assignable part in such a
process. War has its own methods, and accom-
plishes its own objects. It acts upon the body for
its destruction, not upon the mind for its illumination.
170 THE PROBLEM OF HUMAN PEACE
The utmost that it can do for a missionary, in such a case
as we are now supposing, is to secure for him freedom
from molestation, and such a freedom, so secured, may
actually be a hindrance to his spiritual task. As it
is hardly necessary to point out, the noblest mis-
sionary achievements in the world — those of the apos-
toHc age, or of the Church after the fall of the Roman
Empire, or of the early Jesuits — ^were those of men who
enjoyed no such security, and had no other resources
than those of their own temper and intelligence, and
the beauty of the truth which they had to impart.
Against the use of arms, as a direct support to the
cause of religion, the Crucifixion — the greatest mis-
sionary event the world has ever known — bears its
eternal testimony.
So far, then, as what we have called the spiritual
life is concerned — the life of the home, the Church,
the school, or the theatre, as resting on an inner
state of feeling and intelligence — it cannot be shown
that war is a good, that it is a means indispensably
subservient to the ends which this life proposes to
itself. It can be shown, on the contrary, that war,
by its essential methods and objects — being methods
and objects of slaughter and destruction — ^is in natural
antagonism to the methods and objects of the
spiritual Hfe. But the Catholic life — by which we
mean, once more, the total, ordered Hfe of man —
has also, as we have seen, a temporal side. It is
concerned with what we call the State, with the
organization and maintenance of the nation, as such ;
it is concerned, too, ultimately, and fundamentally.
WAR AND THE SPIRITUAL LIFE 171
with man’s action upon the earth. It is only arbi-
trarily and provisionally that one of these sides of
the Catholic life — of a full - flowering, ordered
humanity — can be separated from the other. They
are, in fact, indissolubly connected and interdepen-
dent. Therefore, if it can be proved that war is a
good, that it is inevitably necessary, relatively to
the temporal life, it must be held to be also necessary,
and a good, relatively to the spiritual life, even
although it does not directly enter into the aims and
methods of that life. Stating the same propositions
in another way, we may say that, although war is
not immediately subservient to the affections and
mind of the home, the Church, the school, and the
theatre, it may still be considered to be indispensable
to the security of the political and material foundation
on which they rest. A Scientiflc Catholicism, pre-
cisely because it is scientific, is bound to consider this
question.
CHAPTER VI
WAR AND POLITICAL LIFE
It is, as we have said, the office of science, in regard
to Catholicism, to enable it to see things and represent
them as they are — the things of man and of the
Universal Order, with which he is in dependent and
modifying relation. This, up to the present, Catholi-
cism, being an expression of the mind of man, has not
been able to do, its conception of the world and
humanity, and therefore of God, having been shaped
and symbolized at a time when human experience
and reason were immature. Catholicism, however,
may now become scientific — that is to say, it may
stand for the total, developed mind of man become,
in its range of observation and inference, complete.
Catholicism, so understood, while it continues to use
its old scriptures, formulas, images, and institutions,
will know how far they are a right representation of
man in his maturity, how far they need to be
reinterpreted and supplemented. There is, for ex-
ample, in the Gospel poems a magisterial dictum
bearing upon the spiritual life which is, in a given
construction of it, profoundly and beautifully true,
but which is, in another sense, a sentence of evident
impossibility. That dictum is “ seek first the King-
dom of God, and His righteousness.” We have, in
this treatise, conformed to the principle which is
WAR AND POLITICAL LIFE
173
thus set forth by first endeavouring to ascertain the
End of Life, and by then considering the question of
peace in relation to it. Such a method is plainly
imposed upon us when we are considering man as a
being of high intelligence and will, moved by an inner
vision of Perfection, and acting upon himself and his
environment with a view to its realization. God,
therefore — God being the Universal Order, contained
and presented to us symbolically and prophetically
in the human and personal Order of Christ — must
be seen to be the End of our being when we are con-
sciously and deliberately marshalling all our forces,
external and internal, and stamping them with
purpose.
In practice, however, we must adopt an inverse
method. The first Adam is of the earth — earthy.
In less parabolical language, man is, to begin with,
an animal. There is no disgrace in this — nothing to
be ashamed of ; at any rate, it is a fact. According
to the poem of Genesis, man was made an animal
and a companion of animals, but also a perfect
being and the companion of God. Before the Fall,
as afterwards, he had to eat and drink, and he had
as his associate a being of a different sex from himself.
Whatever our view of the Scriptures of the Old and
New Testaments, however, it is evident that man is
what he is — a being who must eat and drink, and who,
for the satisfaction of his own impulses, or the con-
tinuance of the human race, must be joined to a
being of a different sex from himself. The religious
celibate can so far order himself as to master his own
174 the problem OF HUMAN PEACE
passions, and determine that no other bodily life
shall proceed from his own, but even he cannot live
without eating and drinking, and he also requires
clothing and habitation, warmth and light. While,
therefore, it is true, as we have said, that the Catholic
life may be summed up as prayer and agriculture —
an order of Perfection in Christ, individual and social,
dependent on what man can get from the earth —
it is also true that, practically speaking, agriculture
must come first, or, as Comte expresses it, that “ the
higher order rests upon the lower.” To use the
familiar expression, while we ought not to live to
eat, we must eat to live. While, therefore, the
question of whether war is or is not a good depends
upon our conception of the End of Life, it is neces-
sarily also dependent on the relation of what is dis-
tinctively spiritual in the Catholic Hfe to the material
foundation on which it rests.
The problem of war is, as has been seen, immediately
connected with the problem of nationality, or the
external relations of the State. In a strictly scientific
sense, that is, as we have also seen, an insufiicient
view to take of it, for there have been, and may be
again, civil wars, and we may be forced upon the
conclusion that the causes which, in our modern
world, are provocative of international strife are in
intimate connection with those which might con-
ceivably bring about a civil war, and which do, in
fact, keep almost all European countries in a state
of constant political unrest and conflict. WTiat we
are immediately concerned with, however, is the war
WAR AND POLITICAL LIFE
175
of States or nations. Now, whether war is, relatively
to the nation, a good is a question which itself admits
of being considered from two chief points of view.
One of these is an industrial point of view ; the
other is, in a more definite sense, political. Again,
it is necessary, for an orderly discussion of the
question, to draw the obvious distinction between
offensive and defensive war. There can, of course,
be no defensive war without offensive war, and a
war of defence evidently does not raise the same
questions of principle as a war of aggression.
Unless a given people has made up its mind to submit
to the demands or overlordship of another State, it
may be forced into a war, whatever its views as to
the abstract value of peace. The question of the
good of war is, then, the question of the good of
aggressive war — of a war deliberately and intention-
ally undertaken to promote some purpose of policy
which cannot, on the hypothesis, be otherwise
secured.
Again, it is important to recognize that if a given
aggressive war is, in this sense, a good — being the
indispensable means to a good — it cannot be held to
be an evil because it is contrary to our sentiments of
humanity. The execution of a murderer, or the
prolonged imprisonment of a thief, does violence to
certain sentiments of humanity, and yet we are
compelled to acquiesce in these evils for the sake of
what seems to us a social need. According to our
traditional conception of God, He is an Omnipotent
Being who permits the continuous misery of the
176 THE PROBLEM OF HUMAN PEACE
human race in this life because He cannot abolish this
misery without destroying the good of free will, and He
destines a large part of it to eternal torment in a
future state because it is impossible for Him to act
otherwise without the violation of His own justice.
In the same way, we are told that at the battle of
Omdurman in 1898 a British army, under Lord
Kitchener, killed 11,000 Arabs and wounded 16,000
others in fifteen minutes.* Such a proceeding, in an
age when many persons protest even against animal
vivisection, might seem to be an odious butchery,
but, from another point of view, it may be regarded
as only an incident in the reclamation and pacification
of the Soudan ; and if the ascendency of England in
the world is a good, then, on a principle which was
at one time supposed to be exclusively Jesuitic, the
means which are indispensable to it must be held to
be justifiable. The lesser humanity must give way
to what appears to us the greater. We know, more-
over, that when a battle is in progress it is not the
object of the commander on either side to kill as few
of the enemy as possible, but to gain the victory —
a purpose compared with which all others are then
insignificant. He kills, therefore, few or many,
according to the exigencies of the combat, and he
is not in a position to enter on any scrupulous cal-
culations as to the amount of slaughter which may
be actually required. It is true that in our modern
world the machine-gun and the bayonet are com-
* “ The Life of Spencer Compton, Eighth Duke of Devonshire,”
by Bernard Holland, Vol. II., p. 44.
WAR AND POLITICAL LIFE
177
monly accompanied by the surgeon, the nurse, and
the priest, who are, within certain limits, instruments
of benevolence and reparation ; but it is none the
less obvious that for the purposes of war, as such, the
feeling of humanity must be held in suspense. The
soldier, like the butcher or the executioner, is the
minister of what is believed to be a social need.
The difference between his function and theirs is
mainly a difference of scale and equipment, although
it may perhaps be said that the office of the butcher
is in this sense more important that he is directly
concerned with the nourishment of the human race.
When, therefore, we are considering whether war
is, from the point of view of the national life, an
indispensable good, we must, first, understand by
“ war ” a war voluntary and aggressive, planned and
undertaken for the accomplishment of a specific pur-
pose ; secondly, we must dismiss from our minds the
question of the “ inhumanity ” of war. If a proposed
war is, on a total survey of it, justifiable, we are
entitled to bring it about, and if we are entitled to
bring it about we must recognize that war is, by its
essential nature and processes, a suspension of the
law of humanity. It is a specific application of
material force directed to bloodshed and destruction.
It is this most of all in our modern world, in which
a battle is carried on by the use of a scientific mechan-
ism and a general is only an engineer of slaughter.
When we have recognized this, however, we must
also recognize that the question of whether a nation
is “ justified ” in bringing about a war, or in pursuing
178 THE PROBLEM OF HUMAN PEACE
a policy such as must render war inevitable, cannot
be decided from the standpoint of the nation alone,
politically and industrially considered. It can only
rightly be determined, as we are trying to determine
it here, from the standpoint of a Catholicism become
scientific, and thus rendered capable of seeing the
relation of what we have called the temporal life —
the life of citizenship and industry — to the spiritual.
The distinctive institution of the temporal life is the
State, using this, for the sake of simplicity, as a
term inclusive of both political and industrial govern-
ment ; the distinctive institution of the spiritual life
is the Church. Now the mind of the Church is,
according to our conception of it, science. It sees
and foresees. It is, in principle, universal. It is
international, as is science in the ordinary and
accepted sense of the word — the science of the natural
order. It is for the Church, therefore — the developed
mind of man, pursuing Perfection in Christ — to give
its law to the nation, or State. It is clear that, apart
from such a Catholicism, the nation is, for inter-
national purposes, what in fact we see it at present
to be, a law unto itself, or is without law. Its only
rule of action is derived from what it believes to be
its own exclusive interest, and the power which it
possesses of enforcing it. If there is to be any other
rule of national action than this — which is a rule
secularistic and local — it must be one carrying men’s
minds beyond the limits of a particular country, and
enabling them to see the temporal order of the nation
as part of a spiritual order greater than itself. That
WAR AND POLITICAL LIFE
179
greater spiritual order is the Catholic Church, con-
ceived of as representing and directing the whole life
of humanity, and with its centre and head in Rome.
From the point of view of international policy — ^the
only point of view which immediately concerns us — a
State has been defined as any people, or aggregate of
peoples, however dissimilar in language, religion, race,
or situation, having an independent and sovereign
character, and possessing a responsible, co-ordinating
Government, for internal and external purposes. In
such a use of it, the word “ State ” has a range of
meaning inclusive at once of the smallest of free
European nationalities and of so vast a political
conglomerate as the British or Russian Empire. The
question which we have to determine is how far for
any such State war may be so indispensable a good,
political or industrial, that it is entitled deliberately
to bring it about, or to pursue a policy which may
render it inevitable. This, of course, is quite distinct
from the question of the character and composition of
a particular State. From a certain point of view, it
may be held that the processes by which, for example,
the British and Russian Empires have been built up
and maintained are indefensible, but that is not our
present subject. We are supposing ourselves to start
from a given international status quo, however that
status quo may have been created, and whether or
not we consider it to rest on ideal relations, internal
or external. The installation and maintenance of a
Human Peace require that this status quo shall be
regarded as not to be subject to forcible disturbance.
i8o THE PROBLEM OF HUMAN PEACE
and that there shall be a consequent disarmament and
the common adhesion to a policy in harmony with
such a proceeding. What we have immediately to
decide is how far for any given State there may be
some political good, which it is entitled to set against
the assumed good of a Human Peace.
We may simplify the discussion of this question by
going back to what we have already said as to the
one policy which is, by its native character, inevitably
a cause of war. That policy we have called the policy
of imperialism. We must, however, for the purposes
of a practical discussion, understand the word
“ imperialism ” in a sense at once comprehensive and
specific. We shall, therefore, define it as a policy by
which any one State, or combination of States, seeks
to forcibly interfere with the possessions or domestic
action of any other State, whatever may be the
motives of this policy, and whether it is directed to a
temporary or a permanent purpose. The reason why
we call such a policy a policy of imperialism is plain.
It is, whatever its ultimate aims may be, a policy by
which one nation attempts to exercise a certain over-
lordship over another, and it cannot be accomplished
except by arms. It is an attack upon the freedom
and independence of one people by another, and it is
this whether it is inspired by what may be called a
high and disinterested intention, or by evident pur-
poses of territorial acquisition or conquest. We are,
to begin with, not entitled to use the word “ impe-
rialism ” as necessarily denoting what, from a certain
standpoint, might be considered an “ evil ” policy.
WAR AND POLITICAL LIFE i8i
We use it because it is the right word for any policy
directed against the sovereign authority of an inde-
pendent people and carrying with it a consequence of
war. Such a policy may vary greatly in its professed
intentions and in its effects, but if it is stamped with
these two characteristics it is imperialism.
Let us, by way of illustration, take the policy
which has from time to time been pursued by various
Western Powers in regard to the relations between
the Turkish Government and some of its subjects.
We may, for the sake of argument, assume that this
policy was, on the part of all the Powers concerned in
it, entirely “ disinterested ” — that its only motives
were to satisfy a certain Western feeling in regard to
Turkish misgovernment and to put an end to its
abuses. Even so, it was a policy of imperialism — a
policy by which an external authority sought to
substitute itself, in degree, and for certain specific
purposes, for the internal authority of the Turkish
Empire. As such it was a policy which sooner or
later, if it was ever to be effective, was bound to bring
about war. There is, of course, in the constitution
of a sovereign State, nothing more fundamental than
the relation between its people and its Government.
It is vital. If that relation is interfered with from
without, even for temporary and limited purposes, the
independence of the State is infringed. No Govern-
ment, as is obvious, has any responsibility to the
Government of other countries for its action with
regard to its own subjects ; and in the same way no
people has any responsibility to any external authority
1 82 THE PROBLEM OF HUMAN PEACE
for its proceedings with regard to its own rulers. The
relations between the Government and the governed
are organic. They are reciprocal. They spring
from the inherent life of a particular people, which
has its own situation, its own standards, its own
needs, its own evils, and its own natural remedy
for those evils. The Government of any sovereign
State ought to be free to govern, well or ill,
and its subjects ought to be free to submit to
it, or to revolt against it and change it, if they
have the power. It is clear that to bring in an
exotic agency, either to enable a Government to
rule, or to enable a people to resist, is to destroy the
integrity of the national life, and to substitute, in
greater or less degree, the authority of another State
for the authority of the State which is thus interfered
with. This is imperialism ; and it is none the less
imperialism because its professed and immediate pur-
pose may not be territorial acquisition or the expan-
sion of empire. It is a policy of usurpation and over-
lordship, involving war. Further, although it may
not be consciously directed towards empire, such a
policy almost inevitably creates new imperial responsi-
bilities, the one act of external intervention entailing
others, and leading eventually to the subjugation of
the people whose organic independence has thus been
impaired.
We have taken the case of Western action in
Turkey as an example of one form of imperialism, but
it is quite easy to conceive of others. Russia is, as
we have already pointed out, for certain purposes
WAR AND POLITICAL LIFE
183
not to be reckoned among Western States. She
represents a late and immature civilization, and, as
is well known, her methods of domestic government
have often inspired disapproval and indignation in
Western countries — especially England. If, under
the influence of such sentiments, England were to
interfere with the internal administration of the
Russian Government, that would be an act of
imperiahsm. There is no probability of such inter-
ference, not because there may not seem to be, from
a certain point of view, a moral or political justifica-
tion for it, but because, from the nature of the case,
a successful imperialism — the effective intervention
of a foreign Power in the internal affairs of a sovereign
State — is only possible when that State is unable to
resist it. When it is a powerful empire, such as
Russia, or such as Japan has now become, it may be
subject, of course, to adverse external criticism, but is
exempt from actual interference. The same thing is
true of England. British rule in Ireland and India
has often been accused — even by some Englishmen —
of being unjust and injurious. We need not here
discuss the question of whether the charge is, or is
not, well founded. All that now concerns us is that
any attempt to adopt with regard to England such a
policy as England has adopted with regard to Turkey
would be an act of imperialistic encroachment. It
would be a policy involving war, for the simple reason
that it could only take effect by war. As in the case
of Russia, there is no probability that such a policy
will be adopted. England is at present too powerful
1 84 THE PROBLEM OF HUMAN PEACE
a State for this to be possible. Such a supposition,
however, serves, along with the other considerations
which we have adduced, to place the policy of
imperialism in a clear light. It is a policy directed,
by its essential nature, against the independence of a
sovereign State. It can only take practical ejEect by
war. It can never be prosecuted, whatever its alleged
justification, except by a more powerful country
against a less powerful. It brings about a disruption
of the organic relations between the Government
which is interfered with and its subjects, and tends
to prevent their natural readjustment. It commonly
renders necessary still further external interference,
and it leads eventually to the open and complete
imperialism of territorial aggrandizement.
There is one other important consequence of such
an imperialism — whether directed against a country
like Turkey, or against some native State in Asia or
Africa — which, when what we are concerned with
is a Human Peace, it is necessary here to recall.
Given the existing international relations of Christen-
dom, the policy of imperialism, whatever its professed
purposes, cannot be adopted by any one of the
Western Powers without endangering its good rela-
tions with others. There is no disposition anywhere
to believe in a purely disinterested national action.
That is natural. The rule of “ interests ” — British
interests, German interests, Italian interests, French
interests, Russian or Austrian interests — is the avowed
and common rule of international policy. Whatever
may be the other alleged motives of his action, no
WAR AND POLITICAL LIFE
185
European statesman can justify a policy which may
involve a sacrifice of blood and treasure except on
the ground that it is demanded by the security or
advantage of his own country. Further, almost all
experience goes to show that external interference in
the internal affairs of a country leads inevitably to
its further political enfeeblement and to its ultimate
absorption by the stronger State. Consequently the
imperialism of England or Russia gives rise to a
competing imperialism of France, Germany, and Italy.
It tends to bring about war, not merely between an
aggressive and a resisting nation, but between a
number of rival Powers, each holding itself entitled
to put forward some plea of civilization or progress
as the ground of its action, each having its own
“ interests ” to promote, each being a law unto itself}
and each being suspicious and jealous of others. It is
obvious that, as we have already pointed out, there
is now no rule of international action for any of the
Great Powers of Christendom except one which is
derived from its conception of its own responsibilities,
its own interests, and its own resources. To the
hostile judgment of other countries it pays no atten-
tion, unless this seems to point to some actual danger
attending the prosecution of its aims. At the time of
the English war against the South African Republics
there was undoubtedly a considerable body of Euro-
pean opinion unfavourable to British policy. It is
not here necessary to analyse the grounds of that
opinion. The essential point at present is that it
was opinion only, and had, therefore, no effect on
1 86 THE PROBLEM OF HUMAN PEACE
English action. England was, and claimed to be,
her own judge. She was subject to no external
spiritual tribunal. She made war for her own cause
and in her own way. Exactly the same thing, of
course, would have been true of any other of the
European Powers in similar circumstances. They
may criticize one another and condemn one another,
but they are not in a position to judge one another.
For judgment there must be a competent, disinte-
rested, and recognized tribunal. In the case of private
conflicts such a tribunal exists within the limits of
the national life. In the case of international conflicts
it does not exist. Two hostile nations, therefore, can
only abuse one another and fight.
We have considered one particular type of imperial-
istic action — a type actually given in experience.
There are, however, various other types of the same
essential policy — a policy of aggressive interference,
involving war, and leading to territorial acquisition.
The motives of such a policy, for example, may be
aflinities of language, race, or religion between the
subjects of one State and the subjects of another, and
these motives, of course, become strengthened if the
inhabitants of a given country believe that those who
are in any way akin to them in another are suffering
under injustice or oppression. Conditions such as
these are naturally common. The great States of the
world have not been built up on what we should now
call a sociological principle — with an intention to
bring together under a single rule peoples having
natural ties of speech, or faith, or race, or culture.
WAR AND POLITICAL LIFE
187
There has been no “ State planning ” comparable
with the “ town planning ” which, after towns have
grown as they could, has of late been proposed.
There has been no rule in the shaping of States
except the rule of force and conquest. That rule
has brought together a number of heterogeneous
and unassimilable elements in an artificial order,
which frequently, even after many centuries, has
remained unstable and insecure. Everyone can see
instances of this in the present composition of Europe.
In such a situation imperialism finds a natural
opportunity. It is, in this relation, an attempt by
force of arms to reverse or modify a state of things
which the force of arms has created. Even where
there is no urgent popular demand for such an attempt,
the Government of one country, recognizing the affini-
ties between some of its subjects and the subjects
of another State, has a natural inducement to take
advantage of them for the purpose of enlarging its
dominions. Here again, as it is hardly necessary to
say, we have a type of imperialism given in experience.
So far, the imperialism we have considered has
been of what may be called a distinctively political
character. The pretext of such a policy, of course, may
be one thing ; its actual motives may be quite another.
In all its forms, nevertheless, and whatever its pre-
texts or motives, this political imperialism has always
certain essential characteristics and effects ; it is
action directed by one country against the sovereign
independence of another, and it carries with it war
as a necessary consequence — a war which, in the
1 88 THE PROBLEM OF HUMAN PEACE
modern intimacy and intricacy of international
relations, tends to become general. There is, how-
ever, a kind of imperialism even more important at
the present time than what we have called poHtical
imperialism. It is more important because it is more
universal and because, by its essential nature, it
raises questions which are fundamental and ever-
lasting in the economy of human Hfe. In contra-
distinction to a purely political imperialism, we may
describe it as industrial imperialism. A political
imperialism is professedly inspired by what we com-
monly regard as political objects — dynastic preten-
sions, the aggrandizement of a State, the correction of
abuses in some other country, the satisfaction of
religious, racial or linguistic affinities. Industrial
imperialism is immediately directed towards that
action upon the earth — that basic art of agriculture —
upon which, as we have seen, the Catholic life, the
life of individual and social Perfection in Christ, in
the last resort rests. It is not too much to say that
while political imperialism has played, and still plays,
an important part in bringing about war, the imperial-
ism of our modern world is essentially, and increas-
ingly, industrial. It is conceivable even that while
against a merely political imperialism a Scientific
Catholicism might create an international under-
standing, against industrial imperialism it would still
be powerless.
The reason for this is obvious. The motives
entering into a political imperialism — the splendour
and exaltation of a State or its rulers, or the satis-
WAR AND POLITICAL LIFE 189
faction of national, religious, or linguistic affinities —
are of unequal force at different times and in different
classes of the same community. They are dependent
largely upon changing conditions of belief and culture.
They appeal most to the governing and military
classes of a nation, and least to what we call its
“ lower classes.” To the governing and mihtary classes
a mere extension of empire, as such, means increased
opportunities for gaining power and distinction — ^not
wealth only, but social ascendency and command.
The motives inspiring industrial imperialism are, on
the contrary, universal. They are of all classes.
They are, if we may use the expression, biological.
They are connected with the primary animal Hfe of
man. They are connected, too, with his highest
spiritual life, which necessarily rests upon the lower.
There can be no Church without the workshop. In
the Lord’s Prayer we confess our need for our daily
bread, but the prayer is only a prelude to action. It
is never “ granted ” until we grant it to ourselves.
What is granted, or given, is the earth, with heat and
light, air and water, and the mind and body of man,
the worker. If man, who prays for bread, cannot win
his bread from the earth he dies, just as any animal,
insect, or plant must die, unless it can gain from its
environment the means of life. Prayer is always,
in one of its aspects, an expression of need — ^whether
an immediate need of the body, or a high spiritual
need of the soul — and throughout the wide range of
its meanings it has no outward effect except where
it is a prelude to human action. The need which we
190 THE PROBLEM OF HUMAN PEACE
express in the prayer for bread is so basic and impera-
tive that if it could be shown that, for its satisfaction,
war is indispensable, a Human Peace would be for
ever impossible, and a Scientific Catholicism, ordering
the total life of man for an end of Perfection, would
have to sanction war as one of its means. As, there-
fore, it is for such a CathoHcism to determine how far
the political exigencies of the State demand war, so
it must also consider whether it is rendered necessary
by man’s action upon the earth for the purposes of
the Catholic life.
CHAPTER VII
INDUSTRIAL IMPERIALISM
It is the essential note of a Scientific Catholicism —
of a Catholicism resting on the fully-developed mind
of man, and fulfilling all the sides of his nature for an
end of Perfection — that it is, as we say, synthetic.
As such, it does not recognize any fundamental separa-
tion between man’s industrial action and the other
manifestations of his life. Into any one of the exer-
cises of his will the forces of his total being, such as it
is, and in degree, may be poured. Man, therefore,
labouring upon the earth, labours for Christ — that is
to say, for the realization of an ideal humanity.
Expressing the same principle in other terms, we may
say, again, that from what he gets from the earth he
has to build the workshop, the State, the theatre —
considered as a temple and symbol of the arts — the
school, the Church, and the home. Now, in our
modern world — the world in which a Human Peace
is to be wrought, if it is ever to be wrought — man is,
as he was never before, an inhabitant of the whole
earth. He may be, from the point of view of national
classification, a Frenchman, an Englishman, a German,
or a Chinaman, but he is also a citizen of the world.
This has ceased to be a figure of sentiment ; it has
become a fact of experience. There was a time when
almost any individual family could feed, clothe, and
192 THE PROBLEM OF HUMAN PEACE
house itself within the limits in which it found itself.
Its members could live and die where they were
born, without being called upon to remove from their
own district. There was a time when what was
thus true of the family was also, in a great degree,
true of the city and the nation — so far at least as the
necessaries of life, as distinguished from luxuries,
were concerned. In so far as such conditions
obtained, a nation — here using the word “ nation ”
to denote an independent, organized, sovereign
people, exclusively occupying a definite territory —
was not only a law unto itself, but sufficient unto
itself. So long as it preserved its political freedom
it could live its own life, in every material and political
sense of this word, in its own way. Under such
circumstances “ man ” was not an inhabitant of
the whole earth. He was an inhabitant only of his
own country. He was, from a geographical point of
view, a Frenchman, an Englishman, or an Italian, as
the case might be.
It is one of the most obvious and elementary facts
of our modern experience that this has long ceased
to be the case. There is even now, of course, a
certain difference in the degree in which the various
nations of the world are able, within their own
borders, to procure for themselves what we call the
necessaries of life. Some are more dependent upon
other countries, some less. That is largely a question
of climate, soil, mineral resources, extent of popula-
tion, and industrial habit. Allowing for all such
differences, however, it still remains true that “ man,”
INDUSTRIAL IMPERIALISM
193
in our modern world, has become, not in feeling only,
but in fact, ever less a merely national being, and
ever more an international being. From the stand-
point of mind of course — of that life of religion, art,
philosophy, and science which rests upon the lower
material life — the European man at least has been
progressively an international being, and not merely
a national being, from the time of the Roman Empire
onward. In his spirit he is, in proportion to his
culture, universal. What we are immediately con-
cerned with, however, is life in the lower, or biological,
sense of the term — the relation of the developed
human organism with its environment. Under-
standing the word “ life ” in this sense, it is clear that
an Englishman, for example, no longer lives in
England. He derives food, clothing, and even, in
degree, the means of habitation, from other countries
— some of them extremely distant ; and he is depen-
dent upon other countries almost in proportion to the
range and elevation of his life as a civilized being.
This is no new truth ; it is a truism ; but it is a
truth, or truism, the full significance of which, so
far as the constitution and policy of the world’s
nations are concerned, has hardly yet been sufficiently
recognized. We may hold, if we please, that this
change, or extension, in the habitat of the Englishman,
Frenchman, or German — a change reconcilable with
the actual fixity of the mass of the population — is
not a good but an evil. It is a change which certainly
involves an immense number of human beings in a
ceaseless nomad restlessness, detrimental to their
194 the problem OF HUMAN PEACE
social and civic life ; and it has increased the com-
plexity and instability of all industrial and political
relations. Such as it is, however, it is apparently
irreversible, and one of its effects is to make man,
wherever he may happen to be born and to live,
not so much a Frenchman or an Englishman as a
cosmopolite, dependent for his material nourishment,
as he has long been dependent for his intellectual
nourishment, on countries remote from his actual habi-
tation, and on the co-operating activities of mankind.
It is a certain recognition of this truth which has
no doubt been the main cause of the later industrial
imperialism of various European States. Industrial
imperialism, as distinguished from a purely political
imperialism, may be defined as an attempt by pro-
cesses of policy and conquest to secure for a nation
direct and wider command over the resources of the
earth, instead of the indirect command gained by
means of commercial exchange with other nations.
It is an artificial extension of the national environ-
ment, or, in terms of trade, the creation of a larger
subject area of supply and demand. Imperialism,
for such purposes, is of course not the same thing as
emigration or colonization. An emigrant may go
to a foreign country — as an Englishman or German
to the United States, or an Italian to Brazil — ^and
settle there as one of its citizens. A colonist may go —
as Europeans of all sorts have gone — to a partially-
occupied country, such as Australia or New Zealand,
and found there a new citizenship, superseding or
subordinating the native, uncivilized races. A colony
INDUSTRIAL IMPERIALISM
195
which has been thus established may come in time to
be, especially for commercial purposes, a self-govern-
ing and independent country, and in this sense it
ceases to be a subject part of the empire with which
it is in nominal connection. It is to all intents and
purposes a new nation. These distinctions, obvious
and important as they are, are often overlooked in
political discussions, the word “ empire,” for example,
being employed to describe at once such a relation as
that between England and India and the totally
different relation which exists between England and
Canada or Australia.
The chief type of industrial imperialism — meaning
by this, once more, an imperialism directed mainly
to industrial as distinguished from political ends — is
to be found in the policy which England has, more
or less consciously and systematically, for many years
pursued. The reasons for this are obvious. England
is a relatively small country, with a large and expand-
ing population. She has the advantage, but also the
disadvantage, of an insular situation. She has a
high degree of social development, with a constant
increase in the range of her social needs. She is, by
her natural position, largely cut off from the rest of
Europe. The English people, therefore, have been
driven to look outside their own shores, and even
beyond Europe, for a wider environment — for a
fuller command over the resources of the earth. They
have been great emigrants, great colonists, but they
have been also great imperialists, in the sense of this
word which we have now established ; and they have,
N 2
196 THE PROBLEM OF HUMAN PEACE
of late years especially, been influenced by the con-
ception of a world-wide “ empire,” comprising both
colonies and conquests, within which they may
exercise the same direct control over the earth as is
naturally exercised by a “ nation,” in the strict sense
of the word, actually occupying and cultivating its
own territory. There is no scientific probability that
the British Empire, thus constituted — the rule of a
small island over immense continents and hetero-
geneous populations thousands of miles remote from
it — will be permanent. The whole course of the
world’s development will be against it. That, how-
ever, is not our present subject. What we are now
concerned to recognize is, first, that British industrial
imperialism is only the chief type of a policy which
has been of late increasingly pursued by various
European nations, great and small ; secondly, that
this policy is, as is a policy of political imperialism, a
policy of war. This policy may be, from a given
standpoint, defensible. It may be regarded as indis-
pensable. But it is, by its essential character, a
mode of action which needs the force of arms to
give effect to it.
European industrial imperialism, as such, is, we
may say broadly, not directed immediately against
European territories. Almost all these territories are
now fully peopled. This has, for the time being,
ceased to be true of France, where there is now a
declining population, but it is sufficiently true of the
rest of Europe. Except, therefore, when the indus-
trial imperialism of a European State aims at access
INDUSTRIAL IMPERIALISM
197
to the sea, its main concern is to gain command over
non-European territories rather than over contiguous
countries. One reason for this is to be found in that
natural ascendency of “ Christendom ” over “ non-
Christendom ” to which we have already referred.
Christendom represents the potency of a high civili-
zation — the power of mind, the power of capital. It
represents, too, the machine-gun — the immense
superiority in the weapons of destruction which is
possessed by a modern European State as compared
with a barbarous or backward people. The distinc-
tion between an industrial imperialism prosecuted in
Europe and one which seeks its fields in Africa or
Asia is, however, not vital. The essential thing to
be recognized in it is that wherever it is prosecuted it
means war. It means war, first, because no people,
however defenceless and backward it may be, will-
ingly submits to an alien rule within its own territory ;
secondly, because no one country can engage in such
a policy — a policy of industrial ascendency based on
constant territorial extension — without provoking
jealousy and competition, and without, therefore,
incurring the danger of a war with countries as power-
ful as itself. Industrial imperialism, consequently,
does not merely mean war between a great nation
and a small, or between a civilized State and a
barbarous one, or between Christendom and non-
Christendom ; it means a war of empires, in which
civilization and Christendom themselves become
involved, and it means this naturally and inevitably.
The competition in industrial imperialism is, like the
198 THE PROBLEM OF HUMAN PEACE
competition in industry itself, at bottom biological,
or animal. It is a part of the struggle for human
existence. Its object is to gain a favoured place in
the environment — that basic command over the earth
on which the life of man in all its senses, lower or
higher, his material life, his Catholic, or spiritual, life,
in the last resort rests.
What a Scientific Catholicism has to decide with
regard to industrial imperialism, as with regard to
political imperialism, is how far it is indispensable —
how far, that is to say, it is necessary for that com-
mand over the resources of the earth which is requisite
for the ends of the Catholic life. This is, of course, a
scientific question, and it can only be determined
scientifically. We cannot determine it simply by
reaffirming the great spiritual purposes of Catholicism
and insisting on their value and beauty. If it is
true, as we have said, that the Catholic life can be
summed up as prayer and agriculture, it may be also
true that the life of agriculture is naturally restrictive
of the life of prayer. If it is true that imperialism
is impossible without war and that war is impossible
without a suspension of the law of humanity, still it
may be necessary for man, as a worker upon the
earth, to be an imperialist, to conquer his fellow-
beings, that he may live. We cannot solve this
problem any more than we can solve other problems
of human life, merely by denouncing what seems to
us evil and extolling what seems to us good.
The question of industrial imperialism, as we have
defined it — the attempt of a given nation to gain
INDUSTRIAL IMPERIALISM
199
for itself an increased command over the resources
of the earth by an extension of territory — is in our
contemporary world, as it has been throughout
history, largely a question of the pressure of popula-
tion upon the means of subsistence. This, even in
its modern, theoretic form, is, of course, no new
question. There have been various proposals for
dealing with it— among others, the artificial limitation
of the family. This proposal has been by some
denounced, partly on what are considered to be moral
grounds, but also because they hold that the alleged
need for the restriction of population does not really
exist. It is this latter view of the matter which,
from the standpoint of a Scientific Catholicism, at
present chiefly concerns us. The view may be con-
veniently expressed in the familiar formula that
“ when God sends mouths He sends bread to feed
them.” Now before we can pronounce on the truth
or falsity of the assumption apparently contained in
this proposition we must do with it as we have, for
scientific purposes, to do with most other statements
in which the word “ God ” appears — convert it into
an intelligible statement in terms of experience. The
meaning of this word in this particular sentence is,
of course, relative to the ideas expressed. Let us,
for the sake of convenience, suppose that we are con-
cerned with the case of an English urban workman
who has at a given time a wife and two children and
whose total income is a pound a week. This income
represents the “ bread ” of the family — the immediate
share of the proceeds of agriculture on which its
200 THE PROBLEM OF HUMAN PEACE
Catholic life, its life of positive, many-sided Perfection
in Christ, has to be based. It represents its inherit-
ance in the earth ; and from this inheritance its
total human life — its hfe of industry, citizenship, art,
education, religion, and domestic responsibility — has
to be fed. It is true that in our modern world what
we call “ the State ” is also an instrument, or channel,
by which culture reaches the workman, but this does
not affect the argument, since the State and all its
institutions have to be kept living by labour upon the
earth.
Now, let us further suppose that in the course of time
a third child is born into the family. According to
our proverbial formula “ God sends ” this child.
God, however, works in definite ways and by definite
instruments. In this instance, and relatively to the
procreation of the child. He works by its parents.
They may or may not wish for it, and in our modern
world they can decide whether or not it shall be born.
They are, in any case, if it is born, the proximate
authors of its being. So far, for practical purposes,
we can understand the immediate and relative
meaning of the word “ God.” It means the parents.
It may have, from other points of view and in other
connections a very different meaning, a meaning
transcendent and universal, standing for things
visible and invisible ; but just as the priest at the
altar represents the mind and power of God in the
consecration of the sacred elements, so the parent
represents His mind and power in the procreation of
a child. This being so, it remains to determine in
INDUSTRIAL IMPERIALISM
201
what sense it is that God gives “ bread ” to the
mouth which He has thus sent. Its bread, we say,
is its father’s income. Relatively to that bread, or
income, God presents Himself to the father in the
person of his employer, who conveys to him, as the
Divine instrument or channel, a certain portion of the
produce of the earth in return for his labour. When
this new child is born, does the employer at once and
voluntarily offer to the father an increase in his
wages ? Or, if the father comes to the employer and
prays to him, saying, “ Give us this day our daily
bread,” does the employer, as God’s representative,
grant him his prayer ? We know that these things
do not happen. We know that, simply on the ground
that he has another mouth to feed, the workman
never gets an increase of wages ; that if he ever gets
it it is on other grounds, and because, by combination
with his fellow-workmen and by the exercise of a
form of compulsion, he is able to extort it from his
employers. Here too the Kingdom of Heaven suffers
violence. In the absence of this violence, although
a new human life has come into the world, needing
food, clothing, habitation, health, maternal care, and
all the other means of the Catholic life, there is no
corresponding increase in the provision of these
things. If, therefore, the father represents God as
“ sending ” the child he must also represent God as
feeding it.
We reach, as is obvious, a similar conclusion if,
instead of supposing the father to have, as is usual,
indirect access to the earth through a capitalist and
202 THE PROBLEM OF HUMAN PEACE
by means of a complex of industrial processes, we
imagine him as having direct access to it as an inde-
pendent agriculturist, cultivating his own portion
of land. The word “ God ” — considered as standing
for a Power wholly external to himself — then no
longer represents an employer. It represents imme-
diately the land which he cultivates. If our proverb
expresses a truth, then every time that God, as a
power of procreation, acting through the parents,
sends a new child to the family, this piece of land, in
the absence of any additional culture, and without
any new capital being employed upon it, produces a
more abundant supply of the necessaries of life. We
know that this does not happen. We know that even
when a new intelligence, labour, and capital have been
brought to bear on the land there is no necessary
correspondence between the increase of its yield, if
there is any such increase, and the increased demands
upon it. We know, further, that although the action
of the agriculturist upon it may be regular, patient,
skilful, and hopeful, God — considered as the stars in
their courses — may be fighting against him, and that
an excess or defect of rain or sunshine may destroy
the results of months of laborious toil. We know,
again, that in various parts of the world the land
itself, as the consequence of a volcanic eruption or an
earthquake, may suddenly disappear from beneath the
cultivator’s feet, and that he and all his family may
be involved in a ruin for which he has no personal
responsibility. We know, also, that the mineral and
vegetable products of the earth do not increase in
INDUSTRIAL IMPERIALISM
203
proportion as they are used — that coal once con-
sumed is consumed for ever, and that a tree which
has taken fifty years to grow may be cut down in
an hour.
We must, then, dismiss from a Scientific Catholi-
cism the assumption that man, who lives by prayer
and agriculture — by prayer, in which he receives into
his mind a Divine Image and proposes to himself an
End of Perfection ; by agriculture, in which he pro-
vides the material basis for the spiritual life — ^has a
relation to the earth which can be symbolized by the
formula that God, whenever He sends mouths, sends
bread to feed them. His relation to it is such that if
he increases his demands upon it he must himself,
in some way, increase his capacity to satisfy those
demands, and that if he is unable to do this he must
in some way diminish his demands. The difference
in this respect between an individual man or family
and the company of individuals and families consti-
tuting a nation is, of course, only a difference of degree.
There is, consequently, no necessary correspondence
between the demands which any European people
makes upon the territory which it occupies and its
capacity to satisfy those demands. As a matter of
fact, all European peoples have long lived — in the
material sense of the word “ life,” no less than in its
spiritual sense — outside their own limits. England
is the most conspicuous example of this, but is still
only a single example. In degree all other civilized
countries are now in a similar situation. They have
become, in varying measure, dependent upon other
204 THE PROBLEM OF HUMAN PEACE
nations for access to the earth — for their command
over its products. It may conceivably be true, of
course, that this dependence need not in all cases
be so great as it actually is — that the full agricultural
resources of each of the European countries have not
yet been utilized, and that by the adoption of a
different social and industrial system they could all
gain a much greater support for themselves without
going beyond their own borders. Substantially the
same result would be reached if the population were
restricted throughout Europe as it now is in France —
although this, unless a similar limitation were prac-
tised in other parts of the world, might have serious
consequences in the relations between “ Christen-
dom ” and “ non-Christendom.”
It is not, however, here necessary to enter into these
various suppositions and contingencies. We must
come back to the elementary truth that man is now
an inhabitant of the whole earth, dependent on what
he can get from it for his power to live his life, lower
and higher, and that in the actual situation of
European nations they have ceased, in greater or less
degree, to be able to nourish themselves within their
territorial limits, and must stretch forth their hands
to the ends of the world. They have, as a conse-
quence, become largely dependent on the peoples by
means of which they gain access to the earth and pro-
vide themselves with the necessaries of life. Against
the possible political consequences of this relation
their new resource — ^which, of course, is at the same
time a very ancient one — is, as we have said, indus-
INDUSTRIAL IMPERIALISM
205
trial imperialism, such imperialism, being understood
as action directed to the establishment of the political
supremacy of a State in a country upon which, in
whatever way, it is industrially dependent. Now
imperialism in all its forms, and whatever its motives,
means, as we have seen, war — first, between the
imperialist State and the country in which it is
seeking to establish itself ; secondly, between this
imperialist State and others prosecuting a similar
purpose. If industrial imperialism is a pohcy sound
and indispensable for any one of the great nations of
Europe, it is sound and indispensable for others in
similar circumstances. If it is good for England and
Italy it is good also- — or may be held to be good — for
Russia and Germany. A nation, as such, is, or may
suppose itself to be, concerned only for its own
“ interest.” It must live or die. It regulates its
international action exactly as an individual shop-
keeper, or manufacturer, in a given European town
regulates his commercial action. He does not con-
sider the good of his rivals and competitors ; he con-
siders his own good. He does not always, perhaps,
deliberately plan their extinction or effacement, but
he plans his own prosperity, leaving others to do the
same, successfully or unsuccessfully. He would not
deny that they have the right, if they can, to master
him in the market, but he claims an equal right
for himself. We are not entitled to consider such
a man as representing a “ low morality.” He
represents the average morality. He is the typical
business man. No other rule of action is, in the
2o6 the problem of HUMAN PEACE
industrial world, recognized than that which he
adopts.
What we have called industrial imperialism, there-
fore — which is only the modern form of an ancient
and continuous struggle for the possession of the
earth — has its roots not in international relations,
but in the character and domestic relations of the
individuals and classes constituting a nation. This
struggle, even when there is no war properly so called
— a war of nations — is always in progress. It is a
war of industrial competition which is, amidst aU the
complexities and amenities of the social state, an
elemental conflict for the means of subsistence. In
the chief countries of Christendom, at the present time,
such a war, as we all know, is actively and incessantly
waged. In its largest apparent forms it becomes
what we describe as a class war — a war between the
rich and the poor, between capital and labour. There
are, to use the words employed by Lord Beaconsfield
many years ago in a memorable novel, the “ two
nations ” within the nation — two nations whose ever-
increasing antagonism and conflict have recently more
than once threatened to produce a civil outbreak not
in its motives different from the international wars
which are due to industrial imperialism. It is essen-
tial to recognize the connection between the two
things — to understand that international policy is
prepared in the domestic life of a nation, and
that the clash of empires in the wide arena of
mankind has its sources and feeders in the less
alpable but unending conflict between the in-
INDUSTRIAL IMPERIALISM
207
dividuals and classes entering into the internal
economy.
It is necessary to recognize this for two chief
reasons — first, because otherwise we can have no
right measure of the natural strength of the policy of
industrial imperialism, and, therefore, of the forces
which move men to war ; secondly, because its
recognition can alone enable us to understand the
nature of the influences which, if the forces of war
are ever to be overcome, must be brought to bear
against them. Just as it is true that the policy of
industrial imperialism is not the policy of a single
nation, but of a number of competing nations through-
out the world, so it is true that it is not the policy of
a single class within the nation, but is, in its essential
motives, of aU its classes. The struggle between the
“ two nations ” within the nation — between the rich
and the poor — arises because they both aim at the
same thing, and because the one actually possesses
what the other wishes to gain. The desire for wealth
— for mastery of the products of the earth — is, as is
obvious, not confined to any one order of persons.
It is common to almost all men and women, to the
ignorant and the cultivated, to those who discharge a
temporal function and to those whose office is, in one
way or another, spiritual. If, therefore, the argu-
ment for industrial imperialism is a “ sound ” one —
that is to say, if this policy can be shown actually
to give such a command over the resources of the
earth as could not otherwise be obtained — it is an
argument which makes an irresistible appeal, not to
2o8 the problem of HUMAN PEACE
the “ capitalist ” only, but to the workman, and it
is as seductive to a religious minister, a schoolmaster,
a professor, or an artist as to those who are directly
engaged in the production or acquisition of wealth.
A war of industrial imperialism, that is, carries with
it almost the complete consent and force of the nation
which enters into it — enlists substantially the same
motives on its behalf as are, with a greater or less
degree of consciousness, acknowledged and operative
in that daily struggle for wealth which constitutes
the common life of the people.
It is for this reason that there can be no force
adequate to overcome the motives of war — whether
drawn from political or industrial imperialism —
except one which, recognizing the character and
natural strength of those motives, is still able to call
forth, and raise into lasting predominance, the motives
which make for peace. Such a force we cannot find
in diplomacy alone, or in statesmanship alone, or in
mere political measures, of whatever kind, or simply
in the transfer of power from the hands of one par-
ticular class and placing it in the hands of another.
These instruments and changes may be, on other
grounds, necessary, but they cannot, by themselves,
bring in and maintain the Human Peace. It can
only be brought in and maintained by a Scientific
Catholicism.
CHAPTER VIII
CATHOLICISM AND IMPERIALISM
From the point of view of a Scientific Catholicism
the word “ policy ” gains an elevation and range of
meaning such as in our ordinary statesmanship it
cannot possess. It means, first, the clear recog-
nition of a supreme, continuous End to be reached ;
secondly, the systematic employment of aU the
means, spiritual and temporal, inner and outer,
which, in a synthetic survey of Nature and human
nature, can be shown to be necessary to its attain-
ment. The End which Catholicism proposes to itself
is the perfection of a personal and social humanity —
a perfection given symbolically and prophetically in
Christ, and conceived of as a positive and harmonious
fulfilment of all the sides of human nature, in an
order constituted by the subordination of the lower
to the higher. This is the Catholic life. It is in
reference to this great aim that a Human Peace is, or
is not, a good, and war is, or is not, an evil. Now,
we have, in the consideration of this question, pro-
ceeded, as we have already said, by endeavouring
to descend from Heaven to Earth. We have tried
to put first the Kingdom of God and its righteous-
ness, and have then sought to ascertain the position
of man, as a dependent worker upon the earth, in
210 THE PROBLEM OF HUMAN PEACE
relation to that Kingdom. We have considered him
not first as an animal and then as a Catholic, but first
as a Catholic and then as an animal. There is every
justification for such an order of inquiry, although
there may be a provisional justification for a different
order. Scientifically considered — unless we are to
exclude from the field of science the social and moral
nature of humanity — man is not an animal ; he is a
Catholic. He is a Catholic, first, because as we see
him in history he continuously presents himself to us
as a religious being ; he is a Catholic, secondly,
because even when, in our modern world, he does not
propose to himself the specific purposes which are
represented by the word “ Church,” he still commonly
proposes to himself the ends which are represented
by the words “ home,” “ school,” “ theatre,” “ State,”
and “ workshop.” He is, that is to say, never only
an animal, following mere impulses of appetite and
passion, but, completely or incompletely, a Catholic —
in some sense, and in some degree, a spiritual being,
acting upon his environment and upon himself for
the accomplishment of certain ends of beauty, reason,
and power.
But having followed this method of treatment, and
gained the standpoint which is proper to man in the
full development of his humanity, it is, we repeat,
allowable to adopt the inverse method and approach
the problem of peace rather from below than from
above. Now, what we have to determine is whether
there is some reason, in the nature of things, why
man, not being an animal but containing an
CATHOLICISM AND IMPERIALISM 21 1
animal within him, must, for the satisfaction of
his primary, imperative instincts, go to war with
his fellow-beings. In other words, is the policy
of industrial imperialism, which proceeds from the
working of these instincts, within and without the
nation, a policy indispensable ? If it is, then war
may be, for a given nation and in a given situation,
a good and peace an evil. In its immediate bearing
upon the spiritual life, as we have seen, war — ^con-
sidered as a specific application of material force,
directed to destruction and slaughter — cannot be
shown to be a good. It visibly subserves none of the
purposes of that life. But it is a good — considered as
a means to an end-— if imperialism is a good, because
imperialism demands war. Imperialism has, as we
have seen, two main related forms — one which we
have called political, the other industrial. Neither
of the two forms, it is true, exists, as a rule, by itself.
The forces of war are, as we have shown, connected
and interdependent, and when one of them has been
called into operation almost all the others are also
summoned up. It is, however, possible and desirable
to distinguish one from the other, and to determine
their relative degrees of power and importance. Of
the two forms of imperialism the industrial is the
one upon which it is, in our modern world, most neces-
sary to concentrate our attention. It is this because
it is immediately connected with the question of man’s
command over the earth and its products. It is this
because in it all orders of men and women within the
nation are interested. It is this because it is a policy
212 THE PROBLEM OF HUMAN PEACE
naturally connected with the constant conflict of
individuals and classes in industrial life. It is this
because if it is a policy for one nation it is a policy for
all, in proportion to their power. It is this because
our modern world is pre-eminently and increasingly
a world of industry. It is this because, whatever
may be the other alleged motives of imperialism,
its industrial motive is almost always at last
appealed to to sanction or reinforce them. It is
this because rulers and people, capitalists and work-
men, are alike susceptible to the appeal which it
makes to them, and because the Catholic life itself —
the spiritual and social life of religion or culture
— depends ultimately on what man gets from the
earth.
Now, industrial imperialism, according to our con-
ception and definition of it, has a perfectly plain and
distinctive character ; it is a policy of interference in
the internal concerns of a foreign country, directed
to industrial ends, involving war, local and general,
as one of its consequences, and commonly also leading
to conquest. As such it is, as we have said, to be care-
fully distinguished from movements of emigration
and colonization, which do not necessarily entail such
consequences. The question to be considered, stating
it specifically and practically, is whether this policy
of industrial imperialism is, for any of the nations of
Christendom and in our modern world, necessary —
necessary, that is to say, from the point of view of
that command over the resources of the earth which
is imposed upon man as a condition of both his
CATHOLICISM AND IMPERIALISM 213
animal and his spiritual existence. We may, for the
purposes of this inquiry, assume — ^what, however,
strictly speaking, has not yet been demonstrated —
that it is impossible for any existing European people
to maintain itself, in a merely material sense, within
its own territorial limits — that it is called upon, in
varying degree, to live beyond those limits. We may
assume, too, that the population of Europe will con-
tinue to expand as, except in France, it has expanded
hitherto. We may even assume that it is, from various
points of view, undesirable, even if it were possible,
for a nation to be so completely self-supporting as
to be under no obligation to relate itself industrially
to the other nations of mankind. Each of these
assumptions, of course, itself raises important and
difficult questions, but we may, for our immediate
purposes, disregard them.
The object of industrial imperialism is to enable a
European nation to obtain an indispensable command
over the products of the earth in, let us say, Asia,
Africa, or America, which, on the hypothesis, it cannot
obtain within its own borders. The one question to
be decided, therefore, is whether such a policy is
necessary to secure the result — ^whether it is possible
to reach the same end in any other way. It is obvious
to begin with, that whatever may be the methods
adopted to reach it, a European nation can only secure
the products of any other country — whether in
Europe itself or in other parts of the earth — by a
process of exchange or trade. This process of
exchange must, for example, be carried on, within the
214 THE PROBLEM OF HUMAN PEACE
limits of a world-wide State, such as the British
Empire, precisely as it is carried on beyond those
limits. England, when she receives corn and cotton
from her own distant possessions, has to pay for them
just as when she receives them from America or
Russia. There is, in this respect, no difference what-
ever between what may be called Imperial trade and
foreign trade. It is plain, too, that any European
nation drawing the necessaries of life from some
extra-European possession, is, in an economic sense,
as much dependent upon that possession as if it were
a foreign country. Any results which may follow
from such a dependence are, of course, not abrogated
even if there is, as we say, “ free trade within the
Empire.” The abolition of protective tariffs, for
instance, as between Canada or Australia and England,
would not diminish EngHsh economic dependence
upon those countries, or convert the United Kingdom
into a self-sufficing State. If we suppose this change
to have been brought about, it would still remain true
that the inhabitants of the British Islands — or of
Great Britain at least — could not subsist by such a
direct command over the earth as is to be gained
within their own limits. It is obvious, too, that the
economic needs of any imperial dependency — and
therefore its demand for the products of the govern-
ing State — are determined by the character of its
civilization and its social customs. If it is possible
for it to do what the Imperial nation is unable to
do, subsist entirely within its own limits, it may
have no such imperative needs as give rise to
CATHOLICISM AND IMPERIALISM 215
foreign trade. It may, further, have no exporting
power, either because of the nature of its material
resources or because of the demands of its own
population.
A policy of industrial imperialism, therefore, cannot
abolish time and space, or nullify geographical conse-
quences. The economic effect of English dependence
upon a British possession is substantially the same as
that resulting from its dependence upon a foreign
country. In either case the material Hfe of the nation
is life in relation to an environment which is not its
own. And what applies to England applies, of course,
also to any other European country in similar circum-
stances. It is, however, not enough to say this. Not
only is it true that industrial imperialism does not
increase the economic independence of the State
which pursues such a policy, but it is also true that
the total imperial trade of a country in the position
of England — understanding by “ trade ” a command
of the resources of the earth effected by exchange — is
much less than its total trade with foreign countries.
This the statistics of British imports and exports are
sufficient to show. To accomplish its avowed or
imphed purpose — to enable England, for example, as
a great imperial State, to be economically self-
sufficing — “ free trade within the Empire ” would
have to be exclusive of all trade without the Empire.
England, under such circumstances, would have to
buy and sell only with its own non-European posses-
sions and to do no business in Europe at all ; and, once
more, not only would England have to maintain
2i6 the problem of HUMAN PEACE
itself in such a position, but all other European
countries pursuing a similar policy would have to do
the same. They would, that is to say, have to sacri-
fice their immense body of trade — their wide command
over the resources of the earth- — outside the limits
of their own empire for the sake of the smaller body,
the smaller command, within those limits. Further,
they would be called upon, speaking generally, to
give up their trade with neighbouring countries in
order to trade exclusively with remoter countries.
Lastly, they would have to limit themselves to trading
with uncivilized or undeveloped countries, making
comparatively few demands upon the higher industries,
and to sacrifice their commerce with nations in much
the same plane of culture with themselves, and having
therefore, a wide and increasing range of social needs.
In a word, if the policy of industrial imperialism were,
in its logical development, a possible policy, and were
consistently and systematically maintained, it would
place each of the great “ empires ” of the world,
within its pohtical limits, in much the same position
as was at one time, in a certain degree, occupied by an
isolated and independent people supporting an exclu-
sive and rudimentary civilization on the products of
its own soil.
The policy of industrial imperialism is, however,
ideally considered and in its full development, an
impossible pohcy. It is an attempt to reverse the
results of the total evolution of mankind — to give to
England, France, Germany, or Italy, as an imperial
State, a position of economic isolation and indepen-
CATHOLICISM AND IMPERIALISM 217
dence such as, strictly speaking, hardly any people
has ever absolutely maintained, even in the early
ages of civilization. It is an attempt, too, by political
and mihtary processes to nullify the forces of Nature
— to gain for a nation with certain inherent dis-
advantages of position, climate, soil, vegetation, and
mineral resources the same industrial power and
ascendency as if, in these respects, its situation were
entirely different. It is a policy which carries with
it the consequences of war without securing the
ends of industry to a greater extent than they would
be secured by a policy of peace. The ends of industry
are a command over the resources of the earth, for
the purposes of human life, lower and higher, material
and spiritual. It is, as we have said, conceivable that
each of the imperial nations of Europe has a much
greater capacity of directly supporting itself within
its own territorial limits than has yet been developed,
even if we assume a certain continuous expansion of
population. They have doubtless, in degree, been
driven beyond those limits not so much by a perma-
nent and absolute necessity as by a temporary and
relative necessity — not, for example, because they
are wholly unable to procure food and clothing
within their own borders, but because, at a given time,
they can procure them more readily and cheaply else-
where than at home. Actually, however, what we
see, to fall back upon our former expression, is that
“ man ” — whether he is the “ man ” of England,
France, Germany, or the United States — has, in our
modern world, become an inhabitant of the whole
2i8 the problem of HUMAN PEACE
earth, commanding its resources, not directly by an
exclusive and immediate action upon that part of it
in which he is situated, but by means of his wide and
complex relations with the undivided territory and
life of mankind.
From the point of view of the Catholic Hfe, there-
fore — a life of positive many-sided perfection, sym-
bolized and inspired by the Perfection of Christ — it
cannot be shown that imperialism, the war policy, is
a good policy. To be good it must be indispensable —
indispensable for the attainment of certain great and
specific ends which man, as a continuous being,
developing and harmonizing the various sides of his
nature, progressively proposes to himself. But if it
is not in this sense good, it is evil, and evil in a high
degree. If war is not conducive to the Catholic life —
the life of religious exaltation, the life of spiritual
culture and fulfilment — it is, being what it is, the
greatest of hindrances to that life. War is a special
apphcation of material force, directed to purposes of
destruction and slaughter. If it is indispensable to
the Catholic life, either on its higher side or on its
lower, then against the supreme good which it secures
we are not entitled to set any evils which are asso-
ciated with it, great as those evils in themselves may
be. That men — to employ our traditional concep-
tions and symbolism — should, for some few years of
sin on earth, be condemned to eternal torment in
another world may appear to us horrible, but if this
is indispensable to the fulfilment of Divine justice,
we must reconcile ourselves with the horror. War
CATHOLICISM AND IMPERIALISM 219
has its own character, which fulfils itself. What is
essential in regard to it is not that its evils should be
tempered, but that its objects should be attained. Its
evils are the price which we pay for the good which
we wish to secure. The price may be great, but it
can never be too great if the good is indispensable,
and if we can only secure it by paying the price. In
practice, men, in making war, have always, consciously
or unconsciously, acted on this principle. They have
known that war was a process of destruction and
slaughter — that it was wasteful, murderous, and,
from our ordinary point of view, revolting and awful.
This, however, has not prevented them from waging
it. They have refrained from entering into it either
when they believed themselves unable to prosecute it
successfully, or when they had no apparent purpose to
gain by waging it, and they have ended it when they
have been compelled to do so, or have secured the
objects for which they fought. But they have never
refused to enter into war, and they have never brought
war to an end, merely because of its waste or its
inhumanity. They have understood perfectly well
that waste and inhumanity are as inevitable in war as
are ploughing the land and sowing the seed in agri-
culture — to say nothing of the fact that into war, as
we have seen, enter the instinct of destruction and
the joy of combat.
This, in our modern world, is even more true than
in the earlier ages of mankind. The savage man, or
the man of a low civilization, is a man largely
governed by immediate impulses. He is not a
220 THE PROBLEM OF HUMAN PEACE
“ being of large discourse, looking before and after.”
He has a small command of human experience. He
is heir to no great conquests of order and culture. He
is without a vision of the social future. He is unedu-
cated, improvident, unsystematic. He has com-
paratively little to lose by war ; he gains from it the
satisfaction of that fighting man^ — the man of animal
antagonism and conflict^ — ^who is contained and
restrained in the Catholic man. When he chooses
war, therefore, he chooses it, or is carried into it, by
the full and ready consent of all his instincts, and
with a limited consciousness and idea of responsibility.
If war is in any sense a sin, the savage man, the unde-
veloped or ignorant man, is least of all a sinner when
he wages it. The modern man— the man of Western
Europe in the twentieth century— is in a very
different position. He carries in his mind an ideal
of the Catholic life. The Divine Perfection of
Christ’s Humanity, the tender and immaculate
maternity of Our Lady, the unseen presences of the
saints, the precious creations of the arts and sciences,
the slow and great conquests of industry, the high
order of domestic and national life — -these things
shape him, sustain him, breathe upon him light,
beauty, and power, give to him an image and
prescience of ideal good; and when, therefore, he
enters into war he steps from the sanctuary into a
slaughter-house, and destroys in a moment of
anarchic passion the temple which a thousand
years of genius and achievement have hardly sufficed
to build. If war, therefore, is a sin, the modern
CATHOLICISM AND IMPERIALISM 221
man as he wages it is a sinner in the highest
degree. He is as Satan descending from the Courts
of God to kindle the fury and devastation of
HeU. The higher we rise the lower, if we fall,
we fall.
The recognition and consciousness of this, however,
have not prevented man — the Western man of the
twentieth century — from entering into the bloodiest
and most wasteful war in history. Its bloodshed and
waste were inevitable, if the war was inevitable.
They were, indeed, planned and foreseen. The war
was an outcome of what we call peace. It was a
fruit of policy. It was a result of contrivance and
invention. The machine-gun, the torpedo, the sub-
marine, the aeroplane, the “ Dreadnought,” the
long-range artillery — these are not the extemporized
instruments of a sudden and barbaric passion,
hurrying men blindly to destruction ; they are a high
product of science and social order — the calm creation
of a vast intellectual and material capital. The men
who invented them, the Governments that sanctioned
them, the peoples that applauded them or acquiesced
in them, the tax-payers who provided the means for
them, the ministers of religion who prayed and
preached as usual while they were being perfected—
these all understood why such instruments of havoc
were being wrought, and what was the kind of havoc
which they would necessarily effect. Yet, in the
quiet and reflection of half a century, they witnessed
their production without a protest. The reason for
this is, as we say, plain. If war is a good — in the
222 THE PROBLEM OF HUMAN PEACE
sense of being indispensable to some side or other of
the Catholic life, individual and national — then the
accompanying evils of war must be considered to be,
by comparison, insignificant. If the policy which
produces war is, on a total view of it, sound, then it
is sound with a soundness which makes the death of
a million men, or the destruction of a hundred archi-
tectural masterpieces, or the perpetration of a
number of “ cruelties ” or “ barbarities ” of small
relative importance. War being what it is, only an
indispensable good can justify it, and if it is justified
by an indispensable good, any evils which may attend
it are, real as they may be, of minor consequence.
The fundamental human choice with regard to war
is not the choice which mitigates its subsidiary
horrors, but the exercise of reason and will which
decides whether or not a policy shall be prosecuted
which makes it inevitable. All else is illusory senti-
ment, and is a sentiment which is so far from being
beneficent that it is — as is all sentiment divorced
from right intelligence — a hindrance to the very
purposes which it seeks to attain. It is not in regard
to the methods of war, but in regard to the policy —
the conscious intentional shaping of a nation’s life —
which produces or prevents war that a Scientific
Catholicism has, or has not, its guidance to give to
mankind.
If, however, we have come to the conclusion that
— or the policy of imperialism, political and
industrial, which provokes it — is not, from any point
of view, indispensable to the Catholic life, but is, on
CATHOLICISM AND IMPERIALISM 223
the contrary, a frustration of that life, then it becomes,
in a transcendent sense, evil, for to the evil of blood-
shed and destruction, it superadds the greatest of aU
evils — that it stands between man and the Perfection
of Christ. And this must be the conclusion of a
Scientific CathoHcism. War — meaning always by
war aggressive war, rendered inevitable by a dehberate
pohcy — is not, in fact, in our modern world, indis-
pensable to the attainment of the Catholic aims,
higher and lower, which man proposes to himself.
The one basic, inevitable aim which might seem to
call for it — man’s command over the earth, as a con-
dition of his animal subsistence — is, as is now clear,
an aim which is so far from justifying it that this aim
is actually better fulfilled, for every European nation,
outside the Hmits of empire than within those limits,
and that the pohcy of industrial imperiahsm is, in
any complete sense, impossible. Man is, wherever he
is, economically an inhabitant of the whole earth, and
he is this exactly in proportion to the range of his
needs — to his elevation in the scale of intelligence,
culture, and social refinement. But of the whole earth
a modern European — a Frenchman, a German, an
Englishman, a Russian — can only, for industrial pur-
poses, gain a command in one of two conceivable ways
— either by a universal empire or by universal ex-
change. A universal empire is inconceivable. We are
not called upon to discuss it. There is only one thing that
can be universal, and that is exchange — an exchange
of man’s spiritual acquisitions, or Cathohcism, the
Spirit of God moving over the waters and lands
224 the problem of human peace
and making humanity one — or an exchange of his
material acquisitions, rendering the Catholic life
possible. This double exchange means a Human
Peace.
It is in the presence of this conception — a concep-
tion not drawn from a sentimental idealism, but from
the governing realities of man’s industrial life, that
war — being not only unnecessary, but a visible frus-
tration of his lower and higher aims — becomes an
illimitable evil. To not a single one of man’s repre-
sentative and symbolic institutions — the home, the
Church, the school, the theatre, the State, the work-
shop — does it make a positive contribution. Through-
out the whole range of his hfe it is a form of waste
and dissipation. If the value of life can be expressed
in terms of love, goodness, beauty, truth, wisdom,
and power — if man is, in the conception of him given
continuously in the ages, a being holding in his mind
a vision of his own inner and outer perfection, after
which he always follows — then war is a mere anarchy
in the presence of a possible order. If the master
evils of human life may be summed up, as they may, as
sin, hatred, disease, ugliness, ignorance, penury, then
there is not a single one of those evils which war,
instead of decreasing, does not increase. If the chief
forms of good may be summed up, as they may, as
goodness, love, health, beauty, knowledge, and
material sufficiency, then there is not a single
one of them in relation to which war — an
application of material force, directed to slaughter
and destruction — is not a hindrance. The things
CATHOLICISM AND IMPERIALISM 225
which man, in his moments of choice and pre-
science, would wish to do it prevents him from
doing ; the things that he would wish to avoid
it brings upon him. It is a mode of human mis-
carriage.
CHAPTER IX
A CATHOLIC POLICY OF PEACE
It is now possible, going back upon the principles
which we have endeavoured to establish in this work,
to determine the attitude of a Scientific Cathohcism —
that is to say, of the developed, synthetic mind of
man, proposing to himself Perfection in Christ —
towards the problem of Human Peace. First, we
see that such a peace would be a good — a good so
supreme and universal that against it no good to be
atta ned by war can properly be pleaded. It is in
this sense a good because it is indispensable to the
Catholic life. The CathoHc life is a thing higher and
lower. In principle it begins with the soul ; in
practice it begins with the body. Before we can hve
this life we must have the vision of it clear and full
in our minds, so that we may master and order all
our forces for its realization. When we have gained
this vision, however, we see that the life of the
spiritual man must begin with the hfe of the animal
man — ^with man’s action upon the earth to secure
for himself a material subsistence. It is only in the
light of this comprehensive view of human nature —
showing to us man as a definite organism, in dependent
yet modifying relation with a definite environment —
that we can decide how far war is, or is not, necessary,
how far peace is, or is not, a good. We are entitled
A CATHOLIC POLICY OF PEACE 227
to say that war is not necessary because it is not an
indispensable means to any of man’s continuous ends
— either those ends which are represented by the
words “ home,” “ Church,” “ school,” “ theatre,” or
those which are represented by the words “ State ”
and “ workshop.” We are entitled to say that, on
the contrary, not being necessary, it is a stupendous
evil, a process of anarchic destruction and waste, a
frustration of man’s right government and direction
of himself, in mind and body. We are entitled to
say that peace is a good because it is naturally and
demonstrably subservient to the ends of man —
because it is a state of order, of self-possession, of
self-direction, of organic constructive mastery over
the earth, as the basis of the Catholic life, and of a
full command and use of the things of the spirit, as
its apex and crown.
For a Catholic international policy, however, we
need something more than to be able to show, in this
general way, the evil of war, the good of peace. A
Scientific Catholicism must be both a principle and a
power of peace. It has, finding for itself voices and
organs, to so educate and transform the mind of man
— the man not of one country alone, but, in the first
instance, of all Christendom — that he may give to
peace the same place in his purposes as he has in the
past given to war, or to modes of policy and action
involving war. This it must do by convincing men—
the citizenship of England, France, Germany, Italy,
Russia, and other countries — not only that war is a
frustration of all the high spiritual ends of life, but that
228 THE PROBLEM OF HUMAN PEACE
it is a frustration also of those lower material ends
on which the spiritual ends depend, and for which,
in our modern world, it is commonly waged. In other
words, here, as elsewhere, Catholicism can have no
capacity to shape the life of mankind unless it becomes
positive and practical — unless it can show men not
merely what they are to abstain from doing, but what
they are to do. It must cease to be, what hitherto
it has largely been, a mere voice of prohibition and
censure, or the proclamation of an abstract ideal, and
become a voice of guidance and application. It is
not enough to denounce war and praise peace. It
is necessary to prove to man that peace is indispens-
able to the attainment of the very objects for which
war is now commonly waged, and that the objects
which cannot be secured by peace are such as man,
pursuing the Catholic life, is not called upon to
propose to himself.
The Human Peace, as we have defined it — the
universal, continuous peace of man — must, as we have
said, be preceded by a Western Peace, the peace of
Christendom. For the purposes of such a Western
Peace — of a deliberate and systematic policy, designed
to bring it in and maintain it — we may place ourselves
at the point of view of any one of the Great European
Powers — France, England, Germany, or Italy. They
differ, of course, to some extent in situation,
character, and needs, but they are at the same time
sufficiently similar for us to be entitled to consider
any one of them, for our present purpose, as a repre-
sentative of all the others. It is only in so far as
A CATHOLIC POLICY OF PEACE 229
their position and needs — their “ interests,” to use
the diplomatic expression — are identical that we can
expect them to adopt a common policy. It is, in
fact, because their aims are substantially the same
that, in the pursuit of them, they come into conflict ;
and an international policy of peace can only become
possible if they can arrive at a common understanding
that these aims, in so far as they are actually indis-
pensable, may be accomplished without war.
Such a policy begins with what we call the lowest
need of man — his material need. He lives, we say, in
the basic sense of the word “ life,” by his command of
the earth. Any one of the great nations of Europe,
considered as a continuous, organized society of
human beings, exists by virtue of this command — in
the first place, by its command over that portion of
the earth on which it is immediately seated. Whether
it can gain sufficient material support from its own
territory is a question of fact and experience. We
must, in relation to this, dismiss from our minds the
superstition embodied in the formula that “ when
God sends mouths He sends bread to feed them.” It
can have no place in a Scientific Catholicism, seeing
and representing things as they are. It has, in fact,
never been acted upon even by those who professed
to accept it, and it is contrary to all our experience of
living things, vegetable, animal, and human. It is
doubtless true, as we have said, that every European
nation has a greater power of existing within its own
territory than it has actually developed, and it may
well be a part of Catholic policy — understanding by
230 THE PROBLEM OF HUMAN PEACE
Catholic policy the synthetic ordering of the whole
life of man for the realization of the ends of Per-
fection — to call forth and direct that power, indus-
trially and politically, to a much greater extent than
has hitherto been done. Still, it remains true that
the “ man ” of any European nation does not, in
fact, subsist on the produce of his own soil. Either,
therefore, he must increase its yield, or he must
decrease his demands upon it, or he must, in some
way, go beyond it and exercise a wide sovereignty over
the resources of the whole earth.
He does, in actual experience, employ all these three
processes. He increases the yield of his territory by
progressive industrial and political action. He de-
creases, or limits, his demands upon it, to a certain
extent, by emigration — to say nothing of the great
waste of human life that follows from disease, poverty,
and war. He goes beyond it by means of trade —
either the immense body of trade which we may
describe as international, or the smaller body which
we may call imperial, and which, although it is
imperial, is still dependent, as is international trade,
on free exchange. Now the first of these processes —
the increase of the domestic national resources by
the development of agriculture — does not, we say,
demand war. The same thing is true of emigration
and international trade. The same thing is true even
of imperial trade, in so far as it is trade within the
limits of an empire already established. If we put
ourselves, therefore, at the point of view of any par-
ticular status quo, the policy of industrial imperialism.
A CATHOLIC POLICY OF PEACE 231
which is a war pohcy, must be understood as a policy
to extend an existing empire for the sake of an
increase of imperial trade. It must be recognized,
also, that imperial trade does not constitute a
monopoly. No one of the existing empires of the
world seeks to prevent its various rivals from doing
business with its own possessions. It may aim at
securing certain special advantages for itself, but
subject to these restrictions it acts on the assumption
that universality of exchange is a common interest of
all nations. Therefore, industrial imperialism is for
any European nation a policy which, being a war
policy, endangers its international trade, its greater
trade, for the sake of its imperial, or smaller, trade,
and this without securing a monopoly, even of the
imperial trade. In other words, it is for the sake of
the lesser command of the earth that it imperils the
greater, and makes the Human Peace impossible.
Let us assume that a universal command of the
earth, as distinguished from a merely local command,
is, for any European nation, indispensable. The
problem is how to secure it pacifically. Now, in
regard to this need for a command and use of the
earth, a broad and obvious distinction may be
drawn between those portions of the earth which are
adequately peopled and those which may be said to be,
for industrial purposes, unoccupied. Such a dis-
tinction has its domestic importance even within the
national hmits of an old country like England,
where, as we know, considerable tracts of land have
not yet been brought under culture. What we are
232 THE PROBLEM OF HUMAN PEACE
now concerned with, however, is the international
problem that arises from the fact that vast portions
of the earth — as in Africa, North and South America,
and Australasia — are still manifestly under-peopled,
while others may be said to be relatively over-
peopled. Setting aside the question — a question
which is largely dependent on experience — of how
far the uninhabited, or under-inhabited, parts of the
earth are, from the character of their climate and
soil, uninhabitable, we may say broadly that they
constitute at present the chief danger-points of inter-
national order. If the policy of industrial imperial-
ism — ^which we have defined as a policy of imperial
expansion in the interests of industry — is still to be
prosecuted, it is towards such danger-points that it
will mainly, although not exclusively, be directed.
A Scientific Catholicism, aiming at a human peace,
will understand this. It will know where such
danger-points exist. Its aim, its policy, will be to
guard against the perils inherent in them. This it is
certainly not difficult to do. The map of the earth is
now familiarly known. The danger-points, as we
have called them, are visible and calculable. It
would be easily possible, in any international council
of the Western nations, to consider these specific
danger-points and to shape a common policy in
regard to them. Within certain limits such a policy
has already been adopted — as, for instance, in regard
to Africa. We are not now, of course, discussing the
question of whether such a policy has been, or might
be, in its actual application, ideally just or beneficent
A CATHOLIC POLICY OF PEACE 233
to all concerned. We are assuming that a Human
Peace would be, from the point of view of the total
life of man, a good so great that against it any sub-
ordinate good or evil ought not to be pleaded, real as
it might conceivably be.
The chief danger-points of the earth, in relation to
industrial imperialism, are, we say, its unoccupied
portions, using the word “ unoccupied,” for the
sake of simplicity, so as to include also such as are
under-occupied. Now, we may lay down the principle
that as man, in our modern world, is an inhabitant
of the whole earth, it is, for the purposes of the
Catholic life, necessary that these unoccupied portions
should be, as far as possible, occupied and brought
under culture. What is certain is that even if we do
not assume a Scientific Catholicism to be shaping the
policy of Christendom, these unoccupied portions will
sooner or later, and in one way or another, be occupied
and be made to yield their tribute to human life. The
aim of a Catholic policy, pursuing a Human Peace, is
to make it possible to secure such a result without
war. From the point of view of such a policy, it is
not necessary to consider whether these unoccupied
portions of the earth are in the nominal possession of
“ Christendom ” or “ non-Christendom ” ; and it is,
in the same way, undesirable to complicate the ques-
tion with mere social considerations. The reasons for
this are obvious. In the first place, although, for
Europeans, it is natural to assume that the yellow
and black races are “ inferior ” to the white, it is
evident that these inferior races, even if they con-
234 the problem OF HUMAN PEACE
tinue to retain their present physical and intellectual
characteristics, must be reckoned with as integral,
persisting factors in the total life of mankind. They
may be modified, but no one supposes that they will
be extirpated. In the second place, we may assume
that it will continue to be the aim of Catholicism, by
missionary action, to transform the non-Christian
races, in some sense, into Christians, and, speaking
broadly, to raise the non-Western peoples, as far as
possible, into the Western plane of culture and
civihzation. In a certain degree, such a result has
already been brought about, and in proportion as it
is, by whatever agency, effected, the “ non-Western ”
demands upon the earth will approximate in character
and amount to the “ Western demands.” In other
words, the Catholic life, with its lower and higher
needs, will tend to become universal. Lastly, we
must recognize, once more, that some at least of the
Eastern and non-Christian races are now becoming
in this sense Western that they are able to defend
themselves even against the West, or “ Christendom.”
We may, therefore, so far as the aims of industrial
imperialism are concerned — and that need for the
command of the earth which is its principal motive —
disregard mere differences of religion and race, and
consider only the broad distinction between those
portions of the earth which are “ occupied ” and those
which are unoccupied. It is, as we say, a common
interest of mankind — and not of any one nation
exclusively — that they should be occupied, and made to
yield their proportion of produce to the support of the
A CATHOLIC POLICY OF PEACE 235
human family. For this, however, it is not necessary
that the policy of imperialism should be adopted in
regard to them. There are now hardly any portions
of the earth which are, in a political sense, unoccu-
pied, although they may be unoccupied industrially.
Almost every part of it is under some sort of rule or
government — “ belongs ” to some people or nation,
even if it has not been brought fully under culture.
The natural resource of any European nation, in regard
to the unoccupied portions, of the earth is the ancient
resource of emigration — the method which has in fact
been adopted by all European nations for hundreds
of years past. Such a method is not necessarily a
method of war. The emigrant either goes to a country
which is under the rule, if only the nominal rule, of his
own Government, or to some possession of a foreign
power, European or non-European. An English
emigrant, for example, may go either to Canada,
Australia, South Africa, or to the United States, or to
Brazil. In either case, no question of war arises. He
passes from one dominion to another — becomes sub-
ject to the authority, such as it may be, of the place
in which he settles. That authority, of course,
exercises the natural “ right ” — a “ right ” which is
dependent on “ might ” — of saying whether, or on
what conditions, it will accept him, but when he has
once been accepted he becomes amenable to its rule,
and at the same time gains a certain power of citizen-
ship and control in regard to it. In some “ unoccu-
pied ” countries — ^where the existing population is
relatively small and the territory large — the body of
236 THE PROBLEM OF HUMAN PEACE
emigration may in time become the controlling power,
and the land may virtually change its masters. The
older the world gets, of course, the less are these familiar
results of emigration and colonization likely to be re-
peated. There are, however, as is evident, still vast
regions of the earth which are, in a palpable sense,
under-peopled, and in relation to which a true emigra-
tion is possible. The essential thing to be borne in
mind here is that in our modern world a policy of
emigration need not be the same thing as a policy
of imperialism. It increases the total co-operative
command of the earth, but it does not necessarily
involve war. Emigration throughout the greatest part
of the world, within and without the limits of Europe,
now proceeds by acceptance of the local authority,
such as it may be. In so far as that principle is
observed war is avoided, and the cases in which it may
be impossible to observe it — cases in which the local
authority is inherently and continuously incapable of
maintaining social order — are now so few that it is
easily possible to provide for them by an international
understanding.
The human command of the earth, therefore — that
command on which the total edifice of the Catholic
life, including the life of the nation, ultimately depends
— cannot be shown to demand war. So far as the
greater body of trade — international trade — is con-
cerned it is actually obtained by peaceful exchange ;
so far as its lesser body, imperial trade, is concerned
it is obtained by the same essential process, without
securing a monopoly ; and so far as the “ unoccupied ”
A CATHOLIC POLICY OF PEACE 237
or under-occupied parts of the earth are concerned it
may be obtained by emigration, recognizing and
accepting any existing local authority. A Catholic
policy directed towards the installation and main-
tenance of a Human Peace would found itself on these
considerations. It would prohibit industrial im-
perialism — and this not merely because imperialism
in all its forms means war, but because it is, in our
modern world, unnecessary to secure that command of
the earth for which it is prosecuted, and which we can
see to be indispensable to the Catholic life. It con-
demns and disallows this policy because by emigration
the two main connected purposes are secured which
industrial imperialism, explicitly or implicitly, seeks
to accomplish. First, it relieves what we may call
the European pressure upon the soil ; secondly, it
helps to complete man’s mastery over the earth, and
to give to his social and intellectual life the material
basis which it needs. It must, however, be under-
stood that emigration is only thus an alternative to
industrial imperialism, and a prevention of war, when
the emigrant assumes his true character. He cannot
be both a citizen of the country which he leaves and of
the country in which he settles. An Englishman,
even when, for example, he emigrates to Australia or
Canada, ceases to be an Englishman. He becomes an
Australian or Canadian. He is incorporated in a new
emerging national life, which in course of time, as
cannot be doubted, will become in form, what it already
largely is in fact, an independent sovereign State.
Even more is this principle important when the
238 THE PROBLEM OF HUMAN PEACE
British subject settles, as often happens, not in a
British possession, but, for instance, in the United
States, or in one of the South American republics.
The general principle must be recognized that when a
European — an Englishman, a German, or an Itahan —
emigrates from his own country, and becomes the sub-
ject of another State, he passes wholly out of political
relation with his native land, and is then amenable
to the institutions of the country to which he goes.
Industrial imperialism we have defined as a policy
establishing, by force of arms, the supremacy of one
country over another for industrial purposes. Such a
policy is, by its nature and definition, a war policy.
There is, however, one form of industrial imperialism
which, because of its importance in the modern world,
needs to be especially considered. We may, perhaps,
for the sake of distinction, caU it the imperialism of
foreign investments. So considering it, we may dis-
tinguish between the strictly industrial character of
foreign investments and their possible political conse-
quences. Further, we may, for our present purpose,
disregard the questions — many of them certainly of
high difficulty and importance — of the exclusively
domestic effect of such investments either on the nation
lending or the nation borrowing. We are now only
concerned with their bearing upon the problem of
peace — with their relation to the policy of industrial
imperialism, and, as a consequence, to that command
of the products of the earth which this policy is
designed to subserve. In principle the export of
capital to a foreign country may be said to be only one
A CATHOLIC POLICY OF PEACE 239
form of international trade or exchange. It is a form
of trade, however, which may easily give rise to the
particular political relations which constitute industrial
imperialism. These relations doubtless are not so
likely to arise when the financial transactions are
between two nations of something like equal standing
and power. In such instances, when the capitalists
of one country lend money to the inhabitants of
another, they accept the risks of the situation, as they
accept them in ordinary domestic business. They do
not count on a sort of political guarantee from their
own country. When, however, the transactions are
between a strong and a weak country the case is
different. Then what appears to be a purely indus-
trial enterprise on the part of the stronger State may
become political, and be the prelude to imperialism.
Any inability on the part of the weaker country to
meet its obligations may be a pretext for some form of
intervention and control in its affairs on the part of the
stronger. By such intervention its internal political
order is still further disturbed, its governing authority
is still further weakened, and a situation is created in
which additional interference on the part of the ex-
ternal power appears to be called for, an interference
preparing the way for ultimate annexation.
Just, therefore, as we can see that the unoccupied
or under-occupied portions of the earth are, from the
standpoint of a policy of peace, international danger-
points, which must be taken into account and guarded
against, so also the financial transactions between
States, and especially between States of unequal power.
240 THE PROBLEM OF HUMAN PEACE
are danger-points, which may easily become points of
disorder and war. And here again a Catholic inter-
national policy needs to be founded on science, taking
complete and dispassionate account of the actual
forces and relations of man and his environment. It
cannot be founded on sentiment, however high. It
must be based on the principle that it is necessary for
“ man ” — the universal man of every nation — to
possess a command over the products of the earth. If
for such a command war is necessary, war — horrible
as it may seem from a certain standpoint — must be
accepted, but if it is not thus necessary, then, to a
scientific Catholic, pursuing a total human Perfection
according to Christ, it is not only evil, but senseless.
It is a form of aberration, moral, intellectual, and
practical. Now, war is a special application of
material force directed to slaughter and destruction.
It is, however, as is obvious, a force not immediately
employed upon the earth. It has no direct connection
with industry, which is always ultimately reducible
to agriculture. War does not plough the land, or sow
the seed, or gather in the harvest, or grind the corn,
or make the bread, or build the ships which transport
wheat from one country to another. In the same way,
it does not clothe or house men, or procure for them
heat, light, or locomotion. It does not, by its own
processes, enable them to live the Catholic Hfe, to
maintain the home, the Church, the school, the theatre,
the State, and the workshop. Nevertheless, war has
its victories as well as peace. It has no direct con-
nection with agriculture, but it can, in principle and in
A CATHOLIC POLICY OF PEACE 241
its extreme form, enable a given society of agricul-
turists to entirely exclude another society from the
earth by killing them. It could enable a society con-
sidering itself “ higher ” or “ better ” to so exclude a
society considered to be “ lower ” or “ worse.” It
could, for example, enable aU the white races of man-
kind — ^assuming them to be sufficiently powerful — to
kill off all the yellow and black races. Then the white
races would remain the sole possessors of the earth, and
could proceed with its undisturbed culture, for the
purposes of the Cathohc life.
Such a supposition may seem in the last degree
extravagant. It is, however, not so extravagant as it
may appear. As a matter of fact, and historically
speaking, the relations between what we may broadly
call Europe and non-Europe, or between Christendom
and non-Christendom, have been largely based on the
assumption, or implication, that what considered itself
to be the higher humanity had no obligations towards
the lower, but was entitled, if it could, to conquer it,
take possession of its territory, and rule it for the advan-
tage of its conquerors. No other principle than this,
for example, has, down to the present day, governed
the action of England with regard to the native races
of America, Asia, Africa, and Australia ; and what is
true of England is true of almost every country in
Europe. But not only is it true of the relations of
Europe and non-Europe, of a higher civilization in
contact with a lower ; it is true also of the internal
relations of the rich and the poor, of the capitalists and
the working classes, in every European nation. What
242 THE PROBLEM OF HUMAN PEACE
we call the higher, or upper, classes in a country exclude
from the earth — or, what comes to the same thing,
exclude from the adequate possession of its products
— the great mass of the community. Such an exclu-
sion is, in principle, not only accepted — it is upheld
and sanctioned by the general mind of the nation. It
is defended and justified by “ the Church.” In other
words, the perpetual existence of an “ aristocracy,” or
upper class, and a “ lower class ” — of a comparatively
small number of men basing an ample human life on a
large command of the earth and a vast number basing
a meagre life on a small command — this is, explicitly or
implicitly, held to be both inevitable and beneficent.
But if it is true that within the limits of a single
civilized nation the upper class, or the higher social
life, is entitled to maintain itself at the expense of the
lower, much more may it seem to be true that Western
civilization is entitled to maintain itself at the expense
of non-Western mankind, or Christendom at the ex-
pense of non-Christendom, or the white races at the
expense of the yellow and black. We may even hold,
as has been argued by various eminent thinkers, that
the best thing that can happen to the lower is to be
mastered and ruled by the higher, and that there-
fore, for example, no happier destiny could befall
the three hundred millions of British India than to
be under the government of the forty-five millions
of the United Kingdom. We may formulate the
general principle that that which conquers is, by the
mere fact that it conquers, proved to be higher —
higher, at least, in the qualities essential for social
A CATHOLIC POLICY OF PEACE 243
command and co-ordination — and that the conquered
people is the lower people, whether by “ the people ”
we mean the working classes of a European nation, or
such native races as those of Africa and Asia, held
subject by British power. To this principle of racial
or class inferiority what we may call the Catholic
principle may, it is true, seem to go counter. The
Catholic principle is a principle of universal Perfection
in Christ. Catholicism, so understood, sees Christ, the
ideal man, in the humblest of human beings — in the
black man or the yellow man as in the white man.
Its aim is not to retain men in their inferiority, but
to raise them in the scale of being and make them
heirs of a total humanity. From this point of view,
imperialism, which aims at the forcible subjection of
inferiors by superiors, and thinks mainly of the good of
the best, may seem to be irreconcilable with Catholi-
cism, which would, as far as possible, raise inferiors
to the level of superiors, and thinks of the good of the
whole. Against this conception of Catholicism may,
of course, be urged the traditional view — that its Land
of Promise is heavenly and not earthly. According to
this view, the black and the yellow races, although they
may remain subject and inferior in this world, will
change their colour and status in “ the next ” ; and in
the same way the working classes and the poor of
European civilization ought to remain content with
their present lot till after death, because they may then
begin their entrance into a celestial kingdom.
It is, however, not at the standpoint of this tra-
ditional view — if it is the traditional view — of Catholi-
244 the problem OF HUMAN PEACE
cism, but at the standpoint of Catholicism become
scientific, and therefore in a complete sense Catholic,
that we are placing ourselves in this work. Such a
Catholicism sees things as they are — the universe and
man as he enters, age after age, into larger relation with
it and becomes the right interpreter of it and of himself.
Such a Catholicism, too, being in Christ both fixed
and progressive — finding in Him a continuing Abso-
lute which is always emerging into fuller significance —
knows nothing, in its moments of vision, of Europe
and non-Europe, or of white, yellow and black races.
It knows only man, and has as its first and last aim to
make him Catholic. It is in the light of this aim that
it examines imperialism, and war as its inevitable con-
sequence. It applies to war certain specific practical
tests which are also Catholic tests. War is conceivably
a good if it enables the white races of mankind, as the
“ higher,” to extirpate the yellow and black races, as
the “ lower,” and become the sole possessors of the
earth. Setting aside such a supposition as extrava-
gant and monstrous, war, we may say, is a good if it
enables the higher races not to extirpate but to sub-
jugate the lower, so that as labourers upon the earth
the lower may support their own limited life and at the
same time minister to the richer, fuller life of the higher.
From this point of view, the white races — or if not the
white races, the races of “ Christendom ” may be
regarded as the natural aristocrats of mankind, and as
thus entitled to rule over its other races and to organize
inferiority for the advantage of both inferiority and
superiority. It may be argued, also, that imperialism, in
A CATHOLIC POLICY OF PEACE 245
this sense, need not always be a cause of war. We may
suppose the white races of mankind — the guardians
of what we call “ Christendom,” or Western civiliza-
tion — to agree among themselves as to a common line
of policy to be adopted in regard to the yellow and
black races, including, for the sake of convenience, the
whole of non-Christendom, Mohammedan or other.
Dividing mankind, then, into “ Christendom ” and
“ non-Christendom,” and using these terms as equiva-
lent to a “ higher ” and “ lower ” humanity, we may
consider it to be possible for the nations of Christen-
dom to agree to portion out the world of non-Christen-
dom among themselves, and to preserve a universal
peace by respecting each other’s “ sphere of interest.”
Within certain limits, as we know, this has already
been attempted, and it may be considered that if such a
“ world policy ” became complete and systematic, not
only would war be avoided, but a total human com-
mand of the earth would be gained, by which the
lower would live according to the needs of the lower
and the higher according to the needs of the higher.
This policy, too, it may be held, would naturally put
an end to imperialism. By imperialism, defined as we
have defined it, is meant, not the preservation of exist-
ing empires, but their further extension, whether for
political or industrial ends. Consequently, if the
nations of “ Christendom ” came to a pacific under-
standing for a final partition of non-Christendom
among themselves, and also to abstain from aggressive
attacks upon each other, imperialism, as a policy of
war, would end itself by fulfilling itself.
246 THE PROBLEM OF HUMAN PEACE
While, therefore, it is true that war, considered as
a process of slaughter and destruction, has no direct
relation to the ends of industry, we may argue that
it has this important relation to them, that it may
enable the higher humanity to hold the lower in a
bondage which is proper to its natural inferiority, and
thus to make it instrumental to the good of the
higher, while gaining for itself all the good of which
it is capable. Against this conclusion, however,
certain important considerations may be adduced.
First, what we have broadly called “ non-Christen-
dom ” represents not a minority, but the great mass
of mankind. From the point of view of numbers
alone “ Christendom ” is, relatively to that immense
mass, insignificant. Secondly, this non-Christian
mass is not dead or stagnant. It is a living, moving
body of forces, which, as it cannot be annihilated, so it
cannot have arbitrary limits assigned to it by external
agencies. On the contrary, the external agencies
playing upon it are such as serve to quicken and
develop its power. Non-Christendom is, in our
modern world, gaining from Christendom a new
vitahty — mind, culture, a progressive capacity to
shape itself, to organize itself, and defend itself.
While it is true that Christendom, as the advanced
guard of mankind, is not likely to forfeit its historic
pre-eminence, it is yet more and more tending to lose
its ability to impose limits upon the expansion and
development of non-Christendom. Thirdly, there is
no probability, drawn from experience, that the
nations of Christendom will ever be able to maintain
A CATHOLIC POLICY OF PEACE 247
a permanent peace among themselves based upon a
common mastery and exploitation of non-Christen-
dom. There is, for one thing, no such unity of mind
and purpose in Christendom itself as would be neces-
sary to ensure such a result. We have used the
broad terms “ Christendom ” and “ non-Christen-
dom ” as convenient expressions of sociological com-
parison, but “ Christendom ” does not denote a
settled order of thought and action. It stands,
among other things, for a world of hostile Churches
and sects, for a deep and growing antagonism of
belief and unbelief, for a strife of nations, for a
vast conflict of classes, for a constant clash of material
interests, for a perpetual, insatiable greed for wealth.
History and experience give no sanction to the view
that such a Christendom can bring in and maintain
a Human Peace, based on no other principle than that
of a common predominance over non-Christendom,
even assuming non-Christendom to remain for ever
inert or incapable. They rather make it certain that
those who can only agree to pursue a policy of im-
periaHsm are certain sooner or later to turn their
imperialism against one another, and that a mere
compact among the States of Europe to respect each
other’s conquests beyond the limits of Europe is no
guarantee against war in Europe itself.
But if this is true, then it is plain that the policy
of imperialism, being a war policy, is from beginning
to end, and however we test it, unsound. The one
justification that it might seem to have is that while
securing the predominance of the higher humanity
248 THE PROBLEM OF HUMAN PEACE
over the lower, it would end itself by fulfilling itself,
and would bring in the peace of mankind by establish-
ing a sort of universal empire of Christendom over non-
Christendom. But to this justification, as we have
shown, it cannot lay claim. It is, however, not
enough even to say this. Not only is it true that
imperialism, being a war policy, cannot bring in the
ascendency and reign of the higher humanity — cannot,
in other words, subserve a positive, many-sided Per-
fection in Christ — but it must, from the nature of
things, hinder and frustrate it. War is not a subor-
dination of the lower and fulfilment of the higher ; it
is, on the contrary, a sacrifice of the higher and preser-
vation of the lower. It takes what is most perfect in
man and destroys it. It takes the men who are best in
body and leaves the worst. It takes the men who
are best in mind — masters of the spirit, ministers of
goodness, beauty, and truth, and reduces them to
the level of mere physical fighters, to kill or be killed.
It brings into a companionship of slaughter and
destruction the wise and the foolish, the educated and
the uneducated, the mediocrity and the man of genius,
the profligate and the pure, the sober and the drunken,
the provident and the spendthrift, the wife-beater
and selfish son and the devoted husband and father,
the man who may carry in his mind some high vision
and power of human good and the senseless sensualist,
who has lived as an animal lives, but who yet, on the
field of battle, dies as an animal dies, with an instinc-
tive unhesitating ferocity and courage. It does this,
too, not necessarily to subserve some great interest of
A CATHOLIC POLICY OF PEACE 249
human life, spiritual or temporal — the home, the
Church, the school, the theatre, the State, and the
workshop — but perhaps to give effect to the ambition
of a monarch, or the mistakes of a statesman, or the
blindness of a people, or the designs of a governing
caste, or a common exorbitant desire for wealth,
or the mere suspicion and jealousy of contending
nations.
We must, then, from the point of view of a Scientific
Catholicism, come to this conclusion, not only that
war is, in our modern world, and relatively to the End
of Life, not a good, but that it is an immeasurable
evil — a hindrance and frustration of the very pur-
poses which a Catholic humanity must propose to
itself, whether we think of that indispensable com-
mand of the earth by which such a humanity must be
nourished, or of the high aims of love, goodness,
beauty, truth, and disciplined power to which it is
dedicated. In other words, war is for Catholic man —
the developed man of the modern synthesis, founding
a many-sided perfection on the total experience and
culture of the world — a miscarriage. It is a form of
lunacy. It is a mode of suicide. By it man, as the
Hving temple of God, a sanctuary and vessel of all
Perfection, consciously and intentionally destroys
himself. War, in our modern world, does not spring
from some insurgent impulse of passion in a barbaric
being. It is a product of foresight and system. It is
chosen and willed. It is the result of a policy de-
liberately pursued from year to year, ratified in the
counsels of statesmen, approved by the acquiescence
250 THE PROBLEM OF HUMAN PEACE
of citizenship, sanctioned by the consent of religion.
To end war, if it is ever to be ended, to bring in the
Human Peace, if it is ever to be brought in, we must
end the policy which makes war inevitable, and bring
in the policy which has peace as its natural issue.
The war policy is imperialism — either the political
imperialism by which one nation interferes with
another to secure some alleged political end, or
industrial imperialism, such as we have now defined
it. If imperialism in either of these forms is necessary,
war is justifiable, and justifiable as aggressive war,
which any given nation, being a lord of its own life
and a judge in its own cause, is, from its own point
of view, entitled to bring about. Against such an
imperialism there is only one influence, one policy, to
which an effectual appeal can be made. International
law is, as we have shown, an international illusion.
Treaties have a validity and force which cease with
the weakness of the country upon which they have
been imposed, or the needs of those who have entered
into them. The mere sentiment of peace, the mere
sense of the waste and inhumanity of war, has never
prevented, and will never prevent, men from entering
into it. A mere political change — the transference
of the governing power from the “ aristocracy ” to
the “ democracy ; ” a mere industrial change, the
abolition of “ capitalism,” the establishment of
“ socialism ” — these, by themselves, inevitable or
desirable as they may otherwise be, cannot bring in
the Human Peace. It can only be brought in, if it is
ever to be brought in, by a Scientific Catholicism,
A CATHOLIC POLICY OF PEACE 251
showing man to himself as an interpreting mind, as a
modifying will, in the universe in which he has been
set to work out his hfe, and making it clear to him
that war is a frustration of the ends which he con-
tinuously proposes to himself, and peace a condition
indispensable to their fulfilment.
CHAPTER X
THE REPUBLIC OF PEACE
It is, as we have now seen, from the point of view of a
Scientific Catholicism, possible to show, not only that
war is, in our modern world, a frustration of the Ends
of Perfection, the high, continuous aims of human life,
but that the ends which seem to call for it and justify
it — and most of all man’s industrial command of the
earth — can only be secured by a systematic policy of
peace. Such a policy we may call a Catholic policy —
a policy taking account of the situation and total
needs of man, as a many-sided being, lower and higher,
pressing forward through the ages to a positive
fulfilment of himself in Christ. While, however, we
may, in this way, gain the conception of such a
policy — see how it follows from the very nature of
Catholicism, as a conscious and progressive move-
ment of man towards an ideal end — this, by itself,
cannot suffice to bring in the Human Peace. The
policy, in order to prevail, must gain a place in
the mind of the world — find for itself voices, organs,
and methods of application. In relation to this
subject, as in relation to the whole problem of a
Human Peace, it is essential that we should not
deceive ourselves. A Scientific Catholicism must at
least be scientific. It must recognize the character
of the forces — material, intellectual, moral — which
THE REPUBLIC OF PEACE
253
have to be overcome, or controlled, before a Human
Peace can be established. It may, as we must admit,
be impossible ever to establish it. We have said that
its full command of science — that is to say, of the
ordered experience and power of a developed humanity
— ^will give to Catholicism, in the prosecution of its
unending aims, a resource such as it has never yet
possessed. That is our new and sure ground of hope
for the human future — a reason for believing that a
universal and continuous peace, which has hitherto
been impossible, may yet become possible. It is
obvious, however, that, even with this great resource
at our command, the only certainty we can have in
regard to a thing not actually given in experience is a
certainty of faith. Such a certainty, however, belongs
to the very genius of Catholicism. It is contrary to
its essential character to despair of man. It puts
forward, and has always put forward, the doctrine
of human responsibility. Such a responsibility, how-
ever, implies freedom. It implies power — a power in
man, for example, to order his elemental passions, and
make them subject to a rule of perfection. But if
such a power exists in one sphere, it exists in another.
If it exists in regard to the instincts of nutrition and
sex, it exists in regard to the forces, working within
the nature of man, which bring about war. And such
a capacity for self-control and self-direction we
affirm not merely in spite of its failures, but — if the
paradox may be allowed — because of them.
Therefore, if we say that the attainment of a Human
Peace may conceivably be impossible, this does not
254 the problem OF HUMAN PEACE
mean that man is, by any external or internal con-
straint, made necessarily subject to the forces of war,
or that the science of peace is not sure ; it means
only, what we all know, that the mere knowledge of
a truth is not sufficient to bring about its application,
and that men may see the way to peace as they see
the way to sobriety and chastity, and yet not pursue
it. It is the business of “ the Church ” — that is to
say, of man, as a mind and will, acting or reacting
upon himself for definite spiritual ends by means of
definite organs and institutions — to move them to
walk in it. This, however, can only be done by the
adoption of specific methods. The Catholic doctrine,
or policy, of peace we have now, in sufficient degree,
explained. This doctrine we have called scientific.
By this, however, we do not mean that it is, in its
essential spirit and purposes, new. Science is not an
invention of the new ; it is a revelation, an explana-
tion, of the old. What we have called the Catholic
doctrine of a Human Peace has been present in
Catholicism from the first, although present in spon-
taneous and immature forms — as “ the prophetic
soul of the wide world, dreaming on things to come.”
But Catholicism — Christ organizing Himself in the
life of man — has never existed as a thing absolute
and external to humanity. It has always existed,
and it still exists, as a part of the life of humanity,
gaining significance and character, limitation or
expansion, hindrance or help, from the nature of that
life, according to its seasons of comparative torpor or
progressive activity. Catholicism is, for contemporary
THE REPUBLIC OF PEACE
255
practical purposes, what the great mass of Catholics
are at any given time. Therefore, a Catholic doctrine
of peace, scientifically sure as it is, and consonant with
the eternal spirit of Catholicism as it can be shown to
be, will not necessarily, at any given moment, com-
mand the immediate assent of “ the Church ” — the
Church being, at a given moment, nothing more than
the vast majority of average men and women, laity
and ecclesiastics, subject to their own incapacity,
their own ignorance, their own inertia, and to the
active prejudices of nation, class, party, and material
self-interest.
Such a doctrine, such a policy, must, consequently,
first find for itself a place and instruments in the mind
of the Church. The Church, as such, is a spiritual
power — a power operating upon the affections, intelli-
gence, and will. It does not, in the strict sense of
the word, compel. It educates. It persuades, and
it prays. It helps men to worship. It governs that
which is without by means of that which is within.
The Catholic doctrine of peace must in this way reach
the life of the world — through the teaching Church.
By the teaching Church, of course, we do not mean
merely its priests as such. The Church teaches by its
doctors — philosophers, scientific men, historians, men
of letters, and even its poets and artists, as well as
by its priesthood ; and when it is a question of bring-
ing into it a new impulse, a new vision, a new power
of progressive life, it is to the genius of the prophet,
in the large sense, that we must look, rather than to
the average priest, working within the limits of tra-
256 THE PROBLEM OF HUMAN PEACE
ditional conceptions, and concerned with a routine
functional task. Nevertheless, the Church is a unity.
What is given to it from the mind of the prophet, the
scientific discoverer, the philosopher, the man of
genius, the poet, the musician, the painter, must, in
some measure at least, eventually be given forth again
by the mind of the priest. If there is a Catholic
science or policy of peace — ^as distinguished from a
merely sentimental confession of it as a good, or
platonic acknowledgment of it as an ideal — it must
breathe its spirit into worship and make itself felt
as a force of teaching. Every Catholic Church
must become, in a perfectly definite sense, a school of
peace — not leaving so great a cause to the chance
guardianship of itinerant orators, or individual pub-
licists, or political parties, but showing that it is the
cause of Catholicism itself, and that Catholicism
knows how to uphold and promote it. Such an
advocacy of peace needs, of course, not only know-
ledge, but courage. The Catholic priest, being a
teacher of social truth, must not be the Don Abbondio
of I Promessi Sposi, but its Cardinal Borromeo. If
the blind cannot lead the blind, still less can the
cowardly lead the courageous. It is as necessary for
a teacher in the modern world to be faithful to his
charge against the mere ascendency of wealth, or the
clamour of an angry mob, as it was for a priest of the
seventeenth century to withstand the brutality of
some petty tyrant. It is, of course, not his business
to denounce men, or inflame their resentment. The
office of a teacher is to teach ; but as he cannot teach
THE REPUBLIC OF PEACE
257
without sympathy, tact, and knowledge, so also there
are occasions when he cannot teach without the
courage to proclaim unpopular or unacceptable truths.
We may, however, suppose that the Catholic doc-
trine of peace has established itself in the teaching
mind of the Church, as a thing congruous with its
persistent aims and essential to their complete ful-
filment. By “ the Church,” of course, we here mean,
in the first instance, the Church of Rome, the Church
which has the inestimable advantage of possessing
the Papacy as its head. This Church is an inter-
national Church — the only one that exists. It is, as
such, an independent Spiritual Power. It is a mind
capable of penetrating and regulating the whole body
of humanity. It is of East and West, of North and
South, of the Old World and the New. It has ad-
herents and voices in all the great races of mankind.
It is the one Church which is in a position to give
forth a universal religious message to men. We shall
suppose this Church — that is to say, its leading minds,
its thinkers and priests — to give forth such a message,
to proclaim a universal policy of peace — a policy, not
a sentiment only, not a Utopia, not an ideal, but a
definite, reasoned and practicable policy, such as a
responsible statesmanship may, if it is willing, adopt,
and such as an active citizenship may impose upon
it, if it should prove unwilling. Such a policy, from
the nature of the case, cannot be brought in by any
one nation alone, although any one nation, by its
own independent influence and action, may certainly
do much to promote it. It demands the consent and
258 THE PROBLEM OF HUMAN PEACE
co-operation of all the predominant countries of the
world, and especially, of course, of Christendom.
The policy, being such as we have here defined it — ■
depending, first, on the common acceptance of an
actual status quo, as not to be subject to forcible
disturbance ; secondly, on a consequent disarmament
by land and sea ; thirdly, on the general abstinence
from an aggressive imperialism, political or industrial ;
fourthly, on the realization of man’s command of the
earth by free international exchange and pacific
emigration ; fifthly, on the adoption of common
measures relatively to the “ danger-points ” of inter-
national order, of whatever kind — this policy, being
Catholic in its governing ends, and Catholic also in
the wide human agreement which it requires, needs to
be promoted in the various nations of Christendom
by an authority which, in degree at least, springs from
their common life and represents them all. Such an
authority is the Catholic Church, centred and directed
at Rome.
Even, however, if we suppose the international
mind of the Church, its teaching, or directing, mind,
to be penetrated by the conception of such a policy,
it still remains clear that great and continuous diffi-
culties must attend its common acceptance and
maintenance. Those difficulties arise from the essen-
tial character of the policy itself, and from its relation
to the nature of man, politically and morally con-
sidered. The war policy is, as we have seen, im-
perialism. The peace policy is the abandonment of
imperialism, and the attainment of its Catholic aims
THE REPUBLIC OF PEACE
259
by pacific measures. But imperialism springs from
two main motives— one distinctively political, the
other distinctively industrial. We may, for purposes
of comparison, call its political motive nationalism,
understanding by nationalism the disposition to in-
terfere with the domestic freedom and possessions of
another country for the aggrandizement of one’s own.
So defining nationalism, we are able to distinguish
between it and patriotism. Patriotism we may con-
sider to be a disinterested and active love of one’s
own country. Such a feeling is not necessarily
exclusive. It is not, by its own nature, a source of
hostihty to other nations. It may be without
jealousy or suspicion. It does not demand war for
its satisfaction or manifestation. It may be noblest
and most beneficent in peace. It may uphold peace
as a high national good. It may condemn and resist
war as a supreme national evil. It may, when a war
has been brought about by a mistaken and short-
sighted policy, refuse to sanction it, and abstain from
all voluntary concurrence in it. It may represent the
sane, continuous mind of a nation, looking to its
permanent good, and continuing loyal to that good
amidst the passing passions of a given time, or the
misconceptions of party and class.
Of such a patriotism, in natural opposition to an
aggressive nationalism, a Scientific Catholicism —
being here, as elsewhere, only scientific in its right
discernment and expression of a principle which
Catholicism has always proclaimed — must be the
voice and organ. So long as an aggressive nationalism
26 o the problem of HUMAN PEACE
exists war must exist ; and Catholicism, in its pursuit
of a Human Peace, has to lift men’s minds above it
and maintain them in a higher plane of vision and
effort. It is, as is clear, only the Catholic Church, the
international Church, that can do this, and it is also
clear that it cannot do it by a s.udden summons — by
the denunciation of an evil policy, or the proclamation
of a wise policy, in a time of crisis ; it can only do it
by education, by a prescient, constant direction of
the human mind to the ends, whether of the personal
or the civic Hfe, which Catholicism proposes to it.
In a time of crisis, and stiff more in a time of actual
hostilities, Catholicism, the Spiritual Power, is, as a
directing agency, almost effaced. That is the hour of
the statesman or the soldier — the hour when the
priest and the teacher, relatively to the causes and
issues of war, become nullities. It is in peace, and
by the methods of peace, that the peace of the world
is to be prepared. It is then only that the voice of
the Church can be heard. If, then, a Scientific
Catholicism is to overcome a restless and aggressive
nationalism, it must be by a continuous spiritual
process, the process of the teacher — exactly the same
process as that which is adopted by the scientific
thinker when he educates men to act upon the forces
of Nature, or as is employed by a professor when he
is seeking to give to his students the perceptions and
the capacity of a definite art. This, indeed, has
always been the characteristic method of the Church.
It does not wait until sin is committed before ex-
plaining its nature, or arousing men against it. Its
THE REPUBLIC OF PEACE
261
provision against sin begins with life, and con-
tinues throughout life. In the same way, having
a doctrine of peace, it will educate men in peace for
the ends of peace, and overcome the spirit of an
aggressive nationalism by the spirit of Catholicism.
Recognizing that war is a sin against Catholicism, a
frustration of its purposes— that it is for man, pur-
suing the Perfection of Christ, a form of aberration
and suicide — ^it will not wait till it has actually
broken out before condemning it, but will aim at so
shaping the mind and conduct of men that it may be
possible for them to avoid it.
If it is evident that only by the action of the
international Church can an aggressive nationalism be
overcome, it is still more clear that only by such a
Spiritual Power can an aggressive industrialism, or
industrial imperialism, be transformed into a pacific
and world-wide human co-operation. The roots of
international policy, as we have already said, must
be sought in the national life, and the national life is
only a collective expression of the life of the soul. The
connection between public life and private life is,
indeed, so deep and indissoluble that we may seem to
be imprisoned in a vicious circle when we say that
it is from “ the Church ” alone — the Church being
simply human nature considered in a special relation
— that we can expect the direction of the mind of
man to the ends of peace. Quis custodict tpsos
custodes ? “ If the salt hath lost its savour, where-
with shall it be salted ? ” What we have called
industrial imperialism in the international sphere has,
262 THE PROBLEM OF HUMAN PEACE
as we have shown, its foundation in the conflict of
classes and individuals in the national sphere.
Neither the one nor the other springs from the need
merely for such a right command of the earth as is
indispensable for the Catholic life. They spring
from a desire for monopoly, or ascendency, having
no necessary relation to that life. Stating the same
truth in other words, we may say that they spring
from an individual craving for material wealth irre-
spective of any spiritual and social use which is to
be made of it. The existence of such a craving, pro-
ducing such results, is, of course, one proof that
Catholicism, considered as a doctrine and organization
of the spiritual life, is unable to counteract the
pressure of what, from its own standpoint, we call
the lower instincts. And this again, in a last analysis,
means exactly what St. Paul means when he says :
“ The good which I would I do not ; but the evil
which I would not that I practise.” The inordinate
personal desire for wealth — apart from what we may
now call its Catholic uses — is not the characteristic
of any one nation, or of any one class, or of any one
individual ; it is to be found in every nation and
class and amongst almost all individuals. It is so
constant and potent a factor in the life of man that
in our so-called science of economics we assume its
inevitable and regular action, as in physics we assume
the action of gravity. Being such a factor, it works
in “ the Church ” — that is to say, among men and
women associated for certain spiritual ends — as it
works in “ the world,” and it works in the priest who
THE REPUBLIC OF PEACE 263
proclaims the ideals of Catholic Perfection as it
works in the people to whom he proclaims them.
We may seem, therefore, in our reliance upon the
Church to deliver us from the craving for wealth, to
be involved in the dilemma of expecting grapes from
thorns, or figs from thistles — of being dependent on an
imperfect human nature, as it shows itself in both the
temporal and the spiritual spheres, for the very power
which is to save us from that nature. This dilemma,
too, may appear to be the greater in proportion as the
area of what we caU the Church is extended. An indi-
vidual man may be a “ saint ” — ^that is to say, he may
live an ordered, holy, beautiful life by a strong and
persistent resistance to an adverse social pressure. In
a monastery, or a religious order, or even in a restricted
and restrictive sect, men and women may, for a time
at least, continue in a high plane of spiritual being
without compromising their religious fidelity. But
when “ the Church ” is as wide as the world the distinc-
tion between the Church and “the world” — in other
words, between a disciplined and an undisciplined
life — becomes, to a great extent, abrogated. The
Catholic Church, which reprobates “ the world,” is
itself the world. We can only escape from this
dilemma by recognizing the two meanings — a lower
and a higher meaning — which naturally attach to
the word “ Church.” It represents, on the one hand,
the whole continuous body of the faithful such as
they, in disposition and practice, actually are,
including the priesthood ; it represents, on the other,
the high spiritual mind of this society, expressed in
264 the problem OF HUMAN PEACE
Scripture, creeds, sacraments, doctrines, and above
all in forms of prayer and worship. This mind is the
mind of the aristocracy, of the best, or it is the mind
of the many in their best moments. The progressive
life of man, as a Catholic, depends on the constant
reassertion and development of this nobler mind, in
opposition to the mind of the inert or resistant social
man, whether in the laity or in the priesthood. This
is a truth of aU religious experience, from the time of
Our Lord to the present day. The mere craving for
wealth, therefore, which is, as Our Lord Himself
said, in natural antagonism to the life of Perfection
— this craving which is in the Church, considered
as the whole body of the faithful, can only be
overcome by the Church, considered as the Spirit
of our Lord, living and working in the mind of
man.
This higher, or true Church, the Church of vision
and the ideal, will, as we here conceive it, have the
greater capacity to overcome this craving because it
will be the Church of a Scientific Catholicism, the
Church of developed man, resting on the total
experiences and acquisitions of the past, and moving
towards a complete humanity. As such it will not
use the language of mere censure or prohibition. In
its teaching the negative will be swallowed up in the
affirmative. It will no longer consider man, even in
his sins, simply as “ a sinner ” ; it will consider him
as a being called to Perfection— -to a many-sided
personal and social Perfection of love, goodness,
beauty, truth, and power. It will cease simply to
THE REPUBLIC OF PEACE
265
denounce Mammon. It will aim at mastering Mam-
mon, recognizing that for man, as he is and where he
is, the command of the earth is a condition precedent
of the Catholic life, and that, eternal as is the truth
of renunciation, the common Catholic life cannot be
expressed merely in terms of renunciation, but must
be expressed in terms of possession and fulfilment.
Such a Catholicism, holding the old in the new and the
new in the old, will, in its opposition to imperialism,
have a power of appeal to those even who may seem
to be beyond its borders. It will be a scientific argu-
ment for an ideal human life. In principle, therefore
— allowing for the inevitable apathy or resistant
passions of man — its only real opponents will be the
“ sinners against the Holy Spirit.” In other words,
they will be the conscious and avowed opponents of
science and the ideal. The Catholic Church, as a
true teaching Church, will be in natural alliance with
all teachers of positive truth — even with such as may
appear at present to be out of relation with it. Its
international plea for peace, being not the abstract
proclamation of a vague sentiment, but a reasoned,
practical doctrine of man’s nature and needs, lower
and higher, will, in degree, appeal even to those who
are now classed as “ agnostics ” or “ unbelievers,”
They may not admit that the Church, as such, or as
they conceive it, is a need, but they will, as a rule,
recognize a lower and a higher life in man — a life of
mere animalism and a life of human aims and culture
— and they will acknowledge that this higher life
cannot be made secure and common so long as man
266 THE PROBLEM OF HUMAN PEACE
wastes what is best in himself, physically and intel-
lectually, in war.
By virtue of its command of science, therefore, the
Catholic Church, in its teaching mind, will, as an
organ of peace, be able to give unity and guidance to
the life of Christendom — the Christendom of the
Roman communion, of the Greek Church, of the
Protestant Churches, and even of the agnostic world.
This, however, it will do not only positively by
becoming, in every country, a stimulating and co-
ordinating influence in social teaching, but negatively
by helping to discredit the incompetent and mischie-
vous teaching to which men are at present commonly
subject. So far as social action and citizenship are
concerned, the teacher in the modern world is for
the most part represented by the party politician and
the journalist. They are, of course, not, in any
strict sense of the word, teachers at all. They are
to some extent creators of public opinion, good or
bad, and to some extent also the exponents and
instruments of an opinion which has, by other
agencies, already been generated. They are, speak-
ing generally, the representatives and organs of some
of the very evils to which a Scientific Catholicism, if
it is ever to arise in the world, must put an end — of
an aggressive nationalism, of industrial imperialism,
of the gross greed for wealth, of sectarian narrowness
and strife, of class pretension and conflict, of party
antagonism. Their temper and methods are the
antithesis of the temper and methods required in
anything that deserves to be called teaching. They
THE REPUBLIC OF PEACE
267
work in an atmosphere of perpetual controversy, ill-
will, abuse, and reciprocal misrepresentation. They
have arisen out of the disorder, spiritual and temporal,
of the modern world, and they tend to perpetuate and
increase it. The fundamental need of man, as a
terrestrial spectator and inhabitant of the Universal
Order in which he is placed, is that he should, as far
as possible, understand that Order, and himself in
relation to it, for the purposes of his own spiritual
and practical life. To the right satisfaction of this
need the party poHtician and the journalist con-
tribute nothing. They are partly the victims and
partly the exponents and ministers of a vast con-
fusion of mind. They stand neither for Catholicism,
in its historic and symbolic presentation of truth, nor
for science in the analytic discernment and ordered
application of it. They have, therefore, no concep-
tion of the human past from which man is travelling,
nor of the human future towards which he is moving.
They are not even in any true relation with what
is best in contemporary life. They represent its
obtrusive and noisy mediocrity, its vulgarity, its
superficiality, its untested assumptions, its impatience,
the passions and conflicts of nation and class, the
narrowness and illusions of sect, the restlessness and
disorder begotten of the pursuit of wealth. Above
all is this true of the journalist. The responsible
statesman has, in the modern world, a task of peculiar
difficulty, even when he happens to be a man of high
personal competence and impersonal sincerity. He
works in a situation of unstable opinions, conflicting
268 THE PROBLEM OF HUMAN PEACE
interests, and antagonistic sects and classes. He has
to maintain some degree of order and development
tinder conditions of anarchy and antagonism. He
gains power, commonly, only after many years spent
in opposition and vituperation, and holds it precari-
ously for a short time, during which he is, in his turn,
subject to the opposition and vituperation of others.
The very nature of his task, however, as the cus-
todian, if only the temporary custodian, of vast and
complex social interests begets in him a sense of
responsibility and gives him a certain breadth of
outlook. He is, for the time being, at least an over-
seer of the republic, and not the mere representative of
some exclusive sect or class.
The journalist — using this word in a comprehensive
sense — is in a different position. He is supposed to
be, on the one hand, an organ of opinion ; on the
other, a contemporary historian. In both respects
his office, such as it is, has suffered a progressive
degradation. As an organ of opinion he is, of course,
the mere agent of a sect, party, or class, or perhaps
only of some sordid commercial enterprise. He is
dependent, irresponsible, and frequently anonymous,
and whatever his personal capacity and qualifications
may be, the conditions of every kind under which his
work is done are in the last degree unfavourable to
the formation and expression of disinterested and
competent judgments. They render such judgments,
in fact, impossible. As a contemporary historian,
exhibiting the life of the world as it is, the journalist
discharges a function which might conceivably be of
THE REPUBLIC OF PEACE
269
high value, but which — largely owing to circumstances
for which he has no personal responsibility — is now
actually performed with less intelligence, order,
and good faith than in the early days of the Press.
Nothing is more necessary for a capable and effective
citizenship than an honest and intelligent record of
contemporary life, national and international, given
with the same exactness and veracity as are now
expected from every historian of the past. This does
not at present exist. The daily Press especially has
become increasingly the vehicle of a stupid and stupe-
fying sensationalism, dictated by the lowest needs of
commercial competition ; and the thing which is of
most consequence to the human mind — a right,
orderly understanding of itself and of the world in
which it works — has been rendered almost impossible
by the very instrument which apparently exists to
meet this need.
It will be one of the chief tasks of the teaching
Church, promoting the cause of a Human Peace by
the power of a Scientific Catholicism, to rescue the
great things of man’s mind and life from the hands
of the party politician and the journalist, and to
bring them within the domain of the thinker and
teacher, appealing to a common citizenship. While,
however, the Church — in that high conception of it
which distinguishes it from “ the world ” — is a
teaching mind, a Spiritual Power, acting upon the
forces of the spirit, it is not merely by formal and
abstract teaching that, in its scientific completeness,
it wiU create the power of peace. Catholicism, too,
270 THE PROBLEM OF HUMAN PEACE
represents an “ interest ” as well as a doctrine. It
represents the interest of the Catholic life. The
Catholic life is, in its full and ideal extension, a life
universal. It is not a negative life of prohibition and
renunciation ; it is a positive life of many-sided
possession and fulfilment, in which the lower is made
subject to the higher. It is a life of progressive Per-
fection in Christ, and in terms of institutions it is
expressed by the home, the Church, the school, the
theatre, the State, and the workshop. It is a life also
dependent for its realization upon man’s common
command of the earth, national and international.
At present, so far as the great mass of the people in
Christendom are concerned, this command does not
exist. They are shut out from it. They cannot,
even if they wish to do so, live the Catholic life. They
can, indeed, live the negative Catholic life of pro-
hibition and renunciation. A dependent and home-
less pauper can be a good man in the sense of not
being a “ sinner,” and his poverty, of course, does not
exempt him from moral responsibility. But the
Catholic life of possession and use — the life of a full-
flowering humanity, in which the lower serves as a
foundation for the higher — this only becomes possible
by means of a command of the earth.
The Catholic Church — meaning by this expression,
in this connection, especially its spiritual aristocracy,
concerned with the realization of its highest ideals —
will, in its promotion of peace, be able to appeal to
the interest of that vast social mass which at present
possesses only a limited and precarious command of
THE REPUBLIC OF PEACE
271
the earth, and for which the Catholic life is therefore
impossible. This interest cannot be said to be an
exclusive and material interest ; it is an interest
social and spiritual. It is, in a full sense, human.
It is true that a workman, like a capitalist, may-
desire wealth for merely ignoble ends, but it is also
true that, like the capitalist, he may desire it as the
condition precedent of a life of perfection. Further,
it is plain that in the absence of a certain command
of the earth, direct or indirect, this life is impos-
sible. As, therefore, it is the task of a Scientific
Catholicism to realize this life practically and uni-
versally, it must give its sanction to the just claim of
“ the people ” of Christendom — the great body of
those whom we call the workers — to possess their
due share of the proceeds of the earth. But it must
do more than this. The Church — the true Church,
the aristocracy of Catholicism, the mind of the Spirit
and the ideal — ^has to-day, in a time of science, the
same task to accomplish as in the first centuries of
Christianity, the time of intuition and vision : its
task is to raise human nature and keep it progressing
in a high plane. Its morality is, as we have said, a
“ slave morality ” — a morality which transforms the
slave into a master, giving him a command of himself
and of the earth, as the material basis of his being.
This morality, this high purpose, is none the less the
note of the Church because in practice it has not been
fulfilled. It has ever been professed ; it has never
been repudiated. It remains to be accomplished, and
it is the office of science, as a complete expression and
272 THE PROBLEM OF HUMAN PEACE
direction of the human mind, to point the way to its
accomplishment.
The Church, therefore, in this conception of it, will
not be satisfied with sanctioning the claim of the
people to a right possession of the earth ; it will
direct them to such a possession ; it will inspire in
them a Divine discontent — a discontent with all that
stands between them and the attainment of Divine
things. It will bless and encourage them in their
movement towards a total humanity. It is true —
whether in the case of a people, yearning to throw
ofi[ a foreign yoke, or of a class, seeking social emanci-
pation — that “ who will be free, themselves must
strike the blow.” It is a Catholic principle that
“ God alone cannot save men,” and that prayer, to
become efficacious, must be transformed into a force
of action. “ The people,” therefore, must save them-
selves, and this not merely by desiring the command of
the earth, but by desiring that Catholic life for which
the command of the earth is alone really valuable.
But it is the business of the Church, the true Church
of worship and science, to quicken in them these
desires, and to point the way to their fulfilment. It
will show that the Catholic life is impossible without
a Human Peace, and that the cause of a Human
Peace is, therefore, in a special sense the cause of the
people. It will show that we cannot have both war,
with its lunatic destruction and waste, and the social
realization of a positive Catholicism. It wiU show
that international policy has its roots in national
life — that imperialism in the one sphere has as its
THE REPUBLIC OF PEACE
m
counterpart competition in the other. Under im-
perialism, in all its forms, we may have, indeed-—
what we have now-— a small social class, inordinately
possessed of wealth and political supremacy, with
an immense social body restlessly struggling for the
possession of these things. But under imperialism
we cannot have the Catholic life — the life of a fuU-
flowering humanity — for the whole republic. Im-
perialism means the ascendency of the few — the
ascendency of a governing class within the nation,
the ascendency of a governing State beyond the
nation. It means war because it means international
competition. One country striving for domination
beyond its own borders provokes and justifies the
rivalry of other countries striving for a similar
domination. And war is waste. It is a hindrance to
the higher things ; it is a fulfilment of the lower. It
is the suicide of humanity-— a destruction of its best
physical life, a recurrent frustration of its best
intellectual and moral life.
The Catholic Church, therefore, in its scientific
appeal for peace, will be able to awaken and direct
a force greater than any mere force of the schools—
the force to which Our Lord appealed, the force to
which Catholicism in its best moments has always
appealed, the force of the people, as distinguished
from the force of any special and exclusive class. The
cause of the people is the cause of the whole social
order. It is, therefore, not rightly represented by
the unfortunate and misleading word “ democracy.”
That word, historically, has arisen out of a continuous
274 the problem OF HUMAN PEACE
class struggle, and it may stand, in practice, for a
disastrous attempt to make inferiors the lords of
superiors, or to give the mere power of numbers pre-
dominance over the power of mind. A Scientific and
teaching Catholicism cannot sanction “ democracy ” in
this sense. The ascendency of the best, in every sphere,
is for the good of the commonwealth. It is the word
“ republic,” and not the word “ democracy,” which is
the right expression of this principle. It is to the
Human Republic, national and international, that a
Scientific Catholicism will lead us — a Republic in
which there will no longer be any special hereditary
classes, land-owning or capital-owning, but in which
there will necessarily be special functionaries, pos-
sessing, for the advantage of the Republic, the free-
dom and power which all responsibility demands.
The Republic, in this conception of it, is only the
same thing as the living social Catholic Church. It is,
too, the same thing as the Human Peace, for, as we
have shown, without the Human Peace the Catholic
life, as a life common, in degree, to all men and
women, is for ever impossible. This Republic of
Peace — a free concert of independent, self-governing
nationalities — must, as we have also shown, be first
established in Christendom. When it has been estab-
lished in Christendom — in simpler terms, when the
Great Powers of Europe have given effect to an inter-
national policy such as we have here unfolded — it
will, for all practical purposes, have been established
in the rest of the world. Christendom is the war
centre. It is only necessary for it to become the
THE REPUBLIC OF PEACE
275
peace centre in order to secure the concord of man-
kind. It is for the Catholic Church, the international
Church, the Church of the Papacy, the Church of the
Republic, the Church of Human Perfection, positive
and many-sided, the Church of the people — it is for
this Church, in its full command of science and in the
exercise of its high teaching authority, to bring in and
maintain this Human Peace — first, by fully confessing
it as its own cause, its own ideal, the natural realiza-
tion of the Kingdom of Christ ; and, secondly, by so
acting on the mind of the outside world that it may
be seen by every sect and school to be the ideal and
the cause of man.
BRADBURY, AONEW, & CO. LD., PRINTERS, LONDON AND TONBRIDGE.
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