Section Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2017 with funding from Princeton Theological Seminary Library https://archive.org/details/problemofhumanpeOOquin 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. >V ■ ' /'.l'- I'. '• •'^'4 ■■' :■■■.■ ;, f .H'^-,-^. ? .'■■ ■ • • '4'( ^ '1, .;j v. ,4 A, ■ ■■* >■: 4,;":',‘4'-:;>;';/4^4.-4' '^ l' V.V- :■■■■■': ' i'n4. j4'\4>"'">''’4.7'c'/'4 - ■'.V’, ■ ' ' '/■ '■. ',• •• ••jL'^' - ... J'' ■■' .:'p".' /.. '• 4 '’. ' ., ■' ' ■i-i.yj- ' , - ^ ■' yii.-U ..ii-.t- r .' ’ . '••■ ■ '■ ' ..• , .,.’ "i: 'S' 7 --,' y^ -ym V.;': } h .V. ^ -rO' , ' ■ .■■- ‘ ‘.'■' ■' ..V '4 :’■>'(■ -V', 7 ■•' ■ ■■ , j- y. ‘ ", ■ ■■■/' .- - 11 ^ a -''.""T'-i-'V y .. V ' yy. r 1 ; '■■ I \ r: ' ■ ' ■-■'M ■' ' ■- - f 4 > " 'i' 4 .J ■'■■ 'tv , I ■.'; .'' ■ ; , :'¥'y ■ ■■ ,' ' '•■)’ ,v ■ 1 : •■'^' 4 / ;, V', 'v ■'41 • .' I 1 # 4 • > . ' < ':M ! ' ' V’ V ■' • '-'■■ ■•.' 1 ")..?%' '■} ■ ' V -. ' . 4 ',,1: ■^iVX I' '< . ■ ' 4^.7 ‘}: j' '"'-''ky^.: • . •, .'f'. ' 4 ;,:“-; V^^'' 4 r 44 ' 4 ,^ /<:' 44 :' ’'./■■ 4 ''' 1 ^^ V ' 1,4 VV' 4 ' ■. 4,'4. :^4:'7,C'^’^744 4 ‘■4-.4 l: , 7 7 ,:;7 ,.,^z 4' ' ' ' ■ ;^'4 r 4^' .4'4:r;/ 4' .1 ■ 4^'^^.^v44:f,>n:'vfe4444iiJ^ ■■'''■'"-■a', .' ^'7' •{■'f /'i '.- . ■ • , .J ; . •' :'r • ‘ • . •• - a Date Due FE 4*53 I