Class Ji Book GpightN COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT. THE COLE LECTURES The Productive Beliefs - - - - ( '9*9 ) By Lynn H. Hough, D.D. Old Truths and New Facts - - ( 1918 ) By Charles E. Jefferson, D.D. The North American Idea - - - ( 19 n ) By James A. Macdonald, LL. D. The Foundation of Modern Religion i'9'6) By Herbert B. Workman, D. D. Winning the World for Christ - ( 1915 ) By Bishop Walter R. Lambuth. Personal Christianity --.•--( l 9*4 ) By Bishop Francis J. McConnell. The God We Trust ( '9*3 ) By G. A. Johnston Roes. What Does Christianity Mean ? - ( 19 12 ) By W. H. P. Faunce. Some Great Leaders in the World Movement i'9* 1 ) By Robert E. Speer. In the School of Christ - - - ( 19 10 ) By Bishop William Fraser McDowell. Jesus the Worker (*9°9) By Charles McTyeire Bishop, D. D. The Fact of Conversion - - - ( 1908 ) By George Jackson, B. A. God's Message to the Human Soul ( 1907 ) By John Watson (Ian Maclaren). Christ and Science ( *9° 6 ) By Francis Henry Smith. The Universal Elements of the Christian Religion ('9°5) By Charles Cuthbert Hall. The Religion of the Incarnation - ( 1903 ) By Bishop Eugene Russell Hendrix. The Cole Lectures for ip20 delivered before Vanderbilt University A New Mind For the New Age By HENRY CHURCHILL KING, D.D., LL.D. President of Obertin College New York Chicago Fleming H. Revell Company London and Edinburgh Copyright, 1920, by FLEMING H. REVELL COMPANY New York : 1 58 Fifth Avenue Chicago: 17 North Wabash Ave. London : 2 1 Paternoster Square Edinburgh : 75 Princes Street g)CI.A605965 THE COLE LECTURES THE late Colonel E. W. Cole of Nashville, Ten- nessee, donated to Vanderbilt University the sum of five thousand dollars, afterwards increased by Mrs. E. W. Cole to ten thousand, the design and con- ditions of which gift are stated as follows : " The object of this fund is to establish a foundation for a perpetual Lectureship in connection with the School of Religion of the University, to be restricted in its scope to a defense and advocacy of the Christian re- ligion. The lectures shall be delivered at such inter- vals, from time to time, as shall be deemed best by the Board of Trust ; and the particular theme and lecturer will be determined by the Theological Faculty. Said lecture shall always be reduced to writing in full, and the manuscript of the same shall be the property of the University, to be published or disposed of by the Board of Trust at its discretion, the net proceeds arising therefrom to be added to the foundation fund, or otherwise used for the benefit of the School of Re- ligion." Preface THE Cole Lectureship calls for six lec- tures. To this extent the form of the material of this book is deter- mined by the Lectureship; for the discussion falls into six corresponding chapters. Three chapters deal, it will be seen, with the New Age: its Evidence; its Perils; its Values. The three other chapters deal with the New Mind needed for the New Age; the Political, Eco- nomic, and Social Challenge; the Educational Challenge ; the Moral and Religious Challenge. It is obvious that this wide range of discussion can be covered only suggestively within the limits of the Lectureship, not exhaustively. I have not hesitated to use in this book much of the material of the little book — For a New America in a New World — written for the soldiers overseas ; since that was prepared only for private distribution among some of the returning soldiers, and was not published for the general public either there or in America, and has never been reprinted in America. Such material as has been used, is wrought, of 7 8 PREFACE course, into the connected argument of the present discussion. One hesitates to add to the number of books concerning the present critical times, but the Cole Lectureship requires publication, and one may hope that any honest attempt at interpre- tation of these difficult days may not be wholly without significance. H. C. K. Oberlin College. Contents LECTURE I The New Age: Its Evidence . . n I. Critical Points in Evolution. II. Disillusionment and Reaction Part of the Crisis. III. No Ordinary War. IV. The Changing World-Order. V. The Significance of These After- the- War Days. LECTURE II The New Age : Its Perils 37 I. The Perils of Inevitable Inheritance from the War. II. The Perils of Disillusionment. III. The Perils of Reaction. IV. The Perils of Revolution. LECTURE III The New Age : Its Values . . .63 I. The Values Involved in the Characteristics of the Present World-Order. II. The Help of the Moral Demonstrations of the War. III. The Greatest Ideal Achievements of the War. IO CONTENTS LECTURE IV The New Mind : The Political and So- cial Challenge . . . .105 I. General Introduction. II. Defeating the Perils of the New Age. III. Preserving and Fulfilling the Values of the New Age. LECTURE V The New Mind : The Educational Chal- lenge 133 I. The Power of Education. II. The Value of Education. III. The Comparative Failure of Our Educa- tion on the Ideal Side. IV. The End of Education. V. The Spirit of Education. VI. The Method of Education. VII. Other Needed Emphases in Education. LECTURE VI The New Mind : The Moral and Relig- ious Challenge . . . .167 I. Grounds of Faith and Hope. II. The Basic Reality of Morals and Religion. III. The Inescapable Christ. IV. A Definitely Christian World-Civilization. LECTURE I THE NEW AGE : ITS EVIDENCE LECTURE I THE NEW AGE: ITS EVIDENCE SOME such theme as I have chosen for these lectures — A New Mind for the New Age — seems well-nigh unavoid- able. It is fairly thrust upon one by the criti- cal conditions of the time, as a problem that will not down. All thoughtful men, indeed, are so inevitably turning these questions over in their minds, that one may hope in unusual degree for that quick interplay of thought that keeps a discussion even of familiar themes stimulating and vital. Each one of us, moreover, is a factor in the problem we are to discuss, and in its solution. It concerns us mightily. No merely academic consideration, therefore, to which one might be moved by simple intellectual curiosity will suffice. For, as Professor Giddings says: A powerful barbarism is an appalling menace ; but it is not the supreme menace that threatens civilization at this hour. The supreme menace is the indifferentism, the negligence, and the pro- crastination, the paralysis of will that seems to be 13 14 THE NEW AGE affecting the civilized minority of the world's population. The imperative need, that is, in our time as at, the Christian era, is for a new mind. For the ringing call both of John the Baptist and of Christ was: Repent, — Change your minds, Get a new mind. And that new mind, we may be sure, will still include that utter truth to the trust of one's own individuality, and that will- ingness to take one's full share in the hard and disagreeable tasks in the world, which chal- lenge us again out of that far-away time: " Stir into flame the gift of God, which is in thee;" "Take thy part in suffering hard- ship." This threefold individual challenge, at least, our theme contains from the start. That the theme contains a like manifold challenge to classes and parties and churches and nations and races — for the restoration and creation of good-will and trust, for the full preservation and achievement of freedom, for a truer and more thoroughgoing democracy, for international relations that are not blind to the solidarity of the world, for a deeper and more penetrating spirituality — is hardly less plain. No study of world reconstruction can well help having its political, industrial, social, educational, moral, religious, and missionary ITS EVIDENCE 1 5 applications. But perhaps they may all be grouped under the three general aspects, — po- litical, economic, and social; educational; and moral and religious. We are to think, then, of the New Age — its evidence, its perils, and its values; and of the New Mind needed for that age — the political, economic, and social challenge ; the educational challenge; and the moral and religious chal- lenge. But have we any right to speak of a " new age " ? Can we say that we have passed into a new age, whether for better or for worse? What is the evidence of a distinct change in the world-order, of a crisis in history, of a revolu- tion? Is there in our time anything corre- sponding to the crisis at the Christian era, for example, or at the Renaissance, and the Refor- mation, or at the French Revolution? Many men have been thinking of world reconstruc- tion. Is it more than a vain dream ? I Critical Points in Evolution To these questions it may be said, in the first place, that it is true, no doubt, that we are not to look for an absolute break in cause and effect relations m any crisis in history, however marked or disturbing. There is a continuous 16 THE NEW AGE evolution that can be more or less definitely traced. But this is not to say that evolution must be uniform, with no critical points or periods ; or that human history knows no crises that are unmistakable. No dogmatic theory of evolution can dictate the facts. II Disillusionment and Reaction Part of the Crisis But even if the possibility of outstanding crises and revolutions in human history is fully recognized, do not the disillusionment and re- action that have set in since the war, already evince that there was none too much difference among the Powers in war aims, and that we are living in the " same old world," from which we may expect no great advances or even changes ? The reality of that disillusionment and reac- tion it is certainly impossible to question. Let one recall, for example, the solemn statement of our aims by President Wilson at America's declaration of war, and see how far we are, in spite of an Allied military victory over Ger- many, from a fulfillment of those aims: There are, it may be, many months of fiery trial and sacrifice ahead of us. It is a fearful thing to lead this great peaceful people into war, ITS EVIDENCE 1 7 into the most terrible and disastrous of all wars, civilization itself seeming to be in the balance. But the right is more precious than peace, and we shall fight for the things which we have al- ways carried nearest our hearts — for democracy, for the right of those who submit to authority to have a voice in their own governments, for the rights and liberties of small nations, for a uni- versal dominion of right by such a concert of free peoples as shall bring peace and safety to all nations and make the world itself at last free. To such a task we can dedicate our lives and our fortunes, everything that we are and everything that we have, with the pride of those who know that the day has come when America is privi- leged to spend her blood and her might for the principles that gave her birth and happiness and the peace which she has treasured. God helping her, she can do no other. It was of these sentences that the London Evening Star wrote: We are not ashamed to say that these words are destined to echo through the ages and to be read by free men with grateful hearts. They fill our eyes with tears of pride and grati- tude. . . . Here and now the future of hu- manity is being shaped and moulded for all time. That was then our hope and faith. Can we hold them still? We shall have to face with some definiteness 18 THE NEW AGE of detail this general disillusionment and reac- tion which have set in, when we consider the perils of our age. Here it concerns us clearly to see that the wide-spread disillusionment and reaction, following upon so stupendous a war, and sapping our energies and our moral ambi- tions, are themselves a part of the desperate- ness of our need — a part of the evidence of the crisis of the new age, in which humanity finds itself now involved. Ill No Ordinary War This general reaction, moreover, and the sickening spectacle of the renewal of the old selfish scramble among the nations, tend to call in question the significance of the zvhole zvar. And this tendency is strengthened by a careless and undiscriminating good-nature, that cares little for ideals, and that, on the easy-going policy of letting bygones be bygones, would throw away all the lessons of the war. Even a fine and honest desire to show a spirit of Christlike forgiveness — always to be de- manded — may be unconsciously bent to a like purpose. Now one would be glad, in a discussion like this, if he could be justified in leaving the war and its issues altogether behind him. But the ITS EVIDENCE 19 Christian civilization of the world came quite too near to utter collapse in this war to war- rant such a course. We have no right to for- get the lessons of the war, if we are to under- stand at all this new age, and its imperative tasks. For it is just because this war was no ordinary war, that the human race now stands at perhaps the greatest crisis in its history. Not, then, to stir hatred and bad blood, or to keep alive the antagonisms of the war, but honestly to face essential issues, we need straightly to see what made this war so terrible and so fateful. 1. Its length, the unexampled extent to which it engulfed the world, and its desperate intensity, were all signs of its extraordinary significance. But the secret of its terror does not lie in any of these outward characteristics. 2. We come a little nearer to its deeper meaning, when we remember that one thing which made this war the most terrible of wars was because all the resources of modern science were laid under tribute for destructive pur- poses, until the world stood aghast; so that Saloman Reinach, anticipating the Peace Con- ference, was driven to say: At the future Congress, among the seats re- served for the delegates of the great Powers, one seat should remain vacant, as reserved to the 20 THE NEW AGE greatest, the most redoubtable, though youngest of Powers: science in scarlet robes. That is the new fact ; that is what diplomacy should not ig- nore; if that imminent and execrable scandal is to be averted — the whole of civilization falling a victim to science, her dearest daughter, brought forth and nurtured by her, now ready to deal her the death-blow. The all-important question is the muzzling of the mad dog. Science, as sub- servient to the will to destroy, must be put in chains; science must be exclusively adapted to the works of peace. To like effect, in recent weeks, Professor Giddings has written: More than half of the population of the world is still barbaric in feeling and in purpose. It has not become humane or peace loving. . . . Into the hands of barbarians science has placed weapons of terrible effectiveness: arts of military organization and maneuver, explosives of terrific force, deadly gases, aeroplanes and submarines. Barbarism is equipped, or soon will be equipped, to try out its plan to conquer and to dominate. It is facts like these that make the threat of war so terrible, as I have elsewhere [Funda- mental Questions, p. 219] quoted Mr. Wells as saying: The thought of war will sit like a giant over ITS EVIDENCE 21 all human affairs for the next two decades. It will say to us all : " Get your houses in order. If you squabble among yourselves, waste time, liti- gate, muddle, snatch profits and shirk obligations, I will certainly come again. I have taken all your men between eighteen and fifty, and killed and maimed such as I pleased — millions of them. I have wasted your substance contemptuously. Now you have multitudes of male children be- tween the ages of nine and nineteen running about among you, delightful and beloved boys. And behind them come millions of delightful babies. Of these I have scarcely smashed and starved a paltry hundred thousand perhaps. But go on muddling, each for himself and his parish and his family, and none for all the world, go on in the old way, stick to your rights, stick to your claims, each one of you, make no concessions and no sacrifices, obstruct, waste, squabble, and pres- ently I will come back again and take all that fresh harvest of life — all those millions that are now sweet children and dear little boys and youths — and I will squeeze it into red jam be- tween my hands, and mix it with the mud of trenches and feast on it before your eyes, even more damnably than I have done with your grown-up sons and young men. And I have taken most of your superfluities already; next time I will take your barest necessities." So — war ; and in these days of universal education the great mass of people will understand plainly now that that is his message and intention. Men who 22 THE NEW AGE cannot be swayed by the love of order and crea- tion may be swayed by the thought of death and destruction. 3. The very fact, too, that America felt compelled against all her traditions finally to come into this war in which it had no slightest political or territorial concern, is itself evidence that it had become plain practically to the en- tire American people, that this war was no ordinary war, but of the most fateful human interest; "civilization itself," in President Wilson's words, " seeming to be in the bal- ance." Mr. Hoover's cablegram to President Wil- son upon America's declaration of war, speak- ing for the members of the American Commis- sion for Relief in Belgium, was written out of such knowledge of the contending forces as scarcely another man had. It bore similar testimony to the fateful significance of this war. We wish to tell you that there is no word in your historic statement to Congress that does not find a response in all our hearts. For two and one-half years we have been obliged to remain silent witnesses of the character of the forces dominating this war. But we are now at liberty to say that, although we break with great regret ITS EVIDENCE 23 our association with many German individuals who have given sympathetic support to our work, yet your message enunciates our conviction born of our intimate experience and contact, that there is no hope for democracy or liberalism and con- sequently for the real peace and safety of our country, unless the system which brought the world into this unfathomable misery can be stamped out once for all. 4. But the heart of the matter lies even deeper than all this. Why did this war finally seem so different, for example, from the Franco-Prussian war? Why did Germany's cause come in the end to appear like a kind of embodiment of intrinsic evil? The explana- tion does not lie in the exaggerations of na- tional hates. The fact is that men felt a sort of moral horror of the German position, that meant much more than that, even when they had not thought the situation through. There need be no attempt to disguise the faults of the allied nations, or to hold them free from blame in the remoter causes of the war. Their pre- vious record had been most vulnerable. But men came gradually to see that what Germany had done was this: with her customary logical thoroughness she had taken what was worst in the selfish aggressions of the nations, and not only copied them, and justified them, but car- 24 THE NEW AGE ried them to their farthest logical conclusion in an anti-Christian and immoral philosophy of civilization, of the State, of national life, and of the world structure. And this meant in lit- eral truth a death grapple with such degree of Christian civilization as the world had thus far attained. Little by little it became clear to men that all the highest interests of humanity and even the possibility of a decent civilization were at stake in this war. One can trace with some clearness the steps which Germany had taken, for she proceeded to develop with wonted thoroughness an apolo- getic for selfish aggressive zvars as a profitable and proper business for a State. She built that apologetic, first of all, on her unspeakably arrogant view of the Germans as a super-race, so superlatively gifted that the world could afford to have the contribution of all other races blotted out; of a "Kultur" so transcendent as to make its dominance over the world the highest good of the whole human race. The expressions of this arrogance be- fore and during the war were such as to con- stitute nothing less than an indecent moral exposure of the attitude of a great people. The doctrine of the Germans as " the chosen people " was the major premise of all their fright fulness throughout the war. Anything ITS EVIDENCE 2$ that might be supposed to put this divine race in its proper place of world dominion was counted as thereby justified and sanctified. And other nations need to be sure that they, too, do not fall, in a slightly disguised form, into a like arrogance. She built her apologetic, in the second place, upon an essentially immoral theory of the uni- verse, in her doctrine of the State as above all moral obligations of every kind — as free, there- fore, absolutely without scruple to take any course that seemed selfishly profitable. There was nothing so terrible that it could not be defended by this doctrine. She built her apologetic, in the third place, upon a materialistic interpretation of evolution and " the survival of the fittest " according to which only physical force and material gains are to be taken into account, and in which might at any stage was to be taken forthwith as the proof of right. In Treitschke's words: "Among all political sins, the sin of feebleness is the most contemptible. It is the political sin against the Holy Ghost." In this threefold doctrine, it is now to be noted, Germany persistently schooled her en- tire people, until they stood as a virtual unit behind her war ambitions. In Frederick Har- rison^ searching words: 26 THE NEW AGE In all the world's history, no race has been so drilled, schooled, sermonized into a sort of in- verted religion of hate, envy, jealousy, greed, cruelty, and arrogance. Man and woman, girl and boy have been taught from childhood this inhuman vainglory and lust of power. It has grown to be their Gospel, Creed, Hymnal and Prayer Book. Britain and America cannot com- prehend how a great and intelligent people can have come to a cult so Satanic. That is a terrible indictment ; but its essential truth is evinced by the almost complete lack of any note of penitence among the German peo- ple for a frightfulness which was far worse than native barbarism — a frightfulness delib- erately adopted, scientifically developed, and philosophically defended. For a savage may have inconsistent streaks of kindness. A the- ory has no bowels of compassion. Nothing so much concerns Germany herself as utterly to repudiate her whole philosophy of national greatness. In fact, it may be doubted whether there has ever been before so conscious, deliberate, and stupendous an attempt to reverse the moral standards of the race. Kipling states the case with incisive insight when he says of the Ger- man: He thought out the hell he wished to create; ITS EVIDENCE 2^ he built it up seriously and scientifically with his best hands and brains ; he breathed into it his own spirit that it might grow with his needs; and at the hour that he judged best he let it loose on the world that till then had believed there were limits beyond which men born of women might not sin. . . . For it is the peculiar essence of German Kultur, which is the German re- ligion, that it is Germany's moral duty to break every tie, every restriction, that binds man to fellow-man, if she thinks it will pay. Therefore, all mankind are against her. Therefore, all man- kind must be against her till she learns that no race can make its way, or break its way, outside the borders of humanity. In literal truth, the worst possible thing that could have happened to the German people themselves was success in so wicked a war. On the other hand, the greatest kindness to them is that they should find that the war has been thoroughly unprofitable. But no mere sorrow for consequences will replace the neces- sity of genuine penitence. For the fruits of penitence cannot be had without penitence it- self. And one of the most sinister elements in the world's life to-day is this very general lack of penitence on the part of the German nation, not so much for particular deeds, as for their whole anti-Christian philosophy of na- 28 THE NEW AGE tional life. For it suggests the possibility of a like war to follow. One is most reluctant to say these things in times of peace. But to forget essential moral differences is to forget the great ends for which our dead gave their lives, and to dishonour their memory — If ye break faith with us who die, We shall not sleep tho' poppies grow In Flanders' fields. Moreover, to forget essential moral differ- ences is finally to cry, " Peace, peace, when there is no peace." We may not " prophesy smooth things " here. To gloss over the plain fact that this war has been in essence a head-on collision of irreconcilable ideals not only helps nothing, it confuses the issue, and it destroys from the beginning the possibility of the res- toration of honest relations. Even decent re- lations between nations on the German theory are simply impossible. Unless, therefore, the whole cause of the Allies has been a false one ; unless the human race is passively to resign itself to repetitions of this war on a still more terrible scale, truly friendly and cooperative relations with the Central Powers imperatively demand that Germany renounce forever her entire philosophy of the State, and come into ITS EVIDENCE 29 some honest agreement with the Allies as to the fundamental aims and standards of civili- zation and of international relations. This is what the war at bottom meant. This is what we mean, too, when we say that the supremely significant fact about this war is that on the part of the Allies it was a war for fundamentally moral and religious aims; that it was a war for the conviction that the moral law extends to nations as truly as to individ- uals; that the principles of morals and Chris- tianity either has no warrant at all, or holds in full force for classes and nations and races. IV The Changing World-Order But it is not only this epoch-making charac- ter of the great war which has brought a new crisis in our time. Besides the war's awesome application of modern science to destructive purposes and the relatively new immoral phi- losophy of the State and of national life, that aimed at reversing the moral standards of the race, there are other characteristics of our time which indicate a changing world-order and so something that may fittingly be called a new age. 1. Its characteristics. It is possible, at this point, to do little more than name some of the 30 THE NEW AGE outstanding characteristics of this changing world-order. These characteristics may be said to be: the constantly intensifying world solidarity; the prodigious increase in the last century through modern science of the world's resources of power and wealth and knowledge ; forced scientific cooperation and organization on a scale and to a degree never before seen; the almost world-wide trend toward democracy and universal education; the establishment of a League of Nations ; a steadily growing inter- nationalism; and the deepening sense of the necessity of larger and more significant goals than organized humanity has yet cherished. These characteristics all bear witness to the reality of a new age. 2. The World Still Plastic. We may also hope that with these characteristics, the world may prove still plastic enough to give assur- ance of greater achievements than have yet come out of the war. Even the strong reactionary tendency seen in many quarters cannot wholly escape some vision of the fact that " Humpty-Dumpty " can- not be put together again, and that in any case all of the old is not good enough to deserve preservation. Reaction cannot, one would think, be permanently blind to the constantly recurring conflict, in which progress is always ITS EVIDENCE 3 1 involved, — the conflict between " historic legit- imate right " and " abstract natural right " ; so that mere reaction is self-confessed wrong. On the other hand, there is a wide-spread tendency to call everything into question. Per- haps Laski does not exaggerate this trend when he writes : We have concentrated into the fury of the past five years a generation of eager experience. Cer- tainly no such intellectual upheaval has been known since the spectacle of Revolutionary France burst upon a world divided between fear and admiration. Over and above the spectacle of a world amazed at the prevalence of dissent from acknowledged dogma in art and science and religion, we have a wide-spread attack upon so- cial notions not a decade ago conceived as funda- mental. . . . Every generation must think out anew the conditions of its freedom. . . . What we fail consistently to realize is how much the overwhelming force of society is always opposed to novelty. We live by our routines. [The New Republic, Feb. 18, 1920.] While we can be sure, then, that both the radical and conservative instincts are at work, we may hope that we shall not be so mastered by old habit and routine as to fail to make full use of such plasticity as exists in the world- order for a great forward advance. From this 32 THE NEW AGE point of view, Bolshevism — however one inter- prets it — may have a world service to render, in compelling us all to face new problems, and to refuse to accept shallow, easy-going solu- tions. V The Significance of These After-the-war Days The simple fact is, that one writes in these times under the constant sense of the inade- quacy of human language to express either the possible losses or the possible gains of these fateful days. Mr. Wells made Mr. Britling say early in the war: " This is the end and the beginning of an age. This is something far greater than the French Revolution . . . and we live in it." If that was true when Mr. Wells wrote those words, it is still more true now. For we are only beginning to see that the world has been shaken to its centre in this war, as it was not shaken even by the French Revolution. And in these days Dawson's words yet hold: " We are living at a time when days and weeks have the fullness and significance of years and decades." The immeasurable cost of the peace which has come makes any other view a blasphemy. Let one make real to himself the cost in the ITS EVIDENCE 33 treasure of wealth, handicapping constructive enterprises of good for decades to come. Let him put vividly before himself in terms of in- dividuals the sacrifice of life. Let him remem- ber that France alone lost in those killed in battle one million, four hundred thousand men. Great Britain's number of slain brings the total, simply for those two nations, up to more than two millions. Russia estimates a toll of not less than seven millions. The Copenhagen Society for the Study of the Consequences of the War concludes that the total cost of the world war in lives has reached the appalling figure of 35,380,000. And this is to say noth- ing of those other millions of wrecked lives and wrecked homes. Well may one repeat Simons' words: " Millions have died that the trampling war madness might end. It is better to see that they have not died in vain than to be- wail their dying." If, then, we are to keep our faith at all in a God of truth and righteousness, in the fundamental honesty of the universe, we must believe that such unimaginable sacrifices have not been poured out in vain. No small advances will answer the moral demands which men will here inevitably make. Rupert Brooke, the brilliant young Briton, who himself a little later in the war joined the company of those whom he calls "the rich 34 THE NEW AGE dead," shadowed forth both their untold sacri- fices and their divine gifts to men, in words which are a perpetual challenge to the living, to keep these gifts true as the permanent spir- itual fruit of the war: Blow out, you bugles, over the rich Dead ! There's none of these so lonely and poor of old, But, dying, has made us rarer gifts than gold. These laid the world away ; poured out the red Sweet wine of youth ; gave up the years to be Of work and joy, and that unhoped serene, That men call age; and those who would have been, Their sons, they gave, their immortality. Blow, bugles, blow! They brought us, for our dearth Holiness, lacked so long, and Love, and Pain ; Honour has come back, as a king, to earth, And paid his subjects with a royal wage; And Nobleness walks in our ways again ; And we have come into our heritage. And for the civilians, a cartoon in the Chi- cago Evening Post strikes home to every thoughtful man. It represents " our better selves," from the vantage ground of unstinted, unselfish service, looking back at " our old selfish existence " in its scramble for gain, and asking musingly: "Is it possible we will go back to it?" And the significance of the ITS EVIDENCE 35 question lies not simply in the deterioration of the individual there threatened, but in the un- speakable losses for the race so involved. For we have now come to the most critical time of all in this whole world struggle. Have we really won this war? That is still to be determined. There is such a thing as a deci- sive military victory, coupled at the same time with an equally decisive defeat of the high aims for which the war was fought. If we reinstate in power, under other names, the same great evils against which we fought, these millions will have died in vain, and we shall have a still more terrible war to fight over again in the years ahead. And these after- the-war days bear depressing witness how eas- ily our frail human nature slumps back into the old ways — the old indulgences, the old an- tagonisms, the old injustices. No wonder that Lloyd George said so pas- sionately to a labour deputation in the midst of the war: " Don't always be thinking of getting back to where you were before the war. Get a really new world. . . . The readier we are to cut away from the past, the better we are likely to succeed. Think out new ways, new methods of dealing with old problems. Get a new world/' My chief fear for all the later months of the 36 THE NEW AGE war was that when peace came, it would come suddenly (as it did), and that we should all be so war-weary, so sick and disgusted with the whole strife and its consequences, so anxious to get back to the old ways, and to any kind of a patched-up peace, that we should nervelessly let slip out of our hands the largest single op- portunity that the race has ever had for a great advance. Just here lies the significance of these after-the-war days. LECTURE II THE NEW AGE: ITS PERILS LECTURE II THE NEW AGE: ITS PERILS IF we have, then, to reckon in some real sense with a new age — with days critic- ally significant for all civilization and for the vital interests of all men, we need clearly to see both the perils and the values of this new age, and to withstand those perils and to carry on and fulfill those values. For, speaking only for our own country, it must be frankly said that America is in far more danger of essential failure now in these after-the-war responsibili- ties than in the time of war. First of all, what are the chief perils that men confront in these days following upon the greatest revolution the world has ever seen, days that ought to be days of vision, of con- structive imagination, of girded wills, and of high and world-wide accomplishment? As has already been intimated, all the perils of this critical time may be summed up in one — the peril of letting slip what is probably the largest single opportunity that the race has ever had for a great advance. But this inclusive 39 40 THE NEW AGE peril would itself be the result of certain spe- cific dangers now threatening the world's life —the perils of an inevitable inheritance of evil from the war; of disillusionment; of reaction; of destructive revolution. I The Perils of the Inevitable Inheritance of Evil from the War 1. First of all, in the evil inheritance, this most terrible of wars was marked by frightful destructivcncss in every sphere. Just because it was, as we saw, no ordinary war, there was such a massing of all destructive agencies as left no realm of good unharmed, whether property, or human life, or constructive enter- prise of civilization, or beauty or friendly rela- tions. This destruction and wasting bank- ruptcy threaten to lay a heavy burden on generations yet unborn and become a direct handicap on every good cause. 2. Indeed, the direct toll of the war was so intolerable as to bring all decent civilization to the verge of collapse. Count Okuma deliber- ately declared during the war that the Orient was seeing nothing less than the death of Euro- pean civilization. And in multitudes of situa- tions the condition of things is distinctly worse now than at the time of the armistice. Pro- ITS PERILS 41 fessor Ward hardly overstates the case when he says: " Whatever any war may have done for progress in the past, it is almost practically certain that the universal war of modern times, both in its extent and in its nature, is humanity committing suicide." [The New Social Order, p. 377.] It may be doubted if civilization could outlive even one more such war. So real are the perils. 3. Another evil inheritance from this war is the infectious spread of the intoxication of power. The use of force by the Central Powers on the most stupendous scale the world had ever seen, drove the Allied Powers to a like dependence on force. Nations became drunk with power. For it is not only true that tyrants use power, but that unlimited power breeds tyrants. Such tremendous and irre- sponsible power as this war made possible cre- ates the appetite for more power, and like a drug undermines character in man and nation. The curse of this intoxication of power is likely to rest like a spell upon the nations for years to come. 4. This intoxication of power, moreover, is only part of that Prussianising of the nations — even the Allies — that was almost inevitably involved in the conflict with Prussia. If, as the philosophers contend, there is a certain 42 THE NEW AGE well-nigh unavoidable approximation to that against which we fight, a part of the victory of the Teutons will be that even in defeat they communicated to the Allies the fever that was in themselves. 5. But one of the worst elements in our evil inheritance from the war is the wide- spread tendency to carry over into times of peace the moods and methods of war — to apply war measures to peace conditions. America has witnessed since the armistice increasing violation of fundamental liberties, such as, it would seem, should call forth protest from every true friend of democracy and freedom. As Mr. Devine puts it: " Freedom of speech, of press and of assembly is denied to those to whom we do not wish to be just, and the denial comes not from revolutionists but from fright- ened conservatives." There has been an all too ready appeal to force, to raiding, to injunc- tions, to illegal deportations. Compulsions, hardly justified in a free country even in war time, have been used without compunction to deal with problems of peace. It is refreshing to have Judge Bourquin, a Federal Judge of Montana, in a trial of an alien arrested without warrant and ordered deported, speak out in no uncertain tones to the whole country on the issues involved: ITS PERILS 43 The alien who advocates the doctrines revealed in the case, is a far less danger to this country than are the parties who in violation of law and order, of humanity and justice, have brought him to deportation. They are the spirit of intolerance incarnate, and the most alarming manifestation in America to-day. Thoughtful men who love this country and its institutions see more danger in them and in their practices, and the govern- ment by hysteria that they stimulate, than in the miserable, baited " Reds " that are the ostensible occasion of them all. [The New Republic, March 31, 1920.] In the language of Judge Anderson of the United States District Court of Boston, " It is no light thing to deprive men of their liberty. " According to the impartial and dispassionate testimony of the investigators of the Social Service Commission of the Federal Council of Churches, during the steel strike in Pennsyl- vania, the most elementary freedom of speech and freedom of assembly, even where there was no violence, were interfered with. In the same strike, the press was so manipulated that it is the simple truth to say that the people were not allowed to have the facts necessary to a correct judgment. For example, the report of the Senate Committee upon the strike was so presented in the great body of the daily press as to seem much more unfavourable to the 44 THE NEW AGE strikers than in fact it was. Only a few of the more independent weekly journals gave both sides of the controversy. To strike thiis at the sources of knowledge in the press — it is not to be forgotten — is to imperil all demo- cratic government. Moreover the expulsion of the five Socialists from the New York Assembly and the sequel in the abominable Lusk bills, with their pro- posals to dictate opinions to citizens, are so hideous an invasion of rights in a representa- tive government as to make one feel that our national humiliation at home is to be made to match our humiliation abroad. For the action of the New York Assembly means nothing less than that — in another's vigorous language — " it has denied to a large group of American citizens the exercise of the right of political representation because it does not agree with their political and economic opinions. In so far as its action prevails, the State of New York has ceased to be a democracy. ,, [Nezv Republic, April 14, p. 200.] No wonder that Mr. Hughes and the New York Bar Associa- tion protested ! The standing committee of the Association on the character of proposed legis- lation, it is also to be noted, speaks out in no uncertain terms upon the Lusk bills. And this testimony from lawyers upon this point is par- ITS PERILS 45 ticularly significant, for as a body lawyers are likely to be pretty conservative. 6. As a part of the inheritance of evil from the war must be reckoned also the inescapable reaction from the stress and strain and excite- ment of war. It was to be expected. All men feel it in some form. Each class is inclined to think that it itself has earned and now de- serves special consideration. There is wide- spread distaste for common peaceful work and for moderate profits. Habits of industry and thrift have been broken down. Passionate pursuit of pleasure and of uncontrolled self- indulgence has become epidemic, as even our comic papers point out. These are only a few particulars in the natural general demoraliza- tion of life which comes through war. This demoralization is an omnipresent peril to be overcome. 7. Nor in our joy over the way in which the great cause of war called forth a ringing response from soldiers and nation alike may we shut our eyes to the perils which the war had for the inner life of the soldier — not only the more obvious coarser temptations of im- purity, obscenity and profanity; but the subtler temptations of distance from home, of loneliness, of the abnormal absence of the so- ciety of good women, of facing at some points 46 THE NEW AGE the quite different standards of another people, of much idleness, of intolerable monotony, of dishonesty through the breaking down of the sense of private property, of the reduced neces- sity for the man's own initiative, of the moral and religious shock that comes from familiar- ity with the inevitable brutalities of war. Some of these conditions have deeply marked many men, and made more difficult their ad- justment to these days of peace. Such abnor- mal conditions as war produces can hardly fail often to work abnormal results. 8. And when one turns to note the wider harvest of evil from the war, he may accept the careful judgment of one of the ablest of American correspondents abroad writing soon after the armistice: The spectacle of European ruin is simply ap- palling. Nineteenth century civilization has broken down. . . . There is a collapse of human moral energy, a revival of the primitive barbaric instincts and the fierce endeavour to have one's little private will by force. . . . Up through the European chaos is surely creeping the menace not of socialism but of Bolshevism, which is the revengeful shadow of reckless modern materialism. And one of the most thoughtful of our American editors adds in comment: ITS PERILS 47 In spite, that is, of the victory over Germany, and as a direct consequence of the use of war on such a destructive scale in the interest of civiliza- tion, the very tissue of civilization is suffering from corruption and disease. This American judgment is confirmed from an English point of view, when, in terms per- haps too pessimistic, Mr. Churchill feels com- pelled to say that the state of the world at the present time in no way betokens the endurance of peace, except from the point of view that the fighters are very much exhausted. People talk about the world on the morrow of the Great War as if somehow or other we had all been transported into a higher sphere. We have been transformed into a sphere which is definitely lower from almost every point of view than that which we had attained in the days be- fore Armageddon. . . . There never was a time when more complete callousness and indif- ference to human life and suffering were ex- hibited by the great communities all over the world. On the expanse of Europe an insidious seething scene of misery has formed — a malevo- lence which is not for the moment dangerous, be- cause it proceds only on the basis of exhaustion of a kind that the world has never before recorded. And the casual way in which three or four 48 THE NEW AGE premiers — ignoring the great bulk of the na- tions — are now parcelling out the spoils and determining the fate of the world, gives small ground for expectation of just and permanent settlements from the war. These are some of the perils involved in our inheritance of evil from the war. With all possible qualifications, one can hardly fail to recognize the gravity of the perils which the war has left us. II The Perils of Disillusionment To this direct inheritance of evil from the war must be added, in the second place, the perils of disillusionment, sapping courage and faith. For this direct inheritance of evil tended at once to counteract hoped-for gains, and so to lead to disillusionment and depres- sion, if not to cynicism. The historical situation at Paris after the armistice brought this disillusionment to a cli- max, certainly for many of the most thought- ful Americans. In the first place, there had been no mistak- ing the rare idealism with which America came into the war. For America made her decision on high ideal, and essentially Christian grounds. Not for territorial or commercial ITS PERILS 49 gains; abjuring all idea of later indemnities; practically unmoved, it must be stated, by thoughts even of self-defense; after every righteous effort to preserve peaceful relations with Germany had been exhausted; when the greatness of the issues had become plain; in the face of fixed American traditions ; in mar- vellously unified fashion; and across three thousand miles of sea; America threw her whole self, with her every resource, into this struggle, for the sake of righteousness, of hu- manity, of civilization. It was a singularly impressive moral movement. No wonder that the distinguished litterateur, Hughes le Roux, voiced his conviction, in an address at the American Military Headquarters in France, that history had never seen a great nation moved to war by so completely unselfish and idealistic motives. In the second place, from the time America entered the war up to the armistice, President Wilson was recognised and zvelcomed as inter- preter and protagonist of the cause of the Allies. He was in truth the liberal leader of the world. The influence of the fourteen points upon the armistice and in the Near East was immense, as the inquiries of the Commis- sion on Mandates in Turkey made certain, and far greater than it is now the fashion to admit. 50 THE NEW AGE Class and party and national selfishness — in the appalling strain of the Great War — were in abeyance, and men were glad to accept Presi- dent Wilson as their spokesman because he made them believe that there was in the holo- caust of war something greatly worth fighting for. In the third place, President Wilson's influ- ence and his generally idealistic attitude con- tinued to prevail in large degree in the Peace Conference through the time of the adoption of the Covenant of the League of Nations; and forward-looking men could still believe that the foundations for a great new world- order were being laid, and could rejoice that they had lived to see the day when so noble a document could be made the practical outcome of a world war. But when the nations turned to the actual making of treaties — the immense difficulties of which should not be forgotten — it became rap- idly clear that the selfish scramble among the nations had set in. The Allies were glad to use Mr. Wilson as an instrument for the ac- complishment of their war aims. But they found it singularly easy to forget him and his principles when the war was over. Even in the course of the war, selfish unjustifiable se- cret treaties had been made. And now men ITS PERILS 51 witnessed, for example, the Japanese treatment of Shantung; Italy's attitude toward the Jugo- slavs; the excessive demands of the French; Britain's absorption of Egypt and Persia, and her general insatiable appetite for more terri- tory ; the utter ignoring by both the British and the French of the solemn promises to the Arabs in the Anglo-French Declaration of Novem- ber 9, 1918; and the mistaken provincial selfish patriotism of the American Senate in the at- tempt to return to America's old isolation, to repudiate the rare idealism with which America came into the war, and basely to shirk her world responsibilities. Because of all this, disillusionment, depres- sion and almost cynicism spread like a plague among many of the best of America's repre- sentatives abroad. One could feel it in the very air of Paris. Men asked themselves in amazement: Is all this not simply the spirit and methods of the old condemned diplomacy? Is there any real difference in fundamental ideals? Are these the aims for which America fought ? Have any of us, indeed, sufficiently taken into account what this disillusionment meant to our young soldiers, so that many of them almost inevitably felt betrayed, and thus have become embittered ? There followed, naturally enough, something like an utter breakdown of faith in 52 THE NEW AGE the Allies, and among the Allies in one an- other. And this general breakdown of faith in one another, in the dealing of the nations with one another, is in itself a national and world calamity — a moral world panic and the gravest peril of our time. For where trust has vanished, great cooperative goals for humanity are made impossible. And so faith and cour- age fail. These are the perils of disillusionment. Ill The Perils of Reaction When face to face with the evil inheritance from the war, and with disillusionment as to anticipated gains, it is natural for men to seek to scuttle back to the old goods — to look long- ingly back to the flesh pots of Egypt, to the pre-war world with its frequent comfort, its openness everywhere to travel, and its fairly decent world relations. All this, men tend to set over against the present almost impossible economic conditions, and the present suspicion, fear, ill-will, and threat of Bolshevism and mob-rule. The thought of reaction, thus, the desire simply to bring back the old situation, rather than to venture on a world untried, is almost inevitable. We have the perils of reac- tion to reckon with. ITS PERILS 53 1. This tendency to simple reaction affects us all, almost against our will. There is, to begin with, the natural reaction from the physical and moral strain of the war — a kind of pathological fatigue that catches us un- awares. There is, too, the lazy longing for the ease of the old ways, the old routine, the worn ruts, that makes us impatient of the per- sistent demands of any new regime. There is, also, the mental indolence of " old-fogyism," as James calls it, that besets all men — the un- willingness to face new issues, to see them as new, to call them by their right names, and to adjust to them — instead of clapping old labels upon them and putting them away in the old pigeon-holes, and leaving one's own mind un- disturbed. Everybody hates mental house- cleaning, and there is never a good time for it. To ask a whole generation — or at least the leaders — to undertake this repugnant task with energies already well-nigh spent, seems almost hopeless. Moreover the psychological mood in which men find themselves after this deso- lating war is unfavourable to any decisions — to say nothing of the trenchant and sweeping decisions now called for. The prevalent mood is rather that of seeking to evade all decisions and responsibilities, of substituting for action fatal facility in finding excuses for inaction. 54 THE NEW AGE Nor is it only wearied or enfeebled will that tends to reaction. The world-situation is so complex, its evils so threatening, and its prob- lems and tasks so overwhelming, that men naturally distrust their own insights and fear new and untried ways. Who shall declare, for example, the real significance of the Russian revolution and the Bolshevist movement ? Who shall lay the foundations in righteousness of a Balkan settlement? Who shall point the sure way to industrial righteousness and peace? Who, in short, knows the road to that diviner world for which we really fought this war? Not only our paralysis of will, but our igno- rance, too, thus tends to reaction — to a choice of familiar goods, of lesser value than of the greater goods of a new and unknown world. 2. Naturally this tendency to reaction which besets us all is much accentuated in those classes zvho had a privileged lot in the pre-zvar order. Many of those, thus privileged, are honestly blind to the realities of the situation. They have asked themselves no searching questions as to unearned special privileges. They truly believe that they are the most im- portant people, and best fitted to control, and that they constitute the bulwarks of civilization against the threatening tide of Bolshevism. Their reactionism is blind but honest and in- ITS PERILS 55 dignant. It is all the more dangerous on that account. 3. But reaction has its chief support in human selfishness — class selfishness, partisan selfishness, and national selfishness; though selfishness of another kind may also lead to revolution. Class selfishness leads to reaction, when the class has especially benefited by the old order. It wants to retain its old position of privilege. It deliberately uses the fears of mob rule to maintain its own rule. It stands for no true democracy, and so does not hesitate in time of peace to violate the freedom of the people by measures essentially belonging to war and of doubtful warrant even then. Such class-selfish reactionaries inevitably sow the seed of the very revolution they profess to fear. Partisan selfishness, too, is capable of great treacheries both to the nation and to the world. Few more shameful exhibitions of such selfish- ness have been seen than in America in recent months. The whole blame does not belong to any one party. Both parties have shown a willingness to sacrifice world interests unspeak- ably precious, rather than that the other party should share in the credit of large achievement. It is hardly open to doubt that vastly greater results, in line with America's aims in this 56 THE NEW AGE war, could have been achieved in Paris, if our conferees could have had behind them a united nation. All too largely the party leaders have cared for nothing but their own control. Their general attitude, as reflected in the Senate, has been thoroughly reactionary. They have shown no willingness honestly to face the new issues raised by the war. They have been, rather, quite ready to make the gravest world- issues a football of party politics, and so basely to repudiate America's highest moral achieve- ment — the rare idealism with which she came into the war. For they put their country — that had won highest honour — to black shame in the eyes of all the nations by making selfish national interests supreme, by advocating self- ish and cowardly return to the old isolation, and by so shirking altogether its fair share in world responsibilities. Was America's politi- cal leadership ever more nearly bankrupt, or she herself more humiliated? As to national selfishness, the discussion of the Paris situation should have already made clear how reactionary it is, — how inevitably it harks back to an old world of selfish intrigue, and stands square athwart the path to anything like a brotherhood of the nations. For the Allies were fighting in the war against aggres- sive ruthless selfishness in the Central Powers. ITS PERILS 57 It is moral stultification to fall into a like atti- tude themselves, even if the selfish greed is somewhat modified. Moreover, there is no hope of the new and righteous world of our dreams by the way of national selfishness. That is a contradiction in terms. This war has made some demonstra- tions in the field of national morals, and one of them is the demonstration of the ultimate stu- pidity of national as well as of individual self- ishness. Contrast, for example, America's present immeasurable loss of prestige with its honour in coming into the war. And national selfishness not only betrays the individual na- tion which cherishes it; it betrays as well the whole brotherhood of nations. Only by un- selfish cooperation of the nations on a gigantic scale was civilization saved in this war. Are we to trust national selfishness now to pre- serve it? IV The Perils of Destructive Revolution But selfishness may lead to destructive revo- lution, as well as to reaction, and we must reckon with the entirely possible perils of such revolution. Class selfishness on the part of the unprivileged may be as dangerous to hu- man progress through destructive revolution 58 THE NEW AGE as class selfishness on the part of the privileged through sheer reaction. The rule of no one class — privileged or un- privileged — is democracy. For such class rule is neither just to all the people, nor even good for the ruling class itself. Professor Rausch- enbusch points out in a striking passage the in- evitable tragedy of swollen fortunes: [Chris- tianising the Social Order, p. 309.] The social order as it now is places its bene- ficiaries in a position where they cannot escape wrong and unhappiness. If they obey its laws, they enrich their own life, but at the expense of others, and in the end their apparent advantage turns out to be their own curse. They escape from the necessity of work, but in time idleness undoes either them or their descendants. Their wealth seems to promise large means of doing good, but they find their philanthropy a heavy burden on themselves and a questionable blessing for others. Their money gives them power, but that power is an intoxicant that undermines their sense of human values. It piles up their pleas- ures, but the more they surfeit, the less pleasure do they feel. It offers them free scope for their intellectual life, but it rusts the mainspring of their intellect. It holds out happiness for their families, and does its best to ruin them. It as- sures them of security, and makes them camp among enemies. It increases their sense of strength by surrounding them with inferiors, and ITS PERILS 59 thereby relaxes their virility. It forces leader- ship on them, and yet chills the love of the people which is the condition of all leadership. It seems to win all the powers of this world to their side, but it puts them on the wrong side in the final verdict of God, of humanity, and of their own souis. That is the tragedy of Dives. If the privileged class have their " tragedy of Dives," which they cannot escape, we may be sure that the rule of the proletariat would have another tragedy of its own. For if there are any moral laws at all, selfishness, wherever found, carries in itself a seed of death. So that a purely class-selfish revolution would finally betray its own creators. But the way to its overthrow might be a long and bloody way. The best and only final defense against a destructive revolution — it behooves us all to remember — is not force, never force, but thor- oughgoing justice to all men, with whatever radical changes in all our theories and systems that may be found ultimately to involve. We should all be getting ready for a far more radical democracy than the world has yet seen ; — especially those of us who have been among the more favoured in our present social order. For, as Kidd long ago pointed out in his Social Evolution, two things make for social prog- 60 THE NEW AGE ress in the history of the race: the growing power of the unprivileged classes to seize some juster share in the advantages of the commu- nity; and the growing conviction, on the part of the privileged, that they themselves are not justly entitled to the measure of privilege they have had. Both these causes are now at work, and the war has definitely increased both. We have to reckon with that situation. In the first place, the war has demonstrated as never before the worth and the power of the common man of every race. In common jus- tice he has earned new rights. It is well for society not to forget these facts. As Professor Ward puts it: The growing power of the working class is beyond dispute the outstanding fact in human relationships. The question now is whether this self-conscious, self-dependent working class is going to seek only freedom and power for itself, or whether it will seek the emancipation and development of all humanity. In the second place, the war has forced many questions concerning the righteousness of our present social order upon the consciousness of many of us who are more or less favoured by that order. We may not feel ourselves very wise in the economic field, but we cannot per- ITS PERILS 6l suade ourselves of the decent justice of much that now is. The inequalities of every kind are too drastic. They mock us at every hand. Take, for example, the single fact that, before the war, more than one-half of the families of the United States had a yearly income of only $800, or less. It is not a question of individ- uals, but of a system in which we are all in- volved. One of our most thoughtful students of the social order thus expresses his own sense of the gravity of the situation at this point: The capitalist order has yet to face the con- science of mankind when the common intelligence has fully grasped the significance of the fact that in every nation war profits far exceeded those of peace, that the war occasioned the greatest in- crease of private fortunes ever known. This fact fully reveals the moral nature of a system which makes profits even out of death and dishonour, which capitalizes the supreme tragedy of the world as it capitalizes its laughter and its joy, which proposes to draw interest forever on the millions of youth who now lie in the battle-fields of Europe when they might be helping to make a new world. Along with this fact must be put another. Of the several forces which operated to defeat the hope of those who saw a new international order coming out of the war, not the least was the unconscious influence of the present financial 62 THE NEW AGE system and the actual intrigues of its chief manip- ulators and beneficiaries. On the one hand was the predatory attitude of nations whose economic life is organized around the principle of aggres- sion, whose leaders were face to face with the necessity of answering to the common people for the promises they had made concerning the benefits to be derived from victory. On the other hand was the need of collecting the interest on international debts and maintaining the sanctity of the right of the money lender to have his pound of flesh. To these two necessities the interests of humanity were sacrificed. [Ward, The New Social Order, p. 367.] The adequate solution here is not easy to find; but we can be perfectly certain that sim- ply going on in the age-long conventional way to add to the burdens of the masses of the people is no solution at all, and only invites revolution. LECTURE III THE NEW AGE: ITS VALUES LECTURE III THE NEW AGE: ITS VALUES REAL and great as are the perils which confront us in the new age, and im- perative as it is squarely to face them, they constitute, after all, only one side of the world situation. For there are also great values to be counted upon, and to be used to the full. And we may include under these values of the new age all the forces which may help to that great advance, that ought to follow from the war: the values involved in the out- standing characteristics of the present world- order; the moral demonstrations of the war, as they bear on the continued progress of the race; and the most significant ideal achieve- ments of the war. I The Values Involved in the Characteristics of the Present World-Order We are first to consider the helpful trends involved in the outstanding characteristics of 65 66 THE NEW AGE the present world-order. Of these character- istic world phenomena, two — the war's de- structive use of modern science, and the rela- tively new relentless immoral philosophy of the State and of national life — are utterly hostile to a truly Christian civilization, and have been already dealt with. Three others — world solidarity; the pro- digiously increased resources of power and wealth and knowledge made possible through modern science; and the forced cooperation — are ambiguous in their character. For, as the war has shown, they may be used for good or evil. They are problems for the ideal interests to solve, powerful forces to be mastered. And yet they are all so readily usable for good that they may be unhesitatingly classed among the great helpful trends of the age. The four others named — the world-wide trend toward democracy and universal educa- tion ; the establishment of a League of Nations to enforce peace, even granting its limitations ; the steadily growing internationalism ; and the deepening sense of the necessity of a larger and more significant goal for social progress — we may believe will positively help to a more Christian civilization, to a new epoch for hu- manity. 1. First of all, there is a constantly intensi- ITS VALUES 67 fying world solidarity. Men are called to live a world-life as never before, for the world is increasingly one. Improved methods of trans- portation and communication — no one of them more than one hundred years old — have in- sured it. We are habituated to migrations, compared to which great historic racial migra- tions were insignificant. The races are min- gled in a way that intensifies all race problems. The spread of Western civilization all over the world has forced in no small degree both a commercial and an intellectual solidarity, bringing everywhere the challenge of the scien- tific spirit and of some measure of the social consciousness. The press is making men at remote distances think and feel together. Wireless telegraphy and wireless telephony give promise of the day when all men shall be in touch with one another the world over. Life has a complexity of relations not to be escaped. The war so demonstrated this solidarity of the world as to have compelled America to abandon its settled policy of isolated neutrality, and to champion the cause of the Allies in its larger aspects as unmistakably its own cause. This growing solidarity, too, and the sense of it have been greatly intensified by the events of the war. The war has proved the oneness 68 THE NEW AGE of the earth's life. We cannot escape it, try as we will. Henceforth, nothing significant can occur anywhere and not affect the whole world. From now on all peoples are visibly members one of another. While this gives immense possible power to the forces of evil, it gives a like power to the forces of good, and the consciousness of soli- darity can hardly help sobering the passion of selfishness, and the closer fellowship involved can hardly help creating a better understanding among the nations. Now, if this solidarity of the world is mastered by the forces of right- eousness, then we may look forward to a life larger, more complex, richer, more significant than men have ever yet known, — a life to which all races and nations shall contribute their best. For, of that new City of God, it could then be truly said: " They shall bring the glory and honour of the nations into it." For such a mastered and glorified world-soli- darity we may hope: for it we must be ready. 2. In the second place, through the growth of modern science, there has been in the last century a prodigious increase in the world's resources of pozver and zvealth and knozvledge, constituting again a great challenge to the moral and religious forces. That these re- sources were far greater than men thought, ITS VALUES 69 and that they can be used for the most hideous wrong, this war clearly demonstrated. And it was not less a demonstration, that unless civ- ilization itself is to come to an end the world must learn to bring these resources under moral control. The very power of these re- sources both for good and evil forced the war upon the race, and its issues will not be finally settled except through a reassertion of the moral mastery of all resources and forces. To be true to that requirement will demand stern self- judgment on the part of all the nations. Yet modern science has enormous help to offer to the forces of righteousness through the wealth and power made available by its pro- gressive conquest over nature, and especially through the application of the scientific spirit and method in both world-wide and intensified and concentrated surveys for the sake of the social, moral and religious progress of the race. For good intention, moral indignation and so- cial passion, imperative as they are, in them- selves solve nothing. In complex and difficult times like these we need a conscience enlight- ened as well as sensitive; a will that not only means well but is willing patiently to study and obey the laws of the universe of God in which we are called to realize our righteous purposes. 3. In the third place, forced scientific CO- 70 THE NEW AGE operation and organization, already becoming characteristic of the world-order before the war, were during the war carried out on a scale and to a degree never before seen. The very solidarity of the world implies it. The exigencies of the war forced cooperation to a far greater extent, both on the individual bel- ligerents and on groups of belligerents. The degree to which we must cooperate, whether we will or no, was to be seen, too, in the way in which the belligerents even in war applied the results of the scientific work of their ene- mies. And the lessons of the war are certain to compel on the part of individual nations, in the stern conditions following the war, rational co-working on a scale never before prevailing in times of peace. There has even occurred what Mr. Wells has called " a demilitarization of war." The dependence in the war upon engineers of every sort, upon railroad operators and commercial organizers and food directors and providers is all evidence of this demilitarization. This seems to promise for the future " not so much the conversion of men into soldiers as the so- cialization of the economic organization of the country with a view to both national and inter- national necessities. We do not want to turn a chemist or a photographer into a little figure ITS VALUES 71 like a lead soldier, moving mechanically at the word of command, but we do want to make his chemistry or photography swiftly available if the national organization is called upon to fight. We have discovered that the modern economic organization is in itself a fighting machine." This has a real element of encour- agement in it, for it suggests that where the needs of peace are completely provided for there is already comparative preparedness for the necessities of war. 4. A fourth characteristic of this changing world-order is the unmistakable almost world- wide trend toward democracy and universal education. Every nation, even in Asia, except Afghanistan, is living under some form of constitution. China, with its immense terri- tory and population, has become republican, even if unstably so. The Russian revolution, in spite of the grave anxieties it now stirs, was a prodigious achievement in itself and pro- phetic of great changes elsewhere. Even Japan, which followed so closely the Prussian model in her government, has made real prog- ress toward a more democratic policy. Of the general democratic gains of the war Mr. Hoover has this to say : We went into the war to destroy autocracy as 72 THE NEW AGE a menace to our own and all other democracies. If we had not come into the war every inch of European soil to-day would be under autocratic government. . . . Out of this victory has come the destruction of the four great autoc- racies in Germany, Russia, Turkey and Austria and the little autocracy in Greece. New democ- racies have sprung into being in Poland, Finland, Letvia, Lithuania, Esthonia, Czecho-Slovakia, Greater Serbia, Greece, Siberia, and even Ger- many and Austria have established democratic governments. Beyond these a host of small re- publics, such as Armenia, Georgia, Azerbaijan and others, have sprung up, and again as a result of this great world movement the constitutions of Spain, Rumania, and even England, have made a final ascent to complete franchise and democracy, although they still maintain a symbol of royalty. . . . The world to-day, except for a comparatively few reactionary and com- munistic autocracies, is democratic. Everywhere the war still bids fair, with sim- ple justice, to extend the suffrage and the recognition of the rights of the common people among all the belligerents. Situations incon- sistent with an essentially democratic view- point men more and more feel are not to be defended, even where permitted. Now this democratic trend has certainly been greatly strengthened by the war, for the ITS VALUES 73 war has brought both a new sense of power to the common man himself, and a new faith in him. Both facts inevitably mean a more thor- oughgoing democracy if ultimate revolution is to be avoided. Involved in this trend toward democracy, too, it is plain, is a growing empha- sis on equality, the deep significance of which it is folly to deny or to ignore. In words al- ready quoted, " the growing power of the working class is beyond dispute the outstand- ing fact in human relationships." 5. The definite establishment of a League of Nations, with a Covenant — whatever its limitations — conceived in a spirit unmatched in any similar political document, constitutes an- other evidence of a new age. For unless hu- manity is going insane, it will find some way — in spite of America's present opposition — to an effective league of nations, to lift the intoler- able burden of ever increasing armaments, and to put a stop to suicidal world conflicts. There has been, it seems to me, an unpardonable cynicism respecting the League of Nations on the part of party politicians, and some idealists. And the company in which the idealists find themselves ought to make them suspect their premises. In the first place, as William James reminds us, " all goods are disguised by the vulgarity 74 THE NEW AGE of their concomitants, in this workaday world ; but woe to him who can recognize them only when he thinks them in their pure and ab- stract form." Too many were demanding from the start a degree of perfection in the League not to be expected. No doubt the treaty knit up with the Covenant of the League of Nations was not perfect. I have already spoken of the disillusionment arising from the selfish scramble of the nations. But there is another side to the matter. The treaty-makers for the Allies faced a very difficult situation. For all future world peace, the treaty must be such that it should be plain both to Germany and to the world that Germany had not profited by the war. And yet Germany had deliberately started the war, had had no war on her own soil except in East Prussia, had in- vaded at once territory it had covenanted to respect, had carried through the war its fearful doctrine of f rightfulness, had viciously waged a war intended to crush Belgium and France economically, and had shown little or no peni- tence for any of these things. These and simi- lar facts need to be borne in mind, when men criticize the treaty. Moreover, the calling of the Peace Confer- ence itself was no small achievement, and the Conference was at its best in the consideration ITS VALUES 75 of the Covenant of the League. Let one read again that Covenant and compare it with any previous similar document growing out of other wars. The essential thing was to get the League started. It was capable of amendment as men went on in its practical use. If Amer- ica had come in with any reasonable reserva- tions, a great achievement would have been possible. With America's prompt cooperation the League was capable of becoming the one greatest gain of the war, aside from the simple military defeat of the Germans. What prac- ticable substitute do the partisan and idealist opponents of the League propose? What promise is there in simply washing our hands of Europe? The spirit of cooperation, of mutual sacrifice, of passionate desire for per- manent peace, could all be carried to their le- gitimate fulfillment only in such a League. America, it is to be feared, will have much to answer for, in its dire maiming of the League of Nations. We may hope, however, that America will still find some way to share in the great possi- bilities of an effective League of Nations, in line with the forecast of the Manchester Guardian: What matters far more than that America 76 THE NEW AGE should take an active part in settling the terms of peace for Hungary, Bulgaria, and Turkey is that she should become an effective member of the League of Nations whose task will be the pacification of the world hereafter. For this her cooperation, if not absolutely essential, is of the deepest importance, not so much because of her wealth and power as because of her comparative disinterestedness and singleness of aim. Nothing is more certain than that the arrangements now made or about to be made in Europe and the Near East cannot stand. They have about them no element of permanence, because they are based on no large and humane principle. They are mainly the compromises of national interest and ambition. It follows that in no long time the whole of these arrangements will have to be largely revised and the treaties rewritten. It is here that the cooperation of America would be invaluable, and there is nothing in her present attitude of aloofness which need prevent her from then playing a free and powerful part. As to the League itself, we may well remind ourselves of Lord Grey's words: " The success of the League rests with the people, who can make their Governments what they will." Even in its present lessened power, we may still share Dr. Clifford's joy: " The League is a fact, the greatest fact of the hour, and the greatest fact history records. The Tribunal is created. This is the victory for brotherhood ! " ITS VALUES 77 6. But independently of a League of Na- tions to Enforce Peace, a steadily growing in- ternationalism is both manifest and inevitable, as developing out of all the characteristics of the age already mentioned. It is vain to at- tempt in selfish isolation to withstand it. One of the ablest of British Divines thus sums up this growing internationalism: The international is the dominating conception of the relations of men to men. A new con- sciousness,^ new mind, has entered the soul of the world. . . . The domestic prepares for the civic and the civic for the national; and the na- tional is on the way to the international and real- izes itself in and through the international. Brotherhood is like the air, universal and unescap- able. It besets us behind and before, and lays its quickening and uplifting hand upon us. The world is being made " all clear " for its march. " Labour " has long been international. " Peace " movements are world-wide. The Temperance Crusade assails all barriers and will beat them down. The legislators of different countries meet in conference to harmonize laws. Even the churches are developing international relations and preparing for world congresses ; and I cannot doubt that the movements for unity will slough the obsolete accretions of the past and unite the religions of the world so that Humanity shall become one flock under one Shepherd. 78 THE NEW AGE Bertrand Russell thus emphasizes one par- ticular incentive to internationalism: The war has made it clear that it is impossible to produce a secure integration of the life of a single community while the relations between civilized countries are governed by aggressive- ness and suspicion. For this reason any really powerful movement of reform will have to be in- ternational. 7. But the most noteworthy evidence of a genuinely new age, among these characteris- tics of the changing world-order, is the grow- ing sense that the new age cannot mean simply a little better distribution of things among men, but the taking on of a larger and more signifi- cant goal than organized humanity have ever before cherished. Labour and social pro- grams, preeminently the British Labour Pro- gram, — in the very midst of economic de- mands — bear witness to this growing sense, that life is more than meat. Not only indi- viduals here and there but whole groups and classes are making this larger claim on life. Two typical men — Bertrand Russell and Harry F. Ward — getting at their problem from quite different points of view, may be instanced, as still both voicing the instinctive longings of multitudes, in their insistence on larger and ITS VALUES 79 more significant goals for organized human life. Russell puts the matter thus: It is not only more material goods that men need, but more freedom, more self-direction, more outlet for creativeness, more opportunity for the joy of life, more voluntary cooperation, and less involuntary subservience to purposes not their own. All these things the institutions of the fu- ture must help to produce, if our increase of knowledge and power over Nature is to bear its full fruit in bringing about a good life. And he strikes a still deeper note, when he writes : Life devoted only to life is animal, without any real human value, incapable of preserving men permanently from weariness and the feeling that all is vanity. If life is to be fully human it must serve some end which seems, in some sense, outside human life, some end which is impersonal and above mankind, such as God or truth or beauty. Professor Ward almost summarizes his whole treatment of The Nezv Social Order, in his similar expression of the goal of social activity: It is becoming manifest that the development of personality is to supersede the acquisition of goods as the goal of social activity, and that the 80 THE NEW AGE fullest development of personality is to be found in the effort to realize the solidarity of the human family. These statements of both men — we shall later see — are fundamentally in harmony with that basic and supreme principle of reverence for personality which is both psychologically and religiously grounded and a natural guiding principle in our inquiry. II The Help of the Moral Demonstrations of the War From these values involved in the outstand- ing characteristics of the present world-order, we turn to the help that may come from the moral demonstrations of the war as they bear on the continued progress of the race. After a war of so extraordinary a character, in the midst of days of such significance as these after-the-war days, no thoughtful man can help asking: " What has this most terrible of zvars taught us? " Some things have been demonstrated as by the finger of God Himself. First of all, the war has demonstrated that we must get rid of shallow views of progress, of creed, and of morals. We must get rid of shallow views of prog- ress. If anything has been made plain in the ITS VALUES 8l anguish of this world experience, it is that progress will not take care of itself. The Victorian generation, in its enthusiasm over the new outlook upon the universe afforded by the theory of evolution, not unnaturally and more or less unconsciously assumed that evolu- tion carried progress necessarily with it. But when one makes clear to himself how nearly Germany came to, at least, an immedi- ate success; and how terrible was the strain upon the whole of Western civilization in meet- ing through these years the German onset, he does not need to be told that progress is not a thing to be left to the inevitable course of events; that the very meaning of human his- tory is that the attitude of men themselves is the decisive factor in all worth-while progress ; that progress worthy of the race requires the steady loyalty of truth-loving, freedom-loving men and women, who forever and forever are " staying on the job." Any progress worthy of the name, we may never forget, involves great moral conditions, and there is no evading of these laws of the universe. The man or the nation who will not fulfill these great moral conditions will find himself fighting against the universe of God. " He that falleth on this stone shall be broken to pieces; but on whomsoever it shall fall it 82 THE NEW AGE will scatter him as dust." First of all, there- fore, let every thoughtful man and nation carry out of this war a deep conviction that progress will not take care of itself. And the war has been proving not less cer- tainly that we must get rid of shallozv viezvs of creed as well. For if we have been saying to ourselves, that it does not make much differ- ence what a man or a nation thinks, what their theory of society is, what philosophy of life they hold, that view surely should be no longer possible for this generation. For this war may well be said to be in its entirety the logical re- sult of the German philosophy of the State. Primarily, indeed, we were not fighting the German Government, even the German mili- tary power ; but, as we have seen, the German philosophy of the State — that holds that the State is superior to all moral obligations, that upon it lies no duty of any kind except to seek its own selfish interests. Belgium, Serbia, Armenia and Russia demonstrate for all time the terrible possibilities of this false philosophy. It thus mightily concerns the human race what a nation's creed is, what theory of society it holds, what philosophy of life it is practis- ing. In the process of this war, too, God has been burning into the consciousness of this genera- ITS VALUES 83 tion some elementary and basic lessons in morals. We must get rid of shallow views of morals. This generation ought to know, as no generation has ever known, the true mean- ing of three things in morals — selfishness, arro- gance, and falseness. For, first of all, if we have been saying to ourselves that it does not make much differ- ence whether a man or a nation is selfish or not, that delusion should surely now have van- ished. If one wants to know to what his own selfishness, or that of his own nation, is akin; if he wishes to know what selfishness — pure, unadulterated, unashamed, and unlimited — truly means; if he would see once for all the meanness, the treachery, the sordidness, the hideousness, the devilishness of selfishness; he might have read it revealed to every sense and faculty of man on the very face of desolated Belgium, Northern France, and Armenia. For there were written the natural and inevitable consequences of a national selfishness that had no scruple and no thought or care for any other interests than its own, and that gloried in its shame. So that von Tirpitz could say: " It must be stated that it is not wrong but right that has been done in Belgium." So terrible a thing is selfishness. So, too, if it had seemed to any of us a 84 THE NEW AGE matter of small consequence that a man or a nation should be conceited and arrogant, this world-war should forever be a demonstration of the infinite power for evil which arrogance possesses. For it was a terrible and insensate pride which made it possible for Germany to persuade herself that it was quite proper and right that her domination should be absolute, and the interests of all others sacrificed to her. Desolated Belgium is the logical result of such pride. How characteristic of the arrogance, in which, as Harrison said, the German people have been schooled, is this statement of Haeckel, and how fiendish its applications: " One single highly-cultured German warrior represents a higher intellectual and moral life- value than hundreds of the raw children of nature whom England and France, Russia, and Italy uphold to-day." The German treatment of Belgium, and later of distracted Russia, was, once more, a moral demonstration not only of the falseness and utter untrustworthiness of the German Gov- ernment, but also of the inevitable logical con- sequences of such falseness in its effect on the relations of men to each other. The long un- broken record of unexampled cruelty in Bel- gium is the direct result of the refusal of a great nation to count its plighted word as of ITS VALUES 85 any value. No decent civilization is possible without truth and trust between men and be- tween nations. Let all men and all nations take it to heart that German selfishness, German arrogance, and German falseness bore their inevitable fruit in this hell let loose upon earth, not be- cause they were German, but because they were exactly what they were — selfishness, arrogance, and falseness. It was precisely against these that Christ set Himself. No sound life in any nation or group of nations can be built upon that foundation. " The healing of the nations " can lie only in unselfish good-will, in willingness to learn and to serve, in utter truth. This has been demonstrated. 2. The grip of the lazvs of God upon Nations. This necessity for getting rid of shallow views of progress, of creed, and of morals has only given illustrations of another of the out- standing demonstrations of the war — the in- escapable grip of the laws of God upon the life of nations as well as of individuals. For in all the inevitable connections of progress, of creed, and of morals, is to be seen the grip of God's laws. If it seemed to us at any time in this world- strife that God had forgotten the world, and 86 THE NEW AGE left the powers of evil to conquer, we might have laid aside all such fears. For God, we may be sure, is in the very laws of His uni- verse, and constantly working through them to the accomplishment of His great aims. Wher- ever there has been violation of the funda- mental laws of the universe, there penalty has fallen and will still fall. No man, no nation can finally evade or trick the laws of the uni- verse. As surely as the farmer cannot cheat the soil, so surely every man, every class, every nation will reap according to the sowing. And if it seemed to any of us in the war that Ger- many was too often having it all her own way, we may be perfectly certain that Germany's own record in this war is, on the contrary, an unmistakable demonstration of the grip of the laws of God upon the life of nations. Twenty-five years ago, in spite of factors in her life, which men could not approve, and partly misled by the German propaganda it- self, thousands of men of all nations were turn- ing to Germany for education, and were giving to Germany an admiration and even an affec- tion beyond her real desert. Men were ready to recognize in her the educational, scientific, and musical leader of the world. Is it a good thing for her that in this war, and in the long preparation for it, she put her admirers and ITS VALUES 87 lovers to shame, and did all that the most fiend- ish ingenuity could devise to drive out of their hearts every last bit of admiration and love ? Well might one, whose lines show that he has both known and loved his Germany, and must hope that she will return to sanity and to her own best self, write in Punch of "A Lost Land "— A childhood land of mountain ways, Where earthy gnomes and forest fays, Kind, foolish giants, gentle bears, Sport with the peasant as he fares Affrighted through the forest glades, And lead sweet, wistful little maids Lost in the woods, forlorn, alone, To princely lovers and a throne. ****** Dear haunted land of gorge and glen, Ah, me ! the dreams, the dreams of men ! A learned land of wise old books And men with meditative looks, Who move in quaint red-gabled towns And sit in gravely folded gowns, Divining in deep-laden speech The world's supreme arcana — each A homely god to listening Youth Eager to tear the veil of Truth ; ****** Mild votaries of book and pen — Alas, the dreams, the dreams of men ! 88 THE NEW AGE A music land, whose life is wrought In movements of melodious thought ; In symphony, great wave on wave — Or fugue, elusive, swift, and grave; A singing land, whose lyric rimes Float on the air like village chimes; Music and verse — the deepest part Of a whole nation's thinking heart! ******* Oh land of Now, oh land of then ! Dear God ! the dreams, the dreams of men ! Slave nation in a land of hate, Where are the things that made you great? Child-hearted once — oh, deep defiled, Dare you look now upon a child? Your lore — a hideous mask wherein Self-worship hides its monstrous sin ; Music and verse, divinely wed — How can these live where love is dead? ******* Oh, depths beneath sweet human ken, God help the dreams, the dreams of men ! How dire is Germany's loss at this point is vividly suggested by the words of Mr. Otto Kahn, the well-known Jewish banker of New York, to German-born citizens in the United States— We men of German descent have a special reckoning to make with Kaiserism. The world has been wronged and hurt by Prussianized ITS VALUES 89 Germany as it was never wronged and hurt be- fore. But the deepest hurt of all is that which has been done to us. Our spiritual inheritance has been stolen, wrenched from us by impious hands and thrown in the gutter. The ideals and traditions we cherished have been foully be- smirched; our blood has been dishonoured; we have been bitterly shamed by our kith and kin. The land to which we were linked by fond mem- ories has become an outcast among the nations, convicted of high treason against civilization and of unspeakable crimes against humanity. Has ever nation known such moral isolation as is now hers? The completeness of her col- lapse and of her present disintegration is the inevitable penalty of violation of eternal moral laws. Ill The Greatest Ideal Achievements of the War When one is thinking of the moral demon- strations of the war, and of the great values, which must be carried on into the new age, he certainly may not leave out of account its greatest ideal achievements which may be said, I think, to be these — the rare idealism with which America came into the war ; men's deep- ening conviction of the supremacy of the in- tangible values; voluntary cooperation in a great cause on an unheard-of scale ; the largest 90 THE NEW AGE measure of the spirit of sacrifice the world has ever seen ; and the resulting new revelation of common men. 1. I have already spoken of the rare ideal- ism with zvhich America came into the war as one of the causes of the disillusionment that later befell. But here I remind you of it as the highest accomplishment of our national history and a perpetual challenge to us for the years to come to be true to our own best vision. It is no jingoist but a sober American his- torical scholar who wrote: After all did a nation ever before in the world's history enter a conflict only because it loathed the principles and despised the conduct of another nation — solely because of moral indignation? And Mr. Balfour called our entry into the war, " the most magnanimous and generous act in history." Bergson bore personal testimony to the spirit shown in America at that time: Yes, I was a witness of this spectacle unique in history, a people of nearly a hundred millions of souls throwing themselves into the war with all their forces, all their resources, consenting in advance to every sacrifice, doing this, be it under- stood, entirely without any impulsion of self- defense, for there were hardly a thousand per- ITS VALUES 91 sons in the United States, five hundred, even, who would admit that Germany might be a danger for the United States. Moreover, this was done en- tirely without the impulse due to material ad- vantage, for from the outset the Americans re- fused all compensation, and one of their generals said to me last year, " We will return with empty hands, taking with us only our dead." They came with no designing aim, stirred neither by interest nor fear, but by a principle, by an idea, by the thought of the mission they were called upon to fulfill in the world. I was there, and I saw the rising of that great tide of almost re- ligious emotion which bore away the American people." [Henri Bergson, " French Ideals in Education and the American Student " in The Living Age, Dec. 27, 19 19.] So fine, so united and so unselfish was our national spirit in that high day that one of our poets seemed to us to be accurately reflecting that spirit when she wrote: A nation goes adventuring, With heart that will not quail; A nation goes adventuring, To seek the Holy Grail. A nation leaves its money-bags, Its firesides, safe and warm, To ride about the windy world, And keep the weak from harm. 92 THE NEW AGE A nation goes adventuring, With heart that will not quail, God grant it, on some hard-won dawn, Sight of the Holy Grail. [" America, 1917-1918," by Mary Carolyn Davies.] If these lines seem to us now a bit exagger- ated, let us make sure that it is not because we ourselves have fallen away from the high spirit of which we found ourselves then capable. The glory of that idealism we must not fail to carry over into the new age. 2. A second of these great ideal achieve- ments of the war was this, that, in an age we have called materialistic, the world has dis- closed a new and steadily deepening conviction, on the part of men in all parts of the earth, of the supremacy of the intangible values. It should mean much to all believers in the ideal that more millions of men than ever before, under the tutelage of the German menace, came clearly to see that force and machinery and organization and wealth and even science — all put together — are not enough ; that a man or a nation may have all these and still have 116 life worth living; but, on the contrary, may be a curse to the race. Something like three- fourths of the popula- tion of the globe have been knit up in some ITS VALUES 93 fashion with the cause of the Allies, not for territorial gains, not for commercial aggran- dizement, not for purposes of political domina- tion, but because they came to see as never be- fore that all possible material advances with- out essential liberty do but furnish forth a barren life. This is the significance of the fact that little Central American countries like Guatamala, and Governments like Cuba and Liberia, declared themselves for the Allies. It became finally clear to them that no material gains — such as Germany counted as alone vital — can ever make good the heritage of free men: freedom of conscience, freedom of wor- ship, freedom of thought, freedom of investiga- tion; political, economic, social freedom — the emancipation of all the powers of men. They awakened, thus, to the supremacy of the in- tangible values. They caught the vision of the things that, though they be not seen, are yet eternal — the supreme and everlasting values of faith, of hope, of love. This is a great racial achievement, and a great possible spiritual asset, for which men should be endlessly grateful. In the degree in which that achievement can be maintained, a new day for the world will have dawned. 3. The third great achievement of the war was that, under its pressure, the peoples who 94 THE NEW AGE were really seeking a free society of self-re- specting and mutually-respecting nations were driven to such far-reaching cooperation and companionship in a great unselfish cause as the world had never before seen. The resources of credit, of food, of shipping, of man-power of three-fourths of the world were in large measure pooled to establish the great aims of the Allies. Something like a unified Council of all these peoples was made possible — an actual and potent internationalism, a " super- nationalism " indeed, that holds the one great promise for the world's future peace and progress. To paraphrase the New Republic's statement at an earlier period of the war; We witnessed the creation of a super-national control of the world's necessities. The men who were charged with conducting the war were com- pelled to think as international statesmen. The old notions of sovereignty no longer governed the facts. Three of the unifying forces of mankind were at work — hunger, danger, and a great hope. They swept into the scrap heap the separatist theories that nations should be self-sufficing economically, and absolutely in- dependent politically. A new and more power- ful machinery of internationalism was created. And it was a true internationalism, because it ITS VALUES 95 dealt not with dynastic and diplomatic alli- ances, but with the cooperative control of those vital supplies on which human life depends. Cooperation on such a scale and for such ends may well send a thrill through any man who can think, and certainly opens up the vision of a new world. For here was actual- ized a kind of " parliament of man," a great world unity of the free nations who seek, and must continue to seek, the triumph of freedom, of justice and of peace for all the peoples of the entire world. If cooperation like this for great unselfish aims may be secured in time of war, surely we need not be without hope even yet of the estab- lishment of a permanent League of Free Na- tions in time of peace. For, as President Wil- son said, in presenting to the Peace Conference the draft of the League of Nations: It is not in contemplation that this should be merely a League to secure the peace of the world. It is a League which can be used in any international matter. That is the significance of the provision introduced concerning labour. Such a League, as President Wilson said, must be " a living thing," growing with the growth of the nations, developing to meet de- veloping problems — the great problems of a 96 THE NEW AGE humane and scientific control of production, distribution, and consumption ; the problems of leisure, of recreation, of education, and of re- ligion, for the whole race of men. Here is opportunity for men's highest powers in days of peace; here a great challenge for the libera- tion of human energies in peaceful outlets. And here, in so magnificent an extension of cooperation among the nations, lies the only proper outcome for the immeasurable sacrifices of this war. This, too, is a great racial achievement, and possible spiritual asset, which must be carried over into the new age. 4. And, once more, the war demonstrated afresh, on an unexampled scale, the capacity of men for sacrifice. The massive heroism of the common men of all the nations has made this fact certain. It is the simple truth to say that more millions of men than ever before in the history of the world threw themselves un- flinchingly into the support of a great un- selfish cause, ready for whatever sacrifice that might involve. The very numbers concerned are an inspira- tion. For it was not alone those who " went over the top " who shared in this sacrificial de- votion. No man who enlisted with any sense of the issues at stake could know what his en- listment might involve of life or death; and in ITS VALUES 97 his enlistment he took his hands off himself, and laid that self in very deed upon the altar of country and humanity. In that, perhaps, half-blind dedication to a high unselfish cause, many a man found to his own surprise his life become marvellously simple and free. He had not known before that sacrifice was the way to liberty. This very spirit of sacrifice gave to millions of men a new sense of the great values for which they fought, and a new grip upon them. They saw things in better proportion ; the great values looming up as really great, and the rela- tive goods forced back into their relative places. It was " the glory of the trenches," as Coningsby Dawson said, that they emanci- pated men from selfishness and from the domi- nation of petty aims and fears — There's one person I've missed since my return to New York. I've caught glimpses of him dis- appearing around corners, but he dodges. I think he's a bit ashamed to meet me. That person is my old civilian self. What a full-blown egotist he used to be ! How full of golden plans for his own advancement ! How terrified of failure, of disease, of money losses, of death — of all the temporary, external, non-essential things that have nothing to do with the spirit! War is in itself damnable — a profligate misuse of the accu- mulated brainstuff of centuries. Nevertheless, 98 THE NEW AGE there's many a man who has no love o£ war, who, previous to the war, had cramped his soul with littleness, and was chased by the bayonet of duty into the blood-stained largeness of the trenches, who has learned to say, " Thank God for this war!" He thanks God not because of the car- nage, but because, when the winepress of new ideals was being trodden, he was born in an age when he could do his share. And some such emancipation, as came to the men in the trenches, came in like manner to many soldiers and sailors who never saw the front; but who held themselves at home or abroad not less at their country's command. And it came surely, also, to those who waited in the homes for fathers and husbands, and sons and brothers, and bore them on their heart in love and prayer, and made common cause with them. How inevitably the home life, too, was exalted by the sacrifices of this war is sug- gested by Miss Rittenhouse in her poem, " I Have No Lover on the Battle-field " — I have no lover on the battle-field, I do not go with sickening fear at heart, And when the crier calls the latest horror I do not start. I have no lover on the battle-field, I am exempt from terror of the night, I can lie down, serene and disregarding, Until the light. ITS VALUES 99 But on the battle-field had I a lover, How life would purge itself of petty pain, And what would matter all the petty losses, The petty gain ? I should be one with those who suffer greatly, With pain all pain above, And I should know then beyond peradventure, The heart of Love ! But the glory of the spirit of sacrifice is not merely that it emancipates and exalts the indi- vidual who feels it, but that it is contagious and spreads from soul to soul, and so becomes truly redemptive for other men also. Mr. J. J. Chapman had no doubt his own brilliant son in thought, who died earlier in the war, when he wrote: The young men, as of old, shine as the natural heroes of the race. Their readiness to die re- stores our faith in human nature. It reminds us that the sacrificial part is what counts in the spread of truth. This much we know, and we know little else about morality and religion. To count the cost and dwell upon the life and prop- erty sacrificed in heroic action is to doubt the value of truth. To what better use could these young heroes and all this amassed wealth have been put? It was for this that they existed. The spirit of sacrifice not only involves, thus, the uplift of high companionship in the fulfill- IOO THE NEW AGE ment of great aims; but its unwonted preva- lence means also that more millions of men, than ever before in the history of the world, have found in their own sacrificial experience the key to the understanding of the deepest message of religion, of Christianity, of Christ's own death — the message of sacrifice. Men have come to see in some half-blind fashion the meaning of sacrifice; that they can in some true sense do what Hinton long ago pointed out — make all their pains " identify themselves in meaning, and end with the suffering of Christ. ,, For when one turns all his pains into a willing sacrifice to God and to men, he makes the sacrifice itself, " an instrument of joy " — for love rejoices in sacrifices for love's sake. In the midst of all the drear monotony and drudgery of much of the war, in commonplace tasks that did not easily take on any glamour or glory of war, in mud and squalor and wretchedness and disease, every man still had his place in the huge sacrificial task, and of- fered his life for the triumph of liberty, of democracy, of righteousness in the earth. Surely that cannot happen for millions of men, and the world be not better worth living in hereafter. One does not wonder that one of the English chaplains was able to say that the ITS VALUES IOI favourite hymn of the London regiments, at the long gruelling battle of the Somme, was Watts' old Good Friday hymn — When I survey the wondrous cross, On which the Prince of Glory died, My richest gain I count but loss, And pour contempt on all my pride. Here again was a great racial achievement, and a great possible spiritual asset, which above all the Christian forces must make the very spirit of the new age. 5. Through all these great ideal achieve- ments of the war, already surveyed, another came, — the resulting new revelation of common men. For if millions of men shared in that rare idealism with which America entered the war; if they awakened to a new sense of the supremacy of intangible values; if they arose to the demands of cooperative tasks unmatched in history; if they showed an unbelievable capacity for sacrifice ; then in all this, there was involved a new revelation of common men, that should mean also a new faith in God and His universe. We that have seen man broken, We know man is divine. In the face of such scientific terrors as the 102 THE NEW AGE world had never before seen, man's frail, human body by indomitable will held on its course. Common men of all the nations proved themselves capable of an endurance we had hardly thought possible to men, and of a heroism unsurpassed in the history of the world. Barbusse's novel, The Fire, was one of the truly great books the war gave us. It is significant that it could be correctly described, in the whole heart and sweep of it, as " an ardent tribute to the mute, inglorious millions of ordinary men constrained to heroism by circumstances, brave, determined, reliable, but not imbued with any military spirit — those mil- lions of uprooted civilians." Wells counts this common heroism one of the characteristic things of this war — It is the peculiarity of this war — it is the most reassuring evidence that a great increase in gen- eral ability and critical ability has been going on throughout the last century — that no isolated great personages have emerged. Never has there been so much ability, invention, inspiration, leadership ; but the very abundance of good qual- ities has prevented our focussing upon those of any one individual. . . . It is not that the war has failed to produce heroes, so much as that it has produced heroism in a torrent. The great ITS VALUES 103 man of this war is the common man. It becomes ridiculous to pick out particular names. . . . The acts of the small men in this war dwarf all the pretensions of the great men. Imperatively these multitudinous heroes forbid the setting up of effigies. When I was a young man I imitated Swift and posed for cynicism. I will confess that now, at fifty, and greatly helped by this war, I have fallen in love with mankind. And this courage of the common man is ground, as William Allen White sees, for a great new faith in democracy — That courage — that thing which the Germans thought was their special gift from Heaven, bred of military discipline, rising out of German Kul- tur — we know now is the commonest heritage of men. It is the divine fire burning in the soul of us that proves the case for democracy. For at base and underneath we are all equals. In crises the rich man, the poor man, the thief, the harlot, the preacher, the teacher, the labourer, the ig- norant, the wise, all go to death for something that defies death — something immortal in the human spirit. Those truck-drivers, those mule- whackers, those common soldiers, that doctor, these college men on the ambulance, are brothers to-night in the democracy of courage. Upon that democracy is the hope of the race, for it bespeaks a wider and deeper kinship of men. So heart-breaking and yet so inspiring has 104 THE NEW AGE been this massive heroism of the common rank and file of men, that one does not wonder that it has begotten a new religious faith and led one like H. G. Wells to say on the one hand, " Our sons have shown us God " ; and Dr. P. T. Forsyth to say on the other hand, " God has shown us our sons." Surely it were a faithless generation that, in the light of the revelations of this war, and in spite of all its sordid and brutal accompani- ments, should not find grounds for a new, great faith in common men. LECTURE IV THE NEW MIND: THE POLITICAL AND SOCIAL CHALLENGE LECTURE IV THE NEW MIND: THE POLITICAL AND SOCIAL CHALLENGE I General Introduction WE have been considering thus far the new age, its evidence, its perils, and its values. We turn now to con- sider the new mind needed for that new age, the challenge which that new age brings. That challenge is threefold— a challenge to recognize that we are in a new age, which calls for radical readjustments, a challenge to overcome in posi- tive fashion the perils of the age, and a chal- lenge to preserve and fulfill the values of the age. If we have been right at all in our estimate of the significance of the crisis through which the world has been passing, then it is not too much to say that the opportunity for the great- est advance the human race has ever made is still within our grasp. To build a new world 107 108 THE NEW MIND according to the pattern shown us in our mount of vision — that is the challenge, the oppor- tunity, " the great adventure," to which we are committed. There is a moving passage (writes another [Chaplain E. S. Woods in The Church in the Furnace]) in a moving book, John Masefield's " Gallipoli," where he describes how the final at- tack at Suvla Bay represented a kind of climax of effort and opportunity, led up to by infinite toil and sacrifice. " There was the storm, there was the crisis, the one picked hour, to which this death and agony . . . had led. Then was the hour for the casting off of self, and a setting aside of every pain and longing and sweet affec- tion, a giving up of all that makes a man to the something which makes a race, and a going for- ward to death resolvedly to help out their broth- ers high up above in the shell-bursts and the blazing gorse. Which is a parable as well as history." To all believers in the ideal and lovers of men, has come at last their " one picked hour," their supreme opportunity, their " final summons to fare forth with God in His Great Adventure." For it infinitely concerns us to see that the fight for a nezv world is not over, but only well begun. This is no time to scuttle back to old indulgences; it is no time for petty, private aims, or for narrow, selfish nationalism. For POLITICAL AND SOCIAL CHALLENGE 109 of nations, too, as well as of individuals, it is to be written in that new age: " Whosoever would be first among you, shall be servant of all." Germany's tragic failure is new proof of it. These five years of unspeakable sacrifice have laid their hands in solemn dedication upon the heads, especially of the remaining youth of the nations, pledging them to that further and continuous sacrifice — which is also the measure of life — that holds in itself the promise and potency of a new world. For this generation is challenged to something far greater than the Crusades, far greater than the French Revolu- tion — to a great international movement that deliberately takes into its plans the entire globe and the interests of the whole race of men. To make the final outcomes of this war, then, not less significant than the process; to make the gains commensurate with the sacrifices ; to keep keen the sense of the spiritual issues of the war ; to discern and obey those eternal laws of God, which the war has once more thundered forth; to carry over into the tasks of peace — personal, national and international — the great- est ideal achievements of the war: the rare idealism with which America came into the war, the sense of the supremacy of the in- tangible values, cooperation on an unheard-of IIO THE NEW MIND scale, the well-nigh universal spirit of sacrifice, and the new revelation of common men and common nations — this, is the neiv oath of al- legiance to which in this supreme hour of the world we are all summoned. Can we rise to the opportunity? If we are truly and fully to rise to that op- portunity, it will require the commitment of the whole man, and a many-sided national and international response — political, economic and social adjustment; educational adjustment; moral and religious adjustment. What can political, economic and social forces do to in- sure a better world ? What can education do ? What can the moral and religious forces do? These are our questions. We are to consider, first, the political, economic and social challenge of our times. To knit our discussion up most fruitfully with the considerations already reviewed, and to get as concrete and definite suggestions as possible for the solution of our world problem, let us ask ourselves at this point this specific question: What practically can be done in the way of political, economic or social changes to defeat the perils which threaten us, and to insure to us the fullest harvest — both economic and spiritual — from the available values of our time? POLITICAL AND SOCIAL CHALLENGE III The Threatening Perils of the New Age The threatening perils of the new age seemed to us to be the perils of an inevitable inherit- ance of evil from the war; of disillusionment, of reaction, and of destructive revolution. There is obviously no short and simple way of meeting those perils, and yet they are very real and very great. We are far from safety at any point. 1. The specific dangers involved in our evil inheritance from the war are first to be con- sidered. Here there are, to begin with, the perils arising from frightful destructiveness in every sphere of life and the consequent perils of a civilization near to collapse. Both call for enormous constructive efforts of every kind, not only to make good our losses, but also defi- nitely to insure a better civilization. Then there are the perils of the infectious spread, through so long and terrible a war, of the intoxication of power; the perils of an al- most unavoidable approximation on the part of the Allies to the Prussianism they were fight- ing; and the resulting perils of carrying over into times of peace the moods and methods of war — in the ready appeal to force, the con- 112 THE NEW MIND tempt for human life, and the persistent viola- tion of the liberties of a democratic state. These all call for a new fight for freedom, and for a more thoroughgoing democracy freed from all taint of absolutism. There remain, in this direct inheritance of evil from the war, the perils of the inevitable reaction from the stress and strain and excite- ment of the war — in wide-spread class selfish- ness, the lure of indolence and pleasure-hunt- ing; and the perils which the war had for the inner life of the soldier. Both these causes have tended to induce a general demoralization of life, naturally to be expected after so pro- found a disturbance of normal conditions, but all the more dangerous on that account. These perils can be met effectively only in the indi- vidual life, backed by education and the great motives of morals and religion, though the community can do much sympathetically to help, by making the conditions of living what they ought to be. 2. As to the perils of disillusionment, in another's words: " The hope of a speedy world- reorganization founded on international justice and peace has vanished ; the Peace Conference has given us neither the Society of Nations nor Peace. The friends of justice are disappointed and disheartened." So a writer in the New POLITICAL AND SOCIAL CHALLENGE 113 Europe sums up that situation at Paris, out of which came our present disillusionment. The perils of disillusionment we saw are the perils of losing our trust in one another, of losing our courage and our fundamental faith. Those basic perils can be met only by discerning new grounds of hope from a larger, deeper and more specific survey of world conditions, and from moral and religious considerations. All that we have reviewed under the values of the new age has here its application, and there are other particular elements of promise yet to be noted. 3. The perils of reaction, we saw, are the perils of timidity, of physical and mental in- dolence, of wearied and enfeebled wills, of despair of a forward-looking solution — all abetted everywhere by individual, party, and national selfishness. These perils can be over- come only by individual determination ; by dis- criminating education, that recognizes the need of both the conservative and radical instinct, but makes clear the imperative duty of prog- ress, and definitely points out at least some of the steps to a better age; and by a growing moral and religious victory over selfishness. 4. The comprehensive peril of destructive revolution is simply, " power in the hands of the many, wealth in the hands of the few." 114 THE NEW MIND As a thoughtful writer in the Manchester Guardian puts it: I think the great mass of people who are learn- ing more and more to think and speak of them- selves as the " dispossessed," the " disinherited," will refuse much longer to be " the muck round the roots." And in the violence of their revolt not only the fine flower of culture but all chance, perhaps for several generations, of decent com- fort may be sacrificed. What, then, do we need ? His own answer (somewhat like that of Ralph Adams Cram) is this: Surely a new standard of values. A power to find the good things of life in the goods of the spirit, and in those forms of wealth which in- crease in proportion as they are widely diffused. In short, I am back at that problem which so often exercised me in pre-war days, namely, the problem of evangelical poverty. If we could make plain living and high thinking the fashion, and extravagant and self-indulgent living bad form, how many of our problems would be solved ? There is much in this answer, for, as we have already seen, things in whatever quantity are not sufficient to satisfy the life of man. But the best defense, as we saw, against destructive revolution can be only the most POLITICAL AND SOCIAL CHALLENGE 115 complete justice to all, whatever that may re- quire. Without such essential justice, exhorta- tion to plain living and high thinking will be taken to be only the old device of all the gen- erations to use religion to keep the masses of men satisfied with injustice. If, then, we are to defeat the perils of the evil inheritance from the war, of disillusion- ment, of reaction, of destructive revolution, there are required: enormous constructive ef- forts in every sphere ; a new fight for freedom and for a more thoroughgoing democracy ; in- dividual determination, discriminating educa- tion, and the great motives of morals and re- ligion — all applied at many points ; wide-spread community improvement of living conditions; the discernment of new grounds of hope from a broader, deeper and more specific survey of world-conditions, and from moral and religious considerations ; the doing everywhere of essen- tial justice in such economic changes as will give exacter meaning to the democratic watch- word — liberty, fraternity, equality; and a growing moral and religious victory over hu- man selfishness in all realms. That is the great task with which the perils of our age confront us. This survey of what is required to overcome the perils of the new age makes it plain that nowhere are political or economic or Il6 THE NEW MIND social changes enough, but that everywhere, nevertheless, they have most important help to give. II Defeating the Perils of the Nezv Age 1. Setting aside for the present all the educational and moral and religious demands, let us, as Americans, get some glimpse at least of what might be achieved through political, economic or social means for the insuring of a better civilization. It is possible to give only illustrations. The program of the British La- bour Party has peculiar significance for us here. For it suggests more clearly, concretely, and consistently perhaps than any other how much might be done conceivably by political means in those enormous constructive efforts now called for in every sphere, in the new fight for freedom and a more thoroughgoing democ- racy, and in such economic changes as any true conception of liberty, fraternity and equality required. Something like this program we shall probably ultimately have to face. The Party thus defines its aim : If we in Britain are to escape from the decay of civilization itself ... we must ensure that what is presently to be built up is a new social order, based not on fighting but on frater- POLITICAL AND SOCIAL CHALLENGE 117 nity; not on the competitive struggle for the means of bare life, but on a deliberately planned cooperation in production and distribution for the benefit of all who participate by hand or by brain ; not on the utmost possible inequality of riches, but on a systematic approach toward a healthy equality of material circumstances for every per- son born into the world; not on an enforced do- minion over subject nations, subject races, sub- ject colonies, subject classes, or a subject sex, but, in industry as well as in government, on that equal freedom, that general consciousness of con- sent, and that widest possible participation in power, both economic and political, which is characteristic of democracy. Professor A. B. Wolfe puts in this compact and philosophical form a corresponding Amer- ican view of the case for democracy: What then is democracy? Democracy is a spirit, an attitude, an insight, a view-point, and an ethic. All ethics is at bottom a calculus of ends and means. The fundamental meaning of democracy must be ethical, not political. Thus understood, democracy holds (1) that every in- dividual is an end in himself; (2) that no indi- vidual is to be regarded primarily as a means to the fulfillment of the purposes or desires of any other individual; (3) that no class or group of individuals is to be regarded primarily as a means to the interests of another class as end; (4) that Il8 THE NEW MIND opportunity, and, so far as opportunity is de- pendent upon them, material wealth and income, should be distributed to individuals in proportion to capacity and willingness to use them for the collective good; (5) that the collective good will be highest when opportunity, which at best is limited in quantity and quality, is distributed so that each individual is enabled to develop his potential powers and capacities in like proportion to the development of these potentialities in every other individual; (6) that the means to the utili- zation of individual capacity and the develop- ment of individual happiness can be found only in the willing, fair-minded cooperative work of individuals and groups, all of whom accept and live up to the foregoing principles; and (7) that to secure the operation of these principles all forms and devices of autocracy, and of the master-and-servant ethics, whether in the family, in national political life, in international relations, or in industry, must give way to government by the people as a whole. Is there anything in that aim that ought not to be sought in these days of world reconstruc- tion? 2. When we think of these days of unrest and the multiplied violations of freedom even in America, can we doubt a more elemental truth, that our government, state and national, is solemnly bound not only to cease its un- POLITICAL AND SOCIAL CHALLENGE 1 19 warrantable interference with freedom, and the plans for further interference through sedition laws for peace time, but also to give the fullest protection to freedom of discussion? Surely the Philadelphia Yearly Meeting of the Friends is basicly and everlastingly right, when they say: There is one way — and one way only — in which we can hope to achieve sane and peaceful prog- ress. It is the way of education, of increasing understanding of the causes and cures of this great unrest. And there is one condition — and one condition only — upon which we can hope to follow this path of peaceable and orderly ad- vance. It is the condition of individual liberty, liberty to interchange ideas and information, lib- erty to speak and write, liberty to discuss. In any other direction lies stagnation or upheaval. . . . No man can measure the harm that may ensue if we continue these incroachments upon freedom of expression. History is replete with lessons of the folly of suppression. ... No easy indifference will suffice to maintain freedom among us. Liberty asks of us a price, the price of tolerance toward those to whom we do not wish to show tolerance. But it is only the un- pleasant or hated utterance that really tests the quality of our liberty. " The supreme test of civil liberty," a noted English lord has said, " is our determination to protect an unpopular minor- ity in time of national excitement" 120 THE NEW MIND Every one of us has some power to help at this vital point. One is glad to hear the same doctrine un- equivocally declared in the Senate by Senator France : We hold it to be an elemental and self-evident truth that there can be no free government with- out practical and absolute freedom of speech, an uninfluenced and unfettered press, and the un- abridged right of the people to assemble to peti- tion for a redress of their grievances. We de- mand the immediate restoration of these rights, the repeal of the unconstitutional and tyrannical Espionage act, and a recommendation of amnesty for all political prisoners held under this federal statute only for political opinions or for words spoken or written, as distinguished from direct incitement to violence, acts of violence, or overt acts against the government. You have con- demned Bolshevism for its confiscation of real and personal property. But that is a worse form of Bolshevism which confiscates real and personal rights. Confiscation of real and personal prop- erty affects the few. The confiscation of real and personal rights impoverishes all. Ill Preserving and Fulfilling the Values of the Nezv Age But we are to ask, also, hozv political, economic and social changes may serve not POLITICAL AND SOCIAL CHALLENGE 121 only to withstand the perils of the new age, but to preserve and fulfill its values. Those values we conceived to be the values involved in some of the outstanding characteristics of the present world-order; in the help of the moral demonstrations of the war; and in the greatest ideal achievements of the war. 1. In the first place, there are great grounds of hope in some of the outstanding character- istics of the present world-order: world sol- idarity; prodigiously increased resources of power and wealth and knowledge made possible through modern science; forced scientific co- operation on an unheard-of scale; the world- wide trend toward democracy and the universal diffusion of knowledge; the establishment of a League of Nations to Enforce Peace, even granting its limitations; the steadily growing internationalism; and the deepening sense of the necessity of a larger and more significant goal for social progress. These characteristics alone make this a great age, surely not to be despaired of. And there is scarcely one of them — as our previous dis- cussion has already suggested — that either cannot be used, or will not directly help, to a better social order, a finer civilization. Let us take one concrete illustration — and a test case — the hopes from the League of Na- 122 THE NEW MIND tions, in spite of the great obstacles it has en- countered. So much is here at stake that it is worth while to quote at length Professor Seig- nobos' able discussion of this vexed question in the New Bur ope: Should so many obstacles make us despair of the League of Nations, of general disarmament and a permanent peace? Must Europe resign herself to reverting to the costly and fragile ex- pedients of pre-war days — the armed peace and balancing alliances? Or is there still some hope of an international future different from the past? . . . If the work of the Conference has been im- perfect, it has not been in vain, and its creations, incomplete as they may be, offer a very hopeful perspective. The League of Nations is born (the Conference has drawn up its birth certificate) : it is not still-born, as the adherents of military tra- dition would fain have us believe. It is as yet only a permanent alliance of former belligerents, but it is so constituted as to be capable of enlarge- ment into a real League of All the Nations. We may sum up as follows the grounds for hoping that this transformation may be achieved: — (i) The territorial settlement of Europe, which is the most reasonable part of the work of the Conference, establishes between the various States a new balance, more favourable to inter- national peace. It reduces the number of the Great Powers, which are always more disposed POLITICAL AND SOCIAL CHALLENGE 1 2$ to disturb the peace, less resigned to the limita- tion of their sovereignty by obligations of inter- national morality; while the three fallen Powers are just the three military monarchies, those most hostile to peaceful order. It creates four States of medium strength — Poland, Czecho- slovakia, Jugo-Slavia and Rumania — strong enough to form a barrier against the old aggres- sive empires, but not strong enough to pursue an aggressive policy themselves. This distribution of forces, which had not been known in Europe since the sixteenth century, facilitates the entry of the various States into the League of Nations, whose nucleus is formed by the three great dem- ocratic Powers — Britain, France and Italy — each eager to avoid war. (2) The League is open to the neutrals of Europe and America, who are already beginning to enter. These are all medium-sized or small States, democratic in constitution and pacific in policy. They will bring with them the desire to make the League universal and will introduce a current of international opinion such as will tone down national egoisms. (3) The League has received from the Con- ference several effective functions — notably the administration of mixed territories — the State of Danzig, the State of the Saar (with Fiume and the Straits to follow) : the control over the rights of minorities ; the supervision of extra-European territory disposed of under a mandate. These functions have brought and will bring into being 124 THE NEW MIND organs that will serve as precedents for the crea- tion of other international organs. (4) The League has received several interna- tional powers — the right of inviting States to revise the treaties, the right of urging upon them the reduction of armaments, the right of holding them to the acceptance of arbitration in cases of dispute. These are as yet merely moral powers without "sanction"; but they can exercise an irresistible pressure on the various Governments, when once they have the backing of a strong in- ternational public opinion. (5) The League has created and already set in motion a permanent international organ — the Secretariat — an office for the registration of all international treaties, designed to become a centre of information for all facts of international char- acter and the instrument of concentration for all international services. The Secretariat, provided with a permanent international staff, will be a centre where international public opinion will form, and whence it will permeate to the Gov- ernments. (6) The League has created an international Labour Commission, which has already prepared international legislation on conditions of work and constituted the International Labour Bureau. These organs place those in power in each coun- try in personal contact with the leaders of the working-class, the class most opposed to war, most eager for complete disarmament and lasting peace. In proportion as Labour extends its POLITICAL AND SOCIAL CHALLENGE 125 power in the internal politics of the various States, it will give added force to the League of Nations to assume direction of world policy. (7) The Governments, out of fear of limiting their sovereignty, would not permit the creation of any international powers — neither legislature nor judicature, nor even army; they merely formed an executive, consisting solely of repre- sentatives of the Governments. But those in power, instead of being represented according to the traditional method by members of the diplo- matic bureaucracy, will be present in person at the deliberations of the executive. . . . For the head of a parliamentary Government is not an official, but an elected representative of his Parliament and subject to the public opinion of his people. The League of Nations, then, is al- ready provided with a tolerably representative executive. The permanent Court of Justice which is at present being organized, only has restricted powers ; but it will be sufficient to ex- tend it in order to make of it the supreme inter- national court. . . . The League will at first only be a confederation without any international government. But every durable confederation ends by transforming itself into a federation. The path which leads to the League of Na- tions is still encumbered by obstacles piled up by the Governments. But it has been clearly marked out, and if the nations once set forth upon it, they will in time reach the goal of their desires. [The New Europe, March 25, 1920, pp. 251-253.] 126 THE NEW MIND Such development of the present League of Nations would be politics of a high order, and make directly for a better civilization. 2. Besides the values involved in certain outstanding characteristics of the present world-order, there were mentioned, it will be remembered, the moral demonstrations of the zvar, and the greatest ideal achievements of the zvar. The moral demonstrations of the war were these: — that we should get rid of shallow views of progress, of creed, and of morals; and that we should be certain of the inescapable grip of the laws of God upon the life of na- tions as well as of individuals. The greatest ideal achievements of the war were considered to be: the rare idealism with which America came into the war ; men's deepening conviction of the supremacy of the intangible values; co- operation in a great cause on an unheard-of scale ; the largest measure of the spirit of sacri- fice the world had ever seen; and the resulting new revelation of common men. Now both these moral demonstrations of the war and these greatest ideal achievements of the war, — if they continue at all to be vital realities — cannot help affecting in the long run political, economic and social conditions. But both, as their names indicate, bear so directly upon the educational and moral and religious POLITICAL AND SOCIAL CHALLENGE 1 27 challenge of this new age, that here, too, I must content myself with a single but inclusive illustration, bearing upon political and social changes. The nezv revelation, in the war, of common men should mean a new birth for democracy, — a truer, more consistent and more thorough- going democracy than the world has ever yet seen, in line with something like the British Labour Program, or Professor Wolfe's parallel statement. The common men have earned this right. That would be the only ultimate justi- fication of the war. It must be a democracy rooted at every point in the spiritual principle of reverence for personality, the sense of the priceless value and the inviolable sacredness of every person. Every relation in the democ- racy — personal, industrial, class, national, racial — must be tested by that principle. There must be no use of persons as things, as mere means, as comfortable but despised conveni- ences. It must be a democracy as radical as the essential and radical democracy of Christ, that shall not be able to doubt that property and institutions are made for men, not men for property and institutions. It must be a democ- racy eager to measure up to the included prin- ciples of obligation according to power, and of " first in service/' 128 THE NEW MIND For such a democracy we must all get ready here in America. Ultimately it will come, with or without our consent. But it ought to come by the clear and glad choice of the whole peo- ple. But the discouraging thing in the political field to-day is that there is no evidence that either of our old parties is grappling earnestly with these problems of a radical democracy, or is anything but selfishly reactionary. One of the ablest of our American editors has said that the most conservative parties in the world are our two chief American parties. And it is no credit to America that that is true. A Republican Senator brings a like charge: Judged by their legislative records in Congress during the last three years, both of these two great parties are as decadent as the issues which first quickened them into being. One of two things is likely to be true: either we shall have an essentially new party, dealing earnestly and honestly with the issues of a radical democracy by political means, or we shall have such a democracy forced upon us along industrial lines. In any case, that new birth for democracy will require the patient working through of the baffling problems of a truly democratic policy, in the interests of the whole people, as to the discovery and use of natural forces; as to the POLITICAL AND SOCIAL CHALLENGE 1 29 control and utilization of natural resources; as to the management and ownership of public utilities: as to cooperation and democracy in industries ; and as to those manifold social mal- adjustments that still blot our record as a na- tion. One does not wish to leave this economic issue vague. There is a direct challenge to Christian laymen in it, as Professor Small has said: Since the armistice, the main problem of the Western nations has shifted. The central human question now, and probably for generations to come, is, What is right, and how may we realize the right in economic relations? Even in the countries which are least pacified and between the countries that are trying to organize stable peace, this demand for economic justice is the pivot of all the rest. Since this fundamental question of economic justice has taken possession of the big world, the direction of religious dynamics must and should change accordingly. . . . Both in general and in the concrete the Christian demand is for a Christianity able to vitalize economic righteousness. ... As I have said, of late there has been no lack of Christian declaration that Christianity, whether churched or un- churched, must make the cause of economic jus- tice its own. Yet evidence is still lacking that the leading laymen in the American churches are willing to throw their influence in favour of recog- I30 THE NEW MIND nizing the problem of economic justice as the chief spiritual issue of our period. It remains to be seen whether the balance of power will apply the full force of organized Christianity to investigation and settlement of that problem. [The Christian Century, April 29, 1920.] In the working out of all these difficult prob- lems here in America, there is both need and opportunity to make nczv and fruitful applica- tions of our guiding principle of reverence for personality. For it suggests a vital test in the choice of methods in the various forms of co- operation and state action: namely, the careful preservation of individual initiative. For nothing is more important, both for the indi- vidual himself and for society, than that the individual should be encouraged to the fullest exercise of his own initiative, and so to the largest contribution to the community life. By being most true to his own individuality he will be most true to all. It is, thus, of prime importance for the progress of the race in this after-the-war age that a sharp discrimination should be made between those forms of co- operation and state-action that tend to check and repress individual initiative, and those other forms of cooperation and state-action that definitely encourage such initiative and seek the best and largest contribution from POLITICAL AND SOCIAL CHALLENGE 131 each citizen and class and state and nation. Socialism seems often to fail here to exercise a much needed discrimination. It is one thing to resist innovations, adopted for the period of the war, which threaten personal liberty after the war. It is quite another, in a merely standpat attitude, to resist innovations which consist in a remodeling of our national and in- ternational organization, " so that it operates more efficiently and more humanely." One of the great issues of the time, therefore, is the decision that the enormous powers of forced cooperation and organization characteristic of our time are to be guided by a deep sense of the need of individual free initiative, and to be used for the constructive enterprises of the kingdom of God, for the true progress of the race. This is in full harmony with the fundamental thought of Bertrand Russell's Principles of Social Reconstruction in judging what is the right direction of movement in any given time: There are two general principles which are al- ways applicable. 1. The growth and vitality of individuals and communities is to be promoted as far as possible. 2. The growth of one individual or one com- munity is to be as little as possible at the expense of another. 132 THE NEW MIND A great moral and religious conception un- derlies these principles, as he elsewhere says : The first and greatest change that is required is to establish a morality of initiative, not a mo- rality of submission, a morality of hope rather than fear, of things to be done rather than of things to be left undone. ... It will be in- spired by a vision of what human life may be, and will be happy with the joy of creation, living in a large free world of initiative and hope. It will love mankind, not for what they are to the outward eye, but for what imagination shows that they have it in them to become. This is in the very spirit of Christ's faith in men and reverence for them. There is need here for earnest study, and loyal cooperation and determination on the part of Christian men and women. And beyond all the borders of America itself an enlarged and deepened democratic ideal will require world-vision, world-thinking, world- responsibility. That America should refuse finally to take her full share of responsibility, in mandatories or otherwise, in the cooperative endeavour of a vigorous growing League of Free Nations would be not only irremediably to sully the rare idealism of her war record, but also eternally to shame her people. The time of her isolation is gone. Those are blind who deny it. It is impossible that we should stay in our present state of shame and humiliation. LECTURE V THE NEW MIND : THE EDU- CATIONAL CHALLENGE LECTURE V THE NEW MIND: THE EDUCATIONAL CHALLENGE IN our attempt to define the new mind needed for the new age, we turn now from the field of the political, economic and social changes required to the demands made upon education. What can education do to overcome the perils of the new age? What can education do to insure that the great values of this critical time shall be carried fully over into that new civilization which we seek? At every stage in the facing of the perils of our time — evil inheritances from the war, dis- illusionment, reaction, revolution— better edu- cation is manifestly required. How else shall we share in that new fight for freedom and for a more thoroughgoing democracy, in those enormous constructive efforts demanded, in the impending economic changes? At every stage in the needed incarnation of the great values of our time, too, there is the same neces- sity for an education that shall match the great i35 136 THE NEW MIND tasks and opportunities revealed. The need and opportunity, then, are prodigious. Can the educational forces measure up to that need and to that opportunity ? In these last two chapters, dealing with the educational and with the moral and religious challenge of our times, while all that will be said will be presented in the full light of our consideration of the perils and values of the new age, there will probably be a certain gain in simplicity, directness and interest, in not at- tempting detailed comparisons between the different parts of our discussion. What, then, are some of the demonstrations of the war and of after-the-war conditions that particularly concern educators? And what are some of the consequent demands made upon education to-day ? I The Power of Education First of all, the world has probably never seen such a demonstration of the power of education, as in Germany's preparation for her war for world domination. Here was a people virtually made over in fifty years, its standards and ideals reversed. The immoral philosophy of the State as above all moral obligations and the materialistic interpretation of the survival THE EDUCATIONAL CHALLENGE 137 of the fittest had been drilled into the whole nation from kindergarten to university, until it permeated all their life, and they responded as a unit with the same formula, the same gesture, the same emotion. This proof of the stupendous power of education was most im- pressive, and is a distinct challenge to Amer- ican educators to note what tremendous changes can be wrought by education even within limited periods. At the same time it is solemn warning; not only because it shows how completely educa- tion may be prostituted to evil ends, but also because it reveals so clearly a false conception of the aim of education. The uniformity of result itself betrays the presence and working of a kind of monstrous machine. Education cannot be safely made into mere propaganda, whether for good or evil ends. To regard the pupil simply as means to some ulterior end is itself desecration. His own liberty, his own initiative, his own personality, his own truth to his unique individuality are to be sacredly re- spected. A uniform result, therefore, in edu- cation is itself an evil. As Russell puts it: If the children themselves were considered, ed- ucation would not aim at making them belong to this party or that, but at enabling them to choose intelligently between the parties; it would aim I38 THE NEW MIND at making them able to think, not at making them think what their teachers think. Education as a political weapon could not exist if we respected the rights of children. Germany therefore has two lessons upon education to teach the nations: the power of education and the constant danger of the prosti- tution of education by using it as propaganda. II The Value of Education The crisis of the war and its consequences throw also into relief the indispensable value of education, not simply for the advantage of the individual in competitive struggle, but for the whole good of the race. In the first place, the war brought out the selfish advantage of education for the indi- vidual himself. College education proved up as an aid to promotion. The extensive educa- tional plans of the Government in the demobili- zation period brought home to many thousands of men the need and gain of further study. And there is no doubt that higher education gained distinctly in prestige during the war. College attendance is increasing, and the care- ful statistics of President Hughes make it seem most likely that it will increase even beyond the THE EDUCATIONAL CHALLENGE 139 capacity of established institutions to meet it. A larger opportunity than the colleges have ever had is now before them. They need to make ready for it by careful forecast and planning. It is the business of American edu- cation to make the most of this generally deep- ened conviction of the value of education. But even this more selfish side of the value of education— which too often engrosses our attention — is not simply selfish. Education proves to be for the advantage of the indi- vidual commonly because in some way it en- ables him to render a larger service to the community. But — quite beyond that — there are many things in these after-the-war days that give a great new emphasis to the indispensable value of education for the whole good of the race. First of all, in these days of unexampled co- operation, we cannot forget that human co- operation, even in its simplest forms, requires some degree of education, and the education must increase as the cooperative task grows in size and complexity. It is not by accident either that the world- wide trend toward democracy is so uniformly accompanied with the diffusion of education. For democracy as self-government requires for its very existence some education. Even the 140 THE NEW MIND simpler problems of democracy require judg- ment as to ends to be set, and as to means adapted to those ends. And once again, as the democracy develops, education must develop with it. We have seen also, in our analysis of this new age in which we are, how inevitably and at multiplied points great constructive world tasks confront us, appalling in their extent and complexity. Good intentions will not solve them. They require the farthest reach of scientific mastery, and the disciplined educa- tion that makes that possible. On the other hand, knowledge alone will not solve any of our greatest problems. When, for example, we think of those larger and more significant goals of social activity, which men are more and more cherishing as alone ade- quate, the indispensable value of education for the production of thoughtful, unselfish, signifi- cant personalities is plain. Take, for example, that pregnant paragraph of Professor Ward's on the trend of progress, based on a wide comparative study of social programs, already quoted in part, and feel again the imperative demands of such goals for the completest education on the ideal side : It is increasingly apparent that the new order THE EDUCATIONAL CHALLENGE 141 both in plan and in experiment is forming around certain definite principles. Men everywhere are seeking for a larger measure of equality and for the realization of fraternity in universal service to each other. They are more and more deter- mined to make the social machinery an efficient means to the highest ends of human living. It is becoming manifest that the development of per- sonality is to supersede the acquisition of goods as the goal of social activity and that the fullest development of personality is to be found in the effort to realize the solidarity of the human family. Surely this critical time can leave us in no doubt as to the indispensable value of educa- tion, and the vastly increased significance of its tasks to-day. Ill The Comparative Failure of Our Education on the Ideal Side The war was a time of testing for our whole civilization. It tested the adequacy of our edu- cation. Scientific technical education seems to have borne the test very well. College educa- tion, as a training for efficient adaptation to varied situations, seems also, as we have seen, to have fairly proved out. The number of soldiers, on the other hand, who could not read 142 THE NEW MIND ' or write English and had but the most meager training made it clear that education had not yet conquered the problem of illiteracy. But I fear that the most serious defect in our edu- cation, which the war brought out, was the comparative failure of our education on the ideal side. The very able British Committee on the Army and Religion, in their careful study of religious conditions in the British Army, assert that nothing was more clear in all their findings than the appalling ignorance on the part of the masses of the British sol- diers of the essentials of religion and of Chris- tianity. Vague superstitions and negations made up far too large a part of their religious ideas. There is evidence which makes one think that much the same thing would have to be said concerning great numbers of our Amer- ican soldiers. [Cf. Religion Among American Men, The Committee on the War and the Re- ligious Outlook, pp. 14 ff.] Indeed one is often struck with the profound ignorance of essential Christianity on the part of many highly trained men even at home. The ease with which many members of flourishing Christian churches, too, are swept into shallow religious fads and into what at best are ex- travagant one-sided emphases is evidence of a similar lack of any thorough religious ground- THE EDUCATIONAL CHALLENGE 143 ing. Fortunately the Christian spirit is often more pervasive than Christian ideas. But this dire failure in religious education — for that I fear it must be called — suggests a similar comparative failure on the entire ideal side of our education. For the interests of re- ligion were more specifically brought out through the churches, than the finer aspects of education were, either directly through the schools, or through other agencies. Both the experience with soldiers in classes in the mean- ing of the war and the outcomes that ought to follow, and the wide-spread reaction from the war since — in an epidemic of restlessness, lack of initiative, lack of sense of responsibility, and selfish pleasure-seeking — indicate pretty clearly that for great multitudes the more ideal in- terests in education had not been deeply grounded or largely taken on. Clear insight, for example, into the aims of the war, into the meaning of democracy, into the great ethical principles of the social consciousness, — to say nothing of aesthetic appreciation — was too gen- erally lacking. Now this comparative failure — under the great test of war — of our education on its ideal side is of vital concern ; for it touches the whole deeper life of the people, and their fitness for a great forward step. It not only calls for great 144 THE NEW MIND new emphases in education but challenges our whole educational process, and compels us to ask whether something is not fundamentally at fault in our present educational aims, spirit and method. And these all we need to ex- amine in the light of the present world-situa- tion, though all three are closely interrelated. IV The End of Education In the first place, what should be the end of education? What light have these critical times to throw upon it? There is need of some careful, discriminating thinking here, for we are all too prone to regard education as some kind of propaganda, as an opportunity to train the race into our ideas and ideals. To begin with, it is too late to forget that education must have both an individual and a social goal, in harmony with one another, and with the laws of human development, personal and social. 1. We may appeal confidently to the guid- ing principle in our whole discussion — the supreme ethical and religious principle of rever- ence for personality, the deep-going sense of the priceless value and inviolable sacredness of every person — to give us our ruling educa- THE EDUCATIONAL CHALLENGE I45 tional ideal, and to help us to solve the really difficult paradox of a true education. For the principle of reverence for personality involves inevitably both respect for one's own person- ality, and respect for the liberty and personality of others. It is at the base, therefore, as self- respect, of a true individualism, and, as respect for others, of a true socialism. It combines thus both " mental and spiritual fellowship among men," and " mental and spiritual inde- pendence on the part of the individual " — to use Herrmann's most suggestive paradoxical summary of the moral law. Our principle suggests, thus, both the indi- vidual and the social goal in education ; for the individual goal, the full development of a free, independent but reverent personality; and for the social goal, a developed society of such personalities. And each goal is necessary to the other, and cannot be dissociated from it. 2. On the individual side, education looks to the full development of a certain kind of person whom we have described as free and in- dependent but reverent. He might be char- acterized perhaps by the single word reverent, or by the single word thoughtful, taking that word in its full sweep. For the thoughtful man is a thinking man, discerning the laws of 146 THE NEW MIND life, seeing things in proportion, a considerate man, and a man of inner integrity, intellectual and spiritual. This whole principle of reverence is so fundamentally spiritual that there is gain in bringing forward at this point the precise moral and religious characteristics of that nezv mind for which the crisis of this new age calls. Jesus defined that new mind with singular fidelity in the Beatitudes. The men, He said, who were to be salt and light for the new age, were those characterized by these qualities: the humility of the open mind, penitence, self-con- trol at its highest, the earnest pursuit of char- acter, sympathy with men, reverence toward men, promoting peace among men, sacrificing for men. These qualities are none of them dominating or enslaving. They are all rever- ent. They are all indispensable to a fine society. They are the basic personal and social qualities upon which every new age must build. They constitute a true ideal for moral and re- ligious education to attain. 3. On the social side, education looks to that society of developed free, independent, reverent personalities which is the goal of all human progress. Here a true education may be said to be furnishing the conditions for fruitful and thoroughgoing cooperation. It THE EDUCATIONAL CHALLENGE 147 may be said, also, to be answering the un- conscious questions of growing youth to the race: What are you trying to do? How far have you got? Where can I help? In other words, education may be here conceived as bringing the individual, as I have elsewhere said, to a personal sharing in the great intel- lectual and spiritual achievements of the race: the scientific spirit and method, the historical spirit, the philosophic mind, aesthetic apprecia- tion, the social consciousness with its great ethical implications, and religious discernment and commitment. Here again, as in the Beatitudes, to which these racial spiritual achievements are strangely akin, the emphasis is all on the qualitative spirit, upon a kind of person, not upon the dogmatic content of certain views. These qualities do not call anywhere for the dominat- ing, enslaving attitude in education. On the contrary, they will be best taught where they are best embodied, where the reverent spirit is most manifest. 4. But, it will be said: Are we not bound to teach the truth to our pupils? Undoubtedly. There are great essential and inspiring truths about the world and men and God involved in this whole theory and process of education. Our guiding principle itself implies a great 148 THE NEW MIND truth concerning human nature. And we should try to help our pupils to the truth in all realms. But this does not justify the dominat- ing, over-riding, dogmatic attitude in teaching. The parallel between the pursuit of truth and the pursuit of duty is at this point very close. The true father must say, as Patterson DuBois puts it : not, " I will conquer that child what- ever it may cost him " ; but, " I will help that child to conquer himself, whatever it may cost me/' So in trying to bring another into the truth, one must remember — what Christ so constantly had in mind — that neither truth nor goodness can be laid on another from without. Truth must be earned. The dogmatic method, therefore, from the start, is in danger of sub- stituting a false process for a true one, even when one is most certain concerning the full truth of his own view. That, I fear, is what we have too often done in education. But more than this is to be remembered in this pursuit of the truth. Both the scientific spirit and the first Beatitude make the humble open mind the first condition of coming into the truth. Now that humble open mind must be retained by the teacher as well as by the pupil, for truth's own sake. The teacher comes to the child with humility and faith, try- ing reverently to make possible that new ray THE EDUCATIONAL CHALLENGE 149 of light on the truth which absolute fidelity to the individuality of this soul may bring. Even for the sake of those truths and views about which the dogmatist is most concerned, there- fore, if he looks for growth at all, he must keep the completely reverent spirit. In this question of the pursuit of truth, there is still another aspect to be borne in mind. Truth, it was long ago said, needs only an open field. Truth comes to be, that is, not by men keeping silent about it, but by every man bear- ing honest testimony to that measure of truth it has been given him to see, though with clear and tolerant consciousness that others have much to teach him. There is in this attitude a true combination of self-respect and respect for others. On the other hand, it is also true that in the relation of teacher and pupil, as in the relation of parent and child, there must be great care that the older and maturer person- ality should not over-ride the younger and less mature personality. Still, if that condition is fulfilled, the teacher may not only rightfully enough at the right time — which will be after the pupil has had his own unhurried oppor- tunity to reach a conclusion of his own — bear his testimony to the truth in the matter under discussion; but also may be said to owe that testimony to the pupil, as one element in the 150 THE NEW MIND complete data on which the pupil must finally act. A chief reason, we may be sure, for the com- parative failure of our education on the ideal side, is to be found in our failure to see the true end in education; in our failure in the reverent spirit, and so in our willingness to substitute a short, false dogmatic method for a true and reverent one. There is no cheap and easy and lazy way to achieve education on the ideal side. It has spiritual conditions. It is comparatively easy to get from a pupil external and conventional conformity. To get a gen- uine inner life of his own is another matter. V The Spirit of 'Education So closely interwoven are the end, the spirit, and the method of education, that, in the dis- cussion of the ends of education, I have neces- sarily anticipated much that also indicates the spirit and the method of education. As to the spirit of education, it has been al- ready clearly implied that the whole conception and process of education must be permeated through and through with the spirit of rever- ence for personality, — one's own, and that of others. And respect for others includes dis- tinct respect both for the liberty of others and THE EDUCATIONAL CHALLENGE 151 for the sanctity of their personality. The true teacher, therefore, will abhor the spirit of the boss at any point, will leave large scope for free action, and will know that the one holy ex- istence in the world is a person. And with the Christ, he will stand outside the door of the heart, to knock. He will not force the door. It is refreshing to find so beautiful an expres- sion of this indispensable spirit of reverence, which is so seldom rightly valued, as Bertrand Russell gives: The man who has reverence will not think it his duty to " mould " the young. He feels in all that lives, but especially in human beings, and most of all in children, something sacred, indefi- nable; unlimited, something individual and strangely precious, the growing principle of life, an embodied fragment of the dumb striving of the world. In the presence of a child he feels an unaccountable humility — a humility not easily defensible on any rational ground, and yet some- how nearer to wisdom than the easy self-con- fidence of many parents and teachers. The out- ward helplessness of the child and the appeal of dependence make him conscious of the responsi- bility of a trust. His imagination shows him what the child may become, for good or evil, how its impulses may be developed or thwarted, how its hopes must be dimmed and the life in it grow less living, how its trust will be bruised and its 152 THE NEW MIND quick desires replaced by brooding will. All this gives him a longing to help the child in its own battle ; he would equip and strengthen it, not for some outside end proposed by the State or by any other impersonal authority, but for the ends which the child's own spirit is obscurely seeking. The man who feels this can wield the authority of an educator without infringing the principle of liberty. And a spirit like that is peculiarly needed just now in all our education. The seeming fractiousness of the younger generation may unconsciously reflect this need. For as our claim on life becomes more and more not sim- ply a demand for possessions but for creative worth-while activities and reverent and re- warding personal relations ; and as our concep- tion of the goal of human progress, thus, has taken on largeness and significance, and has tended in these critical years to shape itself, as we have seen, in terms of a developed society of reverent personalities; — so the education which is to understand and guide these new aspirations of the race must be instinct with the supreme principle of reverence for the person. VI The Method of Education 1. What shall be the method of the educa- THE EDUCATIONAL CHALLENGE 1 53 tion which is to guide these large new aims of men? Perhaps it cannot be stated more suc- cinctly or more accurately than in that para- doxical summary of Herrmann's of the moral law — " mental and spiritual fellowship among men ; mental and spiritual independence on the part of the individual." This is precisely the way in which all that is best in human life goes forward. It is the one great method of all growing values. It is indeed Christ's own fundamental method: the contagion of the good life, on the one hand ; the insistence on the essential sound- ness of the individual life, on the other. For, on the one hand, the men of the new mind de- fined in the Beatitudes were to be the salt that keeps the earth's life sound; the light that en- lightens the world's darkness; the leaven to leaven the whole lump of humanity; the seed of the new living kingdom of men. This is the* method of the contagion of the good life, of mental and spiritual fellowship among men. On the other hand, the salt must not have lost its saltness ; the light must not have gone out ; the leaven must not be spoiled; the seed must not be a dead seed. This is the insistence on the steady soundness of the individual life used, on " mental and spiritual independence on the part of the individual" 154 THE NEW MIND It is in exact conformity to this principle that Christ is nowhere satisfied that men should take truth or life on externally, from without, or simply on authority, — even His own. He knows that, in very deed, truth and life cannot so come to any one. He insists, therefore, that men shall see for themselves and decide for themselves, — shall come into insights, de- cisions, convictions, ideals, hopes, that are truly their own ; — that they shall have person- ally shared in His thought and life. This, too, is the method by which scientific discoveries alone get their full fruition. The original discoverer, for example, of the Roent- gen ray, shares his discovery with all other workers in his field — the method of fellow- ship. But if that fellowship is to produce any results, there must be not merely routine repe- tition of the discoverer's work, but honest in- dependent investigation, alert for new phe- nomena and relations — the method of inde- pendence. Only so will there be real verifica- tion, and real extension of the original dis- covery. It is in the same fashion that there comes that personal sharing in those great intellectual and spiritual achievements of the race — the scientific spirit and method, the historical spirit, v he philosophic mind, aesthetic appreciation, the THE EDUCATIONAL CHALLENGE 155 social consciousness with its great ethical im- plications ; and religious discernment and com- mitment — in which we saw education might be said to consist. In fact, this is the one method of any worth- while society among men. The individual needs fellowship with others at every point, to supplement the meagerness of his own view- point, his own limited experience. On the other hand, that fellowship will have nothing to give if there is not mental and spiritual in- dependence on the part of the individuals com- posing the fellowship. It is hardly open to doubt, I suspect, that in American education we have not sufficiently stressed the independ- ence side. In every department and field of education, in its every aspect, this, then, is the essential method — mental and spiritual fellowship and mental and spiritual independence. It will help keep sound and vital everything we attempt in education. The effectiveness of the method lies in this, that it admits no sham or pretense at any point. It seeks absolute reality. 2. What more needs to be said concerning the method of education grows right out of the laws of human nature. The pupil's develop- ment must be in line with the fundamental lazvs of his ozun being, and his education, thus, be in 156 THE NEW MIND truth a vital process, simply a kind of hasten- ing of what comes from normal living itself. For education ought to be just that — hastened living. What is most essential here is suggested by what I have elsewhere called the four great practical inferences from modern psychology: the complexity of life; the unity of man's nature; the central importance of will and action ; and the concreteness of the real, leading to emphasis on the personal. From the first inference comes the necessity of a store of per- manent and valuable interests — one of the great ends of education — and of realizing that life is completely interrelated in all its parts and cannot be sharply divided off nor summed up in short and simple formulas; but rather has its constant paradoxes which we cannot safely ignore. It is this complexity which Lecky has in mind in his Map of Life, and which he calls " the importance of compromise in prac- tical life." It is this upon which James is in- sisting also when he calls for " the reinstate- ment of the vague and inarticulate to its proper place in our mental life." The second great inference contends that we must keep con- stantly in mind the unity of man's nature, and recognizes that we cannot tear ourselves clown at one point and leave the rest of our life un- THE EDUCATIONAL CHALLENGE 1 57 affected. It demands that all sides of man's nature are to be taken into account. It sug- gests, too, the importance of remembering the mutual influence of body and mind. The third great inference, the central importance of will and action, indicates that work — adequate ex- pressive activity — is one of the greatest means to character, influence and happiness alike; as the mood of work — the objective, self-forget- ful mood — is a prime condition of the finest living. The fourth inference gives a like em- phasis to personal association as the greatest of all means for largeness of life, and to re- spect for personality, including self-respect and respect for others, as the supreme condition. The proper fulfillment of the function of edu- cation, then, requires as its great means, first, a life sufficiently complex to give acquaintance with the great fundamental facts of the world, and to call out the entire man ; second, the com- pletest possible expressive activity on the part of the student; and third, personal association with broad and wise and noble lives. And the corresponding spirit demanded in education must be, first, broad and catholic in both senses — as responding to a wide range of interests, and looking to the all-round development of the individual; second, objective rather than self- centered and introspective; and third, imbued 158 THE NEW MIND with the fundamental convictions of the social consciousness. These are always the greatest and the alone indispensable means and condi- tions in a complete education, and they contain in themselves the great sources of character, of happiness, and of social efficiency. The supreme opportunity, in other words, that edu- cation should offer is opportunity to use one's full powers in a wisely chosen complex envi- ronment, in association with the best — and all this in an atmosphere, catholic in its interests, objective in spirit and method, and demo- cratic, unselfish and finely reverent in its per- sonal relations. Education is inevitably impoverished if it fails to take account of the rich complexity of life, of the intertwined unity of man's nature, of the demand of the whole nature of man for expressive activity, of the fact that he is made, in every fiber of his being, body and soul, for personal relations. Now it is impossible to believe, in view of such a revelation of the nature of men, that the narrow economic theory of human progress and human happi- ness that makes man's one great desire posses- sion of things is justified. No wonder that Russell's Principles of Social Reconstruction is largely a rebellion against this " possessive " theory of human life. No wonder that he THE EDUCATIONAL CHALLENGE 159 says: "To me, the chief thing to be learnt through the war has been a certain view of the springs of human action, what they are, and what we may legitimately hope that they will become." VII Other Needed Emphases in Education Assuming, now, what has been said as to the power, value, end, spirit, and method of edu- cation, what other emphases are needed in edu- cation to-day ? They can be only suggested. 1. A crucial time of testing like the Great War suggests at once that we must at least make certain that there is no sham, no pretense, no mere going through the motions in any part of our education, but absolute reality. At the very best, our task is overwhelming. There must be no toy tools. 2. In the second place, if they are not to play with their task, educational institutions must have greatly increased resources, espe- cially for salaries for teachers. The present high cost of living only accentuates here a constant need. For of the teacher it must be said, not only that the labourer is worthy of his hire, but also that he is worthy to choose for himself his own lines of self-sacrifice, and not have them forced upon him. In a democracy, l6o THE NEW MIND especially, it is also desirable that besides strong state educational institutions there should be strong independent institutions as well, to in- sure variety and wholesome rivalry, and also to emphasize the ideal aspects of education in a way hardly possible to the state. But com- parison with the great wealth of state-sup- ported institutions becomes daily more and more difficult. If the values of the inde- pendent institutions are as important as men have professed to believe, there is no cheap and easy way out. Great resources must be made available. This is a part of the signifi- cance of the educational aspect of the Inter- Church World Movement, and of other great educational campaigns. In the meantime, in the interests of honest service, where an institution finds its work growing beyond its resources, limitation in the number of students may well be suggested. 3. To be sure that our education is fitting closely into the needy life of our time, it is particularly important now that education should furnish in a kind of ideal form the con- ditions of a full normal life, in line with the psychological laws already considered. This would call for various particulars, in addition to the larger considerations already covered : — the physical and psychological study THE EDUCATIONAL CHALLENGE l6l of each pupil, to save from needless handicaps and to give a guidance scientifically based; an intelligent comprehensive physical educational program, with emphasis on out-of-door sports and mass athletics, free from professionalism and commercialism; and, fitting into this, a constructive recreation program as a legitimate and needed part of the educational process. War statistics at this point are impressive. The vital and practical relations of all sub- jects taught ought also to be brought out, even in liberal education; not primarily at all for vocational ends, though they are important, but to see the subject in its setting in the real world; to insure a better grasp of it. And to induce that intensive mastery that is more likely to obtain where the vocational ends are in mind. In reference to all practical sub- jects, it deserves emphasis, too, that it is not the subject of a course which determines whether it may be legitimately included in liberal training, but the way in which it is taught. Even the most practical subject can be handled in such broad, scientific and thoroughgoing fashion as to make it indubi- tably cultural in its effect. In any case, the closer relation to concrete life is likely to help keep our education real at every point. There is often an artificialness about academic life 162 THE NEW MIND that is a direct hindrance, rather than help, to a genuine education. The student's common de- sire to separate responsibility from freedom is an illustration ; as is also his frequent conspicu- ous waste of opportunity. It is cause for con- gratulation that the pressure of numbers upon our higher institutions of learning is likely to help to crowd out the idler from the privileges he abuses. As to industrial education, there is real force in this labour declaration: It is also important that the industrial educa- tion which is being fostered and developed should have for its purpose not so much training for efficiency in industry as training for life in an industrial society. A full understanding must be had of those principles and activities that are the foundation of all productive efforts. Children should not only become familiar with tools and materials, but they should also receive a thorough knowledge of the principles of human control, of force and matter underlying our industrial rela- tions and sciences. The danger that certain commercial and industrial interests may domi- nate the character of education must be averted by insisting that the workers shall have equal representation on all boards of education or com- mittees having control over vocational studies and training. 4. The severe lessons of the great war THE EDUCATIONAL CHALLENGE 163 press upon education, too, in unexampled fashion the necessity of a training against the materialistic possessive valuations of life, with their inevitable tragedy for both individual and nation; as well as for a training against the deification of force and the intoxication of power, and the consequent desire to play the tyrant. The very spirit of genuine education will almost unconsciously guard against these perils. 5. Positively, the present world crisis lays upon education the task of training, as never before, for a reverent and more thoroughgoing democracy. The very principle of reverence for personality, made supreme in education, should itself insure such training, for it makes the school itself in the whole spirit of it a rational ethical democracy in which it can never be forgotten that self-government neces- sarily involves self-discipline. 6. It is not too much to say that every one of the larger aspects of the war — as we have earlier reviewed them — makes clear the neces- sity of the international mind for every nation and for every citizen of the nation that means to count intelligently and with full value in the life of the world. One of the great les- sons of the war, for example, was the exten- sion of the moral law from individuals to 1 64 THE NEW MIND nations. That means that selfish isolation, the refusal to take other nations into our thoughts and plans and cooperative endeavour, is as damnable and damning in a nation as in an in- dividual. The education to-day that does not teach men world-vision, world- feeling, and how to think in world-terms, is recreant to the trust given it in this age. 7. Once more, the comparative failure of our education on the ideal side makes unmis- takable the dire need of definite, discriminating but tolerant moral and religious education. We must learn, as never before, how to bring men to insights, convictions, ideals, decisions and hopes, which are no imitations or echoes of others, but their very own. I need not say more at this point. Two other needed educa- tional emphases are so distinctly moral and religious that, with this, they belong rather to the discussion of the moral and religious chal- lenge of the new age, but need to be mentioned here, as most important educational tasks for this generation. 8. That our civilization was so near to collapse in this world-war meant, we need to remember, that the spiritual roots of our civilization were shallowly grounded, its Chris- tianizing too superficial. We cannot run away from the great constructive spiritual task thus THE EDUCATIONAL CHALLENGE 1 65 arising. All the ideal interests of the race are at stake. And a great share of this responsi- bility rests upon education. 9. Once more, and above all, it concerns American educators that they should not fail to meet the challenge of the greatest ideal achievement of the zvar: the rare idealism with which America came into the war; the sense of the supremacy of the intangible values ; co- operation on an unheard-of scale; the well- nigh universal spirit of sacrifice; and the new revelation of common men. These, as we saw, are great enduring racial achievements and great possible permanent spiritual assets, and therefore a perpetual challenge to American educators themselves to incarnate these values, and to help all American citizens to carry them over into the time and tasks of peace. For these great ideal achievements constitute an enduring ground of appeal in education, in- estimably precious and powerful. These are our permanent trust and resource. Has edu- cation on the ideal side ever had a greater opportunity ? LECTURE VI THE NEW MIND : THE MORAL AND RELIGIOUS CHALLENGE LECTURE VI THE NEW MIND: THE MORAL AND RELIGIOUS CHALLENGE AS we review now the ground, so far covered, we are driven at every point to a steadily increasing sense of the necessity of the help which only morals and religion can bring. This crisis in the world's history revealed in the war, to begin with, was in large measure clearly due to moral and religious failure. Our spirituality had been too shallow, our Christianizing of civilization too superficial. The perils of our time — evil inheritance from the war, disillusionment, reaction, revolu- tion — could be fundamentally met only by moral and religious convictions, commitment and faith. The values of the new age, whether in cer- tain outstanding characteristics of the present world-order or in the moral demonstrations of the war, or in the greatest ideal achievements 169 170 THE NEW MIND of the war, all gave evidence of the working of moral and religious forces. The political, economic and social changes needed for progress toward the goal of human history, — a rational, ethical democracy, a so- ciety of developed independent and reverent personalities — themselves require an unselfish- ness, a reverence, and a faith in spiritual forces which morals and religion alone can give. As for the educational challenge of our time, we found we could not even describe a true education without involving moral considera- tions at every turn, — moral considerations, not only themselves growing out of the teaching of Jesus, but implying essentially religious faith and aims. Our whole discussion, thus, inevitably flows together and naturally culmi- nates in the consideration of the moral and religious challenge of the new age. I Grounds of Faith and Hope In the first place, in these difficult days of world crisis it is worth while bringing together in a simple survey some of the grounds of faith and hope, which have appeared in the course of our discussion. 1. Here we may be thankful, first of all, MORAL AND RELIGIOUS CHALLENGE 171 that men are compelled to face the facts, for this is the ground of all scientific control of forces, in movement toward any significant goal. We are all too ready to ignore uncom- fortable facts. It is well that now we cannot wholly evade them. 2. We may count it a distinct gain, too, that men have been brought to a more chas- tened and humble mood in facing the tasks of world-reconstruction. For the humble open mind will succeed where conceit will fail. The most difficult part of these reconstruction tasks, moreover, involves a delicacy of insight, of feeling, of sympathy, that no cock-sure rule of thumb or jaunty confidence in inevitable prog- ress can compass. 3. We have reason to be glad, indeed, that the crisis was not longer delayed; that weak- nesses — personal, class, national and interna- tional — have been laid bare in this earthquake shock, and may now be rooted out, as a help to that new mind without which the better world of our dreams cannot come. 4. We may gain fresh assurance, too, from the favouring conditions which many of the trends of our time afford for the achievement of great new social goals for humanity: the irrefutable demonstration of the solidarity of the world, which the war has brought, that 172 THE NEW MIND forces now a world-life upon us; the pro- digiously increased resources of power and wealth and knowledge made available through modern science for the forces of righteous- ness, if they will have them; the forced scien- tific cooperation and organization everywhere affecting earth's life; the world-wide trend to- ward democracy, and toward universal educa- tion with its vast possibilities; the beginnings at least of the establishment of a League of Nations — that may yet prove the greatest single outcome of the war; the steadily grow- ing internationalism discoverable in all realms of human life, that plays right into that true brotherhood of the peoples for which men must look ; and the growing evidence that men are setting larger and more significant and worthy goals for social progress, in harmony with moral and religious ideals. These all suggest the possibility of an alliance of great world forces and trends that could be mightily used for setting humanity forward. They give new solid ground for faith and hope. 5. One's faith may be steadied and under- girded, too, as he recalls the repeated moral demonstrations of the war — of the power of the invisible things of character and belief; of the conviction that there was inescapable law in the spiritual world ; and of the mighty grip MORAL AND RELIGIOUS CHALLENGE 1 73 of the laws of God upon nations as well as upon individuals. It is in this inviolable moral world that righteous goals are to be wrought out. God Himself is in these laws of His and will work through them. 6. And when we ponder those greatest ideal achievements of the war — the glorious idealism with which America came into the Avar; the deepening sense for millions of men of the supremacy of the intangible unseen values; the unexampled extent to which men voluntarily carried their cooperation for a great cause; the demonstration, on a world scale, of the capacity of men for sacrifice; and the resulting inspiring new revelation of com- mon men, with its new basis for democracy — we must believe that, in the very midst of an unexampled world-catastrophe, God Himself was mightily at work revealing Himself in and through men, and revealing the divine in men to themselves and to others. For these ideal achievements of the war in themselves make a wonderful apocalypse. How shall we not be- lieve and hope? 7. Our study, too, of the political, economic and social changes demanded for the new age makes it clear that nowhere need we expect mere blind reaction to attain anything more than a purely temporary success. 174 THE NEW MIND In the political sphere, the trend toward democracy is unmistakable and growing in power. We need not despair even of the League of Nations. In the realm of economics, while many still cannot see that a new day has dawned, the multitude of experiments in the industries, all seeking a larger measure of justice for the working man, not only make general reaction impossible, but bear witness to the working of a sense of justice that may be in a positive way revolutionary. And more radical elements in economic programs are likely to compel us all squarely to face the question, in the interests of all the people, of the permanence of the present economic sys- tem. In the whole field of comprehensive social programs, the greatest encouragement lies in the fact that thoughtful men everywhere are occupying themselves with the problem of the social order and of the social goal, and that the modern programs generally show a much greater sensitiveness to the deep significance of the ideal elements in the social order. Men are not to be satisfied simply with things. And this makes the problem of the true social order much more than the problem of the triumph of one class. It looks for emancipation for all the people in a community goal that MORAL AND RELIGIOUS CHALLENGE 1 75 shall make all members one of another for good. 8. Nor does it need to be argued that education has great and indispensable help to give to the moral and religious forces, and so affords most significant grounds for faith and hope. The power and value of education we have seen, and the vital. contribution it has to make at its best to the ideal interests, in its end and spirit and method. For, when all is said, they are the end and spirit and method of human life itself. But we may well note here the specific aid it has to give in its content: its enlightenment as to the laws of that whole world of matter and spirit in which our ideals are to be wrought out; the scientific method itself in the survey of a great problem; and the ideal meaning of the very substance of education. Every one of the great elements in modern education which we noted — the scientific spirit and method, the historical spirit, the philosophic mind, aesthetic apprecia- tion, the social consciousness with its great ethical implications, and religious discernment and commitment — all these have moral and even religious implications and bearings. Personally to share in any one of these great racial achievements requires a spirit which is closely akin at least to the demands 176 THE NEW MIND of the moral and religious. For example, there is hardly a closer historical parallel to the demand for the scientific spirit — with its in- sistence that a man should see straight, report exactly, and give an absolutely honest reaction upon the situation in which he is placed — than in Jesus' demand for utter inner integrity on the part of His disciples, with His constant direct appeal to their reason and conscience. " Why even of yourselves judge ye not what is right?" Education, therefore, fits right into the moral and religious program, and strengthens profoundly our faith and hope in the midst of these troublous times. It has solid and funda- mental help to give, for its power is knit up with the very laws of the universe and of the nature of man. 9. Once more, it is a fresh ground for faith and hope that men have learned through the war to undertake great tasks, and that they are now actually daring to attempt greater goals than they would have dreamed possible before the war. Of this the Inter-Church World Movement is the most notable, but by no means the only, example. It is a great and inspiring thing that the moral and re- ligious forces of the country should be at- tempting world-surveys, and great-hearted MORAL AND RELIGIOUS CHALLENGE 1 77 world-aims. Ultimately this must mean a steadily clearing vision of inter-locking goals — personal and social, class and class, national and international. For the race is one, and the world is one, and the kingdom of the spirit, that is to be, is one. We can dare great things in line with the eternal purposes of God. Certainly confident faith and hope are within our reach. II The Basic Reality of Morals and Religion The survey of the grounds of faith and hope in the present world-situation — with all its crisis and chaos and unwonted perils — both suggests and illustrates the basic reality of morals and religion. It reveals, in days more critical perhaps than humanity has ever before known, how inevitable, how inescapable, the claims of the moral and religious life are. We have found that we cannot go to the bottom of any situation or question of these troublous days and not find ourselves face to face not only with some moral and religious demand, but, not less, with some inspiring hint of a solidly grounded faith and hope. It is also only through ethical and religious faith that we can bring fundamental unity and hope into our world-view at all. 178 THE NEW MIND It does not belong to our present task to suggest the more general grounds for faith in the basic reality of morals and religion; nor is that necessary. Religion never had less need to apologize for its existence. It was not by accident that one of two great poems sent out to Chaplains of the American Army over-seas and to religious work secretaries of the Y. M. C. A., by the Religious Work Department of that organization was Francis Thompson's The Hound of Heaven, with its song of the pursuant inescapable love of God. I fled Him, down the nights and down the days; I fled Him, down the arches of the years ; I fled Him, down the labyrinthine ways Of my own mind; and in the mist of tears I hid from Him, and under running laughter. Up vistaed hopes, I sped; And shot, precipitated, Adown Titanic glooms of chasmed fears, From those strong Feet that followed, followed after. But with unhurrying chase, And unperturbed pace, Deliberate speed, majestic instancy, They beat — and a Voice beat More instant than the Feet — "All things betray thee, who betrayest Me." MORAL AND RELIGIOUS CHALLENGE 1 79 Ah, fondest, blindest, weakest, I am He Whom thou seekest ! Thou dravest love from thee, who dravest Me." Men are catching this vision of Francis Thompson's, we may believe, and never before as now. Ill The Inescapable Christ Nor is it only the general claim of morals and religion which our age in its upheaval and need is bringing home to men. It is Christ Himself whom men more and more find in- escapable. The whole world-situation puts us squarely face to face with Him — simply and straightly, because He has discerned the laws of the moral universe as no other has ; and be- cause, above all others, He has incarnated what He taught, so that He becomes literally the Master of Life, supreme in the Bible as well as out of the Bible. In all the higher ranges of their life many who do not call themselves by His name at all, still in very deed live by Him — by His insights, His ideals, His hopes. So es- sential is He to the life of the spirit. For example, it is His all-embracing law of love — endless and self-giving and holding for both God and man — which we find alone 180 THE NEW MIND bringing unity into the world of the spirit, whether we are thinking of the individual or of the nation or of the race. It is in a truly unselfish love that His fundamental paradox— finding one's life by losing it — is most clearly revealed. And that paradox the world has been verifying as never before, for millions have found the way of sacrifice, of self -giving, the way of liberty and life. It is His supreme principle of reverence for the person, to be shown in every personal rela- tion, which we feel compelled to put at the base both of our education and of our civilization, as the essential spirit of both. It is His paradoxical method of fellowship and independence which we are driven to apply as alone adequate, whether in the education and progress of the schools or of life. It is the end He set before His disciples, — the kind of person and the kind of society which He portrayed — a brotherhood of reverent per- sons — which we too, the longer we study our problem, feel constrained to make the goal of the race and of human history. It is the new mind, which He so accurately described in the Beatitudes — the showing of the eight facets of the jewel of a true love — as necessary to the world-crisis of His time, which we must recognize as fundamentally needed, MORAL AND RELIGIOUS CHALLENGE l8l quality by quality, for the world-crisis of our own day. For this is no time for half-way measures or for shallow remedies. Political and economic prescriptions — much as they are needed — will not suffice. There can be no light and easy healing of the hurt of the peoples in this time of a world sick unto death. The conditions of enduring national greatness are moral — the war has proved it. The absolute essentials of a world of peace and good-will are spiritual, as those who are willing to go to the bottom of the world's need to-day clearly see. This is the significance of one of the most remarkable editorials of the war on " The Greatest of These" [New Republic, December 21, 1918] by one of the most far-sighted and radical of American editors, not given over- much to emphasize upon the moral and relig- ious. In the course of that editorial he sets forth the dire need, the only adequate remedy, and its endless justification: The starvation, the anarchy, and the bank- ruptcy which are now threatening Europe may in the end frustrate and sterilize more human lives, arouse more enduring hatreds, work results more menacing to the future of civilization than war itself. Although the fighting is over, there is no peace in the world, little confidence in one an- 182 THE NEW MIND other or in the future, little common understand- ing and good-will. . . . Christians who have lifted the veil and looked into the face of Christ must believe that the limi- tation of Christ is precisely and entirely what the Christian peoples need to deliver them from the bondage of their bankrupt social economy, from the least tolerable of their present sufferings and from the dread of impending calamity. . . . There is nothing in modern social knowledge which discourages us from seeking individual and social deliverance through the limitation of Christ. On the contrary, modern psychology, modern penology, and modern education all recommend a way of enhancing human life which seeks to release men and women from fears, ha- treds, suspicions, greeds, and debts to their own past. To the paramount necessity of applying the mind and spirit of Christ to the whole vast problem of the world's need — this it is, curi- ously enough, to which these terrible years of war have driven us. As another has said: There are many signs that the time has come, and that men see that the time has come, to make the experiment of applied Christianity on a scale as large as the world. For nations and races as well as for individuals, MORAL AND RELIGIOUS CHALLENGE 183 the way of unselfish service and sacrifice is the way of freedom and peace and power. IV Christian World Civilisation Our goal thus is a definitely Christian world- civilization. Nothing less will suffice. What should it mean? 1. To that end we are to be sure, first of all, that our Christianity is the Christianity of Christ Himself, measuring up both to His ideals and to His consciousness of Himself and of His mission. One of the things that the war was surely doing, for those who could see, was sifting out all those types of Christianity which did not truly reflect Christ: a Christianity primarily theological, a Christianity primarily emotional, a Christianity primarily ceremonial, a Christianity that adopts God as a kind of national or racial perquisite, and an Old Testa- ment kind of Christianity. All these alike failed to stand the crucial test of this world crisis. All these kinds of Christianity were readily harmonized in all the belligerent na- tions in this war with a bitterness and hatred and ferocity utterly unchristlike. Christ's Christianity was of no two-sided order— one standard for individuals, another 1 84 THE NEW MIND for states; or one kind of Christianity for us and another kind of Christianity for the classes or races we thought below us. His Christian- ity is a Christianity of honesty and love, of utter inner integrity and genuine tireless un- selfish good-will. As one said of Julian Gren- fell: "God, it is good to think of a soul so wholly devoid of pettiness and humbug, the cynicism and dishonesty of so much that we see." Surely the fires of the war should have done something to burn out the dross in our religious lives. Above all, it should be plain that Christ knows no negative kind of Christianity. The very essence of religion for Him is a personal sharing in the Father's tireless self-giving love in His eternal purposes of good, identifying our wills with His will, as we take on His purposing of all the great positive values of the kingdom of God. To that mighty loving will of God we do not merely submit; we rejoice in it, and take it on as our own, and make its triumph our triumph. All the greatest goals of the great causes and the great ideals are here en- closed. 2. We cannot live up to this Christianity of Christ and His world-view and not definitely seek a civilisation spiritually based. The war held no more solemn warning than that con- MORAL AND RELIGIOUS CHALLENGE 185 tained in the fact that an essentially anti-Chris- tian interpretation of civilization and national life came frightfully near to prevailing, — to strangling what the world had of a Christian civilization. That meant, as we have seen, that our Christianizing of civilization at its best had been too superficial, that it had not premeated to the core of our civilization; that we had had a pagan standard for nations side by side with a Christian standard for individ- uals. And just so far as the old selfish na- tional diplomacy and intrigue are still going on, we are still a house divided against itself. There is no saving this world by any process that does not recognize one moral law, one Christian spirit, as binding upon our zuhole civilization from top to bottom. The debt of Western civilization to Chris- tianity is already beyond estimate, as Canon Holland testifies: Western civilization is a body with a soul. It depends on the active energy of this animating consciousness. And, when you come to look into this determining conscience, you cannot but rec- ognize that it is the moral deposit of historic Christianity. Its growth, its structure, its em- phasis, its proportions, are the result of a pro- longed Christian effort. It may but imperfectly represent the full Christian ideal, but it is never- 186 THE NEW MIND theless inexplicable without presupposing it. It depends on Christian values, it accepts Christian standards, it has been bred in a Christian atmos- phere, it follows from Christian premises. It is soaked through and through with Christian be- liefs. Its sensitiveness to the rights of the in- dividual man, to the position of woman, to the claims of purity and truth, to the calls for service and self-sacrifice, have their spring and source in the mind of Christ, in the creed of the Incarna- tion. It is only by giving full right of way at every point to this permeating spirit of Christianity that a Christian civilization can be finally tri- umphant. 3. And, above all, we may not forget that the task Christ set His disciples was not run- ning away from the world but conquering the world; not merely through missionary activity, but through the mastery by the Christian spirit of all the forces and resources and methods and institutions and aims of the world-life. There is a new attitude required here. The war proved that the world-life was so emphat- ically one that you could not leave a half of it pagan and Christianize the remainder. The Christian forces, therefore, may not run away from the full task of Christianizing our entire civilization. Else the Kingdom of God per- ishes. MORAL AND RELIGIOUS CHALLENGE 187 But history shows that the greatest failure of the Christian institutions and forces has been, not in pioneer and simple conditions, but rather in advanced and complex situations, where resources were abundant. There has been a tendency to flee from the world, rather than to conquer the world. The challenge, therefore, which the present world-crisis brings to the Christian forces, is a challenge definitely to break that tendency,— to break the whole negative relation to the world, and to seek in- stead a positive world conquest in learning to be in the world but not of the world, to use the world as not abusing it. The Christian forces are bound to " overcome the world," bound to bind all its resources of wealth and power and knowledge and beauty to the chariot of the all- embracing and ongoing purposes of God. Our educational institutions, our welfare agencies, and our churches must all alike learn to master great material resources and not be mastered by them. They must cherish unceas- ingly great unselfish community goals. 4. There is no more signal way, by which this positive Christian conquest of the world can be set forward just now, than by making sure that we carry over into the tasks of peace those greatest ideal achievements of the zvar, of which I would once more remind you — the 1 88 THE NEW MIND rare idealism with which America came into the war; the deepening sense for millions of men of the supremacy of the intangible values; the unexampled extent to which men volun- tarily carried their cooperation for a great cause; the demonstration on a world scale of the capacity of men for sacrifice; and the re- sulting new revelation of common men, with its new basis for democracy. We have seen how significant it was that in every one of these values we had a great racial achievement, and a great possible Christian asset, — a permanent ground of powerful ap- peal. But more than this is true. Every one of these great achievements is itself a challenge to individuals, to communities, to institutions, to classes, to the whole nation, to preserve it, to apply it, to fulfill it. For spiritual values like these can truly go on only as they are in- carnated in human lives. Moral and religious education has here, as we have seen, a supreme opportunity. These ideal achievements all involve certain definite practical goals. They mean, in the first place, that there is just one way in which America can be true to her own highest na- tional achievement, and that is by " carrying on" along the line of that achievement now; by showing now a like idealism, a like unself- MORAL AND RELIGIOUS CHALLENGE 1 89 ishness, a like willingness to take her full share of world responsibility. The natural way to have done all this was to have kept a united nation freed from selfish partisanship ; to have taken our place in the League of Nations ; and to have been willing to take on a large and sig- nificant mandate, for example, in the Near East. It was possible for us, as the one great power territorially disinterested, to do there what no other nation could do. We could have cleared up one of the greatest plague spots of the world. And even now it is impossible to believe that America can remain contented to turn her back upon starving humanity. The appeal of the facts, as Mr. Henry P. Davison of the Red Cross puts it, I cannot forbear quoting. This appeal of the facts must surely reach the con- science of the American people: We are going to find out that we can no more escape the influence of the European situation of to-day than we were able to escape the war itself. You cannot have one-half of the world starving and the other half eating. We must help put Europe on its feet or we must participate in Europe's misery. Let it be admitted, if you will, that neither Wilson nor Roosevelt have had the right to speak for the idealism of America [in pledging our sustained friendship and help] ; it 190 THE NEW MIND still remains true that a man is lying wounded by the roadside. He is stripped of his raiment, he is half dead, and America (rich and pros- perous) is passing by on the other side. . . . Whatever the developments were later and what- ever the merits or the reasons, do not forget that to Europe we are all-important and gave them every reason to believe that we were there and there to stick and that now we seem to have turned our backs. ... I know that if our people had a full realization of the situation we would at once say to our government: Quite irrespective of any obligation, quite ir- respective of the fact that we find ourselves the only country possessed of many of the supplies which Europe needs and which cannot be pur- chased or given in sufficient volume on credit; quite irrespective of our own problems at home (and put it all, if you please, upon a commercial basis), we ask you to arrange at once to place within the reach of those peoples that which they need to save them and start them on their way to recovery. We ask you to do this under con- ditions and upon terms which will best insure the success of the undertaking. But we ask you to do it. One of the conditions we would impose would be that politics should be eliminated from the handling of this task both in this country and in Europe, and that the financial terms should be such as not to work a hardship which would defeat its own purpose. I believe that any conditions dictated by justice MORAL AND RELIGIOUS CHALLENGE 191 and common sense would be unanimously ac- cepted, and I also believe that such a step taken by our government would not only be hailed with joyous hope on the part of the nations of the world, but that most cordial and immediate co- operation would be forthcoming from Great Britain, Holland, the Scandinavian countries, Spain, Japan and France, Italy and Belgium to the best of their ability, and perhaps other coun- tries as well. [The Survey, April 24, 1920.] For America to do less than this is to repu- diate indeed that rare idealism with which she came into the war. These greatest ideal achievements mean, also, that the forces of righteousness can count on the permanent power of the ideal sacrificial appeal to men; that they are not, therefore, to make the mistake of pitching their appeal too low ; that, on the contrary, they are to see that what men want from the ideal forces, from the Christian churches, is not easy terms or "sissy " tasks, but a great worth-while program and a man's job. Men know, too, that this cannot be without cooperation of a kind and on a scale that rivals the marvellous cooperation of the war. The indubitable fact, moreover, that spiritual values are always personal suggests that the churches themselves must never forget that even the 192 THE NEW MIND churches, as institutions, are means, not ends; that they are made for the highest service of men, not men for them ; that they are justified only by their fruit in personal lives; and that they should in themselves illustrate that brotherhood of free and reverent personalities which is the goal of human progress. Printed in the United States of America. Deacidified using the Bookkeeper proce Neutralizing agent: Magnesium Oxide Treatment Date: PreservationTechnSKgie A WORLD LEADER IN PAPER PRESERVATI 111 Thomson Park Drive Cranberry Township, PA 1 6066