Will ilHIillilllllil ^ M ni! 'Wiii^i 1 nir ^l^i 'Jllhjifthoilii Class _Tl1_s:i_S Book u-HS- Gop}iight]N? CDEXRIGHT DEPOSIT, BY THE SAME AUTHOR CHRIST AND THE DRAMAS OF DOUBT 12mo. Net, Sl.OO PERSONALISM AND THE PROBLEMS OF PHILOSOPHY 12mo. Net, $1.00 PHILOSOPHY AND THE WAR BY RALPH TYLER FLEWELLING Professor of Philosophy in the University of Southern California THE ABINGDON PRESS NEW YORK CINCINNATI Copyright, 1918. by RALPH TYLER FLEWELLING m 17 f9/3 'Q.Cuk5i)1478 CONTENTS CHAPTER PAGE Introductory — Philosophy and Life 7 I. German Philosophy as a Re- action ON Life 15 IL German Philosophy as a Politi- cal Principle 27 III. Impersonalism as the Essential Feature of German Phil- osophy 32 IV. Impersonalism a Passing Mood 39 V. The World Demand for a Per- soNALisTic Interpretation of Life 46 VI. America and the Superman .... 57 VII. The Voice at Armageddon 67 INTRODUCTORY— PHILOSO- PHY AND LIFE William Archer in a little volume entitled Fighting a Philosophy quotes Oscar Levy, the English exponent of Nietzsche, as saying in 1906, "Shall I prove to you that a new philosophy may be a more powerful enemy than all the navies of the world?" While the struggle goes on that shall prove whether these words are true, there has come an appreciation such as has been markedly wanting in the common thought, that the mood and logical outcome of philosophy may be laden with the utmost moment to society. We Americans must charge ourselves with special laxity. A part of our feeling for democracy has been to allow the individual the 7 PHILOSOPHY AND THE WAR fullest freedom of expression. We have felt that every man had perfect liberty to mouth his opinions un- molested from the housetop, regard- less of their truth, or of their influ- ence on the common weal. Views might be obviously immoral in their outcome, subversive of the general good, or even seditious, and yet with good-natured tolerance we have put the wing of protection too often over forces which were destructive of the social fabric. The present crisis has forced upon our attention in a special way the right of society to protect it- self from the enemies of the common good. So long as these forces have confined themselves to theoretical or philosophical statement we have as- sumed that they were practically harmless. A prominent educator is reported as saying: *This world has at last reached the stage where it sees 8 INTRODUCTORY that philosophy is the determining factor in man's being; that conflicting notions of the way to think of and plan human existence are responsible for the bloodshed and the devastating woes which now so overwhelmingly beset the earth. A great prayer goes up from every land for sounder no- tions of the way to live. This red baptism of agony and death is purg- ing us of our delusion and vanities, and bringing us to the essential reali- ties." We used frequently to hear that it did not matter what a man believed so long as he was conscientious. We are now beginning to see that the great- est safeguards of a democracy are the fountains of its thought. If one mes- sage more than another is being writ- ten across the scroll of the present age, it is the terrifying effect of a culture which is wanting in the spirit- 9 PHILOSOPHY AND THE WAR ual and moral verities. We are be- ginning to see how any civilization that is founded on culture alone is built upon the shifting sand. Think- ing is not safe if it does not contain a note of reverence and social responsi- bility. A culture may be brilliant, it may have attained the maximum of efficiency from the economic or politi- cal standpoint and yet it may fail utterly of true service to society be- cause lacking this deeper element. For this reason there must be in the near future a backward swing from a conception of education as most to be valued and most "scien- tific" the more it is lacking in moral and spiritual values. The tendency has been to exalt a mere professional- ism, and to restrict education to the merely technical, preparing for mer- cantile, professional, or industrial life, with little consideration for mental 10 INTRODUCTORY discipline and ethical training and none at all for the finer qualities of spirit. The readjustments which must follow the present world crisis will demand something more than professional efficiency. They can be reached only as professional effi- ciency is joined to deep ethical and spiritual insight. I am quite aware that these sentiments will sound strange in the ears of this age. So long have we been overawed and dominated by the educational philoso- phy which now menaces the best of civilization that things which men see practically have not become a part of accepted philosophical expression. The world has been fairly well surfeited with the predominance of "dollar" thinking. Where the note of reverence, of spiritual reality and social responsibility is lacking, a deadly miasma creeps into the air, II PHILOSOPHY AND THE WAR creating misunderstandings and hos- tilities that eventually array nations and civilizations in armed combat. For the conscious and subconscious ideals of life, seemingly unimportant, really determine action. Even the folk-tales of a people are not unimpor- tant. They teach a subtle philosophy which enters the common life and con- sciousness. The crude Samson stories sprang not only from the ethical feel- ings of the Jewish people, but were a strong factor in keeping Jewish youth to a high road of purity by showing the weakness that comes of wrong- doing. The modern Englishman owes something of his sense of re- sponsibility for the weak, something of his high notion of honor to the tales of Saint George and the Dragon and the Knights of the Round Table. The legends of Faust, Tannhauser and the Lorelei have been the expres- 12 INTRODUCTORY sion's and the impetus to a wild and irresponsible mood which has made it easy for the leaders of Germany to enter into league with the devil for the mastery of the twentieth-century world. And if it be true that we have entered upon a twilight of the gods, there are brave men who have sworn that it shall be the twilight of the gods of wrong and oppression to which men sell their souls in the hope of un- lawful gains. In calling you to consider the mat- ter of German philosophy I do not presume to pass final judgment on all German philosophy. I do not intend to write except of those phases which in my judgment relate to the war. I do not deny nor overlook that there are better and noble elements, but I do affirm that such philosophical voices are not the ones that are being listened to in Germany at this hour. 13 PHILOSOPHY AND THE WAR That must be my reason for neglect- ing them. Because we thus confine ourselves to certain issues of Ger- man philosophy we will probably be charged with partisanship. We must here limit the discussion to those phases of German thought which take their places in the present crisis. We cannot consider those that lie crushed and defeated upon the field of Ger- man national life. H CHAPTER I GERMAN PHILOSOPHY AS A REACTION ON LIFE German philosophy as a reaction on Hfe is aptly illustrated in the life and masterpiece of Goethe. That the illustration is not farfetched is mani- fest from the fact, of which the Ger- mans boast, that Faust is one of the five books to be found in the knap- sack of every intelligent German sol- dier. That the illustration is ap- propriate is evidenced by the events that have taken place since the war began. Goethe's life philosophy, a fore- gleam of the doctrine of the super- man, was simply this: the Goethe in- dividual, because of his conscious 15 PHILOSOPHY AND THE WAR superiority, was to use all lesser lives (and in this case it meant all other lives) as the foil and impetus of its own development and greatness. All experiences of love and passion were to be indulged for their cultural value to the poet, but with no responsibil- ity assumed on his part. Goethe's friends, male and female, were gath- ered up into his grasp and used so long as they were valuable, and then were cast ruthlessly aside. When the funeral cortege of his best friend passed before Goethe's window, he re- fused to look out lest his own precious spirit be depressed by the sight. In the great work which began with his youth and ended but a short time be- fore his death we have set out before us, as he did not intend, the tragedy of Goethe's dying soul. It was significant of the Goethean philosophy, that while Margaret was i6 A REACTION ON LIFE left to meet her moral problem ac- cording to the antiquated views of the church, after the only effective man- ner of salvation given among men, namely, repentance, confession, and paying the debt to society, the arch- criminal and enlightened Faust wipes from his soul the foulness of unre- pented sin by looking at grass, flowers, and waterfalls. From him there is no repentance nor regret, only "Kultur." And Goethe considered Faust a true solution of the dark prob- lem of sin. Faust is thought to be justified in the ruin of Margaret's life, because thereby his own life was made more replete. There still con- tinue in the world multitudes of peo- ple who have small regard for Faust, the Superman, and who are keen enough to see that when Faust turned from the prison cell, abandoning Margaret to her lonely fate, all that 17 PHILOSOPHY AND THE WAR was noble, all that was worthy the name of manhood, died within him. That which might be called personal- ity was ended and he had developed individuality instead. That this is not an extreme interpretation is evi- denced by the best of German opinion itself. I bring you another example of this philosophy as a reaction upon life, taken from the turbid stream a half century later. We witness in Nietzsche the full flowering of the Goethean ethics and philosophy. Not himself a German, and despising the Prussian, Nietz- sche's philosophy is the predominant philosophy of Germany to-day. A part of the German boast, already alluded to, is that a second one of those books to be found in every in- telligent soldier's knapsack is Nietz- sche. i8 A REACTION ON LIFE To men already inflated with a false individualism and sense of great- ness, for whom Goethe had prepared the doctrine that every sin is pardoned by the attainment of "Kultur," Neitz- sche became the appropriate prophet. The significance of Nietzsche's phi- losophy lay in his reversal of all moral values. Not love, but force and power; not sympathy, but cunning and treachery; not meekness, but mastery by any means, was the gos- pel of this madman. To transform oneself into a "blonde beast," ravag- ing, violating, murdering, was justi- fied by the achievement of power. Should some pro-German friend ob- ject that Nietzsche is not the pre- dominant philosophical force of Ger- many to-day, we reply, "By their fruits ye shall know them." We point to the lurid pages of recent history, so black that they could not be recited 19 PHILOSOPHY AND THE WAR within the hearing of any decent man. The flaming towns, the floating corpses of our own women and chil- dren, in days when we were attempt- ing to withhold our judgment and be neutral; the violated women, the bestially maimed bodies of women, lit- tle children, and prisoners of war; long lines of captive girls, driven with whips into slavery and prostitution — let his hand forget its cunning and his tongue cleave to his mouth, who in wanton forgetfulness of the just judgments of God proposes to make uncertain peace with such a foe. Let us read a few passages from the new testament of the devil, that is, from the Nietzschean scriptures: ''What they" (the levelers) "would fain attain with all their strength, is the universal, green-meadow happi- ness of the herd, together with security, safety, comfort, and allevi- 20 A REACTION ON LIFE ation of life for every one; their two most frequently chanted songs and doctrines are called 'Equality of Rights' and 'Sympathy with All Suf- ferers' — and suffering itself is looked upon by them as something which must be done azvay with. We op- posite ones, however, who have opened our eye and conscience to the question how and where the plant *man' has hitherto grown most vigor- ously, believe that this has always taken place under the opposite condi- tions, that for this end the danger- ousness of his situation had to be in- creased enormously, his inventive faculty and dissembling power (his 'spirit') had to develop into subtlety and daring under long oppression and compulsion, and his Will to Life had to be increased to the uncondi- tioned Will to Power: — we believe that severity, violence, slavery, danger 21 PHILOSOPHY AND THE WAR in the street and in the heart, secrecy, stoicism, tempter's art and devilry of every kind — that everything wicked, terrible, tyrannical, predatory, and serpentine in man, serves as well for the elevation of the human species as its opposite: — we do not even say enough when we say this much" (Be- yond Good and Evil, p. 44). His ideal men outside of their own country, he says, will be little better than so many uncaged beasts of prey. Hear him: "And the same men who inter pares were kept so rigorously in bounds through convention, respect, custom, and gratitude, though much more through mutual vigilance and jealousy inter pares, these men who in their relations with each other find so many new ways of manifesting consideration, self-control, delicacy, loyalty, pride, and friendship, these men are in reference to what is out- 22 A REACTION ON LIFE side their circle (where the foreign element, a foreign country, begins) not much better than beasts of prey which have been let loose. They en- joy there freedom from all social con- trol; . . . they revert to the inno- cence of the beast-of-prey conscience, like jubilant monsters, who perhaps come from a ghastly bout of murder, arson, rape, and torture, with bravado and a moral equanimity, as though merely some wild student's prank had been played. ... It is impossible not to recognize at the core of all these aristocratic races the beast of prey; the magnificent blonde brute, avidly rampant for spoil and victory; this hidden core needed an outlet from time to time, the beast must get loose again, must return into the wilder- ness" (Genealogy of Morals, p. ii). "The essential thing, however, in a good and healthy aristocracy is that 23 PHILOSOPHY AND THE WAR it should not regard itself as a func- tion either of the kingship or the com- monwealth, but as the significance and highest justification thereof — that it should therefore accept with a good conscience the sacrifice of a legion of individuals, who, for its sake, must be suppressed and reduced to imperfect men, to slaves and in- struments. Its fundamental belief must be precisely that society is not allowed to exist for its own sake, but only as a foundation and scaffolding, by means of which a select class of beings may be able to elevate them- selves to their higher duties, and in general to a higher existence. ..." (Beyond Good and Evil, p. 258). "At the risk of displeasing inno- cent ears, I submit that egoism be- longs to the essence of a noble soul, I mean the unalterable belief that to a being such as 'we,' other beings 24 A REACTION ON LIFE must naturally be in subjection, and have to sacrifice themselves" (Be- yond Good and Evil, p. 265 ) . What words of counsel these to put in the hands of young men who hold toward helpless and weak the role of conquerors. In the knapsack with Faust and the Bible ! That you may see how deeply this gospel of blasphemy has taken root among the people I quote^ from pas- tor Wilhelm Phillipps, editor of Ber- lin's Christian Patriotic Weekly, pub- lished recently, and commented on by the Frankischer Volksfreund. The article was headed "Through Tirpitz to Jesus." It read : "Our Divine Re- deemer is a lover of peace. So are we, but the peace that the Lord wants must be a lasting peace, and no peace can be lasting except one that brings * Quoted in Boston Transcript — "Chronicle of the War." 25 PHILOSOPHY AND THE WAR us Courland, the mining regions of Longwy and Briey, and bases for our fleets, to serve as future starting points in any eventual war with Eng- land. The latter, our Tirpitz, a man after Christ's own heart, can assure us. He may be appropriately styled the warlike Nazarene, whose ardent patriotism is only equaled by his de- votion to his Divine Master, who will be his guide in any future enterprises he may engage in for the glorification of Germanism." 26 CHAPTER II GERMAN PHILOSOPHY AS A POLITICAL PRINCIPLE If sentiments like those quoted in the preceding chapter could have re- mained confined to the field of aca- demic discussion, we might never have heard of them, but they are only the philosophical evidences of a wider movement, and philosophical ideas have a way of escaping into life. The immoral egotism and intellectual bril- liance that gave us Faust was but the outward indication of a deep-moving element in German culture and na- tionalism. The movement was a po- tent cause of the Prussian wars, the forcible taking of Schleswig-Holstein, and the rape of Alsace-Lorraine. The 27 PHILOSOPHY AND THE WAR intoxication of egotism received a great impulse in the victories over the Austrians, the Danes, and the French. Then it was that Bismarck betrayed the soul of Germany into the hands of the devil. He proceeded upon the theory that if the people of Germany were well-fed and materially pros- perous, they could be so relieved of moral sense that they would unques- tioningly follow the autocracy. There has been in history no more patent example of the moral debauch of a great people. But some one arises at this point to accuse me of too severe judgments. Then let me turn the tell- ing of the tale over to a German, your- selves being the judges. The Kreuzzeitung (Gazette of the Cross), Berlin, published late in 1917,^ contained the following esti- ' Quoted from the Boston Evening Transcript, "Chronicle of the War," December 22, 1917. 28 A POLITICAL PRINCIPLE mate of Bismarck and his policies: "Can conscience and the necessities of a state march together ? In the world of action it is unfortunately very diffi- cult for them to do so. They can and they do, however, in the world of in- tellect, when an aroused conscience takes on itself the guilt that has arisen from the necessities of a state, and transforms itself into a moral and religious devotion to the state in which that conscience has come into its own. "Bismarck was one of these con- science-governed appreciators of the necessities of the state, and of their preeminence even over the very con- science that ruled him, so that with open eyes and with frank admission he passed through guilt to that road that should lead to the ennoblement and aggrandizement of the state he served. 29 PHILOSOPHY AND THE WAR "Herein lies the profound differ- ence between Bismarck and the Eng- lish statesmen. In their actions they top are led solely by political consider- ations, but they are lacking in that most delicate conscience which hon- estly calls politics by its right name, and admits guilt when through guilt alone those politics can be served. ''Bismarck represents to us there- fore the embodiment of a profound truthfulness, while English statesmen, not being possessed with the requisite moral courage and strength, conceal their politics under a hypocritical mantle of sanctity, which is both dis- gusting and blasphemous in men who have invented, or at all events em- ployed, the most fiendish mechanical contrivances to kill and mutilate men who have no animus against the ene- my but are simply doing their duty in shielding the Fatherland from the 30 A POLITICAL PRINCIPLE catastrophe of invasion." The writer who quotes this adds : "Asphyxiating gas, liquid flame, disease germs, poisoning wells, infernal machines in ship's bunkers, slavery, rape, murder, arson, forgery, justifiable for Ger- many's conscience — British tanks, un- adulterated, original sin." The German editor who wrote that article had lost his sense of moral values, and that it could be written and could be received by intelligent people is proof of widespread moral blindness. n 31 CHAPTER III IMPERSONALISM AS THE ESSENTIAL FEATURE OF GERMAN PHILOSOPHY The fatal weakness of German philosophy in general, and of the sys- tem that now holds the hearts of the people in particular, is its impersonal- ism. I have already mentioned the cultivation of individuality at the ex- pense of personality, which was ap- parent in the life of Goethe. By in- dividualism I mean that rank egotism that fattens itself at the expense of all moral and humane considerations. We have had too much of it in our English-speaking lands under the terminology of Superman. Personal- ity, on the other hand, clings to the great moralities as the priceless treas- 32 IMPERSONALISM ures of the soul, and to these it dings though they lead it to a cross. Per- sonality is the touch of the Divine which may arise in every man, what- ever his race, training, or education, and on account of which he is of the utmost value to society, and in accord- ance with which he claims the right to a normal self-development. When German philosophy overlooks or de- nies this right to the last and the least man in the world it betrays hu- manity. Even in those phases in which it has not sold itself outright to the devil it has been burdened with an abstraction of impersonal theories which have helped to prepare the fertile field of moral equivocation and inhumanity. One need not be unap- preciative of the great work of Kant, Fichte, and Hegel, to recognize their failure to connect with the vital prob- lems of human beings. The reason 33 PHILOSOPHY AND THE WAR for this has been that persons have seemed to them of relatively little moment, and the development of per- sonality of the sacrificial kind as a weakness. This is no new tale or discovery. It has been clear to the best thinkers of Germany for a long time. I shall not soon forget a con- versation with one of the greatest of German thinkers. It occurred just before the outbreak of the war. With grave face and tones of great ear- nestness he described the low state of real religion in his country, and de- clared that an American could not realize the depth of the religious prob- lem that was facing them. The inability of German philosophy to reach the ground and to respond to the vital moral needs of man has been the great source of its failure. Its culture has been intellectual at the ex- pense of the finer voices of the heart. 34 IMPERSONALISM This was the reason that, developing the realm of biblical criticism to a commendable degree, it was able to arrive at results that were only nega- tive and nullifying. The same tinge runs through its inhuman scientific efficiency. And the world is pretty sure to be so sick of the inhumanity and godlessness of its "Kultur" that it will forget any good it has to offer. This impersonal mood in German philosophy must be taken into account in considering the brutality of the German soldier. He is a part of an impersonalistic system. He is bidden by his officers to shut his heart to every tender feeling. And the result has been that his manhood has been lost somewhere in the meshes of mili- tary training, so that he has been guilty of barbarities and refinements of cruelty that savages would despise and be incapable of conceiving. 35 PHILOSOPHY AND THE WAR This impersonal temper has caused Germany likewise to fail in every ac- tion that depended on a knowledge of psychology, though she thought her scholars the most efficient in the world. Her campaign of frightfulness set the red blood surging in a thousand million breasts that might have been supposed inseparably attached to peace. The campaign of frightful- ness has been worth to England more than millions of armed men. Her propaganda of bribery and re- volt raised an army for Britain in India and caused the pouring out of the wealth of the Indian princes. Her submarine campaign, designed to keep America from the war, made Amer- ica's participation inevitable. Her system of spies and espionage misre- ported the temper of every people. There must be a reason for so uni- 36 IMPERSONALISM versal a failure. The Boers from Africa, the Anzacs from Australia, the men of Canada, the honest heart of Ireland singing "Tipperary," all responded to the bugle call of the spirit, and Germany might have fore- seen this had she had any eyes of the spirit to see with. The very efficiency and impersonalism of her culture blinded her to the existence of values that were deeper and more potent than all the mailed fists in the world. And so the world gathers for her un- doing, and the mingled voice of Eng- lish, American, East Indian, African- Dutch, Japanese, Chinese, Italian, French join in one answer to her terri- ble boast, and the answer is, "They shall not pass." And the reason that men of all races and tongues and speech and religions, looking over the rim of the world, catch one vision of freedom is because throughout the 37 PHILOSOPHY AND THE WAR world the essential right of manhood is being challenged by an embattled impersonalism, its common foe. Men know full well that if Germany were in any sense to win this war, no spot on God's earth would be worth living in. 38 CHAPTER IV IMPERSONALISM A PASSING MOOD Two forces have been long at work to bring the impersonalistic temper in all places of culture. The common man's criticism of the college cur- riculum is in a measure just. There may have been more truth than the average scholar has realized in the criticism of the masses that the col- lege has in too many cases succeeded only in training its students away from sympathy and touch with com- mon interest and common life. This tendency has appeared at two widely sundered poles. At least in theory they are far apart. In fact, they are much closer together than 39 PHILOSOPHY AND THE WAR either partisan will admit. The first is represented by a coldly intellectual dogmatic and abstract philosophy. In this realm we hear much of cosmic consciousness, absolutes, thought- planes and states of consciousness, with scarcely a glimmer of light cast upon the reality and force of the in- dividual soul. To such a philosophy man himself is lost from view in the tireless search for an abstraction. Much of this type of teaching has borne as little relation to life and real- ity as the dogmas of ancient scho- lasticism. The main point of failure with such a philosophy has been its rank impersonalism. It was wont to overlook life in oi'der to defend a theory. This type of thought has, however, been much less in vogue, much less influential, than has the system which divided with it the attention of the 40 A PASSING MOOD scholarly world. This second type of impersonaHsm is to be found in great sections of scientific teaching. One might almost say scientific dogma, for many things have been taught as scientific law and gospel which have never reached a surer stage than that of hypothetical reasonableness. Science seeks from multitudinous ex- periences of action in the natural world to discover the uniformities of that action and classify them as laws. These laws are then erected into magic potency which is deemed to read out of the universe all place for Supreme Will, Purpose, and Person- ality. What wonder is it that in- dividual responsibility and social re- action are caught in the same mael- strom of discredit and unimportance. Analogous laws are assumed to apply in the biological, social, and political worlds. It is presumed that psycho- 41 PHILOSOPHY AND THE WAR tian until he could bring himself to the unrelenting form of a common "experience," or creed or formulary or ritualistic order. In society we have had our scien- tific sociological panaceas through which the age was to begin anew by bringing all men to the uninteresting level of commonplace. Our treatment of crime, of problems of labor and capitalism, have each in turn fallen under the ban of "scientific" treatment which forgets the essential part and the interesting part of the problem, the unique and living personalities of men. All such schemes of impersonalism inevitably prove too much, and theo- retically they work too well. They return, like some ugly Frankenstein which we have started and cannot stop, to destroy all that our hands have laboriously wrought. The Ger- 44 A PASSING MOOD man is correct in thinking of his "Kul- tur" as scientific. Where he is wrong is in thinking it can be permanently appHed to any set of living human beings. His system is fundamentally wrong because man cannot be dealt with as a thing. These days of war are proving the inadequacy of all im- personalistic theories of life. They are loosening their ancient reign and must shortly pass away. In the words of Emerson — "There are two laws discrete Not reconciled — Law for man, and law for thing ; The last builds town and fleet, But it runs wild. And doth the man unking," 45 CHAPTER V THE WORLD DEMAND FOR A PERSONALISTIC INTER- PRETATION OF LIFE The war is too close to us for any man to imagine that he can compre- hend it. But out of the sore and bit- ter night-watches there come some gleams of promise for a wonderful new world, better than our fondest dreams. There are tokens of a new seriousness, a new religiousness, and new demands in the minds of men. We cannot tell what the future will bring, but we know that future will not be like the old world that is pass- ing away. As well expect to thrust a fledgling back into its shell as to think for a moment that the multi- 46 THE WORLD DEMAND plied lessons of men will result only in an effort to rebuild the world that has gone to pieces. The foremost de- mand of this new world will be for a personal interpretation of life and his- tory. The reason I am sure of this is because the war is itself the world- wide revolt against the impersonalis- tic interpretation of life, society, and history. We are coming to world- wide understandings of the intrinsic value of one person. The Christmas bells never rang in all the years of Christian history a more meaningful or holy song than at this latest Christ- mas. The song that sings to-day in the hearts of earth's unnumbered mul- titudes is the song that rang first from angel lips over the starry fields of Bethlehem; "Peace on the earth to men of good will." The scattered tribes of earth have looked into each other's eyes with a new understand- 47 PHILOSOPHY AND THE WAR ing and have sworn with the oath of a great sacrifice that every institu- tion, philosophy, king or potentate that dares to break the world's best dream, and reenact the slaughter of the innocents, shall be cast into the pit, and that the sword shall not be sheathed until the song of Bethlehem can tell a message of truth for the last and feeblest child of man in all the world. The demand is a demand for a new humanity — for a fair chance for the mind and soul of every man born into the world. From city slums and mountain loneliness, from where the great river threads the jungle, from the vastness of the Arabian deserts, from the crowded pestholes of India — from everywhere men are showing the devotion of unconsider- ing sacrifice, and prejudices of race are being washed out in seas of blood ; and now we see that to which our eyes 48 THE WORLD DEMAND have been too long holden, that we are the children of one Father, and that not one can suffer in his loneli- ness and misery without injury to all. Materialism that forgets the man be- hind the individual, abstract philoso- phy that makes concrete wrong ap- pear like an abstract right — these will have been found forever want- ing. The one thing that rises out of the wreck of war is the unity of our com- mon interest, and the things that have long divided us appear in their true insignificance. This temper is evidenced by many occurrences in the war, the stories of which are too familiar to repeat. The readiness of chaplains of all faiths to minister religiously to men without distinction of creed shows a universal falling back upon the essentials of religion. Now a Roman Catholic 49 PHILOSOPHY AND THE WAR priest undergoes great personal peril to pray with a dying Protestant ; now a Presbyterian hears the dying con- fession of a Catholic. A rabbi minis- ters with a crucifix to a dying man, or Protestants preserve order for the Mass, only to have the compliment re- turned at the hour of Protestant wor- ship. New religious understandings, new community of feeling, new sense of the simple essentials of Christian life and faith shine out like stars over the murky blackness of the night. The unessential things which divide men are discovered in new and less favorable light. Deeds of undying heroism and sacrifice, manlinesses which show the truest nobility of soul are found not peculiar to any one creed or race of men. While there are being displayed the most reeking depths of inhumanity and worse than bestiality, there are innumerable evi- So THE WORLD DEMAND dences of sacrificial devotion and nobility in lives where it would be least suspected. If the meanness and dastardliness of lives devoted to wrong principles is being shown in a way more complete and tragic than the world has ever known, it is also true that the ennobling value of right principles and a just cause has never been displayed so clearly. And men who are thus discovering their common noble qualities are being welded in sympathy as iron runs together in the white heat of a crucible. Where there is discovered to be a common interest and a com- mon sympathy, a common expression of faith will ultimately be demanded. A startling illustration of this breaking down of barriers has ap- peared during the war in the columns of the "Churchman" in the Boston Evening Transcript. 51 PHILOSOPHY AND THE WAR The first is taken from the Ameri- can Lutheran Survey and follows: ''It is said that many cultured Jews have of late come to recognize and acknowledge the power and the truth of Christianity. One of them is quoted as saying: 'We are being ir- resistibly carried forward toward a spiritual crisis which can end only in spiritual bankruptcy. The gospel is a resistless power which is slowly but surely influencing our minds and making us impotent to maintain our opposition to the Nazarene. Willy- nilly, we are compelled to admire his teaching, his life, and his work. Our position is untenable ; we will have to yield our ground, as hard as it is to acknowledge an error.' This is the only solution of the Jewish question, internally and externally. As soon as a thoughtful Jew has become truly ac- quainted with the actual picture of 52 THE WORLD DEMAND Jesus In the New Testament, he in- voluntarily bows his knees before the supernatural Greatness, and says, 'Thou art fairer than the children of men: grace is poured into thy lips.' That which prevents us from accept- ing Christianity is not Christ but the Christians. They accord us hatred and scorn. ... It is this hatred that is still holding us together as a nation. As prominent a personage as Miss Lazarus, the writer says, 'We are standing on the threshold and do not know where we are to go.' What a marvel might be unfolded," con- tinues the Lutheran Survey, "if Chris- tians enough were to realize that the time of Israel's harvest has come !" We are given another expression of the world longing for unity from another source. "Many of our people are getting tired of the expression 'salvation by character,' " said an ac- 53 PHILOSOPHY AND THE WAR live Unitarian to the writer this week. "They have lost their objection to the expression 'saved by grace,' and would be glad to see it become gen- eral." He went on to explain that it was simply a recognition of the fact that in God we live and move and have our being, and that every good and perfect gift cometh from him, even the gift of character, and that without him we can do nothing. "We are all the children of God created by him, made for a purpose, and saved by his creative plan, which is grace. Whether we accept the idea of atone- ment by substitution, or atonement by the *Lamb slain from the foundation of the world,' which is a symbol of the all-suffering God himself, we are all saved by his grace if we are saved at all. To deny this is atheism." The writer adds : "Can it be in these thrilling days, so mysterious in the 54 THE WORLD DEMAND evidence they show of the working of some mighty power, that God in breaking down the partition walls and burning up in a fierce confla- gration the barriers that divide and antagonize nations, races and churches, finds the principal obstacles to his efforts in the prejudices and hatreds in the hearts of his own chosen ones ?" Now, a world in which such deeds can be done, in which such thoughts can be sincerely and widely expressed, is a plastic world, a world that is lighted with the great hope of a new spirit of humanitarianism — yea, more than that, a world which is pre- pared as no world has ever before been prepared to accept the essential teachings of Jesus as the rule and guide of life, and to enter actually into that brotherhood which is im- plied by the acceptance of God as our 55 PHILOSOPHY AND THE WAR common Father. No more can we allow the last and feeblest brother of man to suffer in bitter or in sullen neglect. 56 CHAPTER VI AMERICA AND THE SUPER- MAN The source of the modern streams of influence form a most interesting field for study. To these streams America is related by connections the most direct. There is no question, I presume, of the influence of the Re- naissance upon modern life, nor that the forces which led to the settling of America and its eventual political de- pendence were long preparing and developing. There would be no ques- tion of the common origin of many of the political and social ideals later realized both in American and in European life. The boldness of the Renaissance philosophy taught by Bacon, Hobbes, 57 PHILOSOPHY AND THE WAR Descartes, and Spinoza was startling to a world that had been long accus- tomed to an anaemic philosophical dogmatism. But their thought was all a part of the general movement of the newly discovered world, and it laid the foundations for the period of the Enlightenment. It is quite impos- sible to consider that movement out of which sprang the French Revolution, the American war for Independence, and the foundations of modern Ger- many apart from the influences of the Enlightenment and the elements which that period in philosophy gath- ered from the Renaissance. Perhaps the greatest political influence of the time centered in the philosophy which was set forth by Rousseau. Rousseau became the father of modern roman- ticism and has exerted a profound and often unappreciated influence upon the present age. In France and 58 AMERICA AND SUPERMAN America he became the spokesman for a rising tide of individuahsm which threatened every political in- stitution. The movement was per- vaded with naturalism, skepticism, and the utilitarian ethics of Spinoza. It was deistic on the religious side. It was a pronounced individualism. It was a part of the general reaction against institutions which had re- pressed both spiritual and political in- itiative. It was the cry of the com- mon man for expression, but it lacked the spiritual element. In France and in America certain factors operated to give this individualism an ap- propriate exercise and outworking which greatly served to rationalize and modify it. In France this indi- vidualism was sobered and brought under discipline as the result of politi- cal readjustment and responsibility which resulted in an orderly republic. 59 PHILOSOPHY AND THE WAR Similar influences modified the move- ment in America. No element works for conservatism like responsibility. In America there were not only the problems arising from the founding of the new state but also from a period given over to pioneering and settle- ment. Then came the agitation over slavery, culminating in the great war, which added a profound humanita- rian and moral element to the Ameri- can spirit. Through struggle Amer- ica at last found her soul. The depth of that influence is suggested by the constant appeal in the present crisis to the moral decisions of Lincoln. The movement of individualism was destined to take a different turn in Germany. Her thinkers were like- wise profoundly moved by romanti- cism. We are told by HenseP that * Quoted by Paul More, in Shelburne Essays, 6th Series, p. 215. 60 AMERICA AND SUPERMAN "Kant and Herder, Goethe and Schil- ler are not to be conceived without Rousseau, and through them is formed the new science, the new phi- losophy, the new poetry of German Idealism." The very heart of Goethe's philoso- phy lay in the claim for the rights of individualism. This claim was aided and abetted by the Spinozean ethics, which characterized the romantic movement. The peculiar attitude to- ward one's own shortcomings and sins, the denial to repentance of any place in moral well-being, gave to that individualism an impulse wholly law- less and dangerous. The doctrine that the individual is right in seeking his own development at any moral cost and without regard to the rights of others, has had most baleful conse- quences. And such was the philoso- phy of Goethe. The popular worship 6i PHILOSOPHY AND THE WAR accorded Goethe in the German world prepared the way for the pohtical ethics of Bismarck and the essen- tial prophet was provided in Nietz- sche. It is interesting to note that the in- dividualism of Rousseau was social as well as selfish. He thought of the good of the mass as well as of the good of the individual. But the Goethean and Nietzschean individu- alism was aristocratic and not demo- cratic. The democratic or meliorative element in Rousseau was destined to find voice in Germany through Karl Marx. It is significant that these systems of common origin stand now face to face in conflict in Germany herself. Romanticism has not lacked disci- ples in America. The influence of Rousseau's ideas of education has been pronounced, and far more influ- 62 AMERICA AND SUPERMAN ential within a quarter century than at any time previously. This influ- ence has been of questionable tendency both in academic and social life. Rousseau's idea of education was "to make instinct instead of experienced judgment the basis of education, im- pulse instead of control, unbridled liberty instead of obedience, nature instead of discipline. To foster the emotions as if the uniting bond of mankind were sentiment rather than reason might seem so monstrous a perversion of the truth as to awaken abhorrence in any considerable reader." To which the writer adds: *'One wonders curiously, or sadly sometimes, that the preachers who abdicate the fear of God for hu- manitarianism, and the teachers who surrender the higher discipline for subservience to individual choice, do not see, or, seeing, do not dread, 63 PHILOSOPHY AND THE WAR the goal toward which they are facing." ^ Fortunately, this movement has not struck deeply into American life. American individualism has been tempered by a strong conservatism. In Germany, on the contrary, where there has been little free and popular government the development, as is usual when confined to theory, has taken on a radical form. The surest cure for radicalism is to make it re- sponsible, so America has long pos- sessed the safety-valve of political ac- tion, and even the easy exploitation of educational fads has not been without a certain advantage. But America's individualism has been turned into humanitarian chan- nels by the force of her historic posi- tion and her spiritual achievement. ' More, Shelburne Essays, 6th Series, pp. 230- 231, 241. 64 AMERICA AND SUPERMAN Evils have gained the upper hand. Slavery, greed, capitalism, saloonism all have been in power during mo- ments of reaction, but every crisis has so far found the heart of her people morally and ethically sound. It has never been possible to turn her permanently away from the rights of the individual, as he exists in society and in political life. It is most fitting for America to take her place in this struggle for freedom. It was to have been ex- pected that when the great eventual conflict for human liberty should come she would find her place beside all other men of good will. America has been intensely personalistic in her ideals. The foundation stone of her democracy has been the unalloyed worth and dignity of the human spirit. It was the vast ideal of our great martyr, Abraham Lincoln. The one 65 PHILOSOPHY AND THE WAR reason for America's being is that everywhere the physical, social, and spiritual rights of man may be achieved. 66 CHAPTER VII THE VOICE AT ARMAGEDDON Now the storm is on the world — a storm so fierce that the old landmarks are obliterated. "The ancient stars are tired and dim And no new star announces Him." Upon our day is cast the necessity of groping out of the darkness, with no surer star than that of Bethlehem. But it is no day for pessimism. The old order passes away with noise and great heat that a new and better order may come in. The meaning of it all is a better world, a new heaven and a new earth to be bought by great sacrifice. What are the voices that shall speak when Armageddon is done? 67 PHILOSOPHY AND THE WAR Shall the final type of manhood be the blonde beast of whom Nietzsche tells, whose contempt for womanhood thus finds expression in Zarathustra? "Man shall be trained for war, and woman for the recreation of the war- rior: all else is folly."^ "Thou goest to Women? Do not forget thy whip!"2 Or shall it be that finer spirit of manhood expressed in the lines of Laurence Binyon, who touches the springs that run deepest at Armaged- don, those which give victory over the beast when man meets man in con- flict. The lines are addressed To Women "Your hearts are lifted up, your hearts That have foreknown the utter price. Your hearts burn upward hke a flame Of splendor and of sacrifice. ' XVIII, p. 75, Zarathustra. *Ibid., p. 77. 68 VOICE AT ARMAGEDDON "For you too to battle go Not with marching drums and cheers, But in the watch of solitude And through the boundless night of fears. "And not a shot comes blind with death, And not a stab of shell is pressed Home, but invisibly it tore And entered first a woman's breast." When Dante made pilgrimage through hell there was one strain as present there and as significant as it was in paradise. Up the steep sides of the pit of agony and flame, above the blackness of blasphemies and hate, reechoing also along the toil- some sides of purgatory, the song was ever heard: "Amore, amore, amore" — "Love, love, love." To the angels it was but the echo of the deeper song that burned, an eternal flame of joy within their hearts. To the pilgrims through purgatory it brought ref resh- 69 PHILOSOPHY AND THE WAR ing dews of aspiration and hope, and to the unrepentant who lay in the pit the song that was aspiration and joy to the others was bitterest punish- ment. Whatever storms may shake the old world, the final song that shall survive all other songs shall be the song of eternal love. The blonde beast shall not utter the final nor the authoritative speech at Armaged- don. I listen to the voice of him who spoke over the death throes of an older world as he stood in the spirit on Patmos on the Lord's Day. I hear him saying across the centuries, "Without are dogs, and sorcerers, and whoremongers, and murderers, and idolaters, and whosoever loveth and maketh a lie." Lieutenant H. P. M. Jones, Ma- chine Gun Corps, British Army, is re- ported in the press to have written 70 VOICE AT ARMAGEDDON from France a few days before he "went west" these words : ''BeHeve me, we are on the eve of a great revelation. All this mastery of the air, X-rays, wireless telegraphy, and other wonders of electricity, and other marvels of modern science — coupled with the ever-widening search after the occult, the mystic and the spiritual — all these things, I say, are but the premonitory rumblings, the signs and symptoms of the Great Dis- covery — a manifestation which shall lift the veil which at present hides from us the Secret of the Ages. Yes, the veil is lifting, and soon Whence and Whither will be revealed. "I believe that this mighty up- heaval of the nations is an integral part of the scheme of the Great Awak- ening. I believe we are witnessing the last demonstration on the part of Germany of the primitive savagery 71 PHILOSOPHY AND THE WAR and barbarism from which we sprang, and that equally on the part of the Anglo-Saxon and the Latin Allies they are being tried in the furnace of Sacrifice and Exaltation, preparatory to entering realms of knowledge and enlightenment as yet unexplored. The Slavs are being tested for their fit- ness for a big step forward, and I be- lieve they will in the end come well through the ordeal. The Teuton will have to make a new start, and the Turk will be sent back to Asia, to await there his fate when the nascent nations of the Far East reach the new milestone in their destiny. . . , That is my reading of the inner purport of this long-ordained eruption. "But to each of us it may have at least this meaning — that each of us has become a soldier in the army of God." Before we reach a world of 72 VOICE AT ARMAGEDDON vaster powers we must decide the moral use of power. We must de- termine now whether we shall use it for the few or for all humanity. Un- til by climbing our cross we show a spiritual mastery sufficient for that better day we cannot enter into our kingdom. You who are going now to the fields of action in the world are going to responsibilities and duties greater than have ever been known to men; some of you, many perhaps, will taste the deep bitterness of sacrifice, but you will go, I trust, with the calm faith expressed by one who but re- cently passed beyond the shadows and the night, William Dewitt Hyde, of Bowdoin, who sang: "Creation's Lord, we give thee thanks That this thy world is incomplete, That battle calls our marshaled ranks, That work awaits our hands and feet. 73 PHILOSOPHY AND THE WAR "That thou hast not yet finished man, That we are in the making still — As friends who share the Maker's plan, As sons who know the Father's will. "Beyond the present sin and shame, Wrong's bitter, cruel, scorching blight, We see the beckoning vision flame, The blessed kingdom of the Right. "What though the Kingdom long delay. And still with haughty foes must cope ? It gives us that for which to pray, A field for toil and faith and hope. "Since what we choose is what we are, ' And what we love we yet shall be. The goal may ever shine afar — The will to win it makes us free." 74