TOWARDS THE GREAT PEACE

BY

RALPH ADAMS CRAM, LITT. D. , LL. D. 

1922

INTRODUCTION

For the course of lectures I am privileged to deliver at this time, Idesire to take, in some sense as a text, a prayer that came to myattention at the outset of my preparatory work. It is adapted from aprayer by Bishop Hacket who flourished about the middle of theseventeenth century, and is as follows:

 _Lord, lift us out of Private-mindedness and give us Public souls to work for Thy Kingdom by daily creating that Atmosphere of a happy temper and generous heart which alone can bring the Great Peace. _

Each thought in this noble aspiration is curiously applicable to eachone of us in the times in which we fall: the supersession of narrow andselfish and egotistical "private-mindedness" by a vital passion for thewinning of a Kingdom of righteousness consonant with the revealed willof God; the lifting of souls from nervous introspection to a heightwhere they become indeed "public souls"; the accomplishing of theKingdom not by great engines of mechanical power but by the dailyoffices of every individual; the substitution in place of currenthatred, fear and jealous covetousness, of the unhappy temper and"generous heart" which are the only fruitful agencies of accomplishment. Finally, the "Great Peace" as the supreme object of thought and act andaspiration for us, and for all the world, at this time of crisis whichhas culminated through the antithesis of great peace, which is greatwar. 

I have tried to keep this prayer of Bishop Hacket's before me during thepreparation of these lectures. I cannot claim that I have succeeded inachieving a "happy temper" in all things, but I honestly claim that Ihave striven earnestly for the "generous heart, " even when forced, bywhat seem to me the necessities of the case, to indulge in condemnationor to bring forward subjects which can only be controversial. If the"Great War, " and the greater war which preceded, comprehended, andfollowed it, were the result of many and varied errors, it matterslittle whether these were the result of perversity, bad judgment or themost generous impulses. As they resulted in the Great War, so they are adetriment to the Great Peace that must follow, and therefore they mustbe cast away. Consciousness of sin, repentance, and a will to do better, must precede the act of amendment, and we must see where we have erredif we are to forsake our ill ways and make an honest effort to strivefor something better. 

For every failure I have made to achieve either a happy temper or agenerous heart, I hereby express my regret, and tender my apologies inadvance. 

CONTENTS

LECTURE

 INTRODUCTION

 I. A WORLD AT THE CROSSROADS

 II. A WORKING PHILOSOPHY

 III. THE SOCIAL ORGANISM

 IV. THE INDUSTRIAL PROBLEM

 V. THE POLITICAL ORGANIZATION OF SOCIETY

 VI. THE FUNCTION OF EDUCATION AND ART

 VII. THE PROBLEM OF ORGANIC RELIGION

 VIII. PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY

 APPENDIX A

 APPENDIX B

TOWARDS THE GREAT PEACE

I

A WORLD AT THE CROSSROADS

For two thousand years Christianity has been an operative force in theworld; for more than a century democracy has been the controllinginfluence in the public affairs of Europe and the Americas; for twogenerations education, free, general and comprehensive, has been therule in the West. Wealth incomparable, scientific achievementsunexampled in their number and magnitude, facile means of swiftintercommunication between peoples, have all worked together towards anearthly realization of the early nineteenth-century dream of proximateand unescapable millennium. With the opening of the second decade of thetwentieth century it seemed that the stage was set for the last act inan unquestioned evolutionary drama. Man was master of all things, andthe failures of the past were obliterated by the glory of the imminentevent. 

The Great War was a progressive revelation and disillusionment. Therein, everything so carefully built up during the preceding four centuries wastried as by fire, and each failed--save the indestructible qualities ofpersonal honour, courage and fortitude. Nothing corporate, whethersecular or ecclesiastical, endured the test, nothing of government oradministration, of science or industry, of philosophy or religion. Thevictories were those of individual character, the things that stood thetest were not things but _men. _

The "War to end war, " the war "to make the world safe for democracy"came to a formal ending, and for a few hours the world gazed spellboundon golden hopes. Greater than the disillusionment of war was that of themaking of the peace. There had never been a war, not even the "ThirtyYears' War" in Germany, the "Hundred Years' War" in France or the warsof Napoleon, that was fraught with more horror, devastation anddishonour; there had never been a Peace, not even those of Berlin, Vienna and Westphalia, more cynical or more deeply infected with thepoison of ultimate disaster. And here it was not things that failed, but_men. _

What of the world since the Peace of Versailles? Hatred, suspicion, selfishness are the dominant notes. The nations of Europe are bankruptfinancially, and the governments of the world are bankrupt politically. Society is dissolving into classes and factions, either at open war ormanoeuvering for position, awaiting the favourable moment. Law and orderare mocked at, philosophy and religion disregarded, and of all thevaried objects of human veneration so loudly acclaimed and loftilyexalted by the generation that preceded the war, not one remains tocommand a wide allegiance. One might put it in a sentence and say thateveryone is dissatisfied with everything, and is showing his feelingsafter varied but disquieting fashion. It is a condition of unstableequilibrium constantly tending by its very nature to a point wheredissolution is apparently inevitable. 

It is no part of my task to elaborate this thesis, and still less tomagnify its perils. Enough has been said and written on this subjectduring the last two years; more than enough, perhaps, and in any case nothinking person is unaware of the conditions that exist, whatever may behis estimate of their significance, his interpenetration of theirtendency. I have set myself the task of trying to suggest someconstructive measures that we may employ in laying the foundations forthe immediate future; they may be wrong in whole or in part, but atleast my object and motive are not recrimination or invective, butregeneration. Nevertheless, as a foundation the case must be stated, andas a necessary preparation to any work that looks forward we must haveat least a working hypothesis as to how the conditions that needredemption were brought about. I state the case thus, therefore: Thathuman society, even humanity itself, is now in a state of flux that atany moment may change into a chaos comparable only with that which camewith the fall of classical civilization and from which five centurieswere necessary for the process of recovery. Christianity, democracy, science, education, wealth, and the cumulative inheritance of a thousandyears, have not preserved us from the vain repetition of history. Howhas this been possible, what has been the sequence of events that hasbrought us to this pass?

It is of course the result of the interaction of certain physical, material facts and certain spiritual forces. Out of these spiritualenergies come events, phenomena that manifest themselves in political, social, ecclesiastical transactions and institutions; in wars, migrations and the reshaping of states; in codes of law, theorganization of society, the development of art, literature and science. In their turn all these concrete products work on the minds and souls ofmen, modifying old spiritual impulses either by exaltation ordegradation, bringing new ones into play; and again these react on thematerial fabric of human life, causing new combinations, unloosing newforces, that in their turn play their part in the eternal process ofbuilding, unbuilding and rebuilding our unstable and fluctuant world. 

Underlying all the varied material forms of ancient society, as thisdeveloped around the shores of the Mediterranean, was the great fact ofslavery: Persia, Assyria, Babylonia, Egypt, Greece, Rome, all weresmall, sometimes very small, minorities of highly developed, highlyprivileged individuals existing on a great sub-stratum of slaves. Allthe vast contributions of antiquity in government and law, in science, letters, art and philosophy, all the building of the culture andcivilization that still remain the foundation stones of human society, was the work of the few free subsisting on the many un-free. Butfreedom, liberty, is an attribute of the soul and it may exist even whenthe body is in bondage. The slaves of antiquity were free neither inbody nor in soul, but with the coming of Christianity all this waschanged, for it is one of the great glories of the Christian religionthat it gave freedom to the soul even before the Church could givefreedom to the body of the slave. After the fall of the Roman Empire, and with the infiltration of the free races of the North, slaverygradually disappeared, and between the years 1000 and 1500 a very realliberty existed as the product of Christianity and under its protection. Society was hierarchical: from the serf up through the peasant, theguildsman, the burgher, the knighthood, the nobles, to the King, and soto the Emperor, there was a regular succession of graduations, but thelines of demarcation were fluid and easily passed, and as through theChurch, the schools and the cloister there was an open road for the sonof a peasant to achieve the Papacy, so through the guilds, chivalry, warand the court, the layman, if he possessed ability, might from an humblebeginning travel far. An epoch of real liberty, of body, soul and mind, and the more real in that limits, differences and degrees wererecognized, accepted and enforced. 

This condition existed roughly for five centuries in its swift rise, itslong dominion and its slow decline, that is to say, from 1000 A. D. To1500 A. D. There was still the traditional aristocracy, now feudal ratherthan patriarchal or military; there was still a servile class, nowreduced to a small minority. In between was the great body of men of adegree of character, ability and intelligence, and with a recognizedstatus, the like of which had never been seen before. It was not abourgeoisie, for it was made up of producers, --agricultural, artisan, craft, art, mechanic; a great free society, the proudest product ofChristian civilization. 

With the sixteenth century began a process of change that was tooverturn all this and bring in something radically different. TheRenaissance and the Reformation worked in a sense together to build uptheir own expressive form of society, and when this process had beencompleted we find still an aristocracy, though rapidly changing in thequality of its personnel and in the sense of its relationship to therest of society; a servile class, the proletariat, enormously increasedin proportion to the other social components; and two new classes, onethe bourgeoisie, essentially non-producers and subsisting largely eitheron trade, usury or management, and the pauper, a phase of life hithertolittle known under the Christian regime. The great body of free citizensthat had made up the majority of society during the preceding epoch, thesmall land-holders, citizens, craftsmen and artists of fifty differentsorts, has begun rapidly to dissolve, has almost vanished by the middleof the seventeenth century, and in another hundred years has practicallydisappeared. 

What had become of them, of this great bulk of the population of westernEurope that, with the feudal aristocracy, the knighthood and the monkshad made Mediaevalism? Some had degenerated into bourgeois traders, managers and financeers, but the great majority had been crushed downand down in the mass of submerged proletariat, losing liberty, degenerating in character, becoming more and more servile in status andwretched in estate, so forming a huge, inarticulate, dully ebullientmass, cut off from society, cut off almost from life itself. 

I must insist on these three factors in the development of society andits present catastrophe: the great, predominant, central body of freemen during the Middle Ages, their supersession during the sixteenth, seventeenth and eighteenth centuries by a non-producing bourgeoisie, andthe creation during the same period of a submerged proletariat. They arefactors of great significance and potential force. 

Towards the end of the eighteenth century the industrial-financialrevolution began. Within the space of an hundred years came all therevelations of the potential inherent in thermo-dynamics andelectricity, and the invention of the machines that have changed theworld. During the Renaissance and Reformation the old social andeconomic systems, so laboriously built up on the ruins of Roman tyranny, had been destroyed; autocracy had abolished liberty, licentiousness hadwrecked the moral stamina, "freedom of conscience" had obliterated theguiding and restraining power of the old religion. The field was clearfor a new dispensation. 

What happened was interesting and significant. Coal and iron, and theirderivatives--steam and machinery--rapidly revealed their possibilities. To take advantage of these, it was necessary that labour should beavailable in large quantities and freely subject to exploitation; thatunlimited capital should be forthcoming; that adequate markets should bediscovered or created to absorb the surplus product, so enormouslygreater than the normal demand; and finally, it was necessary thatdirectors and organizers and administrators should be ready at the call. The conditions of the time made all these possible. The land-holdingpeasantry of England--and it is here that the revolution wasaccomplished--had been largely dispossessed and pauperized under HenryVIII, Edward VI and Elizabeth, while the development of the wool-growingindustry had restricted the arable land to a point where it no longergave employment to the mass of field labourers. The first blast offactory production threw out of work the whole body of cottage weavers, smiths, craftsmen; and the result was a great mass of men, women, andchildren without defense, void of all rights, and given the alternativeof submission to the dominance of the exploiters, or starvation. 

Without capital the new industry could neither begin nor continue. Theexploits of the "joint-stock companies" invented and perfected in theeighteenth century, showed how this capital could easily be obtained, while the paralyzing and dismemberment of the Church during theReformation had resulted in the abrogation of the old ecclesiasticalinhibition against usury. The necessary capital was forthcoming, and thefoundations were laid for the great system of finance which was one ofthe triumphant achievements of the last century. 

The question of markets was more difficult. It was clear that, throughmachinery, the exploitation of labour, and the manipulations of finance, the product would be enormously greater than the local or nationaldemand. Until they themselves developed their own industrial system, theother nations of Europe were available, but as this process proceededother markets had to be found; the result was achieved throughadvertising, i. E. , the stimulating in the minds of the general public ofa covetousness for something they had not known of and did not need, andthe exploiting of barbarous or undeveloped races in Asia, Africa, Oceanica. This last task was easily achieved through "peacefulpenetration" and the preëmpting of "spheres of influence. " In the end(i. E. , A. D. 1914), the whole world had so been divided, the stimulatedmarkets showed signs of repletion, and since exaggerated profits meantincreasing capital demanding investment, and the improvement in"labour-saving" devices continued unchecked, the contest for others'markets became acute, and world-politic was concentrated on the vitalproblem of markets, lines of communication, and tariffs. 

As for the finding or development of competent organizers and directors, the history of the world since the end of medievalism had curiouslyprovided for this after a fashion that seemed almost miraculous. Thetype required was different from anything that had been developedbefore. Whenever the qualitative standard had been operative, it wasnecessary that the leaders in any form of creative action should be menof highly developed intellect, fine sensibility, wide and penetratingvision, nobility of instinct, passion for righteousness, and aconsciousness of the eternal force of charity, honour, and service. During the imperial or decadent stages, courage, dynamic force, thepassion for adventure, unscrupulousness in the matter of method, tookthe place of the qualities that marked the earlier periods. In the firstinstance the result was the great law-givers, philosophers, prophets, religious leaders, and artists of every sort; in the second, the greatconquerors. Something quite different was now demanded--men whopossessed some of the qualities needed for the development ofimperialism, but who were unhampered by the restrictive influences ofthose who had sought perfection. To organize and administer the newindustrial-financial-commercial régime, the leaders must be shrewd, ingenious, quick-witted, thick-skinned, unscrupulous, hard-headed, andavaricious; yet daring, dominating, and gifted with keen prevision andvivid imagination. These qualities had not been bred under any of theMediterranean civilizations, or that of Central Europe in the MiddleAges, which had inherited so much therefrom. The pursuit of perfectionalways implies a definite aristocracy, which is as much a goal of effortas a noble philosophy, an august civil polity or a great art. Thisaristocracy was an accepted and indispensable part of society, and itwas always more or less the same in principle, and always the centre andsource of leadership, without which society cannot endure. It is truethat at the hands of Christianity it acquired a new quality, that ofservice as contingent on privilege--one might almost say of privilege ascontingent on service--and the ideals of honour, chivalry, compassionwere established as its object and method of operation even though thesewere not always achieved, but the result was not a new creation; it wasan institution as old as society, regenerated and transformed andplaying a greater and a nobler part than ever before. 

Between the years 1455 and 1795 this old aristocracy was largelyexterminated. The Wars of the Roses, the massacres of the Reformation, and the Civil Wars in England; the Thirty Years' War in Germany; theHundred Years' War, the Wars of Religion, and the Revolution in Francehad decimated the families old in honour, preserving the tradition ofculture, jealous of their alliances and their breeding--the natural andactual leaders in thought and action. England suffered badly enough asthe result of war, with the persecutions of Henry VIII, Edward VI andElizabeth, and the Black Death, included for full measure. Francesuffered also, but Germany fared worst of all. By the end of the ThirtyYears' War the older feudal nobility had largely disappeared, while theclass of "gentlemen" had been almost exterminated. In France, until thefall of Napoleon III, and in Germany and Great Britain up to the presentmoment, the recruiting of the formal aristocracy has gone on steadily, but on a different basis and from a different class from anything knownbefore. Demonstrated personal ability to gain and maintain leadership;distinguished service to the nation in war or statecraft; courage, honour, fealty--these, in general, had been the ground for admission tothe ranks of the aristocracy. In general, also, advancement to the ranksof the higher nobility was from the class of "gentlemen, " though theChurch, the universities, and chivalry gave, during the Middle Ages, wide opportunity for personal merit to achieve the highest honours. 

Through the wholesale destruction of the representatives of a class thatfrom the beginning of history had been the directing and creative forcein civilization, a process began which was almost mechanical. As theupper strata of society were planed off by war, pestilence, civilslaughter, and assassination, the pressure on the great mass of men(peasants, serfs, unskilled labourers, the so-called "lower classes")was increasingly relaxed, and very soon the thin film of aristocracy, further weakened by dilution, broke, and through the crumbling shellburst to the surface those who had behind them no tradition but that ofservility, no comprehension of the ideals of chivalry and honour of thegentleman, no stored-up results of education and culture, but only anage-long rage against the age-long dominating class, together with theinstincts of craftiness, parsimony, and almost savage self-interest. 

As a class, it was very far from being what it was under the RomanEmpire; on the other hand, it was equally removed from what it wasduring the Middle Ages in England, France and the Rhineland. Undermediaevalism chattel slavery had disappeared, and the lot of the peasantwas a happier one than he had known before. He had achieved definitestatus, and the line that separated him from the gentry was very thinand constantly traversed, thanks to the accepted system of land tenure, the guilds, chivalry, the schools and universities, the priesthood andmonasticism. The Renaissance had rapidly changed all this, however;absolutism in government, dispossession of land, the abolition of theguilds, and the collapse of the moral order and of the dominance of theChurch, were fast pushing the peasant back into the position he had heldunder the Roman Empire, and from which Christianity had lifted him. By1790 he had been for nearly three centuries under a progressiveoppression that had undone nearly all the beneficent work of the MiddleAges and made the peasant class practically outlaw, while breaking downits character, degrading its morals, increasing its ignorance, andbuilding up a sullen rage and an invincible hatred of all that stoodvisible as law and order in the persons of the ruling class. 

Filtering through the impoverished and diluted crust of a dissolvingaristocracy, came this irruption from below. In their own personscertain of these people possessed the qualities and the will which wereimperative for the organization of the industry, the trade, and thefinance that were to control the world for four generations, and producethat industrial civilization which is the basis and the energizing forceof modernism. Immediately, and with conspicuous ability, they took holdof the problem, solved its difficulties, developed its possibilities, and by the end of the nineteenth century had made it master of theworld. 

Simultaneously an equal revolution and reversal was being effected ingovernment. The free monarchies of the Middle Ages, beneath which laythe well recognized principle that no authority, human or divine, couldgive any monarch the right to govern wrong, and that there was such athing (frequently exercised) as lawful rebellion, gave place to theabsolutism and autocracy of Renaissance kingship and this, which wasfostered both by Renaissance and Reformation, became at once the ally ofthe new forces in society and so furthered the growth as well as themisery and the degradation of the proletariat. In revolt against thisnew and very evil thing came the republicanism of the eighteenthcentury, inspired and directed in large measure by members of the fastperishing aristocracy of race, character and tradition. It was asplendid uprising against tyranny and oppression and is best expressedin the personalities and the actions of the Constitutional Convention ofthe United States in 1787 and the States General of France in 1789. 

The movement is not to be confounded with another that synchronizes withit, that is to say, democracy, for the two things are radicallydifferent in their antecedents, their protagonists, their modes ofoperation and their objects. While the one was the aspiration and thecreation of the more enlightened and cultured, the representatives ofthe old aristocracy, the other issued out of the same _milieu_ that wasresponsible for the new social organism. That is to say; while certainof the more shrewd and ingenious were organizing trade, manufacture andfinance and developing its autocratic and imperialistic possibilities atthe expense of the great mass of their blood-brothers, others of thesame social antecedents were devising a new theory, and experimenting innew schemes, of government, which would take all power away from theclass that had hitherto exercised it and fix it firmly in the hands ofthe emancipated proletariat. This new model was called then, and iscalled now, democracy. Elsewhere I have tried to distinguish betweendemocracy of theory and democracy of method. Perhaps I should have useda more lucid nomenclature if I had simply distinguished betweenrepublicanism and democracy, for this is what it amounts to. The formeris as old as man, and is part of the "passion for perfection" thatcharacterizes all crescent society, and is indeed the chief differencebetween brute and human nature; it means the guaranteeing of justice, and may be described as consisting of abolition of privilege, equalityof opportunity, and utilization of ability. Democracy of method consistsin a variable and uncertain sequence of devices which are supposed toachieve the democracy of ideal, but as a matter of fact have thus farusually worked in the opposite direction. The activity of this movementsynchronizes with the pressing upward of the "the masses" through thedissolving crust of "the classes, " and represents their contribution tothe science of political philosophy, as the contribution of the latteris current "political economy. "

It will be perceived that the reaction of the new social force in thecase of industrial organization is fundamentally opposed to that whichoccurred in the political sphere. The one is working steadily towards anautocratic imperialism and the "servile state, " the other towards thefluctuating, incoherent control of the making and administering of lawsby the untrained, the uncultivated, and the generally unfit, the issueof which is anarchy. The industrial-commercial-financial oligarchy thatdominated society for the century preceding the Great War is the resultof the first; Russia, today, is an exemplar of the second. The workingout of these two great devices of the new force released by thedestructive processes of the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenthcenturies, simultaneously though in apparent opposition, explains why, when the war broke out, imperialism and democracy synchronized soexactly: on the one hand, imperial states, industry, commerce, andfinance; on the other, a swiftly accelerating democratic system that wasat the same time the effective means whereby the dominant imperialismworked, and the omnipresent and increasing threat to its furthercontinuance. 

A full century elapsed before victory became secure, or even proximate. Republicanism rapidly extended itself to all the governments of westernEurope, but it could not maintain itself in its primal integrity. Soonerhere, later there, it surrendered to the financial, industrial, commercial forces that were taking over the control and direction ofsociety, becoming partners with them and following their aims, connivingat their schemes, and sharing in their ever-increasing profits. By theend of the first decade of the twentieth century these supposedly "free"governments had become as identified with "special privilege, " and aswidely severed from the people as a whole, as the autocratic governmentsof the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, while they failedconsistently to match them in effectiveness, energy and efficiency ofoperation. 

For this latter condition democracy was measurably responsible. Forfifty years it had been slowly filtering into the moribund republicansystem until at last, during the same first decade of the presentcentury, it had wholly transformed the governmental system, making it, whatever its outward form, whether constitutional monarchy, or republic, essentially democratic. So government became shifty, opportunist, incapable, and without the inherent energy to resist, beyond a certainpoint, the last great effort of the emergent proletariat to destroy, notalone the industrial civilization it justly detested, but the verygovernment it had acquired by "peaceful penetration" and organized andadministered along its chosen lines, and indeed the very fabric ofsociety itself. 

Now these two remarkable products of the new mentality of a social forcewere facts, but they needed an intellectual or philosophicaljustification just as a low-born profiteer, when he has acquired acertain amount of money, needs an expensive club or a coat of arms toregularize his status. Protestantism and materialistic philosophy werejoint nursing-mothers to modernism, but when, by the middle of the lastcentury, it had reached man's estate, they proved inadequate; somethingelse was necessary, and this was furnished to admiration byevolutionism. Through its doctrine of the survival of the fittest, itappeared to justify in the fullest degree the gospel of force as thefinal test, and "enlightened self-interest" as the new moral law;through its lucid demonstration of the strictly physical basis of life, the "descent of man" from primordial slime by way of the lemur or theanthropoid ape, and the non-existence of any supernatural power that haddevised, or could determine, a code of morality in which certain thingswere eternal by right, and other than the variable reactions of veryhighly developed animals to experience and environment, it had givenweighty support to the increasingly popular movement towards democracyboth in theory and in act. 

Its greatest contribution, however, was its argument that, since theinvariable law of life was one of progressive evolution, therefore theacquired characteristics which formed the material of evolution, andwere heritable, could be mechanically increased in number by education;hence the body of inheritance (which unfortunately varied as between manand man because of past discrepancies in environment, opportunities, andeducation) could be equalized by a system of teaching that aimed tofurnish that mental and physical training hitherto absent. 

Whether the case was ever so stated in set terms does not matter; veryshortly this became the firm conviction of the great mass of men, andthe modern democracy of method is based on the belief that all men areequal because they are men, and that free, compulsory, secularized, state-controlled education can and does remove the last difference thatmade possible any discrimination in rights and privileges as between oneman and another. 

In another respect, however, the superstition of mechanical evolutionplayed an important part, and with serious results. Neither the prophetsnor the camp-followers seemed to realize that evolution, whileundoubtedly a law of life within certain limits, was inseparable fromdegradation which was its concomitant, that is to say, that as therocket rises so must it fall; as man is conceived, born and matures, even so must he die. The wave rises, but falls again; the state waxes togreatness, wanes, and the map knows it no more; each epoch of humanhistory arises out of dim beginnings, magnifies itself in glory, andthen yields to internal corruption, dilution and adulteration of blood, or prodigal dissipation of spiritual force, and takes its place in theannals of ancient history. Without recognition of this implacable, unescapable fact of degradation sequent on evolution, the later becomesa delusion and an instrument of death, for the eyes of man are blind toincipient or crescent dangers; content, self-secure, lost in a vaindream of manifest destiny they are deaf to warnings, incapable even ofthe primary gestures of self-defense. Such was one of the results ofnineteenth-century evolutionism, and the generation that saw the lastyears of the nineteenth century and the first part of the new, baskingin its day dreams of self-complacency, made no move to avert the dangersthat threatened it then and now menace it with destruction. 

When, therefore, modernism achieved its grand climacteric in July, 1914, we had on the one hand an imperialism of force, in industry, commerce, and finance, expressing itself through highly developed specialists, anddictating the policies and practices of government, society, andeducation; on the other, a democracy of form which denied, combated, anddestroyed distinction in personality and authority in thought, anddiscouraged constructive leadership in the intellectual, spiritual, andartistic spheres of activity. The opposition was absolute, the resultscatastrophic. The lack of competent leadership in every category of lifefinds a sufficient explanation in the two opposed forces, in theirorigin and nature, and in the fact of their opposition. 

In the somewhat garish light of the War and the Peace, it would not bedifficult to feel a real and even poignant sympathy for two causes thatwere prominent and popular in the first fourteen years of the presentcentury, namely, the philosophy that based itself on a mechanical systemof evolution which predicted unescapable, irreversible human progress, and that religion which denied the reality of evil in the world. Theplausibility of each was dissipated by the catastrophic events thoughboth still linger in stubborn unconsciousness of their demise. Theimpulse towards sympathy is mitigated by realization of the unfortunateeffect they exerted on history. This is particularly true ofevolutionary philosophy, which was held as an article of faith, eitherconsciously or sub-consciously, by the greater part of Western society. Not only did it deter men from realizing the ominous tendency of eventsbut, more unhappily, it minimized their power to discriminate betweenwhat was good and bad in current society, and even reversed their senseof comparative values. If man was indeed progressing steadily from badto good, and so to better and best, then the vivid and even splendidlife of the last quarter of the nineteenth century, with its headlongconquest of the powers of nature, its enormous industrial development, its vast and ever-increasing wealth in material things, must be not onlyan amazing advance beyond any former civilization but positively good initself, while the future could only be a progressive magnifying of whatthen was going on. "Just as" to quote Mr. Chesterton's admirable Dr. Pelkins, "just as when we see a pig in a litter larger than the otherpigs, we know that by an unalterable law of the Inscrutable, it willsome day be larger than an elephant... So we know and reverentlyacknowledge that when any power in human politics has shown for anyperiod of time any considerable activity, it will go on until it reachesthe sky. "

Nothing but a grave inability to estimate values, based on apseudo-scientific dogma, can explain the lack of any just standard ofcomparative values that was the essential quality in pre-war society. Extraordinary as were the material achievements of the time, beneficentin certain ways, and susceptible in part of sometime being used to theadvantage of humanity, they were largely negatived, and even reversed invalue, just because the sense of proportion had been lost. The imagewhich might have stimulated reverence had become a fetish. There werevoices crying in the wilderness against a worship that had poisoned intoidolatry, but they were unheard. Progressively the real things of lifewere blurred and forgotten and the things that were so obviously realthat they were unreal became the object and the measure of achievement. 

It was an unhappy and almost fatal attitude of mind, and it wasengendered not so much by the trend of civilization since theRenaissance and Reformation, nor by the compulsion and cumulativeinfluence of the things themselves, as by the natural temper andinclinations and the native standards of this emancipated mass ofhumanity that, oppressed, outraged and degraded for four hundred yearshad at last burst out of its prison-house and had assumed control ofsociety through industrialism, politics and social life. The savinggrace of the old aristocracies had disappeared with the institutionitself: between 1875 and 1900 the great single leaders, so fine incharacter, so brilliant in capacity, so surprising in their numbers, that had given a deceptive glory to the so-called Victorian Age, hadalmost wholly died out, and the new conditions neither fostered thedevelopment of adequate successors, nor gave audience to the few that, anomalously, appeared. It is not surprising therefore that the newsocial element that had played so masterly a part in bringing to itsperfection the industrial-financial-democratic scheme of life shouldhave developed an apologetic therefor, and imposed it, with all itsmaterialism, its narrowness, its pragmatism, its, at times, grossnessand cynicism, on the mind of a society where increasingly their ownfollowers were, by sheer energy and efficiency, acquiring a predominantposition. 

I am not unconscious that these are hard sayings and that few indeedwill accept them. They seem too much like attempting that which Burkesaid was impossible, viz. , to bring an indictment against a people. Iintend nothing of the sort. Out of this same body of humanity which _asa whole_ has exerted this very unfavourable influence on modern society, have come and will come personalities of sudden and startling nobility, men who have done as great service as any of their contemporarieswhatever their class or status. Out of the depths have come those whohave ascended to the supreme heights, for since Christianity came intothe world to free the souls of men, this new liberty has worked withoutlimitations of caste or race. Indeed, the very creations of the emergentforce, industrialism and democracy, while they were the betrayal of themany were the opportunity of the few, taking the place, as they did, ofthe older creeds of specifically Christian society, and inviting thosewho would to work their full emancipation and so become the servants ofGod and mankind. By the very bitterness of their antecedents, thecruelty of their inheritance, they gained a deeper sense of the realityof life, a more just sense of right and wrong, a clearer vision ofthings as they were, than happened in the case of those who had no suchexperience of the deep brutality of the regime of post-Renaissancesociety. 

True as this is, it is also true that for one who won through there weremany who gained nothing, and it was, and is, the sheer weight of numbersof those who failed of this that has made their influence on the modernlife as pervasive and controlling as it is. 

What has happened is a certain degradation of character, a weakening ofthe moral stamina of men, and against this no mechanical device ingovernment, no philosophical or social theory, can stand a chance ofsuccessful resistance, while material progress in wealth and trade andscientific achievement becomes simply a contributory force in theprocess of degeneration. For this degradation of character we are boundto hold this new social force in a measure responsible, even though ithas so operated because of its inherent qualities and in no materialrespect through conscious cynicism or viciousness; indeed it is safe tosay that in so far as it was acting consciously it was with goodmotives, which adds an element of even greater tragedy to a situationalready sufficiently depressing. 

If I am right in holding this to be the effective cause of the situationwe have now to meet, it is true that it is by no means the only one. Theemancipation and deliverance of the downtrodden masses of men who owedtheir evil estate to the destruction of the Christian society of theMiddle Ages, was a clamourous necessity; it was a slavery as bad in someways as any that had existed in antiquity, and the number of its victimswas greater. The ill results of the accomplished fact was largely due tothe condition of religion which existed during the period ofemancipation. No society can endure without vital religion, and anyrevolution effected at a time when religion is moribund or dissipated incontentious fragments, is destined to be evacuated of its ideals and itspotential, and to end in disaster. Now the freeing of the slaves of theRenaissance and the post-Reformation, and their absorption in the bodypolitic, was one of the greatest revolutions in history, and it came ata time when religion, which had been one and vital throughout WesternEurope for six centuries, had been shattered and nullified, and itsplace taken, in the lands that saw the great liberation, by Calvinism, Lutheranism, Puritanism and atheism, none of which could exert a guidingand redemptive influence on the dazed hordes that had at last come upinto the light of day. 

In point of fact, therefore, we are bound to trace back theresponsibility for the present crisis even to the Reformation itself, aswell as to the tyranny and absolutism of government, and the sordid andprofligate ordering of society, which followed on the end ofMediaevalism. 

So then we stand today confronting a situation that is ominous andobscure, since the very ideals and devices which we had held were thelast word in progressive evolution have failed at the crisis, andbecause we who created them and have worked through them, have failed incharacter, and chiefly because we have accepted low ideals and inferiorstandards imposed upon us by social elements betrayed and abandoned by aworld that could not aid them or assimilate them since itself hadbetrayed the only thing that could give them force, unity and coherency, that is, a vital and pervasive religious faith. 

There are those who hold our case to be desperate, to whom thedisillusionment of peace, after the high optimism engendered by the vastheroism and the exalted ideals instigated by the war, has broughtnothing but a mood of deep pessimism. The sentiment is perhaps natural, but it is none the less both irrational and wicked. If it is persistedin, if it becomes widespread, it may perfectly well justify itself, butonly so. We no longer accept the Calvinistic doctrine of predestination, we believe, and must highly believe, that our fate is of our own making, for Christianity has made us the heirs of free-will. What we will thatshall we be, or rather, what we _are_ that shall we will, and if we makeof ourselves what, by the grace of God, we may, then the victory restswith us. It is true that we are in the last years of a definite period, on that decline that precedes the opening of a new epoch. Never inhistory has any such period overpassed its limit of five hundred years, and ours, which came to birth in the last half of the fifteenth century, cannot outlast the present. But these declining years are precedingthose wherein all things are made new, and the next two generations willsee, not alone the passing of what we may call modernism, since it isour own age, but the prologue of the epoch that is to come. It is for usto say what this shall be. It is not foreordained; true, if we will it, it may be a reign of disaster, a parallel to the well-recognized "DarkAges" of history, but also, if we will, it may be a new and a true"renaissance, " a rebirth of old ideals, of old honour, of old faith, only incarnate in new and noble forms. 

The vision of an old heaven and a new earth was vouchsafed us during thewar, when horror and dishonour and degradation were shot through andthrough with an epic heroism and chivalry and self-sacrifice. What ifthis all did fade in the miasma of Versailles and the cynicism of tradefighting to get back to "normalcy, " and the red anarchy out of the East?There is no fiat of God that fixes these things as eternal. Even theyalso may be made the instruments of revelation and re-creation. Parisand London, Rome, Berlin and Washington are meshed in the tangled web ofthe superannuated who cannot escape the incubus of the old ways and theold theories that were themselves the cause of the war and of thefailure of "modern civilization, " but another generation is taking thefield and we must believe that this has been burned out of them. Theymay have achieved this great perfection in the field, they may haveexperienced it through those susceptible years of life just precedingmilitary age. It does not matter. Somehow they have it, and those whocome much in contact in school or college with boys and men between theages of seventeen and twenty-five, know, and thankfully confess, that ifthey can control the event the future is secure. 

In the harlequinade of fabulous material success the nations of "moderncivilization" suffered a moral deterioration, in themselves and in theirindividual members; by a moral regeneration they may be saved. How isthis to be accomplished? How, humanly speaking, is the redemption ofsociety to be achieved? Not alone by change of heart in each individual, though if this could be it would be enough. Humanly speaking there isnot time and we dare not hope for the divine miracle whereby "in thetwinkling of an eye we shall all be changed. " Still less by solereliance on some series of new political, social, economic andeducational devices; there is no plan, however wise and profound, thatcan work effectively under the dead weight of a society that is made upof individuals whose moral sense is defective. Either of these twomethods, put into operation by itself, will fail. Acting together theymay succeed. 

I repeat what I have said before. The material thing and the spiritualforce work by inter-action and coördinately. The abandonment or reformof some device that has proved evil or inadequate, and the substitutionof something better, changes to that extent the environment of theindividual and so enables him more perfectly to develop his inherentpossibilities in character and capacity, while every advance in thisdirection reacts on the machinery of life and makes its improvement morepossible. With a real sense of my own personal presumption, but with anequally real sense of the responsibility that rests on every man at thepresent crisis, I shall venture certain suggestions as to possiblechanges that may well be effected in the material forms of contemporarysociety as well as in its methods of thought, in order that thespiritual energies of the individual may be raised to a higher levelthrough the amelioration of a hampering environment, and, with evengreater diffidence, others that may bear more directly on thecharacter-development of the individual. In following out this line ofthought I shall, in the remaining seven lectures, speak successively on:A Working Philosophy; The Social Organism; The Industrial and EconomicProblem; The Political Organization of Society; The Function ofEducation and Art; The Problem of Organic Religion; and PersonalResponsibility. 

I am only too conscious of the fact that the division of my subjectunder these categorical heads, and the necessities of special argument, if not indeed of special pleading, have forced me to such particularstress on each subject as may very likely give an impression of undueemphasis. If each lecture were to be taken by itself, such an impressionwould, I fear, be unescapable; I ask therefore for the courtesy of asuspension of judgment until the series is completed, for it is onlywhen taken as a whole, one paper reacting upon and modifying another, that whatever merit the course possesses can be made apparent. 

II

A WORKING PHILOSOPHY[*]

 [*This lecture has been very considerably re-written since it was delivered, and much of the matter it then contained has been cut out, and is now printed in the Appendix. These excisions were purely speculative, and while they have a certain bearing on the arguments and conclusions in the other lectures, might very well be prejudicial to them, and for this reason it has seemed better to remove them from the general sequence and give them a supplementary place by themselves. ]

The first reaction of the World War was a great interrogation, and thetechnical "Peace" that has followed brings only reiteration. Why didthese things come, and how? The answers are as manifold as theclamourous tongues that ask, but none carries conviction and the problemis still unsolved. According to all rational probabilities we had noright to expect the war that befell; according to all the humanindications as we saw them revealed amongst the Allies we had a right toexpect a better peace; according to our abiding and abounding faith wehad a right to expect a great bettering of life after the war, and evenin spite of the peace. It is all a _non sequitur, _ and still we ask thereason and the meaning of it all. 

It may be very long before the full answer is given, yet if we aresearching the way towards "The Great Peace" we must establish someworking theory, if only that we may redeem our grave errors and avoidlike perils in the future. The explanation I assume for myself, and onwhich I must work, is that, in spite of our intentions (which were ofthe best) we were led into the development, acceptance and applicationof a false philosophy of life which was not only untenable in itself butwas vitiated and made noxious through its severance from vital religion. In close alliance with this declension of philosophy upon a basis thathad been abandoned by the Christian world for a thousand years, perhapsas the ultimate reason for its occurrence, was the tendency to voidreligion of its vital power, to cut it out of intimate contact withlife, and, in the end, to abandon it altogether as an energizing forceinterpenetrating all existence and controlling it in certain definitedirections and after certain definite methods. 

The rather complete failure of our many modern and ingeniousinstitutions, the failure of institutionalism altogether, is due farless to wrong theories underlying them, or to radical defects in theirtechnique, than it is to this false philosophy and this progressiveabandonment of religion. The wrong theories were there, and themechanical defects, for the machines were conditioned by the principlethat lay behind them, but effort at correction and betterment will makesmall progress unless we first regain the right religion and a rightphilosophy. I said this to Henri Bergson last year in Paris and hisreply was significant as coming from a philosopher. "Yes, " he said, "youare right; and of the two, the religion is the more important. "

If we had this back, and in full measure; if society were infused by it, through and through, and men lived its life, and in its life, philosophywould take care of itself and the nature of our institutions would notmatter. On the other hand, without it, no institution can be countedsafe, or will prove efficacious, while no philosophy, however lofty andmagisterial, can take its place, or even play its own part in the lifeof man or society. I must in these lectures say much about institutionsthemselves, but first I shall try to indicate what seem to me the moreserious errors in current philosophy, leaving until after a study of thematerial forms which are so largely conditioned by the philosophicalattitude, the consideration of that religion, both organic and personal, which I believe can alone verify the philosophy, give the institutionslife and render them reliable agencies for good. 

For a working definition of philosophy, in the sense in which I use ithere, I will take two sayings, one out of the thirteenth century, onefrom the twentieth. "They are called wise who put things in their rightorder and control them well, " says St. Thomas Aquinas. "Philosophy isthe science of the totality of things, " says Cardinal Mercier, hisgreatest contemporary commentator, and he continues, "Philosophy is thesum-total of reality. " Philosophy is the body of _human_ wisdom, verified and irradiated by divine wisdom. "The science of the totalityof things": not the isolation of individual phenomena, or even of groupsof phenomena, as is the method of the natural sciences, but the settingof all in their varied relationships and values, the antithesis of thatnarrowness and concentration of vision that follow intensivespecialization and have issue in infinite delusions and unrealities, "Philosophy regards the sum-total of reality" and it achieves thisconsciousness of reality, first by establishing right relations betweenphenomena, and then, abandoning the explicit intellectual process, byfalling back on divine illumination which enables it to see throughthose well-ordered phenomena the Divine Actuality that lies behind, informing them with its own finality and using them both as types and asmedia of transmission and communication. So men are enabled byphilosophy "to put things in their right order" and by religion "tocontrol them well, " thus becoming indeed worthy to be "called wise. "

Now, from the beginnings of conscious life, man has found himselfsurrounded and besieged by un-calculable phenomena. Beaten upon byforces he could not estimate or predict or control, he has sought tosolve their sphynx-like riddle, to establish some plausible relationbetween them, to erect a logical scheme of things. Primitive man, asWorringer demonstrates in his "Form Problems of the Gothic, " strove toachieve something of certitude and fixity through the crude but definitelines and forms of neolithic art. Classical man brought into play thevigour and subtlety and ingenuity of intellect in its primal and mostdynamic form, expressed through static propositions of almostmathematical exactness. The peoples of the East rejected theintellectual-mathematical method and solution and sought a way outthrough the mysterious operation of the inner sense that manifestsitself in the form of emotion. With the revelation of Christianity camealso, and of course, enlightenment, which was not definite and closed atsome given moment, but progressive and cumulative. At once, speakingphilosophically, the intellectual method of the West and the intuitivemethod of the East came together and fused in a new thing, each elementlimiting, and at the same time fortifying the other, while the opposedobscurities of the past were irradiated by the revealing and creativespirit of Christ. So came the beginnings of that definitive Christianphilosophy which was to proceed from Syria, Anatolia and Constantinople, through Alexandria to St. Augustine, and was to find its fullestexpression during the Middle Ages and by means of Duns Scotus, AlbertusMagnus, Hugh of St. Victor and St. Thomas Aquinas. 

It is an interesting fact, though apart from my present consideration, that this philosophical fusion was paralleled in the same places and atthe same time, by an aesthetic fusion that brought into existence thefirst great and consistent art of Christianity. This question isadmirably dealt with in Lisle March Phillipps' "Form and Colour. "

This great Christian philosophy which lay behind all the civilization ofthe Middle Ages, was positive, comprehensive and new. It demonstrateddivine purpose working consciously through all things with a result inperfect coherency; it gave history a new meaning as revealing realityand as a thing forever present and never past, and above all itelucidated the nature of both matter and spirit and made clear theiroperation through the doctrine of sacramentalism. 

In the century that saw the consummation of this great philosophicalsystem--as well as that of the civilization which was its expositor inmaterial form--there came a separation and a divergence. The balancedunity was broken, and on the one hand the tendency was increasinglytowards the exaggerated mysticism that had characterized the Easternmoiety of the synthesis, on the other towards an exaggeratedintellectualism the seeds of which are inherent even in St. Thomashimself. The new mysticism withdrew further and further from the commonlife, finding refuge in hidden sanctuaries in Spain, Italy, theRhineland; the old intellectualism became more and more dominant in theminds of man and the affairs of the world, and with the Renaissance itbecame supreme, as did the other qualities of paganism in art as well asin every other field of human activity. 

The first fruit of the new intellectualism was the philosophy of Dr. John Calvin--if we can call it such, --Augustinian philosophy, misread, distorted and made noxious by its reliance on the intellectual processcut off from spiritual energy as the sufficient corrective ofphilosophical thought. It is this false philosophy, allied with anequally false theology, that misled for so many centuries those whoaccepted the new versions of Christianity that issued out of theReformation. The second was the mechanistic system, or systems, theprotagonist of which was Descartes. If, as I believe, Calvinism wasun-Christian, the materialistic philosophies that have gone on from theyear 1637, were anti-Christian. As the power of Christianity declinedthrough the centuries that have followed the Reformation, Calvinismplayed a less and less important part, while the new philosophies ofmechanism and rationalism correspondingly increased. During thenineteenth century their control was absolute, and what we are today wehave become through this dominance, coupled with the generaldevitalizing or abandonment of religion. 

And yet are we not left comfortless. Even in the evolutionary philosophyengendered by Darwin and formulated by Herbert Spencer and the Germans, with all its mistaken assumptions and dubious methods, already there isvisible a tendency to get away from the old Pagan static system rebornwith the Renaissance. We can never forget that Bergson has avowed that"the mind of man, by its very nature, is incapable of apprehendingreality. " After this the return towards the scholastic philosophy of theMiddle Ages is not so difficult, nor even its recovery. If we associatewith this process on the part of formal philosophy the very evident, ifsometimes abnormal and exaggerated, progress towards a new mysticism, weare far from finding ourselves abandoned to despair as to the wholefuture of philosophy. 

Now this return and this recovery are, I believe, necessary as one ofthe first steps towards establishing a sound basis for the building upof a new and a better civilization, and one that is in fact as well asin name a Christian civilization. I do not mean that, with thisrestoration of Christian philosophy, there we should rest. Bothrevelation and enlightenment are progressive, and once the nexus of ourbroken life were restored, philosophical development would becontinuous, and we should go on beyond the scholastics even as theyproceeded beyond Patristic theology and philosophy. I think a break ofcontinuity was effected in the sixteenth century, with disastrouseffects, and until this break is healed we are cut off from what is in asense the Apostolical succession of philosophical verity. 

Before going further I would guard against two possible misconceptions;of one of them I have already spoken, that is, the error so frequent inthe past as well as today, that would make of philosophy, however sound, however consonant with the finalities of revealed religion, a substitutein any degree for religion itself. Philosophy is the reaction of theintellect, of man to the stimuli of life, but religion _is_ life and istherefore in many ways a flat contradiction of the concepts of theintellect, which is only a small portion of life, therefore limited, partial, and (because of this) sometimes entirely wrong in itsconclusions independently arrived at along these necessarilycircumscribed lines. 

The second possible error is that philosophy is the affair of a smallgroup of students and specialists, quite outside the purview of thegreat mass of men, and that it owes its existence to this same class ofdelving scholars, few in number, impractical in their aims, and sharplydifferentiated from their fellows. On the contrary it is a vitalconsideration for all those who desire to "see life and see it whole" inorder that they may establish a true scale of comparative values and aright relationship between those things that come from the outside and, meeting those that come from within, establish that plexus ofinteracting force we call life. As for the source of philosophic truth, Friar Bacon put it well when he said "All the wisdom of philosophy iscreated by God and given to the philosophers, and it is Himself thatillumines the minds of men in all wisdom. " It is a whimsicaljuxtaposition, but the first pastor of the Puritans in America, the Rev. John Robinson, testifies to the same effect. "All truth, " he says, "isof God ... Wherefore it followeth that nothing true in right reason andsound philosophy can be false in divinity.... I add, though the truth beuttered by the devil himself, yet it is originally of God. " There arenot two sources of truth, that of Divine Revelation on the one hand, that of science and philosophy and all the intellectual works of man onthe other. Truth is one, and the Source is one; the channels ofcommunication alone are different. But truth in its finality, theAbsolute, the _noumenon_ that is the substance of phenomena, is initself not a thing that can be directly apprehended by man; it lieswithin the "ultra-violet" rays of his intellectual spectrum. "Thetrammels of the body prevent man from knowing God in Himself" saysPhilo, "He is known only in the Divine forces in which He manifestsHimself. " And St. Thomas: "In the present state of life in which thesoul is united to a passable body, it is impossible for the intellect tounderstand anything actually except by turning to the phantasm. "Religion confesses this, philosophy constantly tends to forget it, therefore true religion speaks always through the symbol, rejecting, because it transcends, the intellectual criterion, while philosophy ison safe ground only when it unites itself with religion, testing its ownconclusions by a higher reality, and existing not as a rival but as acoadjutor. 

It is St. Paul who declares that "God has never left Himself without awitness" and the "witness" was explicit, however clouded, in thephilosophies of paganism. Plato and Aristotle knew the limitations ofman's mind, and the corrective of over-weaning intellectuality inreligion, but thereafter the wisdom faded and pride ousted humility, with the result that philosophy became not light but darkness. Let mequote from the great twelfth century philosopher, Hugh of St. Victor, who deserves a better fate than sepulture in the ponderous tomes ofMigne:

"There was a certain wisdom that seemed such to them that knew not thetrue wisdom. The world found it and began to be puffed up, thinkingitself great in this. Confiding in its wisdom it became presumptuous andboasted it would attain the highest wisdom. And it made itself a ladderof the face of creation.... Then those things which were seen were knownand there were other things which were not known; and through thosewhich were manifest they expected to reach those that were hidden. Andthey stumbled and fell into the falsehoods of their own imagining.... SoGod made foolish the wisdom of this world; and He pointed out anotherwisdom, which seemed foolishness and was not. For it preached Christcrucified, in order that truth might be sought in humility. But theworld despised it, wishing to contemplate the works of God, which He hadmade a source of wonder, and it did not wish to venerate what He had setfor imitation, neither did it look to its own disease, seeking medicinein piety; but presuming on a false health, it gave itself over with vaincuriosity to the study of alien things. "

Precisely: and this is the destiny that has overtaken not only the paganphilosophy of which Hugh of St. Victor was speaking, but also that whichfollowed after St. Thomas Aquinas, from Descartes to Hobbes and Kant andComte and Herbert Spencer and William James. The jealously intellectualphilosophies of the nineteenth century, the materialistic andmechanistic substitutes that were offered and accepted with suchenthusiasm after the great cleavage between religion and life, are but"the falsehoods of their own imaginings" of which Hugh of St. Victorspeaks, for they were cut off from the stream of spiritual verity, andare losing themselves in the desert they have made. 

Meanwhile they have played their part in shaping the destinies of theworld, and it was an ill part, if we may judge from the results thatshowed themselves in the events that have been recorded between the year1800 and the present moment. Just what this influence was in determiningthe nature of society, of industrial civilization and of the politicalorganism I shall try to indicate in some of the following lectures, butapart from these concrete happenings, this influence was, I ampersuaded, most disastrous in its bearing on human character. Neitherwealth nor power, neither education nor environment, not even theinherent tendencies of race--the most powerful of all--can avail againstthe degenerative force of a life without religion, or, what is worse, that maintains only a desiccated formula; and the post-Renaissancephilosophies are one and all definitely anti-religious andself-proclaimed substitutes for religion. As such they were offered andaccepted, and as such they must take their share of the responsibilityfor what has happened. 

I believe we must and can retrace our steps to that point in time when aright philosophy was abandoned, and begin again. There is noimpossibility or even difficulty here. History is not a dead thing, athing of the past; it is eternally present to man, and this is one ofthe sharp differentiations between man and beast. The material monumentsof man crumble and disappear, but the spirit that built the Parthenon orReims Cathedral, that inspired St. Paul on Mars' hill or forged MagnaCharta or the Constitution of the United States is, _because of ourquality as men, _ just as present and operative with us today, if wewill, as that which sent the youth of ten nations into a righteous warfive years ago, or spoke yesterday through some noble action that you orI may have witnessed. It is as easy for us to accept and practice thephilosophy of St. Thomas or the divine humanism of St. Francis as it isto accept the philosophy of Mr. Wells or the theories of Sir OliverLodge. No spiritual thing dies, or even grows old, nor does it driftbackward in the dwindling perspective of ancient history, and thefoolishest saying of man is that "you cannot turn back the hands of theclock. "

It is simply a question of will, and will is simply a question of desireand of faith. 

Manifestly I cannot be expected to recreate in a few words thisphilosophy to which I believe we must have recourse in our hour of need. I have no ability to do this in any case. It begins with St. Paul, iscontinued through St. Augustine, and finds its culmination in the greatMediaeval group of Duns Scotus, Albertus Magnus, Hugh of St. Victor andSt. Thomas Aquinas. I do not know of any single book that epitomizes itall in vital form, though Cardinal Mercier and Dr. De Wulf have writtenmuch that is stimulating and helpful. I cannot help thinking that thegreat demand today is for a compact volume that synthesizes the wholemagnificent system in terms not of history and scientific exegesis, butin terms of life. Plato and Aristotle are so preserved to man, and thephilosophers of modernism also; it is only the magisterial and dynamicphilosophy of Christianity that is diffused through many works, some ofthem still untranslated and all quite without coordination, save St. Thomas Aquinas alone, the magnitude of whose product staggers the humanmind and in its profuseness defeats its own ends. We need no morehistories of philosophy, but we need an epitome of Christian philosophy, not for students but for men. 

Such an epitome I am not fitted to offer, but there are certain ratherfundamental conceptions and postulates that run counter both to paganand to modern philosophy, the loss of which out of life has, I maintain, much to do with our present estate, and that must be regained before wecan go forward with any reasonable hope of betterment. These I will tryto indicate as well as I can. 

Christian philosophy teaches, in so far as it deals with therelationship between man and these divine forces that are foreverbuilding, unbuilding and rebuilding the fabric of life, somewhat asfollows:

The world as we know it, man, life itself as it works through allcreation, is the union of matter and spirit; and matter is not spirit, nor spirit matter, nor is one a mode of the other, but they are twodifferent creatures. Apart from this union of matter and spirit there isno life, in the sense in which we know it, and severance is death. "Thebody" says St. Thomas, "is not of the essence of the soul; but the soul, by the nature of its essence, can be united to the body, so that, properly speaking, the soul alone is not the species, but thecomposite", and Duns Scotus makes clear the nature and origin of thiscommon "essence" when he says there is "on the one hand God as InfiniteActuality, on the other spiritual and corporeal substances possessing anhomogeneous common element. " That is to say; matter and spirit are boththe result of the divine creative act, and though separate, and in asense opposed, find their point of origin in the Divine Actuality. 

The created world is the concrete manifestation of matter, throughwhich, for its transformation and redemption, spirit is active in aconstant process of interpenetration whereby matter itself is beingeternally redeemed. What then is matter and what is spirit? The questionis of sufficient magnitude to absorb all the time assigned to theselectures, with the strong possibility that even then we should bescarcely wiser than before. For my own purposes, however, I am contentto accept the definition of matter formulated by Duns Scotus, whichtakes over the earlier definition of Plotinus, purges it of its elementsof pagan error, and redeems it by Christian insight. 

"Materia Primo Prima" says the great Franciscan, "is the indeterminateelement of contingent things. This does not exist in Nature, but it hasreality in so far as it constitutes the term of God's creative activity. By its union with a substantial form it becomes endowed with theattributes of quantity, and becomes Secundo Prima. Subject to thesubstantial changes of Nature, it becomes matter as we see it. "

It is this "Materia Primo Prima, " the term of God's creative activity, that is eternally subjected to the regenerative process of spiritualinterpenetration, and the result is organic life. 

What is spirit? The creative power of the Logos, in the sense in whichSt. John interprets and corrects the early, partial, and thereforeerroneous theories of the Stoics and of Philo. God the Son, the EternalWord of the Father, "the brightness of His glory and the figure of HisSubstance. " "God of God, Light of Light, very God of very God, begotten, not made, being of one substance with the Father: by Whom all thingswere made. " Pure wisdom, pure will, pure energy, unconditioned bymatter, but creating life out of the operation of the Holy Spirit on andthrough matter, and in the fullness of time becoming Incarnate for thepurpose of the final redemption of man. 

Now since man is so compact of matter and spirit, it must follow that hecannot lay hold of pure spirit, the Absolute that lies beyond and aboveall material conditioning, except through the medium of matter, throughits figures, its symbols, its "phantasms. " Says St. Thomas: "Frommaterial things we can rise to some kind of knowledge of immaterialthings, but not to the perfect knowledge thereof. " The way of lifetherefore, is the incessant endeavour of man sacramentally to approachthe Absolute through the leading of the Holy Spirit, so running parallelto the slow perfecting of matter which is being effected by the sameoperation. So matter itself takes on a certain sanctity, not only assomething susceptible, and in process, of perfection, but as the vehicleof spirit and its tabernacle, since in matter spirit is actuallyincarnate. 

From this process follows of necessity the whole sacramental system, intheology, philosophy and operation, of Christianity. It is of its_esse;_ its great original, revolutionary and final contribution to thewisdom that man may have for his own, and it follows inevitably from thebasic facts of the Incarnation and Redemption, which are also itsperfect showing forth. 

Philosophically this is the great contribution of Christianity and forfifteen centuries it was held implicitly by Christendom, yet it wasrejected, either wholly or in part, by the Protestant organizations thatcame out of the Reformation, and it fell into such oblivion that outsidethe Catholic Church it was not so much ignored or rejected as totallyforgotten. Recently a series of lectures were delivered at King'sCollege, London, by various carefully chosen authorities, allspecialists in their own fields, under the general title "MediaevalContributions to Modern Civilization, " and neither the pious author ofthe address on "The Religious Contribution of the Middle Ages, " nor thelearned author of that on "Mediaeval Philosophy, " gave evidence of everhaving heard of sacramental philosophy. It may be that I do them aninjustice, and that they would offer as excuse the incontestible factthat Mediaevalism contributed nothing to "modern civilization, " eitherin religion or philosophy, that it was willing to accept. 

The peril of all philosophies, outside that of Christianity as it wasdeveloped under the Catholic dispensation, is dualism, and many havefallen into this grave error. Now dualism is not only the reversal oftruth, it is also the destroyer of righteousness. 

Sacramentalism is the anthithesis of dualism. The sanctity of matter asthe potential of spirit and its dwelling-place on earth; the humanizingof spirit through its condescension to man through the making of hisbody and all created things its earthly tabernacle, give, when carriedout into logical development, a meaning to life, a glory to the world, an elucidation of otherwise unsolvable mysteries, and an impulse towardnoble living no other system can afford. It is a real philosophy oflife, a standard of values, a criterion of all possible postulates, andas its loss meant the world's peril, so its recovery may mean itssalvation. 

Now as the philosophy of Christianity is purely and essentiallysacramental, so must be the operation of God through the Church. This"Body of Christ" on earth is indeed a fellowship, a veritable communionof the faithful, whether living or dead, but it is also a divineorganism which lives, and in which each member lives, not by thepreaching of the Word, not even by and through the fellowship in livingand worship, but through the ordained channels of grace known as theSacraments. In accordance with the sacramental system, every materialthing is proclaimed as possessing in varying degree sacramentalpotentiality, while seven great Sacraments were instituted to be, eachafter its own fashion, a special channel for the inflowing of the powerof the Divine Actuality. Each is a symbol, just as so many other createdthings are, or may become, symbols, but they are also _realities, _veritable media for the veritable communications of veritable divinegrace. Here is the best definition I know, that of Hugh of St. Victor. "A sacrament is the corporeal or material element set out sensibly, representing from its similitude, signifying from its institution, andcontaining from its sanctification, some invisible and spiritual grace. "This is the unvarying and invariable doctrine of historic Christianity, and the reason for the existence of the Church as a living andfunctioning organism. The whole sacramental system is in a sense anextension, in time, of the Redemption, just as one particular Sacrament, the Holy Eucharist, is also in a sense an extension of the Incarnation, as it is also an extension, in time, of the Atonement, the Sacrifice ofCalvary. 

The Incarnation and the Redemption are not accomplished facts, completednineteen centuries ago; they are processes that still continue, andtheir term is fixed only by the total regeneration and perfecting ofmatter, while the Seven Sacraments are the chiefest amongst an infinityof sacramental processes which are the agencies of this eternaltransfiguration. 

God the Son became Incarnate, not only to accomplish the redemption ofmen as yet unborn, for endless ages, through the Sacrifice of Calvary, but also to initiate and forever maintain a new method whereby thisresult was to be more perfectly attained; that is to say, the Church, working through the specific sacramental agencies He had ordained, orwas from time to time to ordain, through His everlasting presence in theChurch He had brought into being at Pentecost. He did not come toestablish in material form a Kingdom of Heaven on Earth, or to providefor its ultimate coming. He indeed established a Spiritual Kingdom, HisChurch, "in the world, not of it, " which is a very different matterindeed, as the centuries have proved. His Kingdom is not of this world, nor will it be established here. There has been no _absolute_ advance inhuman development since the Incarnation. Nations rise and fall, epochswax and wane, civilizations grow out of savagery, crest and sink backinto savagery and oblivion. Redemption is for the individual, not forthe race, nor yet for society as a whole. Then, and only then, and underthat form, it is sure, however long may be the period of itsaccomplishment. "Time is the ratio of the resistance of matter to theinterpenetration of spirit, " and by this resistance is the duration oftime determined. When it shall have been wholly overcome then "timeshall be no more. "

See therefore how perfect is the correspondence between the Sacramentsand the method of life where they are the agents, and which theysymbolically set forth. There is in each case the material form and thespiritual substance, or energy. Water, chrism, oil, the spoken word, thetouch of hands, the sign of the cross, and finally and supremely thebread and wine of the Holy Eucharist. Each a material thing, but eachrepresenting, signifying and containing some gift of the Holy Spirit, real, absolute and potent. So matter and spirit are linked together inevery operation of the Church, from the cradle to the grave, and man hasever before him the eternal revelation of this linked union of matterand spirit in his life, the eternal teaching of the honour of thematerial thing through its agency and through its existence as thesubject for redemption. So also, through the material association, andthe divine condescension to his earthly and fallible estate (limited byassociation with matter only to inadequate presentation) he makes theSpirit of God his own, to dwell therewith after the fashion of man. 

And how much this explains and justifies: Man approaches, and mustalways approach, spiritual things not only through material forms but bymeans of material agencies. The highest and most beautiful things, thosewhere the spirit seems to achieve its loftiest reaches, are frequentlyassociated with the grossest and most unspiritual forms, yet the verysplendour of the spiritual verity redeems and glorifies the materialagency, while on the other hand the homeliness, and even animal quality, of the material thing, brings to man, with a poignancy and an appealthat are incalculable, the spiritual thing that, in its absoluteessence, would be so far beyond his ken and his experience and hispowers of assimilation that it would be inoperative. 

This is the true Humanism; not the fictitious and hollow thing that wasthe offspring of neo-paganism and took to itself a title to which it hadno claim. Held tacitly or consciously by the men of the Middle Ages, from the immortal philosopher to the immortal but nameless craftsman, itwas the force that built up the noble social structure of the time andpoised man himself in a sure equilibrium. Already it had of necessitydeveloped the whole scheme of religious ceremonial and given art a newcontent and direction through its new service. By analogy andassociation all material things that could be so used were employed asfigures and symbols, as well as agencies, through the Sacraments, andafter a fashion that struck home to the soul through the organs ofsense. Music, vestments, incense, flowers, poetry, dramatic action, werelinked with the major arts of architecture, painting and sculpture, andall became not only ministers to the emotional faculties but directappeals to the intellect through their function as poignant symbols. Soart received its soul, and was almost a living creature until matter andspirit were again divorced in the death that severed them during theReformation. Thereafter religion had entered upon a period of slowdesiccation and sterilization wherever the symbol was cast away with theSacraments and the faith and the philosophy that had made it live. Thebitter hostility to the art and the liturgies and the ceremonial of theCatholic faith is due far less to ignorance of the meaning and functionof art and to an inherited jealousy of its quality and its power, thanit is to the conscious and determined rejection of the essentialphilosophy of Christianity, which is sacramentalism. 

The whole system was of an almost sublime perfection and simplicity, andthe formal Sacraments were both its goal and its type. If they had beenof the same value and identical in nature they would have failed ofperfect exposition, in the sense in which they were types and symbols. They were not this, for while six of the explicit seven weresubstantially of one mode, there was one where the conditions that heldelsewhere were transcended, and where, in addition to the two functionsit was instituted to perform it gave, through its similitude, the clearrevelation of the most significant and poignant fact in the vast mysteryof life. I mean, of course, the Holy Eucharist, commonly called theMass. 

If matter is _per se_ forever inert, unchangeable, indestructible, thenwe fall into the dilemma of a materialistic monism on the one hand, Manichaean dualism on the other. Even under the most spiritualinterpretation we could offer--that, shall we say, of those today whotry to run with the hare of religion and hunt with the hounds ofrationalistic materialism--matter and spirit unite in man as body andsoul, and in the Sacraments as the vehicle and the essence, buttemporally and temporarily; doomed always to ultimate severance by deathin the one case, by the completion of the sacramental process in theother. If, on the other hand, the object of the universe and of time isthe constant redemption and transformation of matter through itsinterpenetration by spirit in the power of God the Holy Ghost, then weescape the falsities of dualism, while in the miracle of the Mass wefind the type and the showing forth of the constant process of lifewhereby every instant, matter itself is being changed and glorified andtransferred from the plane of matter to the plane of spirit. 

If this is so: if the Incarnation and the Redemption are not onlyfundamental facts but also types and symbols of the divine processforever going on here on earth, then, while the other Sacraments are inthemselves not only instruments of grace but manifestations of thatprocess whereby in all things matter is used as the vehicle of spirit, the Mass, transcending them all, is not only Communion, not only aSacrifice acceptable before God, it is also the unique symbol of theredemption and transformation of matter; since, of all the Sacraments, it is the only one where the very physical qualities of the materialvehicle are transformed, and while the accidents alone remain, thesubstance, finite and perishable, becomes, in an instant of time and bythe operation of God, infinite and immortal. 

It is to sacramentalism then that we must return, not only in religionand its practice, but in philosophy, if we are to establish a firmfoundation for that newer society and civilization that are to help usto achieve the "Great Peace. " Antecedent systems failed, and subsequentsystems have failed; in this alone, the philosophy of Christianity, isthere safety, for it alone is consonant with the revealed will of God. 

III

THE SOCIAL ORGANISM

Society, that is to say, the association in life of men, women andchildren, is the fundamental fact of life, and this is so whether theassociation is of the family, the school, the community, industry orgovernment. Everything else is simply a series of forms, arrangementsand devices by which society works, either for good or ill. Man makes ormars himself in and through society. He is responsible for his own soul, but if he sees only this and works directly for his soul's salvation, disregarding the society of which he is a part, he may lose it, whereas, if he is faithful to society and honourably plays his part as a socialanimal with a soul, he will very probably save it, even though he mayfor the time have quite ignored its existence. Man is a member of afamily, a pupil under education, a worker and a citizen. In all theserelationships he is a part of a social group; he is also a componentpart of the human race and linked in some measure to every other memberthereof whether living or dead. Into every organization or institutionin which he is involved during his lifetime--family, school, art orcraft, trade union, state, church--enters the social equation. Ifsociety is ill organized either in theory or in practice, in any or allof its manifestations, then the engines or devices by which it operateswill be impotent for good. Defective society cannot produce either agood fundamental law, a good philosophy, a good art, or any other thing. Conversely, these, when brought forth under an wholesome society, willdecay and perish when society degenerates. 

In its large estate, that is, comprehending all the minor groups, as anation, a people or an era, society is always in a state of unstableequilibrium, tending either toward better or worse. It may indeed be ofthe very essence of human life, but it is a plant of tender growth andneeds delicate nurture and jealous care; a small thing may work itirreparable injury. It may reach very great heights of perfection andspread over a continent, as during the European Middle Ages; it may sinkto low depths with an equal dominion, as in the second dark ages of thenineteenth century. Sometimes little enclaves of high value hidethemselves in the midst of degradation, as Venice and Ireland in theDark Ages. Always, by the grace of God, the primary social unit, thefamily may, and frequently does, achieve and maintain both purity andbeauty when the world without riots in ruin and profligacy. 

I have taken the problem of the organization of society as the first tobe considered, for it is fundamental. If society is of the wrong shapeit does not matter in the least how intelligent and admirable may be thedevices we construct for the operation of government or industry oreducation; they may be masterly products of human intelligence but theywill not work, whereas on the other hand a sane, wholesome and decentsociety can so interpret and administer clumsy and defective instrumentsthat they will function to admiration. A perfect society would need nosuch engines at all, but a perfect society implies perfect individuals, and I think we are now persuaded that a society of this nature is apurely academic proposition both now and in the calculable future. Whatwe have to do is to take mankind as it is; made up of infinitely variedpersonalities ranging from the idiot to the "super-man"; cruel andcompassionate, covetous and self-sacrificing, silly and erudite, cynicaland emotional, vulgar and cultured, brutal and fastidious, shameful intheir degradation and splendid in their honour and chivalry, and by thefranchise of liberty and the binding of law, facilitate in every way theprocess whereby they themselves work out their own salvation. You cannotimpose morality by statute or guarantee either character or intelligenceby the perfection of the machine. Every institution, good or bad, is theresult of growth from many human impulses, not the creation ofautocratic fiat. But growth may be impeded, hastened, or suspended, andthe most that can be done is to offer incentives to action, remove theobstacles to development, and establish conditions and influences thatmake more easy the finding of the right way. 

Now it seems to me that the two greatest obstacles to the development ofa right society have been first, the enormous scale in which everythingof late has been cast, and second, that element in modern democracywhich denies essential differences in human character, capacity andpotential, and so logically prohibits social distinctions, and refusesthem formal sanction or their recognition through conferred honours. Inquestioning the validity and the value of these two factors, imperialismand social democracy, and in suggesting substitutes, I am, I suppose, attacking precisely the two institutions which are today--or at allevents have been until very recently--held in most conspicuous honour bythe majority of people, but the question is at least debateable, and formy own part I have no alternative but to assert their mistaken nature, and to offer the best I can in the way of substitutes. 

The question of imperialism, of a gross and unhuman and thereforeabsolutely wrong scale, is one that will enter into almost all of thematters with which I propose to deal, certainly with industrialism, withpolitics, with education, with religion, as well as with the immediateproblem of the social organism, for not only has it destroyed the humanscale in human life, and therefore brought it into the danger ofimmediate destruction, but it has also been a factor in establishing thequantitative standard in all things, in place of the qualitativestandard, and this, in itself, is simply the antecedent of well-meritedcatastrophe. In considering the social organism, therefore, we must havein mind that this is intimately affected by every organic institutionwhich man has developed and into which he enters in common with othersof his kind. 

The situation as it confronts us today is one in which man by his veryenergy and the stimulus of those cosmic energies he has so astonishinglymastered, has got far beyond his depth. I say man has mastered theseenergies; yes, but this was true only of a brief period in the immediatepast. They now have mastered him. It is the old story of theFrankenstein monster over again. Man is not omnipotent, he is not God. There are limits beyond which he cannot go without coming in peril ofdeath. An isolated individual here and there may become super-man, perhaps, though at grievous peril to his own soul, and it is conceivablethat to such an one it might be possible to live beyond the human scale, though hardly. If one could envisage so awful a thing as a communitymade up entirely of super-men, one might concede that here also thehuman scale might be exceeded without danger of catastrophe. Withsociety as it is, and always will be, a welter of defectives andgeniuses in small numbers and a vast majority of just plain men, withall that that implies, the breaking through into the imperial scale issimply a letting in the jungle; walls and palings and stockades, thedelicate fabrics of architecture, the clever institutions of law, thethin red line of the army, all melt, crumble, are overcome by the onrushof primordial things, and where once was the white man's city is now theeternal jungle, and the vines and thrusting roots and rank herbage blotout the very memory of a futile civilization, while the monkey and thejackal and the python come again into their heritage. 

Alexander and Caesar, Charles V and Louis XIV and Napoleon and Disraeliand William III could function for a few brief years beyond the limitsof the human scale, though even they had an end, but you cannot linkimperialism and democracy without the certainty of an earlier and a moreignominious fall. 

I have already spoken of the malignant and pathological quality of thequantitative standard. It is indeed not only the nemesis of culture buteven of civilization itself. Out of this same gross scale of things comemany other evils; great states subsisting on the subjugation andexploitation of small and alien peoples; great cities which when theyexceed more than 100, 000 in population are a menace, when they exceed1, 000, 000 are a crime; division of labour and specialization whichdegrade men to the level of machines; concentration and segregation ofindustries, the factory system, high finance and international finance, capitalism, trades-unionism and the International, standardizededucation, "metropolitan" newspapers, pragmatic philosophy, and churches"run on business methods" and recruited by advertising and "publicityagents. "

Greater than all, however, is the social poison that effects societywith pernicious anaemia through cutting man off from his natural socialgroup and making of him an undistinguishable particle in a slidingstream of grain. Man belongs to his family, his neighbourhood, his localtrade or craft guild and to his parish church: the essence of wholesomeassociation is that a man should work with, through and by those whom heknows personally--and preferably so well that he calls them all by theirfirst names. 

As a matter of fact, today he works with, through and by the individualswhom he probably has never seen, and frequently would, as a matter ofpersonal taste, hesitate to recognize if he did see them. He belongs tothe "local" of a union which is a part of a labour organization whichcovers the entire United States and is controlled in all essentialmatters from a point from one hundred to two thousand miles away. Hevotes for mayor with a group of men, less than one per cent of whom heknows personally (unless he is a professional politician), with anothergroup for state officers, and with the whole voting population of theUnited States, for President. If he goes to church in a city he findshimself amongst people drawn from every ward and outlying district, ifhe mixes in "society" he associates with those from everywhere, perhaps, except his own neighbourhood. Only when he is in college, in his club orin his secret society lodge or the quarters of his ward boss does hefind himself in intimate social relations with human beings of like mindand a similar social status. He is a cog in a wheel, a thing, a point ofpotential, a lonely and numerical unit, instead of a gregarious humananimal rejoicing in his friends and companions, and working, playing andquarreling with them, as God made him and meant him to be and to do. 

Of course the result of this is that men are forced into unnaturalassociations, many of which are purely artificial and all of which areunsound. It is true that the trade union, the professional society, theclub are natural and wholesome expressions of common and intimateinterests, but they acquire a false value when they are not balanced andregulated by a prior and more compelling association which cuts, notvertically but horizontally through society, that is to say, theneighbourhood or community group. The harsh and perilous division intoclasses and castes which is now universal, with its development of"class consciousness, " is the direct and inevitable result of thisimperial scale in life which has annihilated the social unit of humanscale and brought in the gigantic aggregations of peoples, money, manufacture and labourers, where man can no longer function either as ahuman unit or an essential factor in a workable society. 

It is hard to see just how we are to re-fashion this impossible societyin terms even nearly approaching the normal and the human. It isuniversal, and it is accepted by everyone as very splendid and quite thegreatest achievement of man. It is practically impossible for any onetoday to conceive of a world where great empires, populous cities, millsand factories and iron-works in their thousands, and employing theirmillions through their billions of capitalization, where the stockexchange and the great banking houses and the insurance companies andthe department stores, the nation-wide trade unions and professionalassociations and educational foundations and religious corporations, donot play their predominant part. Nevertheless they are an aggregation offalse values, their influence is anti-social, and their inherentweakness was so obviously revealed through the War and the Peace that ithas generally escaped notice. 

There seem but two ways in which the true scale of life can be restored;either these institutions will continue, growing greater and moreunwieldy with increasing speed until they burst in anarchy and chaos, and after ruin and long rest we begin all over again (as once beforeafter the bursting of Roman imperialism), or we shall repeat history (aswe always do) only after another fashion and, learning as we always canfrom the annals of monasticism, build our small communities of the rightshape and scale in the very midst of the imperial states themselves, sobecoming perhaps the leavening of the lump. This of course is what themonasteries of St. Benedict did in the sixth century and those of theCluniacs and the Cistercians in the eleventh, and it is what theFranciscans and Dominicans tried to do in the fourteenth century, andfailed because the fall of the cultural and historic wave had alreadybegun. 

The trouble today with nearly all schemes of reform and regeneration isthat they are infected with the very imperialism in scale that hasproduced the conditions they would redeem. Socialism is now ascompletely materialistic as the old capitalism, and as international inits scope and methods. Anarchy is becoming imperial and magnificent inits operations. Secular reformers must organize vast committees withintricate ramifications and elaborate systems supported by "drives" formoney which must run into at least seven figures, and by vast andefficient bureaus for propaganda, before they can begin operations, andthen the chief reliance for success is frequently placed on legislationenacted by the highest lawmaking bodies in the land. Even religion hasnow surrendered to the same obsession of magnitude and efficiency, andnothing goes (or tries to, it doesn't always succeed) unless it isconceived in gigantic "nation-wide" terms and is "put across" byefficiency experts, highly paid organizers, elaborate "teams" ofpropagandists and solicitors, and plenty of impressive advertising. Agood deal can be bought this way, but it will not "stay bought, " for noreform of any sort can be established after any such fashion, sincereform begins in and with the individual, and if it succeeds at all itwill be by the cumulative process. 

I shall speak of this element of scale in every succeeding lecture, forit vitiates every institution we have. Here, where I am dealing withsociety in itself, I can only say that I believe the sane and wholesomesociety of the future will eliminate great cities and great corporationsof every sort. It will reverse the whole system of specialization andthe segregation and unification of industries and the division oflabour. It will build upward from the primary unit of the family, through the neighbourhood, to the small, and closely knit, andself-supporting community, and so to the state and the final unifyingforce which links together a federation of states. In general it will bea return in principle, though not in form, to the social organization ofa Mediaeval Europe before the extinction of feudalism on the Continent, and the suppression of the monasteries and the enclosure of the commonlands in England. 

The grave perils of this false scale in human society have beenrecognized by many individuals ever since the thing itself becameoperative, and every Utopia conceived by man during the last twocenturies, whether it was theoretical or actually put into ephemeralpractice, has been couched in terms of revolt away from imperialism andtowards the unit of human scale. In every case however, the introductionof some form of communism has been the ruin of those projects actuallymaterialized, for this in itself is imperialistic in its nature. Communism implies the standard of the gross aggregate, the denial ofhuman differentiation and the quantitative standard, as well as theelimination of private property and the negation of sacredindividuality. Its institution implies an almost immediate descent intoanarchy with a sequent dictatorship and autocracy, for it is thereversal of the foundation laws of life. Such reversals cannot last, nothing can last that is inimical to flourishing life; it may triumphfor a day but life itself sloughs it off as a sound body rids itself ofsome foreign substance through the sore that festers, bursts and, theseptic conditions done away with, heals itself and returns to normal. 

Now the inhuman scale has produced one set of septic conditions insociety while what is commonly called "democratization" has producedanother. We have a bloated society, but also we have one in which afalse theory has grown up and been put in practice, in accordance withwhich an uniformity of human kind has been assumed which never hasexisted and does not now, and in the effort to enforce this false theorythe achievement of distinction has been impeded, leadership discouragedand leaders largely eliminated, the process of leveling downward carriedto a very dangerous point, the sane and vital organization of societybrought near to an end and a peculiarly vicious scale and standard ofsocial values established. I have urged the return to human scale inhuman associations, but this does not imply any admixture of communism, which is its very antithesis, still less does it permit the retention ofthe theoretical uniformity and the unescapable leveling process ofso-called democracy. 

Before the law all men are equal, that is, they are entitled toeven-handed justice. Before God all men are equal, that is, they aregranted charity and mercy which transcends the law, also they possessimmortal souls of equal value. Here their equality stops. In every otherrespect they vary in character, capacity, intelligence and potentialityfor development along any or all these lines, almost beyond the limitsof computation. A sane society will recognize this, it will organizeitself accordingly, it will deny to one what it will concede to another, it will foster emulation and reward accomplishment, and it will addanother category to those in which all men are equal, that is, thefreest scope for advancement, and the greatest facility for passing fromone social group into another, the sole test being demonstrated merit. 

I am prepared at this point to use the word "aristocracy" for we havethe thing even now, only in its worst possible form. The word itselfmeans two things: a government by the best and most able citizens and, to quote a standard dictionary "Persons noted for superiority in anycharacter or quality, taken collectively. " There is no harm here, butthe harm comes, and the odium also, and justly, when an aristocraticgovernment degenerates into an oligarchy of privilege withoutresponsibility, and when socially it is not "superiority in character orquality" but political cunning, opulence and sycophancy that are thetouchstones to recognition and acceptance. The latter are the antithesisof Christianity and common sense, the former is consonant with both and, paradoxical as it may seem, it is also the fulfilling of the ideals of areal democracy, since its honours and distinctions imply service, itsrelations with those in other estates are reciprocal, it is not a closedcaste but the prize of meritorious achievement, and it is thereforeequality of opportunity, utilization of ability and the abolition ofprivilege without responsibility. 

Men are forever and gloriously struggling onward towards better things, but there is always the gravitational pull of original sin whichscientists denominate "reversion to type. " The saving grace in theindividual is the divine gift of faith, hope and charity implanted inevery soul. These every man must guard and cherish for they are the wayof advancement in character. But society is man in association with men, in a sense a new and complex personality, and the same qualities are asnecessary here as in the individual. Society, like man, may be said topossess body, soul and spirit, and it must function vitally along allthese lines if it is to maintain a normal and wholesome existence. Somewhere there must be something that achieves high ideals of honour, chivalry, courtesy; that maintains right standards of comparative value, and that guards the social organism as a whole from the danger ofsurrender to false and debased standards, to plausible demagogues, andto mob-psychology. 

The greater the prevalence of democratic methods, the greater is thedanger of this surrender to propaganda of a thousand sorts and to thedominance of the demagogue, and the existence of an estate fortified bythe inheritance of high tradition, measurably free from the necessity ofengaging too strenuously in the "struggle for life, " guaranteed securityof status so long as it does not betray the ideals of its order, butopen to accessions from other estates on the basis of conspicuous meritalone, such a force operating in society has proved, and will prove, thebest guardian of civilization as a whole and of the interests andliberties of those who may rank in what are known as lower socialscales. 

But, it may be objected, such an institution as this has never existed. Every political or social aristocracy in history has been mixed andadulterated with bad characters and recreant representatives. Therenever has been and never will be a perfect aristocracy. Quite true;neither has there ever been a perfect democracy, or a perfect monarchyfor that matter. As men we work with imperfections, but we live byfaith, and our sole duty is to establish the highest ideals, and tocompass them, in so far as we may, with unfailing courage, patience andsteadfastness. The _ideal_ of democracy is a great ideal, but the_working_ of democracy has been a failure because, amongst other things, it has tried to carry on without the aid of true aristocracy. If the twocan be united, first in ideal and in theory, then in operation, ourpresent failure may be changed into victory. 

What, after all, does this imply, so far as the social organism isconcerned? It seems to me, something like this. First of all, recognition of the fact that there are differences in individuals, instrains of blood, in races, that cannot be overcome by any power ofeducation and environment, and can only be changed through very longperiods of time, and that these differences must work correspondingdifferences in position, function and status in the social organism. Second, that since society automatically develops an aristocracy of somesort or other, and apparently cannot be stopped from doing this, it mustbe protected from the sort of thing it has produced of late, which isbased on money, political expediency and the unscrupulous cleverness ofthe demagogue, and given a more rational substitute in the shape of apermanent group representing high character and the traditions ofhonour, chivalry and courtesy. Third, that character and service shouldbe fostered and rewarded by that formal and august recognition, thatsecure and unquestioned status, and those added opportunities forservice that will form a real and significant distinction. Finally, thatthis order or estate must be able to purge itself of unworthy material, and also must be freely open to constant accessions from without, whatever the source, and for proved character and service. 

I fear I must argue this case of the inequality in individual potential, that inequality that does not yield to complex education or favourableenvironment, for it is fundamental. If it does not exist, then myargument for the organization of society along lines that recognize andregularize diversity of social status and functions, falls to theground. I affirm that, the doctrine of evolution and modern democratictheory to the contrary, it does exist and that the mitigating influenceof education, environment and inherited acquired characters, is small atbest. 

Let us take the most obvious concrete examples. There are certain ethnicunits or races which for periods ranging from five hundred to twothousand years have produced _character_, and through character thegreat contributions that have been made to human culture and have beenexpressed through men of distinction, dynamic force, and vividpersonality. Such, amongst many, are the Greeks, the Jews, the Romans, the Normans, the Franks, the "Anglo-Saxons, " and the Celts. There areothers that in all history have produced nothing. There are certainfamily names which are a guarantee of distinction, dynamic force, andvivid personality. There are thousands of these names, and they are tobe found amongst all the races that have contributed towards thedevelopment of culture and civilization. On the other hand, there arefar more that have produced nothing distinctive, and possibly neverwill. 

What is the reason for this? Is it the result of blind chance, ofaccidents that have left certain races and families isolated in stagnanteddies from which some sudden current of a whimsical tide might sweepthem out into the full flood of progress, until they then overtook andpassed their hitherto successful rivals, who, in their turn, would driftoff into progressive incompetence and degeneracy? Biology does not lookwith enthusiasm on the methods of chance and accident. The choice andtransmission of the forty-eight chromosomes that give to each individualhis character-potential are probably in accordance with some obscurebiological law through which the unfathomable divine will operates. Nowthese chromosomes may be selected and combined after a fashion, and witha persistence of continuity, that would guarantee character-potential, for good or for ill, through many generations, or they might be sovaried in their combinations that no distinct traits would be carriedover from one generation to another. As a matter of experience all thesethree processes take place and are recorded in families of distinctquality, good, bad and indifferent. If the character-potential ispredetermined, then manifestly education and environment can play onlythe subordinate part of fostering its development or retarding it. 

In the same way the character and career of the various races of men aredetermined by the potential inherent in the individuals and familiesthat compose them, and like them the races themselves are for longperiods marked by power and capacity or weakness and lack ofdistinction. There are certain races, such as the Hottentot, the Malay, the American Indian, and mixed bloods, as the Mexican peons andMongol-Slavs of a portion of the southeastern Europe, that, so far asrecorded history is concerned, are either static or retrogressive. Thereare family units, poverty-stricken and incompetent, in Naples, Canton, East Side New York; or opulent and aggressive in West Side New York, inBirmingham, Westphalia, Pittsburgh, that are no more subject to thecultural and character-creating influences of education andenvironment--beyond a certain definite point--than are the amphibians ofAfrica or the rampant weeds of my garden. 

This is a hard saying and a provocative. The entire course of democratictheory, of humanitarian thought and of the popular type of scientificspeculation stands against it, and the Christian religion as well, unless the statement itself is guarded by exact definitions. If thecontention of the scientific materialist were correct, and the thingthat makes man, and that Christians call the immortal soul, were but theresult of physical processes of growth and differentiation, then slaverywould be justifiable, and exploitation a reasonable and inevitableprocess. Since, however, this assumption of materialism is untenable, and since all men are possessed of immortal souls between which is nodistinction in the sight of God, the situation, regrettable if you like, is one which at the same time calls for the exercise of a higherhumanitarianism than that so popular during the last generation, and aswell for a very drastic revision of contemporary political and socialand educational methods. 

The soul of the man is the localization of divinity; in a sense each manis a manifestation of the Incarnation. Black or white, conspicuous orobscure, intelligent or stupid, offspring of a creative race or bound bythe limitations of one that is static or in process of decay, there isno difference in the universal claim to justice, charity, andopportunity. The soul of a Cantonese river-man, of a Congo slave, of anEast Side Jew, is in itself as essentially precious and worth saving asthe soul of a bishop, of a descendant of a Norman viking or an Irishking, or that of a volunteer soldier in the late armies of France orGreat Britain or the United States. 

Here lies absolute and final equality, and the State, the Law, theChurch are bound to guard this equality in the one case and the otherwith equal force; indeed, those of the lower racial and family typesclaim even more faithful guardianship than those of the higher, for theycan accomplish less for themselves and by themselves. But thefundamental and inescapable inequality, in intellect, in character, andin capacity, which I insist is one of the conditioning factors in life, is vociferously denied, but ruthlessly enforced, by the people that willbe the first to denounce any restatement of what is after all no morethan a patent fact. 

A little less enthusiasm for shibboleths, and a little more intelligentregard for history and palpable conditions, will show that the assumedequality between men "on the strength of their manhood alone, " thesufficiency of education for correcting the accidental differences thatshow themselves, and the scheme of life that is worked out alongdemocratic lines on the basis of this essential (or potential) equality, are "fond things vainly imagined" which must be radically modifiedbefore the world can begin a sane and wholesome building-up after thegreat purgation of war. 

That equality between men which exists by virtue of the presence in eachof an immortal soul, involves an even distribution of justice and theprotection of law, without distinction of persons, and an even measureof charity and compassion, but it does not involve the admission of aclaim to equality of action or the denial of varied status, sincerace-values, both of blood and of the _gens_ enter in to establishdifferences in character, in intelligence and in capacity which cannotbe changed by education, environment or heredity within periods whichare practical considerations with society. If we could still hold theold Darwinian dogmas of the origin of species through the struggle forexistence and the survival of the fittest, and if the equally august andauthoritative dogma of the transmission by inheritance of acquiredcharacteristics were longer tenable, then perhaps we might invoke faith, hope and patience and continue our generous method of imperillingpresent society while we fixed our eyes on the vision of that to comewhen environment, education and heredity had accomplished their perfectwork. Unfortunately--or perhaps fortunately--science is rapidlyreconsidering its earlier and somewhat hasty conclusions, and theconsensus of the most authoritative opinion seems to be that we mustbelieve these things no longer. Failing these premises, on which we havelaboured so long and so honestly and so sincerely, we are again thrownback on the testimony of history and our own observation, and with thisreversal we also are bound to reconsider both our premises and theconstitution of those systems and institutions we have erected on themas a foundation. 

The existence of a general law does not exclude exceptions. The factthat in the case of human beings we have to take into consideration apowerful factor that does not come into play in the domain of zoölogyand botany--the immortal soul--makes impossible the drawing of exactdeductions from precedents therein established. This determining touchof the divine, which is no result of biological processes, but standsoutside the limitations of heredity and environment and education, maymanifest itself quite as well in one class as in another, for "God is norespecter of persons. " As has been said before, there is no differencein degree as between immortal souls. The point is, however, that each islinked to a specific congeries of tendencies, limitations, effective ordefective agencies, that are what they have been made by the parents ofthe race. These may be such as enable the soul to triumph in its earthlyexperience and in its bodily housing; they may be such as will bringabout failure and defeat. It is not that the soul builds itself "morestately mansions"; it is that these are provided for it by the physicalprocesses of life, and it is almost the first duty of man to see thatthey are well built. 

Again, the soul is single and personal; as it is not a plexus ofinherited tendencies, so it is not heritable, and a great soul showingsuddenly in the dusk of a dull race contributes nothing of its essentialquality to the issue of the body it has made its house. The stews of amill town may suddenly be illuminated by the radiance of a divine soul, to the amazement of profligate parents and the confusion of eugenists;but unless the unsolvable mystery of life has determined on a newspecies, and so by a sudden influx of the _élan vital_ cuts off the lineof physical succession and establishes one that is wholly new, then thebrightness dies away with the passing of the splendid soul, and theestablished tendencies resume their sway. 

The bearing of this theory on the actions of society is immediate. Through the complete disregard of race-values that has obtained duringthe last two or three centuries, and the emergence and completesupremacy in all categories of life of human groups of low potential, civilization has been brought down to a level where it is threatenedwith disaster. If recovery is to be effected and a second era of "darkages" avoided, there must be an entirely new evaluation of things, a newestimate of the principles and methods that obtained under Modernism, and a fearless adventure into fields that may prove not to be sounfamiliar as might at first appear. 

Specifically, we must revise our attitude as to immigration, excludingwhole classes, and even races, that we have hitherto welcomed with openhands from the disinterested offices of steamship companies: we mustcontrol and in some cases prohibit, the mating of various racial stocks;finally we must altogether disallow the practice of changing, by law, one race-name for another. This process is one for which no excuseexists and unless it can be brought to an end then, apart from certainphysical differentiations on which nature wisely insists, we have noguaranty against the adulteration that has gone so far towardssubstituting the mongrel for the pure racial type, while society isbound to suffer still further deception and continued danger along thelines that have recently been indicated by the transformation ofTreibitsch into "Lincoln, " Braunstein into "Trotsky" and Samuels into"Montague. "

For its fulfillment, then, and its regeneration, the real democracydemands and must achieve the creation and cooperation of a realaristocracy, not an aristocracy of material force either military orcivil, nor one of land owners or money-getters, nor one of artificialcaste. All these substitutes have been tried from time to time, in Rome, China, Great Britain, the United States, and all have failed in the end, for all have ignored the one essential point of _character_, withoutwhich we shall continue to reproduce what we have at present; a thing asinsolent, offensive and tyrannical as the old aristocracies at theirworst, with none of the constructive and beneficent qualities of the oldaristocracies at their best. 

That race-values have much to do with this development of character Ibelieve to be true, but of far greater efficiency, indeed the actualmotive force, is the Christian religion, working directly on and throughthe individual and using race as only one of its material means ofoperation. Democracy has accomplished its present failure, not onlybecause it could not function without the cooperation of aristocracy, but chiefly because, in its modernist form, it has become in factisolated from Christianity. All in it of good it derives from thatCatholic Christianity of the Middle Ages which first put it intopractice, all in it of evil it owes to a falling back on paganism and adenial of its own parentage and rejection of its control. I shall dealwith this later in more detail; I speak of it now just for the purposeof entering a caveat against any deduction from what I have said thatany natural force, of race or evolution or anything else, or any formalinstitution devised by man, ever has, or ever can, serve in itself as away of social redemption. I am anxious not to overemphasize these thingson which the development of my argument forces me to lay particularstress. 

For those who can go with me so far, the question will arise: How thenare we so to reorganize society that we may gain the end in view? It isa question not easy of solution. Granted the fact of socialdifferentiation and the necessity of its recognition, how are we tobreak down the wholly wrong system that now obtains and substituteanother in its place? It would be simple enough if within the periodallowed us by safety (apparently not any too extended at the presentmoment) a working majority of men could achieve, in the old and exactphraseology, that change of heart, that spiritual conversion, that wouldbring back into permanent authority the supernatural virtues of faith, hope, and charity, and that sense of right values in life, whichtogether make almost indifferent the nature of the formal devices mancreates for the organization of society. Certainly this is possible;greater miracles have happened in history but, failing this, what?

One turns of course by instinct to old models, but in this is the dangerof an attempt at an archaeological restoration, a futile effort atreviving dead forms that have had their day. In principle, and in theworking as well, the old orders of chivalry or knighthood stronglycommend themselves, for here there was, in principle, both themaintenance of high ideals of honour courtesy and _noblesse oblige, _ andthe rendering of chivalrous service. Chesterton has put it well in thephrase "the giving things which cannot be demanded, the avoiding thingswhich cannot be punished. " Moreover, admission to the orders ofknighthood was free to all provided there were that cause which camefrom personal character alone. Knighthood was the crown of knightlyservice and it was forfeited for recreancy. Is there not in this somesuggestion of what may again be established as an incentive and areward, and as well, as a vital agency for the reorganization ofsociety?

Knighthood is personal, and is for the lifetime of the recipient. Isthere any value in an estate where status is heritable? If there is anyvalidity in the theory of varying and persistent race-values, it wouldseem so, yet the idea of recognizing this excellence of certain familiesand the reasonable probability of their maintaining the establishedstandard unimpaired, and so giving them a formal status, would no doubtbe repugnant to the vast majority of men in the United States. I thinkthis aversion is based on prejudice, natural but ill-founded. We resentthe idea of privilege without responsibility, as we should, but this, while it was the condition of those aristocracies which were operativeat the time of the founding of the Republic, was opposed to theMediaeval, or true idea, which linked responsibility with privilege. Theold privilege is gone and cannot be restored, but already we have a newprivilege which is being claimed and enforced by proletarian groups, andthe legislative representatives of the whole people stand in such terrorof massed votes that they not only fail to check this astonishing andtopsy-turvy movement, but actually further its pretensions. The"dictatorship of the proletariat" actually means the restoration ofprivilege in a form far more tyrannical and monstrous than any everexercised by the old aristocracies of Italy, France, Germany andEngland. Much recent legislation in Washington exempting certainindustrial and agricultural classes from the operation of laws whichbear heavily on other classes, and some of the claims and pretensions ofunionized labor, tend in precisely the same direction. 

It is not restoration of privilege I have in mind but rather in a sensethe prevention of this through the existence of a class or estate thathas a fixed status dependent first on character and service and then onan assured position that is not contingent on political favour, the bulkof votes, or the acquisition of an inordinate amount of money. Surety ofposition works towards independence of thought and action and towardsstrong leadership. It establishes and maintains certain high ideals ofhonour, chivalry, and service as well as of courtesy and manners. If thethings for which the gentlemen, the knighthood and the nobility ofEurope during the Christian dispensation were responsible were strickenfrom the record there would be comparatively little left of the historyof European culture and civilization. 

After all, is it merely sentimentalism and a sense of the picturesquethat leads us to look backward with some wistfulness to the days ofwhich the record is still left us in legends and fairy-tales and oldromance, when ignorance and vulgarity did not sit in high places even ifarrogance and pride and tyranny sometimes did, and when the profiteerand the oriental financier and the successful politician did notrepresent the distinction and the chivalry and the courtesy and thehonour of the social organism man builds for his own habitation? Theidea of knighthood still stirs us and the deeds of chivalry and thecourtesy and the honour of the social Knights of the Round Table, Crusaders and knights errant, the quest of the Holy Grail, rescue andadventure, the fighting with paynims and powers of evil, still stir ourblood and arouse in our minds strange contrasts and antinomies. Princesand fair chatelaines in their wide domains with castle and chase anddelicate pleasaunce, liege-men bound to them by more than the feudalties of service. All the varied honours of nobility, vitalized bysignificant ritual and symbolized by splendid and beautiful costumes. Courts of Love and troubadours and trouvères, kings who were kingsindeed, with the splendour and courtesy and beneficence of theircourts--Louis the Saint and Frederic II, Edward III and KingCharles--above all the simple rank and high honour of the "gentleman, "the representative of a long line of honourable tradition, no casual andpurse-proud upstart, but of proud race and unquestioned status, proudbecause it stood for certain high ideals of honour and chivalry andloyalty, of courtesy and breeding and compassion. All these old thingsof long ago still rouse in us answering humours, and there are a few ofus who can hardly see just why they are inconsistent with liberty andopportunity, justice, righteousness and mercy. 

Somehow the last two generations, and especially the last ten years, have revealed many things hitherto hidden, and as we envisage society asit has come to be, estimating it by new-found standards and establishingnew comparisons through a recovery of a more just historical sense, thequestion comes whether it is indeed more wholesome, more beautiful, morenormal to man as he is, than the older society that in varying forms butalways the same principle, had held throughout all history until the newmodel came in, now hardly a century ago. 

I do not think this wistful and bewildered looking backward isparticularly due to a new desire for beauty, that comeliness ofcondition that existed then and has now given place to gross uglinessand ill-conditioned manners and ways. Rather it seems to me it is due toa sense of irrationality and fundamental injustice in the present order, coupled with a new terror of the proximate issue as this already isrevealing itself amongst many peoples. We resent the high estate, purchasable and purchased, of the cynical intriguer and the vulgarprofiteer, of the tradesman in "big business, " the cheap prophet and thepathetic progeny of "successful men" fast reverting to type. We know ourcity councils and our state legislatures and our houses of congress, weknow our newspapers, their standards and the motive powers behind them, and what they record of the character and the doings of what they call"society men and women. " Above all we know that under the ancientregime, in spite of manifold failures, shortcomings and disloyalty, there was such a thing as a standard of honour, a principle of chivalry, an impulse to unselfish service, a criterion of courtesy and goodmanners; we look for these things now in vain, except amongst thoselittle enclaves of oblivion where the old character and old breedingstill maintain a fading existence, and as we consider what we havebecome we sometimes wonder if the price we have paid for "democracy" wasnot too extortionate. 

Above all, we are tempted to this query when we think of our vanishingstandards of right and wrong, of our progressive reversal of values, ofour diminishing stock of social character. We tore down in indignantrevolt the rotten fabric of a bad social system when it had so fardeclined from its ideal and its former estate that it could no longer beendured, and we made a new thing, full as we were with the fire ofdesire for a new righteousness and a new system that would compass it. Perhaps we did well, at least we hardly could have done anything else;but now we are again in the position of our forefathers who saw thingsas they were and acted with force and decision. There are as many countsagainst our society of plutocrats, politicians and proletarians, mingledin complete and ineffective confusion, as there were against thearistocracies, so called, of the eighteenth century. Perhaps there aremore, at least many of them are different, but the indictment is no lesssweeping. 

Our plan, so generous, so liberal, so high-minded in many ways, hasfailed to produce the results we desired, while it has worked itself outto the point of menace. It is for us to see these facts clearly, and soto act, and so promptly, that we may not have to await the destroyingforce of cataclysm for the correction of our errors. 

IV

THE INDUSTRIAL PROBLEM

The solution of the industrial and economic problem that now confrontsthe entire world with an insistence that is not to be denied, iscontingent on the restoration, first of all, of the holiness and the joyof work. Labour is not a curse, it is rather one of the greatest of theearthly blessings of man, provided its sanctity is recognized and itsperformance is accomplished with satisfaction to the labourer. In workman creates, whether the product is a bushel of potatoes from a space ofonce arid ground, or whether it is the Taj Mahal, Westminster Abbey orthe Constitution of the United States, and so working he partakessomething of the divine power of creation. 

When work is subject to slavery, all sense of its holiness is lost, bothby master and bondman; when it is subject to the factory system all thejoy in labour is lost. Ingenuity may devise one clever panacea afteranother for the salving work and for lifting the working classes fromthe intolerable conditions that have prevailed for more than a century;they will be ephemeral in their existence and futile in their resultsunless sense of holiness is restored, and the joy in production andcreation given back to those who have been defrauded. 

Before Christianity prevailed slavery was universal in civilizedcommunities, labour, as conducted under that regime, was a curse, andthis at length came home to roost on the gaunt wreckage of imperialism. Thereafter came slowly increasing liberty under the feudal system withits small social units and its system of production for use not profits, monasticism with its doctrine and practice of the sanctity of work, andthe Church with its progressive emancipation of the spiritual part ofman. Work was not easy, on the contrary it was very hard throughout theDark Ages and Mediaevalism, but there is no particular merit in easywork. It was virtually free except for the labour and contributions inkind exacted by the over-lord (less in proportion than taxes in moneyhave been at several times since) from the workers on the soil, and inthe crafts of every kind redeemed from undue arduousness by the joy thatcomes from doing a thing well and producing something of beauty, originality and technical perfection. 

The period during which work possessed the most honourable status andthe joy in work was the greatest, extends from the beginnings of thetwelfth century well into the sixteenth. In some centuries, and alongcertain lines of activity, it continued much longer, notably in Englandand the United States, but social and industrial conditions were rapidlychanging, the old aristocracy was becoming perverted, Lutheranisms, Calvinism and Puritanism were breaking down the old communal sense ofbrotherhood so arduously built up during the Middle Ages, capitalism wasousting the trade and craft guilds of free labour and politicalabsolutism was crushing ever lower and lower a proletariat that was fastlosing the last vestiges of old liberty. The fact of slavery without thename was gradually imposed on the agricultural classes, and after thesuppression of the monasteries in England work as work lost its sacredcharacter and fell under contempt. With the outbreak of industrialism inthe last quarter of the eighteenth century through the institution andintroduction of "labour-saving" machinery and the consequent division oflabour, the factory system, the joint-stock company and capitalism, thisnew slavery was extended to industrial workers, and with itsestablishment disappeared the element of joy in labour. 

For fifty years, about the blackest half-century civilization has had torecord, this condition of industrial slavery continued with littleamendment. Very slowly, however, the workers themselves, championed bycertain aristocrats like the seventh Earl of Shaftsbury againstprofessional Liberals like Cobden, Bright, and Gladstone in England, began to loosen the shackles that bound them to infamous conditions, andafter the abrogation of laws that made any association of workingmen apenal offense, the labour unions began to ameliorate certain of theservile conditions under which for two generations the workman hadsuffered. Since then the process of abolishing wage-slavery went slowlyforward until at last the war came not only to threaten its destructionaltogether but also to place the emancipated workers in a position wherethey could dictate terms and conditions to capital, to employers, togovernment and to the general public; while even now in many parts ofEurope and America, besides Russia, overt attempts are being made tobring back the old slavery, only with the former bondsmen in supremedictatorship, the former employers and the "bourgeoisie" in the newserfage. 

The old slavery is gone, but the joy in work has not been restored;instead, those who have achieved triumphant emancipation turn fromlabour itself with the same distaste, yes, with greater aversion thanthat which obtained under the old régime. With every added liberty andexemption, with every shortening of hours and increase of pay, production per hour falls off and the quality of the output declines. What is the reason for this? Is it due to the viciousness of the worker, to his natural selfishness, greed and cruelty? I do not think so, butrather that the explanation is to be found in the fact that theindustrial system of modernism has resulted in a condition where the joyhas been altogether cut out of labour, and that until this state ofthings has been reversed and the sense of the holiness of work and thejoy of working have been restored, it is useless to look for workablesolutions of the labour problem. The _fact_ of industrial slavery hasbeen done away with but the sense of the servile condition that attachesto work has been retained, therefore the idea of the dignity andholiness of labour has not come back any more than the old joy andsatisfaction. Failing this recovery, no reorganization of industrialrelations, neither profit-sharing nor shop committees, neithernationalization nor state socialism, neither the abolition of capital, nor Soviets nor syndicalism nor the dictatorship of the proletariat willget us anywhere. It is all a waste of time, and, through its ultimatefailure and disappointments, an intensification of an industrialdisease. 

Why is it that this is so? For an answer I must probe deep and, it mayseem, cut wildly. I believe it is because we have built up a system thatgoes far outside the limits of human scale, transcends human capacity, is forbidden by the laws and conditions of life, and must be abrogatedif it is not to destroy itself and civilization in the process. 

What, precisely has taken place? Late in the eighteenth century twothings happened; the discovery of the potential inherent in coal and itsderivative, steam, with electricity yet unexploited but ready to hand, and the application of this to industrial purposes, together with theinitiating of a long and astounding series of discoveries and inventionsall applicable to industrial purposes. With a sort of vertiginousrapidity the whole industrial process was transformed from what it hadbeen during the period of recorded history; steam and machinery took theplace of brain and hand power directly applied, and a revolution greaterthan any other was effected. 

The new devices were hailed as "labour-saving" but they vastly increasedlabour both in hours of work and in hands employed. Bulk productionthrough the factory system was inevitable, the result being an enormoussurplus over the normal and local demand. To organize and conduct theseprocesses of bulk-production required money greater in amount thanindividuals could furnish; so grew up capitalism, the joint-stockcompany, credit and cosmopolitan finance. To produce profits anddividends markets must be found for the huge surplus product. This wasaccomplished by stimulating the covetousness of people for things theyhad not thought of, under normal conditions would not, in many cases, need, and very likely would be happier without, and in "dumping" onsupposedly barbarous peoples in remote parts of the world, articlesalien to their traditions and their mode of life and generallypestiferous in their influence and results. So came advertising in allits branches, direct and indirect, from the newspaper and the bill-boardto the drummer, the diplomatic representative and the commercialmissionary. 

Every year saw some new invention that increased the product per man, the development of some new advertising device, the conquest of some newterritory or the delimitation of some new "sphere of influence, " and therevelation of some new possibility in the covetousness of man. Profitsrose to new heights and accumulating dividends clamoured for newopportunities for investment. Competition tended to cut down returns, therefore labour was more and more sustained through diminished wagesand laws that savagely prevented any concerted effort towardsself-defense. Improvements in agricultural processes and the applicationof machinery and steam power, together with bulk-production andscientific localization of crops, threw great quantities offarm-labourers out of work and drove them into the industrial towns, while advances in medical science and in sanitation raised theproportion of births to deaths and soon provided a surplus of potentiallabour so that the operation of the "law of supply and demand, " extolledby a new philosophy and enforced by the new "representative" ordemocratic and parliamentary government, resulted in an unfailing supplyof cheap labour paid wages just beyond the limit of starvation. 

At last there came evidences that the limit had been reached; the wholeworld had been opened up and pre-empted, labour was beginning to demandand even get more adequate wages, competition, once hailed as "the lifeof trade" was becoming so fierce that dividends were dwindling. Something had to be done and in self-defense industries began tocoalesce in enormous "trusts" and "combines" and monopolies. Capitalization of millions now ran into billions, finance becameinternational in its scope and gargantuan in its proportions andominousness, advertising grew from its original simplicity and naïvetéinto a vast industry based on all that the most ingenious professorscould tell of applied psychology, subsidizing artists, poets, men ofletters, employing armies of men along a hundred different lines, expending millions annually in its operations, making the modernnewspaper possible, and ultimately developing the whole system ofpropaganda which has now become the one great determining factor in themaking of public opinion. 

When the twentieth century opened, that industrialism which had begunjust a century before, had, with its various collateral developments, financial, educational, journalistic, etc. , become not only the greatestforce in society, but as well a thing operating on the largest scalethat man had ever essayed: beside it the Roman Empire was parochial. 

The result of this institution, conceived on such imperial lines, was, in the field we are now considering, the total destruction of the senseof the holiness of labour and of joy in work. It extended far beyond thelimits of pure industrialism; it moulded and controlled society in allits forms, destroying ideals old as history, reversing values, confusingissues and wrecking man's powers of judgment. Until the war it seemedirresistible, now its weakness and the fallacy of its assumptions arerevealed, but it has become so absolutely a part of our life, indeed ofour nature, that we are unable to estimate it by any sound standards ofjudgment, and even when we approximate this we cannot think in otherterms when we try to devise our schemes of redemption. Even thesocialist and the Bolshevik think in imperial terms when they try tocompass the ending of imperialism. 

Under this supreme system, as I see it, the two essential things I havespoken of cannot be restored, nor could they maintain themselves if, bysome miracle, they were once re-established. The indictment cannot beclosed here. The actual condition that has developed from industrialismpresents certain factors that are not consonant with sane, wholesome andChristian living. Not only has the unit of human scale in human societybeen done away with, not only have the sense of the nobility of work andjoy in the doing been exterminated, but, as well, certain absolutelyfalse principles and methods have been adopted which are not susceptibleof reform but only of abolition. 

Of some of these I have spoken already; the alarming drift towardscities, until now in the United States more than one-half the populationis urban; the segregation of industries in certain cities and regions;the minute division of labour and intensive specialization; the abnormalgrowth of a true proletariat or non-land-holding class; the flooding ofthe country by cheap labour drawn from the most backward communities andfrom peoples of low race-value. Out of this has arisen a bitter classconflict and the ominous beginnings of a perilous class consciousness, with actual warfare joined in several countries, and threatened in allothers where industrial civilization is prevalent. With this has grownup an artificially stimulated covetousness for a thousand futileluxuries, and a standard of living that presupposes a thousandnon-essentials as basic necessities. Production for profit, not use, excess production due to machinery, efficient organization, and surplusof labour, together with the necessity for marketing the product at aprofit, have produced a state of things where at least one-half theavailable labour in the country is engaged in the production and sale ofarticles which are not necessary to physical, intellectual or spirituallife, while of the remainder, hardly more than a half is employed inproduction, the others are devoting themselves to distribution and tothe war of competition through advertising and the capturing of trade byingenious and capable salesmen. It is a significant fact that two of thegreatest industries in the United States are the making of automobilesand moving pictures. 

It is probably true to say that of the potential labour in the UnitedStates, about one-fourth is producing those things which are physically, intellectually and spiritually necessary; the remaining three-fourthsare essentially non-producers: they must, however, be housed, fed, clothed, and amused, and the cost of this support is added to the costof the necessities of life. The reason for the present high cost ofliving lies possibly here. 

Lest I be misunderstood, let me say here that under the head ofnecessities of life I do not mean a new model automobile each year, moving pictures, mechanical substitutes for music or any other art, andthe thousand catch-trade devices that appear each year for the purposeof filching business from another or establishing a new desire in thealready over-crowded imaginations of an over-stimulated populace. Particularly do I not mean advertising in any sense in which it is nowunderstood and practised. If, as I believe to be the case, productionfor profit, rather than for use, the reversal of the ancient doctrinethat the demand must produce the supply, in favour of the doctrine thatthe supply must foster the demand, is the foundation of our economicerror and our industrial ills, then it follows that advertising as it isnow carried on by billboards, circulars and newspapers, by drummers, solicitors and consular agents, falls in the same condemnation, forexcept by its offices the system could not have succeeded or continue tofunction. It is bad in itself as the support and strength of a badinstitution, but its guilt does not stop here. So plausible is it, soessential to the very existence of the contemporary régime, so knit upwith all the commonest affairs of life, so powerful in its organizationand broad in its operations, it has poisoned, and continues to poison, the minds of men so that the headlong process of losing all sense ofcomparative values is accelerated, while every instinctive effort atrecovery and readjustment is nullified. How far this process has gonemay be illustrated by two instances. It is only a few months ago that amost respected clergyman publicly declared that missionaries were thegreatest and most efficient asset to trade because they were unofficialcommercial agents who opened up new and savage countries to Westerncommerce through advertising commodities of which the natives had neverheard, and arousing in them a sense of acquisitiveness that meant morewealth and business for trade and manufacture, which should supportforeign missions on this ground at least. More recently the head of anadvertising concern in New York is reported to have said: "It isprincipally through advertising that we have arrived at the high degreeof civilization which this age enjoys, for advertising has taught us theuse of books and how to furnish our homes with the thousand and onecomforts that add so materially to our physical and intellectualwell-being. The future of the world depends on advertising. Advertisingis the salvation of civilization, for civilization cannot outliveadvertising a century. "

It is tempting to linger over such a delectable morsel as this, for evenif it is only the absurd and irresponsible output of one poor, foolishman, it does express more or less what industrial civilization holds tobe true, though few would avow their faith so whole-heartedly. Thestatement was made as propaganda, and propaganda is merely advertisingin its most insidious and dangerous form. The thing revealed itspossibilities during the war, but the black discredit that was then veryjustly attached to it could not prevail against its manifest potency, and it is now universally used after the most comprehensive andfrequently unscrupulous fashion, with results that can only be perilousin the extreme. The type and calibre of mind that has now been releasedfrom long bondage, and by weight of numbers is now fast taking over thedirection of affairs, is curiously subservient to the written word, andlacking a true sense of comparative values, without effective leadershipeither secular or religious, is easily swayed by every wind of doctrine. The forces of evil that are ever in conflict with the forces of rightare notoriously ingenious in making the worse appear the better cause, and with every desire for illumination and for following the right way, the multitude, whether educated or illiterate, fall into the falsehoodsof others' imaginings. Money, efficiency, an acquired knowledge of mobpsychology, the printing press and the mail service acting in alliance, and directed by fanatical or cynical energy, form a force of enormouspotency that is now being used effectively throughout society. It isirresponsible, anonymous and pervasive. Through its operation the lastbarriers are broken down between the leadership of character and theleadership of craft, while all formal distinctions between the valuableand the valueless are swept away. 

I have spoken at some length of this particular element in the presentcondition of things, because in both its aspects, as the support of ourpresent industrial and economic system and as the efficient moulder of afluid and unstable public opinion, it is perhaps the strongest and mostsubtle force of which we must take account. 

With a system so prevalent as imperial industry, so knit up with everyphase of life and thought, and so determining a factor in all ourconcepts, united as it is with two such invincible allies as advertisingand propaganda, it is inconceivable that it should be overthrown by anyhuman force from without. Holding it to be essentially wrong, it seemsto me providential that it is already showing signs of falling by itsown weight. Production of commodities has far exceeded production of themeans of payment, and society is now running on promises to pay, onpaper obligations, on anticipations of future production and sale, oncredit, in a word. The war has enormously magnified this condition untilan enforced liquidation would mean bankruptcy for all the nations of theearth, while the production of utilities is decreasing in proportion tothe production of luxuries, labour is exacting increasing pay fordecreasing hours of work and quality of output, and the enormousfinancial structure, elaborately and ingeniously built up throughseveral generations, is in grave danger of immediate catastrophe. Thewhole world is in the position of an insolvent debtor who is so deeplyinvolved that his creditors cannot afford to let him go into bankruptcy, and so keep him out of the Poor Debtor's Court by doling out supportfrom day to day. Confidence is the only thing that keeps matters going;what happens when this is lost is now being demonstrated in many partsof Europe. The optimist claims that increased production, coupled withenforced economy, will produce a satisfactory solution, but there is noevidence that labour, now having the whip-hand, will give up its presentadvantage sufficiently to make this possible; even if it did, paymentmust be in the form of exchange or else in further promises to pay, while the capacity of the world for consumption is limited somewhere, though thus far "big business" has failed to recognize this fact. Atpresent the interest charges on debts, both public and private, havereached a point where they come near to consuming all possible profitseven from a highly accelerated rate of production. Altogether it isreasonable to assume that the present financial-industrial system isnear its term for reasons inherent in itself, let alone the possibilityof a further extension of the drastic and completely effective measuresof destruction that are characteristics of Bolshevism and itsblood-brothers. 

Assuming that this is so, two questions arise: what is to take the placeof imperial industry, and how is this substitution to be brought about?

I think the answer to the first is: a social and industrial system basedon small, self-contained, largely self-sufficing units, where supplyfollows demand, where production is primarily for use not profit, andwhere in all industrial operations some system will obtain which is moreor less that of the guilds of the Middle Ages. I should like to go intothis a little more in detail before trying to answer the secondquestion. 

The normal social unit is a group of families predominantly of the samerace, territorially compact, of substantially the same ideals asexpressed in religion and the philosophy of life, and sufficientlynumerous to provide from within itself the major part of those thingswhich are necessary to physical, intellectual and spiritual well-being. It should consist of a central nucleus of houses, each with its garden, the churches, schools and public buildings that are requisite, themanufactories and workshops that supply the needs of the community, theshops for sale of those things not produced at home, and all necessaryplaces of amusement. Around this residential centre should be sufficientagricultural land to furnish all the farm products that will be consumedby the community itself. The nucleus of habitation and industry, together with the surrounding farms, make up the social unit, which isto the fullest possible degree, self-contained, self-sufficient andself-governing. 

Certain propositions are fundamental, and they are as follows: Everyfamily should own enough land to support itself at need. The farmsincluded in the unit must produce enough to meet the needs of thepopulation. Industry must be so organized that it will normally servethe resident population along every feasible line. Only such things ascannot be produced at home on account of climatic or soil limitationsshould be imported from outside. All necessary professional servicesshould be obtainable within the community itself. All financialtransactions such as loans, credits, banking and insurance should bedomestic. Surplus products, whether agricultural, industrial orprofessional, should be considered as by-products, and in no case shouldthe producing agency acquire such magnitude that home-consumptionbecomes a side issue and production for profit take the place ofproduction for use. 

All this is absolutely opposed to our present system, but our presentsystem is wasteful, artificial, illogical, unsocial, and thereforevicious. I have said enough as to the falsities, the dangers and thefailures of bulk-production through the operations of capitalism, thefactory system and advertising, but its concomitant, the segregation ofindustries, is equally objectionable. To ship hogs 1, 500 miles to beslaughtered and packed in food form, and then ship this manufacturedproduct back to the source from which the raw material came; to feed agreat city with grain, potatoes and fruits coming from 1, 000 to 3, 000miles away, and vegetables from a distance of several hundred miles, while the farms within a radius of fifty miles are abandoned and barren;to make all the shoes for the nation in one small area, to spin the wooland cotton and weave the cloth in two or three others; to make thegreater part of the furniture in one state, the automobiles in a secondand the breakfast food in a third, is so preposterous a proposition thatit belongs in Gulliver's Travels, not in the annals of a supposedlyintelligent people. The only benefit is that which for a time accrued tothe railways, which carted raw materials and finished products back andforth over thousands of miles of their lines, the costs of shipment andreshipment being naturally added to the price to the consumer. Thepenalties for this uneconomic procedure were borne by society at large, not only in the increased costs but through the abnormal communities, each with its tens of thousands of operatives all engaged in the samework and generally drawn from foreign races (with the activeco-operation of the steamship lines), and the permanent dislocation ofthe labour supply, together with the complete disruption of the socialsynthesis. 

With production for profit and segregation of industries has come analmost infinitesimal division and specialization of labour. Under aright industrial system this would be reduced, not magnified. Thedignity of labour and the joy of creation demand that in so far aspossible each man should carry through one entire operation. This is ofcourse now, and always has been under any highly developed civilization, impossible in practice, except along certain lines of art andcraftsmanship. The evils of the existing system can in a measure be doneaway with the moment production for use is the recognized law, for it isonly in bulk-production that this intensive specialization can be madeto pay. Bulk-production there will always be until, and if, the world isreorganized on the basis of an infinite number of self-contained socialunits, but in the ideal community--and I am dealing now with ideals--itwould not exist. 

Allied with this is the whole question of the factory method and the useand misuse of machinery. It seems to me that the true principle is thatmachinery and the factory are admissible only when so employed theyactually do produce, in bulk operations, a better product, and with lesslabour, than is possible through hand work. Weaving, forging and allwork where human action must be more or less mechanical, offer a fairfield for the machine and the factory, but wherever the human elementcan enter, where personality and the skilled craft of the hand are givenplay, the machine and the factory are inadmissible. The great city, creation of "big business, " segregation of industries, advertising, salesmanship and a hundred other concomitants of modernism, have builtup an abnormal and avaricious demand for bulk-production along lineswhere the handicraft should function. It becomes necessary--let ussay--to provide a million dollars worth of furniture for a ten milliondollar hotel (itself to be superseded and scrapped in perhaps ten years)and naturally only the most intensive and efficient factory system canmeet this demand. Rightly, however, the furniture of a community shouldbe produced by the local cabinet makers, and so it should be in manyother industries now entirely taken over by the factory system. 

For the future then we must consciously work for the building upwardfrom primary units, so completely reversing our present practice ofcreating the big thing and fighting hopelessly to preserve such smalland few doles of liberty and personality as may be permitted to filterdownward from above. This is the only true democracy, and the thing wecall by the name is not this, largely because we have bent our bestenergies to the building up of vast and imperial aggregates which haveinevitably assumed a complete unity in themselves and become dominating, tyrannical and ruthless forces that have operated regardless of thesound laws and wholesome principles of a right society. Neither thevital democracy of principle nor the artificial democracy of practicecan exist in conjunction with imperialism, whether this is establishedin government, in industry, in trade, in society or in education. 

If we can assume, then, the gradual development of a new society inwhich these principles will be carried out, a society that is made up ofsocial units of human scale, self-contained, self-supporting andself-governed, where production is primarily for use not profit, andwhere bulk-production is practically non-existent, the sub-division oflabour reduced to the lowest practicable point, machinery employed to amuch less extent than now, and the factory system abolished, whatorganic form will labour take on in place of that which now obtains? Itis possible to forecast this only in the most general terms, for lifeitself must operate to determine the lines of development and dictatethe consequent forms. If we can acquire a better standard of comparativevalues, and with a clearer and more fearless vision estimate the rightsand wrongs of the contemporary system, rejecting the ill thing andjealously preserving, or passionately regaining, the good, we shall beable to establish certain broad, fundamental and governing principles, and doing this we can await in confidence the evolution of the organicforms that will be the working agencies of the new society. 

I have tried to indicate some of the basic principles of a new society. The operating forms, so far as industry is concerned, will, I think, follow in essential respects the craft-guilds of the Middle Ages. Theywill not be an archaeological restoration, as some of the Englishprotagonists of this great revolution seem to anticipate, they will bevariously adapted to the peculiar conditions of a new century, but thebasic principles will be preserved. Whatever happens, I am sure it willnot be either a continuation of the present system of capitalism andprofit-hunting, or nationalization of industries, or state socialism inany form, or anything remotely resembling Bolshevism, syndicalism or a"dictatorship of the proletariat. " Here, as in government, education andsocial relations, the power and the authority of the state must decline, government itself withdrawing more and more from interference with theoperation of life, and liberty find its way back to the individual andto the social and economic groups. We live now under a more tyrannicaland inquisitorial regime, in spite of (partly perhaps because of) itsdemocratic forms and dogmas, than is common in historical records. Nationalization or state socialism would mean so great a magnifying ofthis condition that existence would soon become both grotesque andintolerable. We must realize, and soon, that man may lose even the lastsemblance of liberty, as well under a nominal democracy as under anominal despotism or theocracy. 

The guild system was the solution of the industrial problem offered andenforced by Christianity working through secular life; it presupposedthe small social and industrial unit and becomes meaningless ifconceived in the gigantic and comprehensive scale of moderninstitutions. "National guilds" is a contradiction in terms: it takes onthe same element of error that inheres in the idea of "one big union. "In certain respects the Christian guild resembled the modern tradeunion, but it differed from it in more ways, and it seems to be truethat wherever this difference exists the guild was right and the unionis wrong. Community of fellowship and action amongst men of each crafttrade or calling is essential under any social system, good or bad, andit would be inseparable from the better society that must sometime growup on the basis of the unit of human scale, for these autonomous groups, in order to furnish substantially all that their component parts couldrequire, would have to be of considerable size as compared with thelittle farming villages of New England, though in contrast with thegreat cities of modernism they would be small indeed. In these new"walled towns" there would be enough men engaged in agriculture, in thenecessary industrial occupations, in trade and in the professions toform many guilds of workable size, and normally these guilds wouldneither contain members of two or more professions or occupations, northose from outside the community itself. The guild cannot function underintensive methods of production or where production is primarily forprofit, or where the factory system prevails, or where capitalism is theestablished system, or under combinations, trusts or other devices forthe establishing and maintenance of great aggregates tending alwaystowards monopoly. However much we may admire the guild system and desireits restoration, we may as well recognize this fact at once. Theimperial scale must go and the human scale be restored before the guildcan come back in any general sense. 

I am assuming that this will happen, either through conscious action onthe part of the people or as the result of catastrophe that alwaysovertakes those who remain wedded to the illusions of falsity. On thisassumption what are these enduring principles that will control theguild system of industry in the new State, however may be its form?

The answer is to be found in the old guilds, altars, shrines, vestmentsand sacred vessels were given in incredible quantities for thefurnishing and embellishment of the chapel or church; funds also for themaintenance of priestly offices especially dedicated to the guild. 

Closely allied with the religious spirit was that of good-fellowship andmerrymaking. Every sort of feast and game and pageant was a part of theguild system, as it was indeed of life generally at this time when mendid not have to depend upon hired professional purveyors of amusementfor their edification. What they wanted they did themselves, and thiscommunity in worship and community in merrymaking did more even than themerging of common material interests, to knit the whole body togetherinto a living organism. 

In how far the old system can be revived and put into operation is aquestion. Certainly it cannot be adopted as a fad and imposed on anunwilling society as a clever archaeological restoration. It will haveto grow naturally out of life itself and along lines at present hardlypredicable. There are many evidences that just this spontaneousgeneration is taking place. The guild system is being preached widely inEngland where the defects of the present scheme are more obvious and theresulting labour situation--or rather social situation--is more fraughtwith danger than elsewhere, and already the restoration seems to havemade considerable headway. I am convinced, however, that the vitalaspects of the case are primarily due to the interior working of a newspirit born of disillusionment and the undying fire in man that flamesalways towards regeneration; what the ardent preaching of theenthusiastic protagonists of the crusade best accomplishes is thecreation in the minds of those not directly associated with the movementof a readiness to give sympathy and support to the actual accomplishmentwhen it manifests itself. Recently I have come in contact here inAmerica with several cases where the workmen themselves have broken awayfrom the old ways and have actually established what are to all intentsand purposes craft-guilds, without in the least realizing that they weredoing this. 

I think the process is bound to continue, for the old order has brokendown and is so thoroughly discredited it can hardly be restored. If timeis granted us, great things must follow, but it is increasingly doubtfulif this necessary element of time can be counted on. Daily the situationgrows more menacing. Capital, which so long exploited labour to its ownfabulous profit, is not disposed to sit quiet while the fruits of itslabours and all prospects of future emoluments are being dissipated, andit is hard at work striving to effect a "return to normalcy. " In this itis being unconsciously aided by the bulk of union labour which, encouraged by the paramount position it achieved during the war, influenced by an avarice it may well have learned from its formermasters, as narrow in its vision as they, and increasingly subservientto a leadership which is frequently cynical and unscrupulous and alwaysof an order of character and intelligence which is tending to lower andlower levels, is alienating sympathy and bringing unionism intodisrepute. In the United States the tendency is steadily towards a verydangerous reactionism, with a corresponding strengthening of the radicalelement which aims at revolution, and that impossible thing, aproletarian dictatorship. It is this latter which is rampant and atpresent unchecked in Europe, and this also is a constant menace to thesuccess of those sane and righteous movements which take their lead fromthe guild system of the Middle Ages. A third danger, but one which isconstantly on the decline at present, partly because of the generaldisrepute of governments and partly because of the enormous accessionsof power now accruing both to reactionism and radical revolutionism, or"Bolshevism, " is state socialism or nationalization, which leavesuntouched all the fatal elements in industrialism while it changes onlythe agents of administration. The complete collapse of able andconstructive and righteous leadership, which is one of the startlingphenomena of modernism, has left uncontrolled the enormous energy thathas been released during the last three generations, and this is workingblindly but effectively towards a cataclysm so precipitate andcomprehensive that it is impossible not to fear that it may determinelong before the sober and informed elements in society have accomplishedvery much in the recovery and establishment of sound and righteousprinciples and methods. 

Of course we can compass whichever result we will. We may shut our eyesto the omens and let matters drift to disaster, or we may take thoughtand council and avert the penalty that threatens us; the event is in ourown hands. It is as criminal to foresee and predict only catastrophe asit is to compass this through lethargy, selfishness and illusion. We arebound to believe that righteousness will prevail, even in our own time, and believing this, what, in general terms will be the construction ofthe new system that must take the place of industrialism?

I have already indicated what seem to me the fundamental ideas as: thesmall social unit that is self-sustaining; production primarily for use, coöperation in place of competition; a revived guild system with theabolition of capitalism, exploitation and intensive specialization as wenow know these dominant factors in modern civilization. In theapplication of these principles there are certain innovations that will, I think, take place, and these may be listed somewhat as follows:

Land holding will become universal and the true proletariat or landlessclass will disappear. It may be that the holding of land will become aprerequisite to active citizenship. Industrial production being for usenot profit, the great city becomes a thing of the past, and life isrendered simpler through the elimination of a thousand useless andvicious luxuries; those employed in mechanical industries will beincalculably fewer than now, while those that remain will give only aportion of their time to industrial production, the remainder beingavailable for productive work on their own gardens and farms. Thehandicrafts will be restored to their proper place and dignity, takingover into creative labour large numbers of those who otherwise would besacrificed to the factory system. Where bulk production, as in weavingand the preparation and manufacturing of metals, is economical andunavoidable and carried on by factory methods, these manufactories willprobably be taken over by the several communities (not by the state as awhole) and administered as public institutions for the benefit of thecommunity and under conditions and regulations which ensure justice andwell-being to the employees. All those in any community engaged in agiven occupation, as for example, building, will form one guild made upof masters, journeymen and apprentices, with the same principles andmuch the same methods as prevailed under the ancient guild system. Fluctuating scales of prices determined by fluctuating conditions ofcompetition, supply and demand, and power of coercion, will give placeto "the fair price" fixed by concerted community action and revised fromtime to time in order to preserve a right balance with the general scaleof cost of raw materials and cost of living. A maximum of returns in theshape of profits or dividends will be fixed by law. The community itselfwill undertake the furnishing of credits, loans and necessary capitalfor the establishing of a new business, charging a small rate ofinterest and maintaining a reserve fund to meet these operations. Private banking, insurance and the loaning of money on collateral willcease to exist. 

I dare say this will all sound chimerical and irrational in the extreme;I do not see it in that light. Its avowed object is the supersession of"big business" in all its phases by something that comes down to humanscale. It aims to reduce labour and divide it more evenly by making thegreat mass of non-producers--those engaged in distribution, salesmanship, advertising, propaganda, and the furnishing of thingsunnecessary to the bodily, intellectual and spiritual needs ofman--actual producers and self-supporting to a very large extent. Itaims at restoring to work some sense of the joy in creation throughactive mind and hand. It aims at the elimination of the parasiticelement in society and of that dangerous factor which subsists on wealthit acquires without earning, and by sheer force of its own opulencedominates and degrades society. It does not strike at private ownership, but rather exalts, extends and defends this, but it _does_ cut into allthe theories and practices of communism and socialism by establishingthe principle and practice of fellowship and coöperation. Is this"chimerical and irrational"?

Meanwhile the "walled towns" do not exist and may not for generations. "Big business" is indisposed to abrogate itself. Trade unionism isfighting for its life and thereafter for world conquest, while theenmity between capital and labour increases, with no evidence that arestored guild system is even approximately ready to take its place. Strikes and lockouts grow more and more numerous, and wider and moremenacing in their scope. The day of the "general strike" has only beendelayed at the eleventh hour in several countries, and a general strike, if it can hold for a sufficient period, means, where-ever it occurs andwhenever it succeeds, the end of civilization and the loosing of thefloods of anarchy. There is hardly time for us patiently to await theslow process of individual and corporate enlightenment or thespontaneous development of the autonomous communities which, if theywere sufficient in number, would solve the problem through eliminatingthe danger. What then, in the premises, can we do?

There are of course certain concrete things which might help, as forinstance the further extension and honest trying out of the "Kansasplan" for regulating industrial relations; the forming of "consumersleagues, " and all possible support and furtherance of coöperativeefforts of every sort. There are further possibilities (perhaps hardlyprobabilities) of controlling stock issues and stock holdings so thatdividends do not have to be paid on grossly inflated capitalization, andfixing the maximum of dividends payable to non-active stockholders. Equally desirable but equally improbable, is the raising of the level ofleadership in the labour unions so that these valuable institutions mayno longer stultify themselves and wreck their own cause by their unjustand anti-social regulations as to apprentices, control of maximum outputand its standard of quality, division of labour with ironcladinhibitions against one man doing another's work and against one mandoing what six men can do less well, and as to the obligation to strikeon order when no local or personal grievance exists. Most useful of allwould be a voluntary renunciation, on the part of the purchasing public, of nine-tenths of the futile luxuries they now insanely demand, coupledwith the production by themselves of some of the commodities which areeasily producable; in other words, establishing some measure ofself-support and so releasing many men and women from the curse ofexistence under factory conditions and giving them an opportunity ofliving a normal life under self-supporting circumstances. This, coupledwith a fostering of the "back to the farm" movement, and the developmentof conditions which would make this process more practicable and thelife more attractive, would do much, though in small ways, towardsproducing a more wholesome and less threatening state of affairs. 

Back of the whole problem, however, lies a fallacy in our conception ofexistence that must be eliminated before even the most constructivepanaceas can possibly work. I mean the whole doctrine of natural rightswhich has become the citadel of capitalism in all its most offensiveaspects, and of labour in its most insolent assumptions. The "rights" ofproperty, the "right" to strike, the "right" to collective bargaining, the "right" to shut down an essential industry or to "walk out" and thenpicket the place so that it may not be reopened, the "right" to vote andhold office and do any fool thing you please so long as it is within thelaw, these are applications of what I mean when I speak of a grossfallacy that has come into being and has stultified our intelligencewhile bringing near the wrecking of our whole system. 

Neither man nor his community possesses any _absolute_ rights; they areall conditioned on how they are exercised. If they are not soconditioned they become privilege, which is a right not subject toconditions, and privilege is one of the things republicanism anddemocracy and every other effort towards human emancipation have setthemselves up to destroy. Even the "right to life, liberty and thepursuit of happiness" is conditioned by the manner of use, and the sameis true of every other and unspecified right. I do not propose to speakhere of more than one aspect of this self-evident truth, but the singleinstance I cite is one that bears closely on the question of ourindustrial and economic situation; it is the responsibility to societyof property or capital on the one hand and of labour on the other, whenboth invoke their "rights" to justify them in oppressing the generalpublic in the pursuit of their own natural interests. 

During the Middle Ages, just as the political theory maintained thatwhile a king ruled by divine right, this right gave him no authority togovern wrong, so the social theory held that while a man had a right toprivate property he had no right to use it against society, nor couldthe labourer use his own rights to the injury of the same institution. Power, property and labour must be used as a _function_, i. E. , "anactivity which embodies and expresses the idea of social purpose. "Unless I am mistaken, this is at the basis of our "common law. "

As Mediaevalism gave place to the Renaissance this Christian idea wasabandoned, and increasingly the obligation was severed from the right, which so became that odious thing, privilege. Intolerable in itsinjustice and oppression, this privilege, which by the middle of theeighteenth century had become the attribute of the aristocracy, wascompletely overthrown, in France first of all, and a new doctrine ofrights was enunciated and put in operation. Unfortunately the result wasin essence simply a transforming of privilege from one body to another, for the old conception of social purpose, as the necessary concomitantof acknowledged rights, did not emerge from the shadows of the MiddleAges; it had been too long forgotten. The new "rights" were exclusivelyindividualistic, in practice, though in the minds of the idealists whoformulated them, they had their social aspect. Their promulgationsynchronized with the sudden rise and violent expansion ofindustrialism, and as one country after another followed the lead ofEngland in accepting the new system, they hardened into an iron-cladscheme for the defence of property and the free action of the holdersand manipulators of property. Backed by the economic philosophy ofLocke, Adam Smith, Bentham and the Manchester School, generally, and theevolutionary theories of the exponents of Darwinism, and abetted by anendless series of statutes, the idea of the exemption of propertyholders from any responsibility to society for the use of theirproperty, became a fixed part of the mental equipment of modernism. Precisely the same thing happened politically and socially. Rights werepersonal and implied no necessary obligation to society as a whole; theywere personal attributes and as such to be defended at all costs. 

Now the result of this profound error as to the existence, nature andlimitation of these personal rights has meant simply the destruction ofa righteous and unified society which works by coöperation andfellowship, and the substitution of individuals and corporate bodies whowork by competition, strife and mutual aggression towards the attainmentof all they can get under the impulse of what was once praised as"enlightened self interest. " In other words--war. The conflict thatbegan in 1914 was not a war hurled into the midst of a white peace, itwas only a military war arising in the centre of a far greater socialwar, for there is no other word that is descriptive. Rights that are notcontingent on the due discharge of duties and obligations are buthateful privilege; privilege has issue in selfishness and egotism, whichin turn work themselves out in warfare and in the hatred that bothprecedes and follows conflict. 

The net result of a century and a half of industrialism is avarice, warfare and hate. Society can continue even when avariciousness isrampant--for a time--and warfare of one sort or another seemsinseparable from humanity, at all events it has always been so, buthatred is another matter, for it is the negation of social life and isits solvent. Anger passes; it is sometimes even righteous, but hatred issynonymous with death in that it dissolves every unit, reducing it toits component parts and subjecting each of these to dissolution in itsturn. Righteous anger roused the nations into the war that hate hadengendered, but hate has followed after and for the moment isvictorious. Russia seethes with hatred and is perishing of its poison, while there is not another country in Europe, of those that wereinvolved in the war, where the same is not true in varying degrees;hatred of race for race, of nation for nation, of class for class, ofone social or industrial or economic or political institution foranother. This, above all else, is the disintegrating influence, andagainst it no social organism, no civilization can stand. Unless it isabrogated it means an ending of another epoch of human life, a period ofdarkness and another beginning, some time after the poison has beenworked out by misery, adversity and forced repentance. 

It is this prevalence of hatred, reinforced by avarice and perpetuatedby incessant warfare, that negatives all the efforts that are madetowards effecting a correspondence between the divided interests thatare the concomitant of industrialism. Strikes and lockouts, tradesunions and employers' associations as they are now constituted and asthey now operate, syndicalism and Bolshevism and proletariandictatorships, protective tariffs and commercial spheres of influence, propaganda and subsidized newspapers are all energized by the principleof hate, and no good thing can come of any of them. Nor is it enough towork for the re-establishment of justice even by those methods ofrighteousness, and with the impulse towards righteousness, which are sodifferent from those which are functioning at present along the lines ofcontemporary industrial "reform. " Justice is a "natural" virtue with areal place in society, but the only saving force today is a supernaturalvirtue. This, amongst other things, Christ brought into the world andleft as the saving force amongst the race He had redeemed and in thesociety reconstituted in accordance with His will. This supernaturalvirtue is Charity, sometimes expressed in the simpler form of Love, theessence of the social code of Christianity and the symbol of the NewDispensation as justice was the symbol of the Old. Just in so far as aman or a cult or an interest or a corporation or a state or a generationor a race, relinquishes charity as its controlling spirit, in so far itrelinquishes its place in Christian society and its claim to theChristian name, while it is voided of all power for good or possibilityof continuance. Where charity is gone, intellectual capacity, effectualpower, and even justice itself become, not energies of good, but potentcontributions to evil. Is this supernatural gift of charity a mark ofcontemporary civilization? Does it manifest itself with power today inthe dealings between class and class, between interest and interest, between nation and nation? If not, then we have forfeited the name ofChristian and betrayed Christian civilization into the hands of itsenemies, while our efforts towards saving what is left to us of a onceconsistent and righteous society will be without result except as anacceleration of the now headlong process of dissolution. 

I am not charging any class or any interest or any people with exclusiveapostacy. In the end there is little to choose between one or another. Labour is not more culpable than capital, nor the proletarian than theindustrial magnate and the financier, nor the nominal secularist thanthe nominal religionist. Nor am I charging conscious and willfulacceptance of wrong in the place of right. It is the institution itself, industrialism as it has come to be, with all its concomitants andderivatives, that has betrayed man to his disgrace and his society tocondemnation, and so long as this system endures so long will recoverybe impossible and regeneration a vain thing vainly imagined. Charity, that is to say, fellowship, generosity, pity, self-sacrifice, chivalry, all that is comprehended in the thing that Christ was, and preached, andpromulgated as the fundamental law of life, cannot come back to theworld so long as avarice, warfare and hate continue to exist, andthrough Charity alone can we find the solution of the industrial andeconomic problem that _must_ be solved under penalty of social death. 

V

THE POLITICAL ORGANIZATION OF SOCIETY

In these essays, which look towards a new social synthesis, I findmyself involved in somewhat artificial subdivisions. Industrial, socialand political forces all react one upon another, and the complete socialproduct is the result of the interplay of these forces, coördinated andvitalized by philosophy, education and religion. To isolate each factorand consider it separately is apt to result in false values, but thereseems no other way in which the subject, which is essentially one, maybe divided into the definite parts which are consequent on the form of acourse of lectures. In considering now the political estate of the humansocial organism it will be evident that I hold that this must becontingent on many elements that reveal themselves in a contributoryindustrial system, in the principles that are embodied in socialrelationships, and in the general scheme of such a working philosophy oflife as may predominate amongst the component parts of the syntheticsociety which is the product of all these varied energies and theorganic forms through which they operate. 

Political organization has always been a powerful preoccupation ofmankind, and the earliest records testify to its antiquity. Theregulation of human intercourse, the delimiting of rights andprivileges, protection of life and property, the codifying of laws, vague, various and conflicting, the making of new laws and the enforcingof those that have taken organic form; all these and an hundred othergovernmental functions, appeal strongly to the mind and touch closely onpersonal interests. It is no wonder that the political history of humansociety is the most varied, voluminous and popular in its appeal. At thepresent moment this problem has, in general, an even more poignantappeal, and no rival except the industrial problem, for in both casessystems that, up to ten years ago, were questioned only by a minority(large in the case of industry, small and obscure in the case ofgovernment) have since completely broken down, and it is probable that apolitical system which had existed throughout the greater part of Europeand the Americas for a century and a half, almost without seriouscriticism, has now as many assailants as industrialism itself. 

The change is startling from the "Triumphant Democracy" period, a spaceof time as clearly defined and as significant in its characteristics asthe "Victorian Era. " Before the war, during the war, and throughout theearlier years of the even more devastating "peace, " the system whichfollowed the ruin of the Renaissance autocracies, the essential elementsin which were an ever-widening suffrage, parliamentary government, andthe universal operation of the quantitative standard of values, wasnever questioned or criticised, except in matters of detail. That it wasthe most perfect governmental scheme ever devised and that it mustcontinue forever, was held to be axiomatic, and with few exceptions theremedy proposed for such faults as could not possibly escape detectionwas a still further extension of the democratic principle. Even the waritself was held to be "a war to make the world safe for democracy. " Itis significant that the form in which this saying now frequently appearsis one in which the word "from" is substituted in place of the word"for. " It is useless to blink the fact that there is now a distrust ofparliamentary and representative government which is almost universaland this distrust, which is becoming widespread, reaches from theBolshevism of Russia on the one hand, through many intermediate socialand intellectual stages, to the conservative elements in England and theUnited States, and the fast-strengthening royalist "bloc" in France. 

In many unexpected places there is visible a profound sense thatsomething is so fundamentally wrong that palliatives are useless andsome drastic reform is necessary, a reform that may almost amount torevolution. Lord Bryce still believes in democracy in spite of his keenrealizations of its grievous defects, because, as he says, hope is aninextinguishable quality of the human soul. Mr. Chesterton preachesdemocracy in principle while condemning its mechanism and its workingswith his accustomed vigour; the Adamses renounce democracy and all itsworks while offering no hint as to what could consistently take itsplace with any better chance of success, while the royalists excoriateit in unmeasured terms and preach an explicit return to monarchy. Meanwhile international Bolshevism, hating the thing as violently as dokings in exile, substitutes a crude and venal autocracy, while organizedlabour, as a whole, works for the day when a "class-consciousproletariat" will have taken matters into its own hands and establisheda new aristocracy of privilege in which the present working classes willhold the whip-hand. Meanwhile the more educated element of the generalpublic withdraws itself more and more from political affairs, going itsown way and making the best of a bad job it thinks itself taught byexperience it cannot mend. 

It is useless to deny that government, in the character of itspersonnel, the quality of its output, the standard of its service andthe degree of its beneficence has been steadily deteriorating during thelast century and has now reached, in nearly every civilized country, adeplorably low level. Popular representatives are less and less men ofcharacter and ability; legislation is absurd in quantity, short-sighted, frivolous, inquisitorial, and in a large measure prompted by selfishinterests; administration is reckless, wasteful and inefficient, whileit is overloaded in numbers, without any particular aptitude on the partof its members, and in a measure controlled by personal or corporateinterests. The whole system is in bad odour for it is shot through andthrough with the greed for money and influence, while the cynicism ofthe professional politician and the low average of character, intelligence and manners of the strata of society that increasingly areusurping all power, work towards producing that general contempt andaversion that have become so evident of late and that are a menace tosociety no less than that of the decaying institution itself. 

Confronted by a situation such as this, the natural tendency of thosewho suffer under it, either in their material interests or their ideals, is to condemn the mechanism, perhaps even the very principles for theoperation of which the various machines were devised. Some reject thewhole scheme of representative, parliamentary government, and, failingany plausible substitute, are driven back on some form of the soviet, oreven government by industrial groups. Those that go to the limit andreject the whole scheme of democracy are in still worse plight for theyhave no alternative to offer except a restored monarchy, and this, the_terminus ad quem_ of their logic, their courage will not permit them toavow. 

It is a dilemma, but forced, I believe, by the fatal passion of the manof modernism for the machine, the mechanical device, the materialequivalent for a thing that has no equivalent, and that is the personalcharacter of the constituents of society and the working factors in apolitical organism. There was never a more foolish saying than thatwhich is so frequently and so boastfully used: "a government of laws andnot of men. " This is the exact reversal of what should be recognized asa self-evident truth, viz, that the quality of the men, not the natureof the laws or of the administrative machine, is the determining factorin government. You may take any form of government ever devised by man, monarchy, aristocracy, republic, democracy, yes, or soviet, and if thecommunity in which this government operates has a working majority ofmen of character, intelligence and spiritual energy, it will be a goodgovernment, whereas if the working majority is deficient in thesecharacteristics, or if it makes itself negligible by abstention frompublic affairs it will be a bad government. There is no one politicalsystem which is right while all others are wrong. The monarchy of St. Louis was better than the Third Republic, as this is better than was themonarchy of Louis XV. The aristocracy of Washington was better than thedemocracy of this year of grace, as this in itself is better than thelate junker aristocracy of Prussia. You cannot substitute a machine inplace of character, you cannot supersede life by a theory. 

This does not mean that the form of government is of no moment, it is ofthe utmost importance for I cannot too often insist that the organiclife of society is the resultant of two forces; spiritual energy workingthrough and upon the material forms towards their improvement or--whenthis energy is weak or distorted--their degeneration; the material formsacting as a stimulus towards the development of spiritual energy throughassociation and environment that are favourable, or towards itsweakening and distortion when these are deterrents because of their owndegraded or degrading nature. If it is futile to look for salvationthrough the mechanism, it is equally futile to try to act directly andexclusively on the character of the social constituents in the patienthope that their defects may be remedied, and the preponderance ofcharacter of high value achieved, before catastrophe overtakes theexperiment. Life is as sacramental as the Christian religion andChristian philosophy; neither the spiritual substance nor the materialaccidents can operate alone but only in a conjunction so intimate thatit is to all intents and purposes--that is, for the interests andpurposes of God in human life--a perfect unity. However completely andeven passionately we may realize the determining factor of spiritualenergy as this manifests itself through personal character, howeverdeeply we may distrust the machine, we are bound to recognize theparamount necessity of the active interplay of both within the limits oflife as we know it on the earth, and therefore it is very much ourconcern that the machine, whether it is industrial, political, educational, ecclesiastical or social, is as perfect in its nature andstimulating in its operations as we are able to compass. 

In the present liquidation of values, theories and institutions we arebound therefore to scrutinize each operating agency of human society, tosee wherein it has failed and how it can be bettered, and the problembefore us now is the political organism. 

Now it appears that in the past there have been just two methods wherebya civil polity has come into existence and established itself for ashort period or a long. These two methods are, first, unpremeditated andsometimes unconscious growth; second, calculated and self-consciousrevolution. The first method has produced communities, states andempires that frequently worked well and lasted for long periods; thesecond has had issue in nothing that has endured for any length of timeor has left a record of beneficence. Evolution in government is inaccord with the processes of life, even to the extent that it is alwaysafter a time followed by degeneration; revolution in government is thethrowing of a monkey-wrench into the machinery by a disaffected workman, with the wrecking of the machine, the violent stoppage of the works, andfrequently the sudden death of the worker as a consequence. The Englishmonarchy from Duke William to Henry VIII, is a case of normal growth byminor changes and modifications, but its subsequent history has been oneof revolutions, six or seven having occurred in the last four hundredyears; the scheme which now holds, though precariously, is the result ofthe great democratic revolution accomplished during the reign of QueenVictoria. The free monarchies of Europe which began to take form duringthe long period of the Dark Ages and pursued their admirable course wellthrough the Middle Ages, were also normal and slow growths; but therevolutions that have followed the Great War will meet a different fate, several of them, indeed, have counted their existence in months and havealready passed into history. 

If we are wise we shall discount revolutions for the future, for nothingbut ill is accomplished by denying life and exalting the ingenioussubstitutes of ambitious and presumptuous Frankensteins; the result istoo often a monster that works cleverly at first, and with a semblanceof human intelligence, but in the end shows itself as a destroyer. Ourtask is to envisage, as clearly as possible, the political systemsestablished amongst us, note their weaknesses either in themselves or intheir relationship to society as it is, and then try to find thoseremedies that can be applied without any violent methods of dislocationor substitution; always bearing in mind the fact that the energizingforce that will make them live, preserve them from deterioration, andadapt them to conditions which will ever change, is the spiritual forceof human personality, and that this force comes only through thecharacter qualities of the individual components of society. 

Now in considering our own case in this day and generation there arefirst of all two matters to be borne in mind. One is that we shall dowell to confine our inquiry to the United States, for while the defectswe shall have to point out are common to practically all thecontemporary governments of Europe and the Americas, our own enginery isdifferent in certain ways, and our troubles are also different betweenone example and another. After all, our immediate interest must lie withour own national problems. The other point is that in criticising theworkings of government in America we are not necessarily criticising itsfounders or the creators of its original constitutions, charters, andother mechanisms. The Constitution of the United States, for example, was conceived to meet one series of perfectly definite conditions thathave now been superseded by others which are radically, and evendiametrically different. The original Constitution was a most ableinstrument of organic law, but just because it did fit so perfectlyconditions as they were four generations ago, it applies butindifferently to present circumstances, and even less well than theFounders hoped would be the case; for the reason that the amendmentswhich were provided for have seldom taken cognizance of these changingconditions, and even when this was done the amendments themselves havenot been wisely drawn, while certain of them have been actuallydisastrous in their nature, others frivolous, and yet more the result ofephemeral and hysterical ebullitions of an engineered public opinion. The same may be said of state constitutions and municipal charters, which have suffered incessant changes, mostly unfortunate andill-judged, except during the last few years, when a spirit of realwisdom and constructiveness has shown itself, though sporadically and asyet with some timidity. The reforms, such as they are, are largely inthe line of palliatives; the deep-lying factors, those that control bothsuccess and failure, are seldom touched upon. The necessary courage--orperhaps temerity--is lacking. What is needed is such a clear seeing ofconditions, and such an approach, as manifested themselves in theConstitutional Convention of the United States, for in spite of the manycompromises that were in the end necessary to placate a public opinionnot untouched by prejudice, superstition and selfishness, the greatdocument--and even more the records of the debates--still brilliantlyset forth both the clear-seeing and the lofty attitude thatcharacterized the Convention. Had these men been gathered togethertoday, even the same men, they would frame a very different document, for they took conditions and men as they were, and, with anindestructible hope to glorify their common sense, they produced amasterpiece. It is in the same spirit that we must approach our problemof today. 

Now in considering the situation that confronts us, we find certainrespects in which either the methods are bad, or the results, or both. There is no unanimity in this criticism, indeed I doubt if any two of uswould agree on all the items in the indictment, though we all mightunite on one or two. I can only give my own list for what it is worth. In the first place we, in common with all the nations, have drifted intoimperialism of a gross scale and illiberal, even tyrannical working. Wecould hardly do otherwise for such has been the universal tendency formore than an hundred years. By constant progression municipalgovernments have absorbed into themselves matters that in decency, andwith any regard for liberty, belong to the individual. Simultaneouslyour state governments have followed the same course, infringing even onthe just prerogatives of the towns and cities, while, more than all, thenational government has robbed the states, the cities and the citizensof what should belong to them, until at last we have an imperial, autocratic, inquisitorial, and largely irresponsible government atWashington that is the one supreme political fact; we are no longer aFederal Republic but an Imperialism, in which is centralized all theauthority inherent in the one hundred and ten millions of our populationand from which a constantly diminishing stream of what is practicallydevolved authority, trickles down through state and city to theindividual in the last instance--if it gets there at all! This I believeto be absolutely and fatally wrong. In the first place, human societycannot function at this abnormal scale, it is outside the human scale, for in spite of our pride and insolence there are limits on every handto what man can do. In the second place, I conceive it to be absolutelyat variance with any principle of republicanism or democracy or even offree monarchy. It is at one only with the imperialism of Egypt, Babylon, Rome and the late Empire of Germany. In a free monarchy, a republic, ora democracy, the pyramid of political organism stands, not on its pointbut broad-based and four-square, tapering upward to its final apex. Asane and wholesome society begins with the family--natural orartificial--which has original jurisdiction over a far greater series ofrights and privileges than it now commands. From the family certainpowers are delegated to the next higher social unit, the village orcommunal group, which in its turn concedes certain of its inherentrights to the organic group of communities, or states, and finally thestates commit to the last and general authority, the nationalgovernment, some of the elements of authority that have been delegatedto them. The principle of this delegation from one organism to another, is common interest and welfare; only those functions which can beperformed with more even justice and with greater effectiveness, by thecommunity for example, than by the family, are so delegated. In the sameway the several groups commit to their common government only so much asthey cannot perform with due justice and equity to the others in thesame group. In the end the national government exists only that it mayprovide for a limited number of national necessities, as for example, defence against extra-national aggression, the conduct of diplomaticrelations with foreign powers, the maintaining of a national currencyand a national postal service, the provision of courts of last resort, and the raising of revenue for the support of these few and explicitfunctions. 

The first step, it seems to me, towards governmental reform, isdecentralization, with a return to the States, the civic communities andthe individual citizens of nine-tenths of the powers and theprerogatives that have been taken from them in defiance of abstractjustice, of the principles of free government and of the theory of theworkable unit of human scale. In a word we must abandon imperialism andall its works and go back to the Federal Republic. 

The second cause of our troubles lies, I believe, in the institution ofuniversal suffrage founded on the theory (or dogma) that the electoralfranchise is an inalienable right. This doctrine is of recent invention, only coming into force during the "reconstruction period" following theWar between the States, when it was brought forward by certain leadersof the Republican party to justify their enfranchisement of the negroesin the hope that by this act they could fix their party in power toperpetuity. In any case, the plan itself has worked badly, both for thecommunity and for many of the voters. It is of course impossible for meto argue the case in detail; I can do hardly more than state my ownpersonal belief, and this is that the question is wholly one ofexpediency, and that the question of abstract justice and the rights ofman does not enter into the consideration. I submit that the electoralfranchise should again be accepted as a privilege involving a duty, andnot as a right inherent in every adult person of twenty-one years orover and not lunatic or in jail. This privilege, which in itself shouldconfer honour, should be granted to those who demonstrate their capacityto use it honestly and intelligently, and taken away for cause. 

The acute critic will not be slow to remind me that this proposition issomewhat beside the case and that it possesses but an academic interest, since we are dealing with a _fait accompli. _ This is of course perfectlytrue. The electoral franchise could be so restricted only by thesuffrages of the present electorate, and it is inconceivable that anylarge number, and far less, a majority, of voters would even considerthe proposition for a moment. For good or ill we have unrestricted adultsuffrage, and there is not the faintest chance of any other basis beingestablished by constitutional means. Something however can be done, andthis is a thing of great value and importance. What I suggest isconcerted effort towards a measured purification of the electoratethrough the penalizing of law-breakers by temporary disfranchisement. Itis hardly too much to assume that a man who deliberately breaks the lawis constructively unfit to vote or to hold office, at all events, conviction for any crime or misdemeanour gives a reasonable ground fordepriving the offender of these privileges, at least for a time. Thelaw-breaking element, whether it is millionaire or proletarian, is oneof the dangerous factors in society, which would lose nothing if fromtime to time these gentry were removed from active participation inpublic affairs. If, for example, any one convicted of minor offensespunishable by fine or imprisonment were disfranchised for a year, if ofmajor offenses, for varying and increasing periods, from five yearsupwards, and if a second offense during the period of disfranchisementworked an automatic doubling of the time prescribed for a first offense, I conceive that the electorate would be measurably purified and thatregard for the law would be stimulated. In one instance I am persuadedthat disfranchisement should be for life, and that is in the case ofgiving or accepting a bribe or otherwise committing a crime against theballot; this, together with treason against the state, should besufficient cause for eliminating the offender from all furtherparticipation in public affairs. If the electorate could be purifiedafter this fashion, and if more stringent laws could be passed in thematter of naturalization of aliens, together with iron-clad requirementsthat every voter should be able to speak, read and write the Englishlanguage, we should have achieved something towards the safeguarding ofthe suffrage. 

The third weakness in our system, and in some respect the mostdangerous, as it is in all respects the most pestiferous, is theinsanity of law-making. All parliamentary governments suffer from thismalady, but that of the United States most grievously, and this is trueof the national government, the states and the municipalities. It hasbecome the conviction of legislative bodies that they must justify theirexistence by making laws, and the more laws they pass the better theyhave discharged their duties. The thing has become a scandal and anoppression, for the liberties of American citizens and the justprerogatives of the states and the cities, as vital human groups, havebeen more infringed upon, reduced, and degraded by free legislation thanever happened in similar communities by the action of absolute monarchs. It is a folly that works its insidious injury in two ways; first byconfusing life by innumerable laws ill-advised, ill-drawn, mutuallycontradictory, ephemeral in their nature, inquisitorial in theirworkings; second, by creating a condition where any personal or factiousinterest can be served by due process of law, until at last we havereached a point where liberty itself has largely ceased to exist and wefind ourselves crushed under a tyranny of popular government no lessoppressive than the tyranny of absolutism. Nor is this all; the maniafor making laws has bred a complete and ingenious and singularlyeffective system of getting laws made by methods familiar to the membersof all legislative bodies whether they are city councils, statelegislatures or the national congress, and this means opportunities forcorruption, and methods of corruption, that are fast degradinggovernment in the United States to a point where there is none so pooras to do it reverence. The whole system is preposterous and absurd, breeding not only bad laws, but a widespread contempt of law, while thepersonal freedom for which democracy once fought, is fast becoming amemory. 

The trouble began as a result of one of the elements in the AmericanConstitution which was the product not of the sound common sense and thelofty judgment of the framers, but of a weak yielding to one of thedoctrinaire fads of the time that had no relationship to life but wasthe invention of political theorists, and that was the unnaturalseparation of the executive, legislative and judicial functions ofgovernment. The error has worked far and the superstition still holds. What is needed is an initiative in legislation, centred in oneresponsible head or group, that, while functioning in all normal andnecessary legislative directions, still allows individual initiative onthe part of the legislators, as a supplementary, or corrective, orprotective agency. No government functions well in fiscal matterswithout a budget: what we need in legislative matters is a legislativebudget, and by this phrase, I mean that the primary agency for theproposing of laws should be the chief executive of a city, or state orthe nation, with the advice and consent of his heads of departments whowould form his cabinet or council. 

Under this plan the Governor and Council, for example, would at theopening of each legislative session present a programme or agenda ofsuch laws as they believed the conditions to demand, and in the shape ofbills accurately drawn by the proper law officer of the government. Nosuch "government" bill could be referred to committee but must bediscussed in open session, and until the bills so offered had beenpassed or refused, no private bill could be introduced. A procedure suchas this would certainly reduce the flood of private bills to reasonabledimensions while it would insure a degree of responsibility now utterlylacking. There is now no way in which the author of a foolish ordangerous bill which has been enacted into law by a majority of thelegislature, can be held to account and due responsibility imposed uponhim, but the case would be very different if a mayor, a governor or thePresident of the United States made himself responsible for a law or aseries of laws, by offering them for action in his own name. Certainlyif this method were followed we should be preserved in great measurefrom the hasty, confused and frivolous legislation that at present makesup the major part of the output of our various legislative bodies. Oneof the greatest gains would be the reduction of the annual grist to asize where each act could be considered and debated at sufficient lengthto guarantee as reasonable a conclusion as would be possible to themembers of the legislative body. The deplorable device of institutingcommittees, to each of which certain bunches of bills are referredbefore they are permitted to come before the house, would be no longernecessary. This system, which became necessary in order to deal with theenormous mass of undigested matter which has overwhelmed everylegislature as a result of the present chaotic and irresponsibleprocedure, is perhaps both the most undemocratic device ever put inpractice by a democracy, and the most fruitful of venality, corruptionand injustice. It is unnecessary to labour this point for everyone knowsits grave evils, but there seems no way to get rid of it unless somecurb is placed on the number of bills introduced in any session. TheBritish Parliament is not necessarily a model of intelligent or capableprocedure, but where in one session at Westminster no more than fourhundred bills were introduced, at Washington, for the same period, thecount ran well over twelve thousand! Manifestly some committee system isinevitable under conditions such as this, but under the committee systemfree government and honest legislation are difficult of attainment. 

One would not of course prevent the proposal of a bill by any member ofthe legislature, indeed this free action would be absolutely necessaryas a measure of protection against executive oppression, but this shouldbe prohibited until after the government programme had been disposed of. After that task was accomplished the legislature might sit indefinitely, or as long as the public would stand it, for the purpose of consideringprivate bills, and these could be referred to committees as at present. The chances are, however, that the government programme would cover themost essential matters and what would remain would be the edifyingspectacle of Solons solemnly considering such questions as the minimumlength of sheets on hotel beds, the limitation in inches and fractions, of the heels of women's shoes, the amount of flesh that could be legallyexposed by a bathing suit, or the pensioning of a Swedish AssistantJanitor, --all of which are the substance of actual bills introduced invarious State legislatures during the session last closed. 

Another grave weakness in our system is the election by popular vote ofmany judicial and administrative officers, coupled with the vigorousremnants of the old and degrading "spoils system" whereby many thousandsof strictly non-political offices are almost automatically vacated afterany partisan victory. I cannot trust myself to speak of the infamy of anelective judiciary; fortunately I live in a state where this worst abuseof democratic practice does not exist, and so it touches me only in sofar as it offends the sense of decency and justice. In the other casesit is only a question of efficient and intelligent administration. Thereis an argument for electing the chief executive of a city, a state orthe nation, by popular vote, and the same holds in the case of the lowerhouse of the legislature where a bi-cameral system exists, but there isno argument for the popular election of the administrative officers of astate. There is even less, --if there can be less than nothing--for thechanges in personnel that take place after every election. Civil servicereform has done a world of good, but as yet it has not gone far enoughin some directions, while its mechanism of examinations is defective inprinciple in that it leaves out the personal equation and establishesits tests only along a very few of the many lines that actually exist. Iwould offer it as a proposition that no election should in itself affectthe status of any man except the man elected, and, in the case of amayor or governor or the President, those who are directly responsibleto him and to his administration for carrying out his policies; andfurther, that the voter, when he votes, should vote once and for one manin his city, once and for one man in his state, and once and for one manin the nation, and that man, in each case, should be his representativein the lower branch of the legislative body. Choosing administrativeofficials by majority vote, and the election of judges for short termsby the same method, are absurdities of a system fast falling into chaos. The maintenance of a bi-cameral legislative organization, with thechoosing of the members of both houses by the same electorate is in thesame class, a perfectly irrational anomaly which violates the firstprinciples of logic and leads only to legislative incompetence, andworse. The referendum is of precisely the same nature, but this alreadyhas become a _reductio ad absurdum, _ and can hardly survive thediscredit into which it has fallen. In any reorganization of governmentlooking towards better results, these elements must disappear. 

As a matter of fact, government has come to occupy altogether too largea place in our consciousness; naturally, for it has come to a pointwhere it pursues us--and overtakes us--at every turn. Democracies alwaysgovern too much, that is one of their great weaknesses. Elections, law-making, and getting and holding office, have become an obsession andthey shadow our days. So insistent and incessant are the demands, soartificial and unreal the issues, so barren of vital results all thispandemonium of partisanship and change, the more intelligent andscrupulous are losing interest in the whole affair, and while theyincreasingly withdraw to matters of a greater degree of reality thosewho subsist on the proceeds gain the power, and hold it. At the verymoment when the women of the United States have been given the vote, there are many men (and women also) who begin to think that the vote isa very empty institution and in itself practically void of power toeffect anything of really vital moment. I am not now defending thisposition, I only assert that it exists, and I believe it is due to thedegradation of government through the very modifications andtransformations that have been effected, since the time of AndrewJackson, in a perfectly honest attempt at improvement. 

The best government is that which does the least, which leaves localmatters in the hands of localities, and personal matters in the hands ofpersons, and which is modestly inconspicuous. Good governmentestablishes, or recognizes, conditions which are stable, reliable, andthat may be counted on for more than two years, or four years, at atime. It has continuity, it preserves tradition, and it follows customand common law. Such a government is neither hectic in its vicissitudesnor inquisitorial in its enactments. It is cautious in its expenditures, efficient in its administration, proud in maintaining its standards ofhonour, justice and "noblesse oblige. " Good government is august andhandsome; it surrounds itself with dignity and ceremony, even at timeswith splendour and pageantry, for these things are signs of self-respectand the outward showing of high ideals--or may be made so; that is whatgood manners and ceremony and beauty are for. Finally, good governmentis where the laws of Christian morals and courtesy and charity that aresupposed to hold between Christian men hold equally, even moreforcefully, in public relations both domestic and foreign. Wheregovernment of this nature exists, whether the form is monarchical, republican or democratic, there is liberty; where these conditions donot obtain the form matters not at all, for there is a servile state. 

At the risk of being tedious I will try to sketch the rough outlines ofwhat, in substance, I believe to be that form of civil polity which, based on what now exists, changes only along lines that would perhapstend towards establishing and maintaining those ideals of liberty, orderand justice which have always been the common aim of those who havestriven to reform a condition of things where they were attainedindifferently or not at all. 

The primary and effective social and political unit is the "vill" orcommune; that is to say, a group of families and individuals living inone neighbourhood, and of a size that would permit all the members toknow one another if they wished to do so, and also the coming togetherof all those holding the electoral franchise, for common discussion andaction. The average American country town, uninvaded by industrialism, is the natural type, for here the "town meeting" of our forefathers ispracticable, and this remains the everlasting frame and model ofself-government. In the case of a city the primary unit would be ofapproximately the same size, and the entire municipality would bedivided into wards each containing, say, about five hundred voters. These primary units would possess a real unity and a very large measureof autonomy, but they would be federated for certain common purposeswhich would vary in number and importance in proportion to the closenessof their common interests, from the county, made up of a number of smallvillages, to the city which would comprise as many wards as might benumerically necessary, and whose central government would administer agreat many more affairs than would the county. The city would be ineffect a federation of the wards or boroughs. 

The individual voter would exercise his electoral franchise and performhis political duties only within the primary unit (the township or ward)where he had legal residence. At an annual "town meeting" he would votefor the "selectmen" or the ward council who would have in charge thelocal interests of the primary unit, which would be comprehensive in thecase of a township, necessarily more limited in the case of a ward. These local boards would elect their own chairmen who would also formthe legislative body of the county or the municipality. At the same townmeeting the voter would cast his ballot for a representative in thelower legislative body of the state. In the smaller commonwealths eachtownship or ward would elect its own representative, but in states ofexcessive population representation would have to be on the basis ofcounties and municipalities, for no legislative body should contain morethan a very few hundred members. Nominations in the town meeting shouldbe _viva voce, _ elections by secret ballot. Legislation should beprimarily on the initiative of the selectmen or ward council, and votingshould be _viva voce. _ With the exercise of his privilege of speakingand voting at the meetings of his primary unit, the direct politicalaction of the citizen would cease. 

The secondary unit would be the county or the city. Here the legislativebody would consist of the presiding officers of the township or wardgovernments. The sheriff of a county or the mayor of a city would bechosen by these legislative bodies from their own number and should holdoffice for a term of several years, while the local governments, andtherefore the legislative bodies of the county or the city, would bechosen annually. The chief executive of a county or city would appointall heads of departments who would form his advisory council, and hewould also frame and submit annually both a fiscal and a legislativebudget. 

The tertiary unit is the state, which is a federation of the countiesand cities forming some one of the historic divisions of the UnitedStates. The legislature would as now be composed of two chambers, onemade up of representatives of the primary units, holding office for abrief term, and a second representing the secondary units and chosen bytheir governing bodies for a long term. The logic of a bi-cameral systemdemands that the lower house should represent the changing will of thepeople, the upper, in so far as possible, its cumulative wisdom and thecontinuity of tradition, while, as already stated, the whole principleis vitiated if both houses are chosen by the same electorate. The chiefexecutive should be chosen by the legislative chambers in joint session, from a panel made up of their own membership and the heads of the countyand city governments. He should hold office for a long term, preferablyfor an indeterminate period contingent on "good behaviour. " In this casehis cabinet, or council of the heads of departments, would of course beresponsible to the legislature and would resign on a formal vote ofcensure or "lack of confidence. " The Governor would have the same powerof appointment, and the same authority to present fiscal and legislativebudgets as, already specified in the case of a mayor of a city. No"commissions, " unpaid or otherwise, should be permitted, all theadministrative functions of government being performed by the variousdepartments and their subordinate bureaux. 

The national government is the final social and political unit, thoughit is conceivable that with a territory and population as great anddiversified as that of the United States, and bearing in mind the greatdiscrepancy in size between the states, something might be gained by theinstitution of a system of provinces, some five or six in all, made upof states grouped in accordance with their general community ofinterests, as for example, all New England, New York, Pennsylvania, NewJersey and Delaware; the states of the old Confederacy, those of thePacific Coast, and so on. The point need not be pressed here, but thereare considerations in its favour. In any case the nation as a whole isthe final federal unit. Here the lower legislative house would consistof not more than four hundred members, allocated on a basis ofpopulation and elected by the representative bodies of the primary units(the townships and city wards) as already described. The members of theupper house would be elected by the legislative bodies of the severalstates on nomination by the Governor. The chief executive of the nationwould be chosen by the two legislative bodies, in joint session, fromamongst the then governors of the several states. He should certainlyhold office for "good behaviour, " and his cabinet would be responsibleto the legislature as provided for in the case of the state governments. 

I do not offer this programme with any pride of paternity; probably itwould not work very well, but it could hardly prove less efficaciousthan our present system under conditions as they have come to be. Thiscannot continue indefinitely, for it is so hopelessly defective that itis bound to bring about its own ruin, with the probable substitution ofsome doctrinaire device engendered by the natural revolt against anintolerable abuse. If only we could see conditions clearly and estimatethem at something approaching their real value, we should rapidlydevelop a constructive public opinion that, even though it represented aminority, might by the very force behind it compel the majority toacquiesce in a radical reformation. Unfortunately we do not do this, weare hypnotized by phrases and deluded by vain theories, as Mr. Chesterton says:

"So drugged and deadened is the public mind by the conventional publicutterances, so accustomed have we grown to public men talking this sortof pompous nonsense and no other, that we are sometimes quite shocked bythe revelation of what men really think, or else of what they reallysay. "

We do, now and then, confess that legislation is as a whole foolish, frivolous and opportunist; that administration is wasteful, incompetentand frequently venal; that the governmental personnel, legislative, administrative and executive, is of a low order in point of character, intelligence and culture--and tending lower each day. We admit this, forthe evidence is so conspicuous that to deny it would be hypocrisy, butsomething holds us back from recognizing the nexus between effect andcause. Unrestricted immigration, universal suffrage, rotation in office, the subjection of many offices and measures to popular vote, theparliamentary system, government by political parties--all these customsand habits into which we have fallen have arrived at failure whichpresages disaster. They have failed because the character of the peoplethat functioned through these various engines had failed, diluted by thelow mentality and character-content of millions of immigrants and theiroffspring, degraded by the false values and vicious standards imposed byindustrial civilization, foot-loose from all binding and control of avital and potent religious impulse or religious organism. 

It is the old, vicious circle; spiritual energy declines or is divertedinto wrong channels; thereupon the physical forms, social, industrial, political, slip a degree or two lower out of sympathy with the failingenergy, and these in their turn exert a degrading influence on thewaning spiritual force, which declines still further only to be pulledlower still by the material agencies which continue their progressivedeclension. Theories, no matter how high-minded and altruistic, cannotstand before a condition such as this, for self-protection decreesotherwise even if the higher motive of doing right things and gettingright things just because they _are_ right, does not come into effectiveoperation. The evil results of the institutions I have catalogued aboveare not to be denied, and the institutions themselves must be reformedor altogether abandoned, in the face of the loud-mouthed exhortations ofthose who now make them their means of livelihood, and even at theexpense of the honest upholders of theories and doctrines that do creditto their humanitarianism but have been weighed and found wanting. 

I am anxious not to put this plan for the reform, in root and branch, ofour political institutions, on the low level of mere caution andself-defense. The motive power of this is fear, and fear is only secondto hate in its present position as a controlling force in society. Weshould have good government not because it is economical and ensureswhat are known as "good business conditions, " and promises a peacefulcontinuance of society, but because it is as worthy an object ofcreative endeavour as noble art or a great literature or a just andmerciful economic system, or a life that is full of joy and beauty andwholesome labour. The political organism is in a sense the microcosm oflife itself, and it should be society lifted up to a level of dignity, majesty and nobility. The doctrine that in a democracy the governmentmust exactly express the numerical preponderance in the socialsynthesis, and that, if this happens to be ignorant, mannerless andcorrupt, then the government must be after the same fashion, is a lowand a cowardly doctrine. Government should be better than the majority;better than the minority if this has advantage over the other. It shouldbe of the best that man can compass, resting above him as in some sortan ideal; the visible expression of his better self, and the better selfof the society of which he is a part. If a political system, anypolitical system, produces any other result; if it has issue in arepresentation of the lowest and basest in society, or even of thegeneral average, then it is a bad system and it must be redeemed or itwill bring an end that is couched in terms of catastrophe. 

Reform is difficult, perhaps even impossible of attainment under theexisting system where universal, unlimited suffrage and the party systemare firmly intrenched as opponents of vital reform, and whererepresentation and legislation take their indelible colour from theseunfortunate institutions. It must freely be admitted that there is nochance of eliminating or recasting either one or the other by therecognized methods of platform support and mass action through theballot. It comes in the end to a change of viewpoint and of heart on thepart of the individual. No party, no political leader would for a momentendorse any one of the principles or methods I have suggested, for thiswould be a suicidal act. The newspaper, irresponsible, anonymous, directed by its advertizing interests or by those more sinister still, yet for all that the factor that controls the opinions of those who holdthe balance of power in the community as it is now constituted, wouldreject them with derision, while in themselves they are radicallyopposed to the personal interests of the majority. The only hope oflifting government to the level of dignity and capacity it should hold, lies in the individual. It is necessary that we should see thingsclearly, estimate conditions as they are, and think through to the end. We do not do this. We admit, in a dull sort of way, that matters are notas they should be, that legislation is generally silly and oppressive, that taxation is excessive, that administration is wasteful and recklessand incompetent, for we know these things by experience. We accept them, however, with our national good-nature and easy tolerance, assuming thatthey are inseparable from democratic government--as indeed they are, butnot for a moment does any large number think of questioning theprinciple, or even the system, that must take the responsibility. Whendisgust and indifference reach a certain point we stop voting, that isall. At the last presidential election less than one half the qualifiedvoters took the trouble to cast their ballots, while in Boston (which isno exception) it generally happens that at a municipal elections theballots cast are less than one-third the total electorate. I wonder howmany there are here today who have ever been to a ward meeting, or havesat through a legislative session of a city government, as of Boston forexample, or have listened to the debates in a state house ofrepresentatives, or analyzed the annual grist of legislative bills, orhave sat for an hour or two in the Senate or House at Washington. Suchan experience is, I assure you, illuminating, for it shows exactly whypopular government is what it is, while it forms an admirable basis fora constructive revision of judgment as to the soundness of acceptedprinciples and the validity of accepted methods. 

Our political attitude today is based on an inherited and automaticacceptance of certain perfectly automatic formulae. We neither seethings clearly, estimate conditions as they are, nor think a propositionthrough to the end: we are obsessed by old formulae, partisan "slogans"and newspaper aphorisms; the which is both unworthy and perilous. Let ussee things clearly for a moment; if we do this anything is possible, nomatter how idealistic and apparently impracticable it may be. Is thereany one who would confess that character and intelligence are now ahelpless minority in this nation? Such an admission would be almostconstructive treason. The instinct of the majority is right, but it isdefective in will and it is subservient to base leadership, while itspower for good is negatived by the persistence of a mass of formulaethat, under radically changed conditions, have ceased to be beneficient, or even true, and have become a clog and a stumbling block. 

I may not have indicated better ideals or sounder methods of operation, but the true ideals exist and it is not beyond our ability to discover abetter working system. Partisanship cannot reveal either one or theother, nor are they the fruit of organization or the attribute ofpolitical leadership. They belong to the common citizen, to you, to theindividual, and if once superstition is cast out and we fall back onright reason and the eternal principles of the Christian ethic and theChristian ideal, we shall not find them difficult of attainment; andonce attained they can be put in practice, for the ill thing exists onlyon sufferance, the right thing establishes itself by force of its veryquality of right. 

VI

THE FUNCTION OF EDUCATION AND ART

When, as on occasion happens, some hostile criticism is leveled againstthe civilization of modernism, or against some one of its many details, the reply is ready, and the faultfinder is told that the defect, if itexists, will in the end be obviated by the processes of populareducation. Pressed for more explicit details as to just what may be thenature of this omnipotent and sovereign "education, " the many championsgive various answer, depending more or less on the point of view and thepeculiar predilections of each, but the general principles are the same. Education, they say, consist of two things; the formal practice andtraining of the schools, and the experience that comes through the useof certain public rights and privileges, such as the ballot, the holdingof office, service on juries, and through various experiences of thepractice of life, as the reading of newspapers (and perhaps books), theactivities of work, business and the professions, and personalassociation with other men in social, craft, and professional clubs andother organizations. 

With the second category of education through experience we need notdeal at this time; it is a question by itself and of no mean quality;the matter I would consider is the more formal and narrow one ofscholastic training in so far as it bears on the Great Peace that, though perhaps after many days, must follow the Great War and the littlepeace. 

Answering along this line, the protagonists of salvation througheducation pretty well agree that the thing itself means the widestpossible extension of our public school system, with free stateuniversities and technical schools, and the extension of the educationalperiod, with laws so rigid, and enforcement so pervasive and impartial, that no child between the ages of six and sixteen can possibly escape. This free, compulsory and universal education is assumed to bescrupulously secular and hedged about with every safeguard against theinsidious encroachments of religion; it will aim to give a littletraining in most of the sciences, and much in the practical necessitiesof business life, as for example, stenography, book-keeping, advertisingand business science; it will cover a broad field of manual trainingleading to "graduate courses" in special technical schools; the"laboratory method" and "field practice" will be increasingly developedand applied; Latin, Greek, logic and ancient history will be minimizedor done away with altogether, and modern languages, applied psychologyand contemporary history will be correspondingly emphasized. As for thestate university, it will allow the widest range of free electives, andas an university it will aim to comprise within itself every possibledepartment of practical activity, such as business administration, journalism, banking and finance, foreign trade, political science, psycho-analysis, mining, sanitary engineering, veterinary surgery, aswell as law, medicine, agriculture, and civil and mechanicalengineering. I am curious to inquire at this time if education such asthis does, as a matter of fact, educate, and how far it my be reliedupon as a corrective for present defects in society; or rather, first ofall, whether education of this, or of any sort, may be looked on as asufficient saving force, and whether general education, instead of beingextended should not be curtailed, or rather safeguarded and restricted. 

I have already tried to indicate, in my lecture on the Social Organism, certain doubts that are now arising as to the prophylactic andregenerative powers of education, whether this is based on the oldfoundation of the Trivium and Quadrivium under the supreme dominion ofTheology, or on the new foundation of utilitarianism and applied scienceunder the dominion of scientific pedagogy. While the active-mindedportion of society believed ardently in progressive evolution, in thesufficiency of the intellect, the inerrancy of the scientific method, and the transmission by inheritance of acquired characteristics, thissupreme confidence in free, secular, compulsory education as thecure-all of the profuse and pervasive ills of society was not onlynatural but inevitable. I submit that experience has measurably modifiedthe situation, and that we are bound therefore to reconsider our earlierpersuasions in the light of somewhat revealing events. 

We may admit that the system of modern education works measurably wellso far as intellectual training is concerned; _training_ asdistinguished from development. It works measurably well also inpreparing youth for participation in the life of applied science and formaking money in business and finance. Conscientious hard labour has beengiven, and is being given, to making it more effective along theselines, and almost every year some new scheme is brought forwardenthusiastically, tried out painstakingly, and then cast asideignominiously for some new and even more ingenious device. The amount ofeducation is enormous; the total of money spent on new foundations, courses, buildings, equipment--on everything but the pay of theteachers--is princely; the devotion of the teachers, themselves, in theface of inadequate wages, is exemplary, and yet, somehow the results aredisappointing. The truth is, the development of _character_ is not inproportion to the development of public and private education. The moralstanding of the nation, taken as a whole, has been degenerating; inbusiness, in public affairs, in private life, until the standards ofvalue have been confused, the line of demarcation between right andwrong blurred to indistinctness, and the old motives of honour, duty, service, charity, chivalry and compassion are no longer the controllingmotive, or at least the conscious aspiration, of active men. 

This is not to say that these do not exist; the period that has seen theretrogression has recorded also a reaction, and there are now perhapsmore who are fired by the ardent passion for active righteousness, thanfor several generations, but the average is lower, for where, many timesin the past, there has been a broad, general average of decency, now thedisparity is great between the motives that drive society as a whole, and its methods of operation, and the remnant that finds itself anunimportant minority. Newspapers are perhaps hardly a fair criterion ofthe moral status of a people--or of anything else for that matter--butwhat they record, and the way they do it, is at least an indication of acondition, and after every possible allowance has been made, what theyrecord is a very alarming standard of public and private morality, bothin the happenings themselves and in the fashion of their publicity. 

No one would claim that the responsibility for this weakening of moralstandards rests predominantly on the shoulders of the educational systemof today; the causes lie far deeper than this, but the point I wish tomake is that the process has not been arrested by education, in spite ofits prevalence, and that therefore it is unwise to continue ourexclusive faith in its remedial offices. The faith was never wellfounded. Education can do much, but what it does, or can do, is tofoster and develop _inherent possibilities, _ whether these are ofcharacter, intelligence or aptitude: it cannot put into a boy or manwhat was not there, _in posse, _ at birth, and humanly speaking, thediversity of potential in any thousand units is limited only by thenumber itself. Whether our present educational methods are those bestcalculated to foster and develop these inherent possibilities, so variedin nature and degree, is the question, and it is a question the answerto which depends largely on whether we look on intelligence, capacity orcharacter as the thing of greatest moment. For those who believe thatcharacter is the thing of paramount importance--amongst whom I countmyself--the answer must be in the negative. 

Nor is an affirmative reply entirely assured when the question is askedas to the results in the case of intellect and capacity. There are fewwho would claim that in either of these directions the general standardis now as high as it was, for example, in the last half of the lastcentury. The Great War brought to the front few personalities of thefirst class, and the peace that has followed has an even lessdistinguished record to date. We may say with truth, I think, that thelast ten years have provided greater issues, and smaller men to meetthem in the capacity of leaders, than any previous crisis of similarmoment. The art of leadership, and the fact of leadership, have beenlost, and without leadership any society, particularly a democracy, isin danger of extinction. 

Here again one cannot charge education with our lack of men ofcharacter, intelligence and capacity to lead; as before, the causes liefar deeper, but the almost fatal absence at this time of thepersonalities of such force and power that they can captain society inits hours of danger from war or peace, must give us some basis forestimating the efficiency of our educational theory and practice, andagain raise doubts as to whether here also we shall be well advised ifwe rely exclusively upon it as the ultimate saviour of society, while weare bound to ask whether its methods, even of developing intelligenceand capacity, are the best that can be devised. 

Another point worth considering is this. So long as we could lay theflattering unction to our souls that acquired characteristics wereheritable, and that therefore if an outcast from Posen, migrating toAmerica, had taken advantage of his new opportunities and so haddeveloped his character-potential, amassed money and acquired a measureof education and culture, he would automatically transmit something ofthis to his offspring, who would start so much the further forward andwould tend normally to still greater advance, and so on _ad infinitum, _so long we were justified in enforcing the widest measure of educationon all and sundry, and in waiting in hope for a future when thecumulative process should have accomplished its perfect work. Now, however, we are told that this hope is vain, that acquiredcharacteristics are not transmitted by heredity, and that the oldfolk-proverb "it is only three generations between shirtsleeves andshirtsleeves, " is perhaps more scientifically exact than theevolutionary dictum of the nineteenth century. Which is what experienceand history have been teaching, lo, these many years. 

The question then seems to divide itself into three parts; (a) are wejustified in pinning our faith in ultimate social salvation to free, secular, and compulsory education carried to the furthest possiblelimits; (b) if not, then what precisely is the function of formaleducation; and (c) this being determined, is our present methodadequate, and if not how should it be modified?

It is unwise to speak dogmatically along any of these lines, they aretoo blurred and uncertain. I can only express an individual opinion. 

It seems to me that life unvaryingly testifies to the extreme disparityof potential in individuals and in families and in racial strains, though in the two latter the difference is not necessarily absolute andpermanent, but variable in point of both time and degree. In individualsthe limit of this potentiality is inherent, and it can neither becompletely inhibited by adverse education and environment nor measurablyextended by favourable education and environment. Characteristicsacquired _outside_ inherent limitations are personal and non-heritable, however intimately they may have become a part of the individualhimself. 

If this is true, then the question of education becomes personal also;that is to say, we educate for the individual, and with an eye to thepart he himself is to play in society. We do not look for cumulativeresults but in a sense deal with each personality in regard to itselfalone. I think this has a bearing both on the extent to which educationshould be enforced and on the quality and method of education itself, and though the contention will receive little but ridicule, I am boundto say that I hold that _general_ education should be reduced inquantity and considerably changed in nature. 

If the limit of development is substantially determined in eachindividual and cannot be extended by human agencies (I say "human"because God in His wisdom and by His power can raise up a prophet or asaint out of the lowest depths, and frequently does so), then thequantity and extent of general education should be determined not by aperiod of years and the facilities offered by a government liberal inits expenditures, but entirely by the demonstrated or indicated capacityof the individual. Our educational system should, so far as it is freeand compulsory, normally end with the high school grade. Free college, university and technical training should not be provided, except forthose who had given unmistakable evidences that they could, and probablywould, use it to advantage. This would be provided for bynon-competitive scholarships, limited in number only by the number ofcapable candidates, and determination of this capacity would be, not onthe basis of test examinations, but on an average record covering aconsiderable period of time. It is doubtful if even these scholarshipsshould be wholly free; some responsibility should be recognized, for agood half of the value of a thing (perhaps all its value) lies inworking for it. A grant without service, a favour accepted withoutobligations, privilege without function, both cheapen and degrade. 

Let us now turn to the second question, i. E. , what precisely is thefunction of formal education. For my own part I can answer this in asentence. It is primarily the fostering and development of thecharacter-potential inherent in each individual. In this processintellectual training and expansion and the furthering of naturalaptitude have a part, but this is secondary to the major object which isthe development of character. 

This is not in accordance with the practice or the theory of recenttimes, and in this fact lies one of the prime causes of failure. The onething man exists to accomplish is character; not worldly success andeminence in any line, not the conquest of nature (though some have heldotherwise), not even "adaptation to environment" in the _argot_ of lastcentury science, but _character;_ the assimilation and fixing inpersonality of high and noble qualities of thought and deed, thefurtherance, in a word, of the eternal sacramental process of redemptionof matter through the operation of spiritual forces. Without this, social and political systems, imperial dominion, wealth and power, afavourable balance of trade avail nothing; with it, forms and methodsand the enginery of living will look out for themselves. And yet thisthing which comprises "the whole duty of man" has, of late, fallen intoa singular disregard, while the constructive forces that count haveeither been discredited and largely abandoned, as in the case ofreligion, or, like education, turned into other channels or reversedaltogether, as has happened with the idea and practice of obedience, discipline, self-denial, duty, honour and unselfishness; surely the mostfantastic issue of the era of enlightenment, of liberty and of freedomof conscience. 

As a matter of fact character, as the chief end of man and the soleguaranty of a decent society, has been neglected; it was not disregardedby any conscious process, but the headlong events that have followedsince the fifteenth century have steadily distorted our judgment andconfused our standards of value even to reversal. By an imperceptibleprocess other matters have come to engage our interest and control ouraction, until at last we are confronted by the nemesis of our ownunwisdom, and we entertain the threat of a dissolving civilization justbecause the forces we have engendered or set loose have not been curbedor directed by that vigorous and potent personal character informing apeople and a society, that we had forgot in our haste and that alonecould give us safety. 

Formal education is but one of the factors that may be employed towardsthe development of character; you cannot so easily separate one force inlife from another, assigning a specific duty here, a definite taskthere. That is one of the weaknesses of our time, the water-tightcompartment plan of high specialization, the cellular theory ofefficiency. Life must be seen as a whole, organized as a whole, lived asa whole. Every thought, every emotion, every action, works for thebuilding or the unbuilding of character, and this synthesis of livingmust be reestablished before we can hope for social regeneration. Nevertheless formal education may be made a powerful factor, even now, and not only in this one specific direction, but through this, for theaccomplishing of that unification of life that already is indicated asthe next great task that is set before us; and this brings me to aconsideration of the last of the questions I have proposed for answer, viz. : is our present system of education adequate to the sufficientdevelopment of character, and if not, how should it be modified?

I do not think it adequate, and experience seems to me to prove thepoint. It has not maintained the sturdy if sometimes acutely unpleasantcharacter of the New England stock, or the strong and handsome characterof the race that dwelt in the thirteen original colonies as thismanifested itself well into the last century, and it has, in general, bred no new thing in the millions of immigrants and their descendantswho have flooded the country since 1840 and from whom the public schoolsand some of the colleges are largely recruited. It is not a question ofexpanded brain power or applied aptitude, but of character, and herethere is a larger measure of failure than we had a right to expect. Andyet, had we this right? The avowed object of formal education is mentaland vocational training, and by no stretch of the imagination can wehold these to be synonymous with character. We have dealt with andthrough one thing alone, and that is the intellect, whereas character israther the product of emotions judiciously stimulated, balanced (notcontrolled) by intellect, and applied through active and variedexperience. Deliberately have we cut out every emotional and spiritualfactor; not only religion and the fine arts, but also the studies, andthe methods of study, and the type of text-books, that might have helpedin the process of spiritual and emotional development. We haveeliminated Latin and Greek, or taught them as a branch of philology; wehave made English a technical exercise in analysis and composition, disregarding the moral and spiritual significance of the works of thegreat masters of English; we minimize ancient history and concentrate onEuropean history since the French Revolution, and on the history of theUnited States, and because of the sensitiveness of our endless varietyof religionists (pro forma) text books are written which leave religionout of history altogether--and frequently economics and politics as wellwhen these cannot be made to square with popular convictions; philosophyand logic are already pretty well discarded, except for specialelectives and post-graduate courses, and as for art in its multifariousforms we know it not, unless it be in the rudimentary and devitalizedform of free-hand drawing and occasional concerted singing. The onlything that is left in the line of emotional stimulus is competitiveathletics, and for this reason I sometimes think it one of the mostvaluable factors in public education. It has, however, another function, and that is the coordination of training and life; it is in a sense an_école d'application, _ and through it the student, for once in a way, tries out his acquired mental equipment and his expanding character--aswell as his physical prowess--against the circumstances of activevitality. It is just this sort of thing that for so long made the"public schools" of England, however limited or defective may have beenthe curriculum, a vital force in the development of British character. 

At best, however, this seems to me but an indifferent substitute, aninadequate "extra, " doing limitedly the real work of education byindirection. What we need (granting my assumption of character as the_terminus ad quem_) is an educational system so recast that the formalstudies and the collateral influences and the school life shall be morecoordinated in themselves and with life, and that the resulting stimulusshall be equally operative along intellectual, emotional and creativelines. 

It is sufficiently easy to make suggestions as to how this is to beaccomplished, to lay out programmes and lay down curricula, but here aselsewhere this does not amount to much; the change must come and theinstitutions develop as the result of the operations of life. If we canchange our view of the object of education, the very force of life, working through experience, will adequately determine the forms. It isnot therefore as a meticulous and mechanical system that I make thefollowing suggestions as to certain desirable changes, but rather toindicate more exactly what I mean by a scheme of education that willwork primarily towards the development of character. 

Now in the first place, I must hold that there can be no education whichworks primarily for character building, that is not interpenetrated atevery point by definite, concrete religion and the practice of religion. As I shall try to show in my last two lectures, religion is the force orfactor that links action with life. It is the only power available toman that makes possible a sound standard of comparative values, and withphilosophy teaching man how to put things in their right order, itenters to show him how to control them well, while it offers the greatconstructive energy that makes the world an orderly unity rather than atype of chaos. Until the Reformation there was no question as to this, and even after, in the nations that accepted the great revolution, thepoint was for a time maintained; thereafter the centrifugal tendency inProtestantism resulted in such a wealth of mutually antagonistic sectsthat the application of the principle became impracticable, and forthis, as well as for more fundamental reasons, it fell into desuetude. The condition is as difficult today for the process of denominationalfission has gone steadily forward, and as this energy of the religiousinfluence weakens the strenuosity of maintenance strengthens. With our157 varieties of Protestantism confronting Catholicism, Hebraism, and amass of frank rationalism and infidelity as large in amount as allothers combined, it would seem at first sight impossible to harmonizefree public education with concrete religion in any intimate way. So itis; but if the principle is recognized and accepted, ways and means willoffer themselves, and ultimately the principle will be embodied in aworkable scheme. 

For example; there is one thing that can be done anywhere, and wheneverenough votes can be assembled to carry through the necessarylegislation. At present the law regards with an austere disapproval thatreflects a popular opinion (now happily tending towards decay), what areknown as "denominational schools" and other institutions of learning. Those that maintain the necessity of an intimate union between religionand education, as for example the great majority of Roman Catholics andan increasing number of Episcopalians and Presbyterians, are taxed forthe support of secular public schools which they do not use, while theymust maintain at additional, and very great, expense, parochial andother private schools where their children may be taught after a fashionwhich they hold to be necessary from their own point of view. Again, state support is refused to such schools or colleges as may be underspecific religious control, while pension funds for the teachers, established by generous benefactions, are explicitly reserved for thosewho are on the faculties of institutions which formally dissociatethemselves from any religious influence. I maintain that this is bothunjust and against public policy. Under our present system of religiousindividualism and ecclesiastical multiplicity, approximations only arepossible, but I believe the wise and just plan would be for the state tofix certain standards which all schools receiving financial support fromthe public funds must maintain, and then, this condition being carriedout, distribute the funds received from general taxation to public andprivate schools alike. This would enable Episcopalians, let us say, orRoman Catholics, or Jews, when in any community they are numerous enoughto provide a sufficiency of scholars for any primary, grammar, or highschool, to establish such a school in as close a relationship to theirown religion as they desired, and have this school maintained out of thefunds of the city. This is not a purely theoretical proposition; afteran agitation lasting nearly half a century, Holland has this year putsuch a law in force. From every point of view we should do well torecognize this plan as both just and expedient. One virtue it wouldhave, apart from those already noted, is the variation it would permitin curricula, text books, personnel and scholastic life as between oneschool and another. There is no more fatal error in education than thatstandardization which has recently become a fad and which finds its mostmechanistic manifestation in France. 

Of course this need for the fortifying of education by religion isrecognized even now, but the only plan devised for putting it intoeffect is one whereby various ministers of religion are allowed acertain brief period each week in which they may enter the publicschools and give denominational instruction to those who desire theirparticular ministrations. This is one of the compromises, like the oldermethod of Bible reading without commentary or exposition, which availsnothing and is apt to be worse than frank and avowed secularism. It isputting religion on exactly the same plane as analytical chemistry, psychoanalysis or salesmanship, (the latter I am told is about to beintroduced in the Massachusetts high schools) or any other "elective, "whereas if it is to have any value whatever it must be an ever-presentforce permeating the curriculum, the minds of the teachers, and theschool life from end to end, and there is no way in which this can beaccomplished except by a policy that will permit the maintenance ofschools under religious domination at the expense of the state, providedthey comply with certain purely educational requirements established andenforced by the state. 

I have already pointed out what seems to me the desirability of aconsiderable variation between the curriculum of one school and another. This would be possible and probably certain under the scheme proposed, but barring this, it is surely an open question whether the prettythoroughly standardized curriculum now in operation would not beconsiderably modified to advantage if it is recognized that the primeobject of education is character rather than mental training and thefitting of a pupil to obtain a paying job on graduation. From my ownpoint of view the answer is in a vociferous affirmative. I suggest thedrastic reduction of the very superficial science courses in all schoolsup to and including the high school, certainly in chemistry, physics andbiology, but perhaps with some added emphasis on astronomy, geology andbotany. History should become one of the fundamental subjects, andEnglish, both being taught for their humanistic value and not asexercises in memory or for the purpose of making a student a sort ofdictionary of dates. This would require a considerable rewriting ofhistory text books, as well as a corresponding change in the methods ofteaching, but after all, are not these both consummations devoutly to bewished. There are few histories like Mr. Chesterton's "Short History ofEngland, " unfortunately. One would, perhaps, hardly commend thisstimulating book as a sufficient statement of English history forgeneral use in schools, but its approach is wholly right and itpossesses the singular virtue of interest. Another thing that commendsit is the fact that while it runs from Caesar to Mr. Lloyd George, itcontains, I believe, only seven specific dates, three of which arepossibly wrong. This is as it should be--not the inaccuracies but thecommendable frugality in point of number. Dates, apart from a few keyyears, are of small historical importance; so are the details of palaceintrigues and military campaigns. History is, or should be, lifeexpressed in terms of romance, and it is of little moment whether thenarrated incidents are established by documentary evidence or whetherthey are contemporary legend quite unsubstantiated by what are known(and overestimated) as "facts. " There is more of the real Middle Ages inMallory's "Mort d'Arthur" than there is in all Hallam, and the sameantithesis can be established for nearly all other periods of history. 

The history of man is one great dramatic romance, and so used it may bemade perhaps the most stimulating agency in education as characterdevelopment. I do not mean romance in the sense in which Mr. Wells takesit, that is to say, the dramatic assembling and clever coördination ofunsubstantiated theories, personal preferences, prejudices andaversions, under the guise of solemn and irrefutable truth attested byall the exact sciences known to man, but romance which aims like anyother art at communicating from one person to another something of theinner and essential quality of life as it has been lived, even if thematerial used is textually doubtful or even probably apocryphal. Thedeadly enemy of good, sound history is scientific historical criticism. The true history is romantic tradition; the stimulating thing, the talethat makes the blood leap, the pictorial incident that raises up in aninstant the luminous vision of some great thing that once was. 

I would not exchange Kit Marlowe's

 _"Is this the face that launched a thousand ships And burnt the topless towers of Ilium?"_

for all the critical commentaries of Teutonic pedants on the characterand attributes of Helen of Troy as these have (to them) been revealed byarchaeological investigations. I dare say that Bishop St. Remi of Reimsnever said in so many words "Bow thy proud head, Sicambrian; destroywhat thou hast worshipped, worship what thou hast destroyed, " and thatthe Meroving monarch did not go thence to issue an "order of the day"that the army should forthwith march down to the river and be baptizedby battalions; but _there_ is the clear, unforgettable picture of thetimes and the men, and it will remain after the world has forgotten thatsome one has proved that St. Remi never met Clovis, and that he himselfwas probably only a variant of the great and original "sun-myth. "

Closely allied with the teaching of history and forming a link as itwere with the teaching of English, is a branch of study at presentunformulated and unknown, but, I am convinced, of great importance ineducation as a method of character development. Life has always focusedin great personalities, and formal history has recognized the fact whileshowing little discretion, and sometimes very defective judgment, in thechoices it has made. A past period becomes our own in so far as wetranslate it through its personalities and its art; the originaldocuments matter little, except when they become misleading, as theyfrequently do, when read through contemporary spectacles. Now the greatfigures of a time are not only princes and politicians, conquerors andconspirators, they are quite as apt to be the knights and heroes andbrave gentlemen who held no conspicuous position in Church or state. Ithink we need what might be called "The Golden Book of Knighthood"--or aseries of text books adapted to elementary and advanced schools--made upof the lives and deeds (whether attested by "original documents, " orlegendary or even fabulous does not matter) of those in all times, andamongst all peoples, who were the glory of knighthood; the "parfaitgentyl Knyghtes" "without fear and without reproach. " Such for example, to go no farther back than the Christian Era, as St. George and St. Martin, King Arthur and Launcelot and Galahad, Charles Martel andRoland, St. Louis, Godfrey de Bouillon and Saladin, the Earl ofStrafford, Montrose and Claverhouse, the Chevalier Bayard, Don John ofAustria, Washington and Robert Lee and George Wyndham. These are but afew names, remembered at random; there are scores besides, and I thinkthat they should be held up to honour and emulation throughout theformative period of youth. After all, they became, during the years whenthese qualities were exalted, the personification of the ideals ofhonour and chivalry, of compassion and generosity, of service andself-sacrifice and courtesy, and these, the qualifications of agentleman and a man or honour, are, with the religion that fosteredthem, and the practice of that religion, the just objective ofeducation. 

Much of all this can even now be taught through a judicious use of theopportunities offered instructors in English, whether this is throughthe graded "readers" of elementary education, or the more extendedcourses in colleges and universities. Very frequently theseopportunities are ignored, and will be until we achieve something of anew orientation in the matter of teaching English. 

Now it may be I hold a vain and untenable view of this subject, but I amwilling to confess that I believe the object of teaching English is theunlocking of the treasures of thought, character and emotion preservedin the written records of the tongue, and the arousing of a desire toknow and assimilate these treasures on the part of the pupil. I am verysure that English should not be taught as a thing ending in "ology, " notas an intricate science with all sorts of laws and rules and exceptions;not as a system whereby the little children of the Ghetto, and theoffspring of Pittsburgh millionaires, and the spectacled infant elect ofBeacon Hill may all be raised to the point where they can write withacceptable fluency the chiseled phrases of Matthew Arnold, the cadencedLatinity of Sir Thomas Browne, the sonorous measures of Bolingbroke orthe distinguished and resonant periods of the King James Bible. Such anaim as this will always result in failure. 

The English language is the great storehouse of the rich thought and theburning emotion of the English race, and all this, as it has issued outof character, works towards the development of character, when it ismade operative in new generations. There is no other language but Latinthat has preserved so great a wealth of invaluable things, and Englishis taught in order that it all may be more available through thatappreciation that comes from familiarity. There is no nobler record inthe world: from Chaucer down to the moderns is one splendid sequence ofcharacter-revelations through a perfect but varied art, for literatureis also a fine art, and one of the greatest of all. Is it not fair tosay that the chief duty of the teacher of English is to lead the studentto like great literature, to find it and enjoy it for himself, andthrough it to come to the liking of great ideas?

In the old days there was an historical, or rather archaeological, method that was popular; also an analytical and grammarian method. Therewas also the philological method which was quite the worst of all andhad almost as devastating results as in the case of Latin. It almostseems as though English were being taught for the production of acommunity of highly specialized teachers. No one would now go back toany of those quaint and archaic ways digged up out of the dim and remotepast of the XIXth century. We should all agree, I think, that forgeneral education, specialized technical knowledge is unimportant andscientific intensive methods unjustifiable. For one student who willturn out a teacher there are five hundred that will be just simplevoters, wage-earners, readers of the Saturday Evening Post and the NewRepublic, members of the Fourth Presbyterian Church or the EthicalSociety, and respectable heads of families. The School of Pedagogy hasits own methods (I am given to understand), but under correction Isubmit they are not those of general education. Shall I put the wholething in a phrase and say that the object of teaching English is to getyoung people to like good things?

You may say this is English Literature, not English. Are the two so veryfar apart? English as a language is taught to make literature available. "Example is better than precept. " Reading good literature for the loveof it will bring in the habit of grammatical speaking and writing farmore effectively than what is known as "a thorough grounding in theprinciples of English grammar. " I doubt if the knowledge of, andfacility in, English can be built up on such a basis; rather the lawsshould be deduced from examples. Philology, etymology, syntax arederivatives, not foundations. "Practice makes perfect" is a saying thatneeds to be followed by the old scholastic defensive _"distinguo. "_Practice in reading, rather than practice in writing, makes good Englishcomposition possible. The "daily theme" may be overdone; it is of littleuse unless _thought_ keeps ahead of the pen. 

I would plead then for the teaching of English after a fashion that willreveal great thoughts and stimulate to greater life, through the nobleart of English literature and the perfectly illogical but altogetheradmirable English language. The function of education is to makestudents feel, think and act, after a fashion that increasingly revealsand utilizes the best that is in them, and increasingly serves the usesof society, and both history and English can be so taught as to helptowards the accomplishment of these ends. 

There is another factor that may be so used, but I confess I shall speakof it with some hesitation. It is at present, and has been for ages, entirely outside the possibility even of consideration, and in a sensethat goes beyond the general ignoring of religion, for while Catholics, who form the great majority of Christians, still hold to religion as aprime element in education, there are none--or only a minority so smallas to be negligible--who give a thought to art in this connection. Ibring forward the word, and the thing it represents, with diffidence, even apologetically: indeed, it is perhaps better to renounce the wordaltogether and substitute the term "beauty, " for during the nineteenthcentury art got a bad name, not altogether undeservedly, and thedisrepute lingers. So long as beauty is an instinct native to men (andit was this, except for very brief and periodic intervals, until hardlymore than a century ago, though latterly in a vanishing form), it iswholesome, stimulating and indispensable, but when it becomesself-conscious, when it finds itself the possession of a few highlydifferentiated individuals instead of the attribute of man as such, thenit tends to degenerate into something abnormal and, in its last estate, both futile and unclean. In its good estate, as for example in Greece, Byzantium, the Middle Ages, and in Oriental countries until the last fewdecades, beauty was so natural an object of endeavour and a mode ofexpression, and its universality resulted in so characteristic anenvironment, it was unnecessary to talk about it very much, or to giveany particular thought to the educational value of the arts which wereits manifestation through and to man, or how this was to be applied. Thethings were there, everywhere at hand; the temples and churches, thepainting and the sculpture and the works of handicraft; the music andpoetry and drama, the ceremonial and costume of daily life, both secularand religious, the very cities in which men congregated and the villagesin which they were dispersed. Beauty, in all its concrete forms of art, was highly valued, almost as highly as religion or liberty or bodilyhealth, but then it was a part of normal life and therefore taken forgranted. 

Now all is changed. For just an hundred years (the process definitelybegan here in America between 1820 and 1823) we have been eliminatingbeauty as an attribute of life and living until, during the last twogenerations, it is true to say that the instinctive impulse of the raceas a whole is towards ugliness in those categories of creation andappreciation where formerly it had been towards beauty. Of course thecorollary of this was the driving of the unhappy man in whom was bornsome belated impulse towards the apprehending of beauty and its visibleexpression in some art, back upon himself, until, conscious of hisisolation and confident of his own superiority, he not only made his arta form of purely personal expression (or even of exposure), but heldhimself to be, and so conducted himself, as a being apart, for whom thelaws of the herd were not, and to whom all men should bow. 

The separation of art from life is only less disastrous in its resultsthan the separation of religion from life, particularly since with theformer went the separation of art (and therefore of beauty) from itsimmemorial alliance with religion. It was bad for art, it was bad forreligion, and it was worst of all for life itself. Beyond a certainpoint man cannot live in and with and through ugliness, nor can societyendure under such conditions, and the fact is that, however it came topass, modern civilization has functioned through explicit ugliness, andthe environment it has made for its votaries and its rebelsindifferently, is unique in its palpable hideousness; from the clothesit wears and the motives it extols, to the cities it builds, and thestructures therein, and the scheme of life that romps along in itsruthless career within the sordid suburbs that take the place of theonce enclosing walls. And the defiant and segregated "artists, " mortuaryart museums, the exposed statues and hidden pictures, the operasubsidized by "high society, " and the "arts and crafts" societies andthe "art magazines" and "art schools" and clubs and "city beautiful"committees, only seem to make the contrast more apparent and thedesperate nature of the situation more profound. 

It is a new situation altogether, and nowhere in history is there anyrecorded precedent to which we can return for council and example, fornothing quite of the same sort ever happened before. It is also aproblem of which formal education must take cognizance, for the lack isone which must somehow be supplied, while it reveals an astonishing_lacuna_ in life that means a new deficiency in the unconsciouseducation of man that renders him ineffective in life; defective even, it may be, unless from some source he can acquire something of what inthe past life itself could afford. 

Indeed it is not merely a negative influence we deal with, but apositive, for, to paraphrase a little, "ugly associations corrupt goodmorals. " Youth is beaten upon at many points by things that not onlylook ugly, but are, and as in compassion we are bound to offer some newagency to fill a lack, so in self-defence we must take thought as to howthe evil influence of contemporaneousness is to be nullified and itsresults corrected. 

I confess the method seems to me to lean more closely to the indirectinfluence rather than the direct. It is doubtful if "art" can really betaught in any sense; the inherent sense of beauty can be fostered and aninherent aptitude developed, but that is about all. As for the buildingup of a non-professional passion for art I am quite sure it cannot bedone, and should hardly be attempted, and very likely the same is trueof the application of beauty. 

Text books on "How to Understand" this art or that are interestingventures into abstract theory, but they are little more. We must alwaysremember that art is a result, not a product, and that sense of beautyis a natural gift and not an accomplishment. On the other hand, much canbe accomplished by indirection, and by this I mean the buildings and thegrounds and the cultural adjuncts that are offered by any school orcollege. The ordinary type of school-house--primary, grammar or highschool--is, in its barren ugliness and its barbarous "efficiency, " avery real outrage on decency, and a few Braun photographs and plastercasts and potted plants avail nothing. Private schools and somecolleges--by no means all--are apt to be somewhat better, and here theimprovement during the last ten years has been amazing, one or twouniversities having acquired single buildings, or groups, of the mostastonishing architectural beauty. In no case, however, has as yetcomplete unity been achieved, while the arts of painting, sculpture, music and the drama, as vital and operative and pervasive influences, lag far behind, and formal religion with its liturgies and ceremonial, its constant and varied services and its fine and appealingpageantry--religion which is the greatest vitalizing and stimulatingforce in beauty is hardly touched at all. 

Bad art of any kind is bad anywhere, but in any type of educationalinstitution, from the kindergarten to the post graduate college, it isworse and less excusable than it is elsewhere, unless it be inassociation with religion, while the absence of beauty at theinstigation of parsimony or efficiency is just as bad. I am firmlypersuaded that we need, not more courses of study but more beautifulenvironment for scholars under instruction. 

I have touched cursorily on certain elements in education which needeither a new emphasis or an altogether new interpretation; religion, history, art, but this does not mean that the same treatment should notbe accorded elsewhere. There are certain studies that should be revived, such as formal logic, there are others that need immediate and completerestoration, as Latin for example, there are many, chiefly alongscientific and vocational lines, that could well be minimized, or insome cases dispensed with altogether: one might go on indefinitely onthis line, however, weighing and testing studies in relation to theircharacter-value, but certainly enough has already been said to indicatethe point of view I would urge for consideration. Before I close, however, I want to touch on two points that arise in connection withcollege education, if, even for the sake of argument, we admit that theprimary object of all formal education is the "education" of thecharacter-capacity in each individual. 

Of these two, the first has to do with the college curriculum, but Ineed to devote little time to this for the principle has already beendeveloped and applied in a singularly stimulating and lucid book called"The Liberal College, " by President Meiklejohn of Amherst, to which Ibeg to refer you. The scheme is a remarkable blending of the prescribedand the elective systems, and provides for the freshman year fivecompulsory studies, viz. : Social and Economic Institutions, Mathematicsand Formal Logic, Science, English and Foreign Languages; for thesophomore year European History, Philosophy, Science, Literature, andone elective; for the junior year American History, History of Thoughtand two electives, and for the senior year one required study, Intellectual and Moral Problems, and one elective, the latter, whichtakes two-thirds of the student's time, must be a continuation of one ofthe four subjects included in the junior year. It seems to me that thisis a singularly wise programme, since it not only determines the fewstudies which are fundamental, and imposes them on the student indiminishing number as he advances in his work, but it also provides forthat freedom of choice which permits any student to find out andcontinue the particular line along which his inclinations lead him totravel, until his senior year is chiefly given over to the fullestpossible development of the special subject. The fad for free electivesall along the line was one of those curious phenomena, both humorous andtragic, that grew out of the evolutionary philosophy and the empiricaldemocracy of the nineteenth century, and it wrought disaster, while theironclad curriculum that preceded it was almost as bad along an oppositeline. This project of Dr. Meiklejohn's seems to me to recognize life asa force and to base itself on this sure foundation instead of on theshifting sands of doctrinaire theory, and if this is so then it isright. 

For after all there is such a thing as life, and it is more potent thantheory as it also has a way of disregarding or even smashing themachine. It is this force of life that should be more regarded ineducation, and more relied upon. It is the living in a school or acollege that counts more than a curriculum; the association with others, students and teachers, the communal life, the common adventures andscrapes, the common sports, yes, and as it will be sometime, the commonworship. It is through these that life works and character develops, andto this development and instigation of life the school and collegeshould work more assiduously, minimizing for the moment the problems ofcurricula and pedagogic methods. If I am right in this there is no placefor the "correspondence school, " while the college or university thatnumbers its students by thousands becomes at least of doubtful value, and perhaps impossible. In any case it seems to me self-evident that acollege, whatever its numbers, must have, as its primal and essentialunits, self-contained groups of not more than 150 students segregated intheir own residential quad, with its common-room, refectory and chapel, and with a certain number of faculty members in residence, the wholebeing united under one "head. " There may be perhaps no reason why, granting this unit system, these should not be multiplied in numberuntil the whole student body is as great as that of a western stateuniversity today, but to me the idea is abhorrent of an "university"with five or ten thousand students all jostling together In one inchoatemass, eating in numerical mobs, assembling in social "unions" as largeas a metropolitan hotel and almost as homelike, or taking refuge forsafety from mere numbers in clubs, fraternities and secret societies. Acollege such as this is a mob, not an organism, and as a mob it ought tobe put down. 

I said at the outset of this lecture that we could not lay the presentfailure of civilization to the doors of education, however great itsshortcomings, for the causes lay deeper than this. I maintain that thisis true; and yet formal education can not escape scatheless, for it hasfailed to admit this decline while acknowledging the claim set up for itthat it could and would achieve this end. Certainly it will incur aheavy responsibility if it does not at once recognize the fact thatwhile it can not do the half that has been claimed for it, it can do farmore than it is doing now, and that in a very large degree the futuredoes depend for its honour or its degradation on the part formaleducation is to perform at the present crisis. To do this it mustexecute a _volte face_ and confess that it can only develop inherentpotential, not create capacity, and that the primary object of itsactivities must be not the stall-feeding of intellect and the practicalpreparation for a business career, but the fostering and the building upof the personal character that denotes the Christian gentleman. I do notthink that I can do better for a conclusion than to quote from the"Philosophy of Education" by the late Dr. Thomas Edward Shields. 

"The unchanging aim of Christian education is, and always has been, toput the pupil into possession of a body of truth derived from nature andfrom Divine Revelation, from the concrete work of man's hand and fromthe content of human speech, in order to bring his conduct intoconformity with Christian ideals and with the standards of thecivilization of his day. 

"Christian education, therefore, aims at transforming native instinctswhile preserving and enlarging their powers. It aims at bringing theflesh under the control of the spirit. It draws upon the experience andthe wisdom of the race, upon Divine Revelation and upon the power ofDivine grace, in order that it may bring the conduct of the individualinto conformity with Christian ideals and with the standards of thecivilization of the day. It aims at the development of the whole man, atthe preservation of unity and continuity in his conscious life; it aimsat transforming man's native egotism to altruism; at developing thesocial side of his nature to such an extent that he may regard all menas his brothers; sharing with them the common Fatherhood of God. In oneword, it aims at transforming a child of the flesh into a child of God. "

VII

THE PROBLEM OF ORGANIC RELIGION

If philosophy is "the science of the totality of things, " and "they arecalled wise who put things in their right order and control them well, "then it is religion, above all other factors and potencies, that entersin to reveal the right relationships and standards of value, and tocontribute the redemptive and energizing force that makes possible theadequate control which is the second factor in the conduct of the manthat is "called wise. " Philosophy and religion are not to be confounded;religion is sufficient in itself and develops its own philosophy, butthe latter is not sufficient in itself, and when it assumes thefunctions and prerogatives of religion, it brings disaster. 

Religion is the force that relates action to life. Of course it hasother aspects, higher in essence and more impalpable in quality, but itis this first aspect I shall deal with, because I am not now speaking ofreligion as a purely spiritual power but only of its quality as thegreat coordinator of human action, the power that establishes a rightratio of values and gives the capacity for right control. Whether weaccept the religion of the Middle Ages or not; whether we look on theperiod as one of high and edifying Christian civilization, or as a timeof ignorance and superstition, we are bound to admit that society in itsphysical, intellectual and spiritual aspects was highly organized, andcoordinated after a most masterly fashion. It was more nearly an unit, functioning lucidly and consistently, than anything the world has knownsince the Roman Empire. Whatever its defects, lack of coherency was notone of them. Life was not divided into water-tight compartments, butmoved on as a consistent whole. Failures were constant, for the worldeven then was made up of men, but the ideal was perfectly clear-cut, theprinciples exactly seen and explicitly formulated; life was organic, consistent, highly articulated, and withal as full of the passion ofaspiration towards an ultimate ideal as was the Gothic cathedral whichis its perfect exemplar. 

The reason for this coherency and consistency was the universalrecognition and acceptance of religion as the one energizing andstandardizing force in life, the particular kind of religion that thenprevailed, and the organic power which this religion had established;that is to say, the Church as an operative institution. So long as thiscondition obtained, which was, roughly speaking, for three hundredyears, from the "Truce of God" in 1041 to the beginning of the"Babylonian Captivity" of the Papacy at Avignon in 1309, there wassubstantial unity in life, but as soon as it was shaken, this unitybegan to break up into a diversity that accomplished a condition ofchaos, at and around the opening of the sixteenth century, which onlyyielded to the absolutism of the Renaissance, destined in its turn tobreak up into a second condition of chaos under the influence ofindustrialism, Puritanism and revolution. 

Since the accomplishment of the Reformation, this function of religionhas never been restored to society in any degree comparable with thatwhich it maintained during the Middle Ages. The Counter-Reformationpreserved the institution itself in the Mediterranean lands, but it didnot restore its old spiritual power in its entirety. Amongst the peoplesthat accepted the Reformation the new religion assumed for a time theauthority of the old, but the centrifugal force inherent in its naturesoon split the reformed churches into myriad fragments, so destroyingtheir power of action, while the abandonment of the sacramental systemprogressively weakened their dynamic force. As it had from the firstcompounded, under compulsion, with absolutism and tyranny, so in the endit compromised with the cruelty, selfishness, injustice and avarice ofindustrialism, and when finally this achieved world supremacy, andphysical science, materialistic philosophy and social revolution enteredthe field as co-combatants, it no longer possessed a sufficient originalpower either of resistance or of re-creative energy. 

Religion is in itself not the reaction of the human mind, under processof evolution, to certain physical stimuli of experience and phenomena, it is supernatural in that its source is outside nature; it is amanifestation of the grace of God, and as such it cannot be brought intoexistence by any conscious action of man or by any of his works. On theother hand, it can be fostered and preserved, or debilitated anddispersed, by these human acts and institutions, and in the same way manhimself may be made more receptive to this divine grace, or turnedagainst it, by the same agencies, the teachings of Dr. John Calvin tothe contrary notwithstanding. This is part of the Catholic doctrine offree-will as opposed to the sixteenth-century dogma of predestinationwhich, distorted and degraded from the doctrine of St. Paul and St. Augustine, played so large a part in that transformation of theChristian religion from which we have suffered ever since. God offersthe free gift of religion and of faith to every child of man, but therecipient must cooperate if the gift is to be accepted. The Church, thatis to say, the supernatural organism that is given material form in timeand space and operates through human agencies, is for this reasonsubject to great vicissitudes, now rising to the highest level ofrighteousness and power, now sinking into depths of unrighteousness andimpotence. Nothing, however, can affect the validity and the potency ofits supernatural content and its supernatural channels of grace. Theseremain unaffected, whether the human organism is exalted or debased. Thesacraments and devotions and practices of worship, are in themselves aspotent if a Borgia sits in the chair of St. Peter as they are if aHildebrand, and Innocent III or a Leo XIII is the occupant; neverthelessevery weakening or degradation of the visible organism affects, andinevitably, the attitude of men towards the thing itself, and when thisdeclension sets in and continues unchecked, the result is, first, afalling away and a discrediting of religion that sometimes results ingeneral abandonment, and second--and after a time--a new outpouring ofspiritual power that results in complete regeneration. The Church, inits human manifestation, is as subject to the rhythmical rise and fallof the currents of life as is the social organism or man himself, therefore it is not to be expected that it will pursue a course of evenexaltation, or maintain a status that is impeccable. 

Now the working out of this law had issue in a great decline that beganwith the Exile at Avignon and was not terminated until the Council ofTrent. In the depth of this catastrophe came the natural and righteousrevolt against the manifold and intolerable abuses, but, like allreforming movements that take on a revolutionary character, reform andregeneration were soon forgotten in the unleashed passion fordestruction and innovation, while the new doctrines of emancipation fromauthority, and the right of private judgment in religious matters, wereseized upon by sovereigns chafing under ecclesiastical control, as aprovidential means of effecting and establishing their own independence, and so given an importance, and an ultimate victory that, in and bythemselves, they could hardly have achieved. In the end it was thesecular and autocratic state that reaped the victory, not the reformedreligion, which was first used as a tool and then abandoned to itsinevitable break-up into numberless antagonistic sects, some of themretaining a measure of the old faith and polity, others representing allthe illiteracy and uncouthness and fanaticism of the new racial andsocial factors as these emerged at long last from the submergence andthe oppression that had been their fate with the dissolution ofMediaevalism. 

Meanwhile the Roman Church which stood rigidly for historic Christianityand had been preserved by the Counter-Reformation to the Mediterraneanstates, continued bound to the autocratic and highly centralizedadministrative system that had become universal among secular powersduring the decadence of Mediaevalism, and from which it had taken itscolour, and it kept even pace for the future with the progressiveintensification of this absolutism. This was natural, though in manyrespects deplorable, and it can be safely said that adverse criticism ofthe Catholic Church today is based only on qualities it acquired duringthe period of Renaissance autocracy and revived paganism; qualities thatdo not affect its essential integrity or authority but do misrepresentit before men, and work as a handicap in its adaptability and in itswork of winning souls to Christianity and re-establishing the unity ofChristendom. Fortunately this very immobility has saved it from asurrender to the new forces that were developed in secular societyduring the last two centuries, as it did yield to the compulsion ofthose that were let loose in the two that preceded them. It has neversubjected questions of faith and morals to popular vote nor has itdetermined discipline by parliamentary practice under a well developedparty system, therefore it has preserved its unity, its integrity andits just standard of comparative values. On the other hand, it has heldso stubbornly to some of the ill ways of Renaissance centralization, which are in no sense consonant with its character, that it has failedto retard the constant movement of society away from a life whereinreligion was the dominating and coordinating force, while at the presentcrisis it is as yet hardly more able than a divisive Protestantism tooffer the regenerative energy that a desperate case demands. 

I do not know whether secular society is responsible for the decadenceof religion, or the decadence of religion is responsible for the failureof secular society, nor does it particularly matter. What I am concernedwith is a condition amounting to almost complete severance between thetwo, and how we may "knit up this ravelled sleeve" of life so that oncemore we may have an wholesome unity in place of the present disunity;for until this is accomplished, until once more religion enters into thevery marrow of social being, enters with all its powers of judgment anddetermination and co-ordination and creative energy, just so long shallwe seek in vain for our way out into the Great Peace of righteous andconsistent living. 

Of course there is only one sure way, one method by which this, and allour manifold difficulties, can be resolved, and that is through theachieved enlightenment of the individual. As I have insisted in each ofthese lectures, salvation is not through machinery but through theindividual soul, for it is life itself that is operating, not theinstruments that man devises in his ingenuity. Yet the mechanism is ofgreat value for even itself may give aid and stimulus in the personalregenerative process, or, on the contrary, it may deter this by theconfusing and misleading influences it creates. Therefore we are boundto regard material reforms, and of these, as they suggest themselves inthe field of organized religion, I propose to speak. 

No one will deny the progressive alienation of life from religion thathas developed since the Reformation and has now reached a point ofalmost complete severance. Religion, once a public preoccupation, hasnow withdrawn to the fastnesses of the individual soul, when it has notvanished altogether, as it has in the case of the majority of citizensof this Republic in so far as definite faith, explicit belief, application, practice and action are concerned. In the hermitage thatsome still make within themselves, religion still lives on as ardent andas potent and as regenerative as before, but in general, if we are tojudge from the conduct of recent life, it is held, when it is acceptedat all, with a certain formality, and is neither cherished withconviction nor allowed to interfere with the everyday life of thepractical man. As a great English statesman remarked in the lastcentury, "No one has a higher regard for religion than I, but when itcomes to intruding it into public affairs, well, really--!"

The situation is one not unnaturally to be anticipated, for the wholecourse of religious, secular and sociological development during thelast few centuries has been such as to make any other result improbable. I already have tried to show what seem to me the destructive factors, secularly and sociologically. As for the factors in religiousdevelopment that have worked towards the same end, they are, first, theshattering of the unity of Christendom, with the denial by those of thereformed religions of the existence of a Church, one, visible andCatholic and infallible in matters of faith and morals; second, thedenial of sacramental philosophy and abandonment of the sacraments (orall but one, or at most two of them) as instruments of Divine Grace;third, the surrender of the various religious organisms to thecompulsion of the materialistic, worldly and opportunist factors in thesecular life of modernism. The truths corresponding to these threeerrors are, Unity, Sacramentalism and Unworldliness. Until these threethings are won back, Christianity will fail of its full mission, societywill continue aimless, uncoördinate and on the verge of disaster, lifeitself will lack the meaning and the reality that give both joy in theliving and victory in achievement, while the individual man will begravely handicapped in the process of personal regeneration. 

It is not my purpose to frame a general indictment against persons andmovements, but rather to suggest certain ways and means of possiblerecovery, and in general I shall try to confine myself to that form oforganized religion to which I personally adhere, that is to say, theAnglican or Episcopal Church, partly because of my better knowledge ofits conditions, and partly because whatever is said may in most cases beequally well applied to the Protestant denominations. 

_The unity of the Church. _ It is no longer necessary to demonstrate thisfundamental necessity. The old days of the nineteenth century are gone, those days when honest men vociferously acclaimed as honourable andglorious "the dissidence of dissent and the protestantism of theProtestant religion. " Everyone knows now, everyone, that is, thataccepts Christianity, that disunion is disgrace if not a very palpablesin. The desire for a restored unity is almost universal, but everyeffort in this direction, whatever its source, meets with failure, andthe reason would appear to be that the approach is made from the wrongdirection. In every case the individual is left alone, his personalbeliefs and practices are, he is assured, jealously guarded; all that isasked is that some mechanical amalgamation, some official approximationshall be effected. 

Free interchange of pulpits, a system of reciprocal re-ordination, a"merger" of church property and parsons, an "irreducible minimum" ofcredal insistencies these, and others even more ingeniouslycompromising, are the well-meaning schemes that are put forward, and inthe process one point after another is surrendered, as a _quid pro quo_for the formal and technical capitulation of some other religious group. 

It is demonstrable that even if these well-meaning approximations werereceived with favour--and thus far nothing of the kind has appeared--theresult, so far as essential unity is concerned, would be _nil. _ There isa perfectly definite line of division between the Catholic and theProtestant, and until this line is erased there is no possible unity, even if this were only official and administrative. The Catholic (and inrespect to this one particular point I include under this title membersof the Roman, Anglican and Eastern Communions) maintains and practicesthe sacramental system; the Protestant does not. There is no reason, there is indeed grave danger of sacrilege, in a joint reception of theHoly Communion by those who look on it as a mere symbol and those whoaccept it as the very Body and Blood of Christ. Protestant clergy areurged to accept ordination at the hands of Anglican bishops, but theplea is made on the ground of order, expediency, and the preservation oftradition; whereas the Apostolical succession was established andenforced not for these reasons but in order that the grace of God, originally imparted by Christ Himself, may be continued through thelines He ordained, for the making and commissioning of priests who havepower to serve as the channels for the accomplishing of the divinemiracle of the Holy Eucharist, to offer the eternal Sacrifice of theBody and Blood of Christ for the quick and the dead, and to remit thepenalty of sins through confession and absolution. If the laying on ofhands by the bishop were solely a matter of tradition and discipline, neither Rome nor the Anglican Communion would be justified in holding toit as a condition of unity; if it is for the transmission of the HolyGhost for the making of a Catholic priest, with all that implies and hasalways implied, then it is wrong, even in the interests of a formalunity, to offer it to those who believe neither in the priesthood nor inthe sacraments in the Catholic and historic sense. 

The conversion of the individual must take precedence of corporateaction of any sort. When the secularist comes to believe in the Godheadof Christ he will unite himself with the rest of the faithful in aChurch polity, but he will not do this, he has too much self-respect, simply because he is told by some ardent but minimizing parson that hedoes not have to believe in the Divinity of Christ in order to "join thechurch. " When a Protestant comes to accept the sacramental system, todesire to participate in the Holy Sacrifice of the altar, to makeconfession of his sins and receive absolution, and to nourish anddevelop his spiritual nature by the use of the devotions that have grownup during nineteen hundred years, he will renounce his Protestantism, when his self-respect would not permit him to do this just because hehad been assured that he need not really change any of his previousbeliefs in order to ally himself with a Church that had betterarchitecture and a more artistic ceremonial, and locally a higher socialstanding. When Anglicans or the Eastern Orthodox come to believe that avernacular liturgy and a married priesthood and provincial autonomy areof less importance than Catholic unity, and when Roman Catholics can seethat the same is of greater moment than a rigid preservation ofRenaissance centralization and a cold _"non possumus"_ in the matter ofOrders, then the way will be open for the reunion of the West, wherethis operation cannot be affected by formal negotiations looking towardssome form of legalistic concordat. 

The evil heritage of the sixteenth century is still heavy upon us, andthis heritage is one of jealousy and hate, not of charity andtoleration. It is an heritage of legalism and technicalities, ofself-will and individualism, of shibboleths that have become a deadletter, of prejudices that are fostered on distorted history and thepropaganda of the self-seeking and the vain. The spirit of Christ is notin it, but the malice of Satan working upon the better natures of menand justifying in the name of conscience and principle what arefrequently the workings of self-will and pride and intellectualobsession. This is the tragedy of it all; that Protestants and Anglicansand Roman Catholics are, so far as the majority are concerned, honestlyconvinced that they are right in maintaining their own divisiveness; inperpetuating an hundred Protestant sects on the basis of some variationin the form of baptism or church government or the method of conversion;in splitting up the Catholic Church because of a thousand year olddisagreement as to a clause in the Creed which has a technical andtheological significance only, or because one sector is alleged to haveadded unjustifiably to the Faith while the other is alleged to haveunjustifiably taken away. Self-will and lack of charity, not love andthe common will as these are revealed to the world through the DivineWill of Christ, are working here. The momentary triumph of evil overgood, the passing victory that yet means the banishment of religion fromthe world, and the assurance of disaster still greater than that whichis now upon us unless every man bends all his energies to the task ofmaking the will of God prevail, first in himself, and so in the secularand ecclesiastical societies in and through which he plays his part inthe life of the world--these are the fruits of a divided Christendom. 

I honestly believe that the first real step towards reunion would be aprompt cessation of the whole process of criticism, vilification andabuse, one of the other, that now marks the attitude of what are knownas "church periodicals. " Roman, Anglican, Protestant, are all alike, forall maintain a consistent slanging of each other. I have in mind inparticular weekly religious papers in the United States which maintaindepartments almost wholly made up of attacks on Roman Catholicism andthe derision of incidents of bad taste or illiteracy in the Protestantdenominations, and others which lose no opportunity to discredit orabuse the Episcopal Church and the Protestant denominations, and finallya curiously malevolent newspaper representing the worst type ofProtestant ignorance and prejudice, which exists on its libelous andindecent and dishonest assaults on Catholicism wherever it may be found. These are not alone, for the condition of ascerbity and nagging ispractically universal. It merely echoes the pulpit and a portion of thegeneral public. We all know of the so called "church" in Boston that isthe forum of "escaped nuns" and "unfrocked priests, " but in many placesof better repute the sermon that bitterly attacks Christian Science, or"High Church Episcopalianism, " or the errors of Protestantism generally, or the "usurpations of Rome" is by no means unknown, while elsewherethan in Ireland, the public as a whole finds much pleasure in bating anyreligion that happens to differ from its own, --or offends its sense ofthe uselessness of all religion. Let us have a new "Truce of God, " andfor the space of a year let all clergy, lecturers, newspapers, religiousjournals, and private individuals, totally abstain from sneering andill-natured attacks on other religions and their followers. Could thisbe accomplished a greater step would be taken towards the reunion ofChristendom than could be achieved by any number of conferences, commissions, councils and conventions. 

It was the will and the intent of Christ "that they all may be one, thatthe world may believe that Thou hast sent Me, " and in disunity we denyChrist. There is no consideration of inheritance, of personal taste, ofinterests, of intellectual persuasion that can stand in the way of anaffirmative answer to this prayer. Every man who calls himself aChristian and yet is not praying and working to break down the self-willand the self-conceit that, so often under the masquerade of conscience, hold him back from a return, even if it is only step by step, to theoriginal unity of the Catholic Faith, is guilty of sin, while it is sinof an even graver degree that stands to the account of those whoconsciously work to perpetuate the division that now exists. 

_Sacramentalism. _ The stumbling block, the apparently impassablebarrier, is that which was erected when belief was substituted forfaith; it is the intellectualizing of religion that has brought aboutthe present failure of Christianity as a vital and controlling force inman and in society. The danger revealed itself even in the Middle Ages, and through perhaps the greatest Christian philosopher, and certainlyone of the most commanding intellects, the world has known: St. ThomasAquinas. In his case, and that of the others of his time, the intellectwas still directed by spiritual forces, the chiefest of which was faith, therefore the inherent danger in the intellectualizing process did notclearly reveal itself or come into actual operation, but with theRenaissance and the Reformation it stood boldly forth, and since then asmind increased in its dominion faith declined. The Reformation, in allits later phases, that is to say, after it ceased to be a protestagainst moral defects and administrative abuses and became arevolutionary invention of new dogmas and practices, was the result ofclever, stupid or perverse minds working overtime on religious problemswhich could not be solved or even apprehended by the intellect, whetherit was that of an acute and highly trained master such as Calvin, orthat of any one of the hundred founders of less savage but more curiousand uncouth types of "reformed religion. "

What we need now for the recovery and re-establishment of Christianityis not so much increased belief as it is a renewed faith; faith inChrist, faith in His doctrine, faith in His Church. We lost this faithwhen we abandoned the sacraments and sacramentalism as superstitions, orretained some of them in form and as symbols while denying to them allsupernatural power. If we would aid the individual soul to regain thislost faith we could do no better than to restore the seven sacraments ofthe historic Christian faith, and Christian Church to the place theyonce held for all Christians, and still hold in the Roman CatholicChurch, the Eastern Orthodox Churches and (with limitations) in theAnglican Church. Faith begets faith; faith in Christ brings faith in thesacraments, and faith in the sacraments brings faith in Christ. 

It is disbelief in the efficacy of the sacraments and in the sacramentalprinciple in life that is the essential barrier between Protestantismand Catholicism, and until this barrier is dissolved there can beneither formal unity nor unity by compromise. This is already widelyrecognized, and as well the actual loss that comes with the denial andabandonment of the sacraments. There is in the Presbyterian church ofScotland a strong tendency towards a reassertion of the full sacramentaldoctrine; the "Free Catholic" movement throughout Great Britain is madeup of Congregationalists, Methodists, Baptists, and otherrepresentatives of Evangelical Protestantism, and it is workingunreservedly for the recovery and application of all the Catholicsacraments, with the devotions and ritual that go with them. Dr. Orchard, the head, and a Congregational minister, maintains in London achurch where, as a Methodist member of the "Free Catholic" organizationwrote me the other day, "the Blessed Sacrament is perpetually reservedand 'High Mass' is celebrated on Sundays with the full Catholicceremonial. " In my own practice of architecture I am constantlyproviding Presbyterian, Congregational, and even Unitarian churches, byrequest, with chancels containing altars properly vested and ornamentedwith crosses and candles, while the almost universal demand is forchurch edifices that shall approach as nearly as possible in appearanceto the typical Catholic church of the Middle Ages. Of course some ofthis is due to a revived instinct for beauty, that almost sacramentalquality in life which was ruthlessly destroyed by Protestantism, andalso to a renewed sense of the value of symbol and ritual; but back ofit all is the growing consciousness that, as Dr. Newman Smythe says, Protestantism has definitely failed, or at least become superannuated;that the essence of religion is spiritual not intellectual, affirmativenot negative, and that the only measure of safety lies in a returntowards, if not actually to, the Catholic faith and practice from whichthe old revolt was affected. It is a movement both significant and fullof profound encouragement. 

Here then are two tendencies that surely show the way and demandencouragement and furtherance; recovery of the sense of Christian unityin Christ and through an united Catholic Church, and the re-acceptanceof sacramentalism as the expression of that faith and as the method ofthat Church. I feel very strongly that wherever these tendencies showthemselves they must be acclaimed and cherished. The Protestantdenominations must be aided in every way in their process of recovery ofthe good things once thrown away; Episcopalians must be persuaded thatnothing can be wrong that leads souls to Christ, and that therefore theymust cease their opposition to Reservation of the Blessed Sacramentexplicitly for adoration, to such devotions as Benediction and theRosary simply because they have not explicit Apostolic sanction, or tovestments, incense and holy water because certain prescriptive lawspassed four hundred years ago in England have never been repealed. Aboveall is it necessary that the Episcopal Church should declare itselfformally for the reinstitution of the seven Catholic sacraments, withthe Mass as the one supreme act of worship, obligatory as the chiefservice on Sundays and Holy Days, and both as communion and assacrifice. In this connection there is one reform that would I think bemore effective than any other, (except the exaltation of the HolyEucharist itself) and that is the complete cessation of the practice ofcommissioning lay readers and using them for mission work and clericalassistance. A mission can be established and made fruitful only on thebasis of the sacraments, and chiefly on those of the Holy Eucharist andPenance. It is not enough to send a zealous and well intentioned laymanto "a promising mission field" in order that he may read Morning andEvening Prayer and some sermon already published. What is needed is apriest to say Mass and hear confessions, and nothing else will serve asa substitute. How this is to be accomplished, now when the candidatesfor Holy Orders are constantly falling off in number, with no immediateprospect of recovery, is a question. Perhaps we may learn something fromthe old custom of ordaining "Mass priests, " without cure of souls andwith a commission to celebrate the Holy Mysteries even while theycontinue their own secular work in the world. For my own part I ampersuaded that the best solution lies in the establishing of diocesanmonasteries where men may take vows for short terms, and, during theperiod of these vows, remain at the orders of the bishop to go out atany time and anywhere in the diocese and to do such temporary orperiodical mission work as he may direct. 

_Unworldliness:_ I have referred to the great falling off in the numberof candidates for the priesthood in the Episcopal Church; the samephenomenon is apparent in all the Protestant denominations, so far as Iknow, but it has not shown itself in the Roman Catholic Church. Thisdefection parallels the falling-off of membership in the variouschurches (except again the Roman Catholic) in proportion to the increasein population. We are told that the diminution of the ministry is due tothe starvation wages that are paid in the vast majority of cases, and ofcourse it is true that where a married clergy is allowed, men whobelieve they have a calling both to ministerial and to domestic lifewill think twice before they follow the call of the first when thepecuniary returns are such as to make the second impossible, which is, generally speaking, the situation today. To obviate this difficulty manyreligious bodies have recently established pension funds, but even thisform of clerical insurance, together with the increase that has beeneffected in clerical stipends, has shown no results in an increase ofstudents in theological seminaries and in candidates for Orders. The manwho has enough of faith in God and a strong enough call to the ministryof Christ, will answer the call even if he does think twice before doingso. The trouble lies, I believe, in the very lack of faith and in afailure of confidence in organized religion largely brought about byorganized religion itself through the methods it has pursued during thelast two or three generations. There is a widespread belief that it iscompromising with the world; that it is playing fast and loose withfaith and discipline in a vain opportunism that voids it of spiritualpower. Even where distrust does not reach this disastrous conclusion, there is a growing feeling of repugnance to the methods now beingadopted in high quarters to "sell religion" to the public, as is thephrase which is sufficient in itself to explain the falling away thatnow seems to be in process. The attempt to win unwilling support by themethods of the "institutional church, " the rampant advertising, sofrequently under the management of paid "publicity agents"; the settingapart of half the Sundays in the year for some one or other specialpurpose, usually the raising of money for a specific and frequentlyworthy object; the "drives" for millions, the huge and impressiveorganizations, "scientifically" conducted, for rounding up lapsedcommunicants, or doubtful converts, or cash and pledges for missions, orpensions, or the raising of clergy stipends; the "Nation-wide Campaign, "the "Inter-Church World Movement"; these--not to speak of the growingpolicy of "making it easy" for the hesitant to "come into the church" byminimizing unpopular clauses in the Creeds or loosening-up ondiscipline, and of attracting "advanced" elements by the advocacy andexploiting of each new social or industrial or political fad as itarises--are strong deterrents to those who honestly and ardently hungerfor religion that _is_ religion and neither social service nor "bigbusiness. "

Christ said "you _cannot_ serve both God and mammon, " and this is one ofthe few cases where He stated a moral condition as a fact instead ofindicating the right or the wrong possibility in action. OrganizedChristianity has for some time been trying to render this dual service, and the penalty thereof is now on the world. This consideration seems tome so important and so near the root of our troubles, and not in thefield of organized religion alone, that I am going to quote at lengthfrom the Rev. Fr. Duffy of the American "Society of the DivineCompassion. " What he has said came to me while I was preparing thislecture, and it is so much better than anything I could say that for mypresent purpose I make it my own. 

"To the thoughtful person, and the need of reformation will appeal onlyto the thoughtful person, it must on reflection become abundantlyevident that the chief necessity of our times in the religious world isthe recovery of Faith. Probably lack of the true measure of Faith hasbeen the story of every generation, with few exceptions, in the longhistory of Christianity, but there possibly never has been a time whenmen talked more of it and possessed less than in our own day. * * * *"

"Christianity is a new thing of splendid vision for each and everygeneration of men, unique in its promise and unapproached in itsattraction. And yet how small a factor we have made it in the world'smoulding compared with what it might be. We have not achieved a tinypart of what we might have achieved, because we lack the essentials ofachievement; Faith and Faith's vision. Obsessed, after centuries ofdiscussion and persecution, with the notion that faith is made up ofmere belief, we have lost the secret of that victorious power thatovercomes the world, and are weakly dependent upon the world's means forwhat spiritual operation we undertake. And so content have we grown withthings as they are, that what they might be comes only as a dream thatpasses away quickly with the night; blind to our appallingmoney-dependency in modern religion, satisfied that the Kingdom ofHeaven is as nigh to us as is possible under present conditions ofsociety, we practically have substituted for the theological virtues, Faith, Hope and Charity, the ascending degrees of belief, resignation, money. This is partly due to our religious inheritance and partly tomental and spiritual sloth which dislikes the effort of thinking, preferring easy acquiescence in conditions that are the resultants ofblinded vision. For dependency upon money is not something merely of thepresent, but a condition in the spiritual sphere that is largely aproduct of a long past. The really inexcusable thing is our willingness, in a day of greater light and knowledge, to close our eyes to the truenature of the unattractive, anaemic thing we _call_ faith, which wouldbe seen as powerless to achieve at all, if taken out of the soil ofmaterial means in which it has been planted. "

He then gives various instances of methods actually put in practiceamongst the churches and denominations which indicate the renunciationof faith and an exclusive reliance on worldy agencies and he thencontinues:

"The Joint Commission on Clergy Pensions, appointed by the GeneralConvention of 1913, made as the basis for apportionment, not theservices of self-denial of, but the amount of stipend received by, theclergy eligible for pension, thus penalizing the priest who, for thelove of God, sacrificed a larger income to accept work in the mostneeded places where toil is abundant and money scarce. It must beevident, of course, that the motive of the Commission is not anendorsement of the blasphemous gospel of Success, by adding penalty tothe self-denying clergy; what is painfully obvious is their apparentunbounded confidence that there are no clergy sufficiently foolish tosacrifice stipend at the call of faith's venture! And since theArmistice, the only real activity in organized religion has been aseries of "drives" for vast sums of money, in most cases professionallydirected. 

"A consideration of a few facts such as the forgoing must readilyconvince even the most unimaginative person that whatever power faithmight have had in the past, it counts for little today; that itssecrets, its very meaning have been forgotten. Otherwise there could notbe this extraordinary exaggeration of the place of money in spiritualoperation, and the unblushing, tacit admission that mammon, which Christso warned against, had been recognized as the master of spiritualsituation, instead of the willing servant and useful adjunct of faith itwas designed to be in the Christian vision. Indeed they all speak ofthat, largely unconscious, atmosphere of distrust of God which is soall-prevailing among Christian people today. If the great, positive viceof the age is covetousness, the great negative one is distrust of God;the two invariably go together as parts of a whole--one is the reverseside of the other--for, it is not that we _must_ not, or _ought_ not, but that we "_cannot_ serve God and mammon. " And this atmosphere is onein which faith cannot exist, it is stifled, crushed, killed, except itbreathe the pure, sweet air of God, with which it can alone surrounditself when human hearts will. 

"It is not surprising that out of such conditions should grow falsevalues, and that spirituality should be measured by the world'sstandard. Thus we have fallen into the vicious habit of adjudgingqualifications for spiritual leadership among the clergy by the amountof their stipends, and measuring their potentialities for usefulness inthe Kingdom of God by the amount of their yearly incomes; among thelaity, the men of power are ever the men of material means, whom wepermit to play the part of Providence in feeding and sustaining theChurch from large purses, the filling of which will not always bearclose investigation, and the really successful parish is always the onethat, no matter what its spiritual condition, rejoices in abundantmaterial means. So evident is it that the means of spiritual life havebeen so confused with the purely material, that it occasions no surprisewhen a neighbourhood having changed from the residence district of thecomparatively well-to-do to the very poor, the vestry feels bound toconsider the moving of the church to a more 'desirable' quarter. 

"These, of course, are hard facts to face, and it is not strange that weshould seek to evade them by a false optimism that thinks evil iseliminated by merely contemplating good. The point is, _they must befaced, _ and at a time when there is some evidence of a little awakening, it must more and more force itself into the consciousness of thethoughtful that the dead spiritual conditions of today are due to theshifting of faith from God to material things as the means of achieving. The only hope lies in the apparent unconsciousness of the error. This isinvariably the atmosphere that prevails when ecclesiastical historyrepeats itself in corruption; it had been true of more than two or threegenerations, though obviously unseen save by a few of those contemporarywith the times, that in Jerusalem, 'the heads thereof judge for reward, and the priests teach for hire, and the prophets thereof divine formoney; yet will they lean upon the Lord, and say: Is not the Lord amongus? None evil can come upon us. ' Corporate unconsciousness, in greateror less measure, of these conditions, may influence the degree of guilt, but never can acquit of the sin. And the cold, naked truth is that todaywe stand almost helpless before a world of peculiar problems. 

"What is there here to reflect the _power_ and _might_ of Christianity, such as the early Church, especially, possessed, and subsequentgenerations, in times of great faith, really knew so much of--the powerto heal the sick, to cast out devils, to achieve wonders out of Christ'spoverty, to experience the thrilling joy of religion in the ever-abidingDivine Presence, and witness the marvels of faith in the conquering ofthe world? How is it we are no longer able to communicate the secrets tothe suffering world which are able to transmute the people's want intoGod's plenty, and attract and hold the hearts of men with the joys ofthe Vision Splendid? Why is it that hope has given way to resignation, that the preaching of forgiveness has been dwarfed by the insistenceupon penalty, that distinct evils in the physical sphere are attributedto God and, because of that, held up to religious estimation as good;the day of miracles is regarded as belonging to a far distant past, theanswering of prayer looked upon as the exception instead of the rule, and the old melody of joy in religion exchanged for the wail of despairin an interpretation of 'Thy will be done' that is only associated withhuman calamity? The reply is as simple as, to the thoughtful person, itis obvious: we have lost knowledge of a living, vital, conquering faiththat is rooted in God Himself, and have satisfied the hunger of humansense by placing trust in the things of the earth which we see andtouch, and in so doing lost the power spiritually to achieve. 

"Now we can only approach, in the hope of a day of better things, thegreat practical and intellectual problems of our times from thestandpoint of faith's recovery, for it is only in their relationship tofaith they can be viewed intelligently by the Christian. And it will befound that at the root of all our difficulties and all ournegligences--so many of them unconscious--and as the cause of our vainexpediencies and attempts to justify the corporate spiritual situation, is the absence of vital faith and a _whole_ obedience to which God alonehas conditioned results. We need sorely to reconsider what faith reallyis, and when we have recovered in some measure that knowledge of it inexperience, which declared its unspeakable worth in the early Church andin later periods of ecclesiastical history which stand out before allothers, we shall look back upon our past distrust of God and Hispromises with shame and wonderment, and proceed to revise ourcataloguing of spiritual values and degrees of sin. For the reallydestructive thing, _before all others, _ is a weakened faith thatcompromises in a half obedience to Christ and a search for earthlyprops. The work of Satan has even been the prompting of distrust of Godin the human family, just as the work of redemption means so largely there-establishing of it in the Person of Jesus Christ. From the firsttemptation of man to the present moment, all the forces of evil haveconcentrated upon breaking man's trust in God and His promises; everysin has had that as its ultimate end, and every disaster, ill and trial, in the world and individual life, is subtly presented by the enemy ofGod and man (knowing our haziness of vision), so as to place theappearances against the Creator in a blind disregard for the created;just as in the life of the Incarnate Son all the great power of theforces of darkness were brought to bear unsuccessfully upon the snappingof His faith in His Father--from the time He was tempted to believeHimself forgotten, when hungering and physically reduced in thewilderness after His long fast, until the dreadful cry of derelictionfrom the Cross at the very end. 

"The call for reformation today, then, is to the doing of things leftundone, the search for and recovery of almost lost spiritual powers thatalone lastingly can achieve for God and hasten man's salvation. And thisrequires the venture and daring that breaks from the world, withdrawsfrom compromise, and that, rightly estimating the character and attitudeof God, refuses longer to believe Him the author of evils we resignedlyaccept today by calling them good; and instead, claims the powers of theDivine promises for the utter destruction of the world's ills by astrict dependence upon spiritual forces and weapons for theaccomplishment of results. Above all, this means a change and reform incorporate conduct as the end of repentance, for the present almost totaldisregard of the laws and principles of Christian living as given in theSermon on the Mount. "

These are hard sayings and strong doctrine, but will any one say theyare not true? The weakening of religion, with the consequent decline ofcivilization, is ultimately to be traced back to _organized_ religion, not to religion itself, and still less to any inherent defects inChristianity. Where organized religion has failed it deserved to fail, because it countenanced disunion, forsook the saving sacraments, andfinally compromised with worldliness and materialism. With each one ofthese false ventures faith began to weaken amongst the mass of peopleuntil at last this, which can always save, and alone can save, ceased tohave either the power or the will to force the organism to conform tothe spirit. If we have indeed accomplished the depth of our fall, thenthe time is at hand when we may hope and pray for a new outpouring ofdivine grace that will bring recovery. 

There are wide evidences that men earnestly desire this. I have alreadyspoken of the great corporate movements towards unity, and these meanmuch even though they may at present take on something of the quality ofmechanism instead of depending on the individual and the grace of Godworking in him. The "World Conference on Faith and Order, " the justeffected federation of the Presbyterians, Methodists andCongregationalists in Canada, above all the eirenic manifesto of theBishops at the last Lambeth Conference, all indicate a new spiritworking potently in the souls of men. Concrete results are not as yetconspicuous, but the spirit is there and a beginning has been made. Evenmore significant is the wide testimony to the need for definite, concrete and pervasive religion that is daily given by men whose nameshave hitherto been quite dissociated from matters of this kind;scientists, educators, men of business and men of public life. It may betestimony in favour of some new invention, some synthetic product ofcurious and abnormal ingredients; as a matter of fact it frequently is, and we confront such remarkable products as Mr. Wells has given us, forexample. The significant thing, however, is the fact of the desire andthe avowal; if we have this I think we may leave it to God to see thatthe desire is satisfied in the end by heavenly food and not by thenostrums of ingenuity. For the same reason we may look without dismay oncertain novel phenomena of the moment. In their divergence from "theFaith once delivered to the Saints" and left in the keeping of theChurch Christ founded as a living and eternal organism through which HisSpirit would work forever, they are wrong and therefore they cannotendure, but each testifies to the passionate desire in man for religionas a reality, and no one of them comes into existence except as theresult of desperate action by men to recover something that had beentaken from them and that their souls needed, and would have at any cost. Each one of these strange manifestations is a reaction from some olderror that had become established belief or custom. No one who holds tohistoric Christianity is interested in them, but those who have foundreligion intellectualized beyond endurance and transformed either bymaterialism or rationalism, seek for the mysticism they know to be areality (to employ a paradox) in the ultra mysticism of Oriental cults;those who revolt against the exaggeration of evil and its exaltation toeminence that rivals that of God Himself, which is the legacy of onepowerful movement in the Reformation, rush to the other extreme and denythe existence of evil and even the reality of matter, while spiritism, the most insidious, perilous and fatal of all the spiritual temptationsthat beset the world at this time, gains as its adherents those who havebeen deprived of the Catholic belief in the Communion of Saints and havebeen forbidden to pray for the dead or to ask for their prayers andintercessions. 

However strange and erroneous the actual manifestation, there is noquestion as to the reality and prevalence of the desire for the recoveryof spiritual power through the channels of religion. It shows itself, asit should, first of all in the individual, and it is only recently thatorganized religion, Catholic or Protestant, has begun to show asympathetic consciousness and to take the first hesitant steps towardsmeeting the demand. Because of this the seekers for reality have beenleft unshepherded and have wandered off into strange wildernesses. Thecall is now to the churches, to organized religion, and if the call isheeded our troubles are well on the road to an end. If the old way ofjealousy, hatred and fear is maintained, then humanly speaking, our caseis hopeless. If the older way of brotherhood, charity andloving-kindness is followed the future is secure in the Great Peace. Nothing is wrong that leads men to Christ, and this is true from theSalvation Army at one end of the scale to the Seven Sacraments ofCatholicity at the other. The world demands now not denial butaffirmation, not protest and division but the ringing "Credo" ofCatholic unity. 

VIII

PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY

 Not by might, nor by power, but by My Spirit, saith the Lord of Hosts. 

We have tried to approach each subject in this course of lectures in thespirit of peace, and the greatest contributory factor in the achievingof the Great Peace is the individual himself, on whom, humanly speaking, rests the final responsibility. "Not by might, nor by power, but by MySpirit, saith the Lord of Hosts. " Not by majestical engines and curiousdevices and mass-action, nor yet by an imposed human authority enforcedby arms and the law, but by the Holy Spirit of God working through theindividual soul and compelling the individual will. Peace is one of thepromised fruits of the Holy Spirit, and like the others is manifestedthrough human lives; therefore on us rests the preëminent responsibilityof showing forth in ourselves, first of all, those things we desire forothers and for society. 

We have experienced the Great War, we endure its aftermath, and amidstthe perils and dangers that follow both there is none greater than thatwhich attaches to exterior war, viz. , that the attention of bothcombatants is focussed on the faults and the weaknesses and the crimesof the opponent, with the result that both become destructive criticsrather than constructive examples. Chesterton rightly says, "What iswrong with the critic is that he does not criticise himself * * * ratherhe identifies himself with the ideal. " Seeing evil in others andflattering one's self is the antithesis of the spirit that would lead tothe Great Peace, for in that spirit the field of warfare is transferredfrom the external to the internal, and the interior contest, which aloneestablishes lasting results, necessitates a recognition of our own errorand the need of amendment of our own life. 

If our modern devices have failed; if the things we invented with a highheart and high hope, in government, industry, society, education, philosophy have in the end brought disappointment, disillusionment, evendespair, it is less because of their inherent defects than because theindividual failed, and himself ceased to act as the sufficient channelfor the divine power which alone energizes our weak little engines andwhich acts through the individual alone. There is no betterdemonstration of this essential part played by the personal life of manthan the fact that God, for the redemption of the world, took on humanform and became one Man amongst many men. There is no betterdemonstration of the fact that it is through the personal lives ofindividuals that the Great Peace is to be achieved, both directly andindirectly, than the fact that peace, the gift of the Holy Spirit, waspromised to the individual man, by Christ Himself, as the legacy he leftto his disciples after His Resurrection and Ascension. Since then theworld has been under the dispensation of the Holy Spirit, the "Guide andComforter" that was promised, even though it has blindly and from timeto time rejected the guidance and therefore known not the comfort. TheOld Law of "Thou shalt not" was followed by the New Law of "Thou shalt, "and this in turn by the law of the third Person of the Trinity whichdoes not supersede the dispensations of the Father and of the Son, butfulfills them in that it affords the spiritual power, if we will, toabide by the inhibitions and to carry out the commands. 

Our search is for peace, the Great Peace, "the Peace of God whichpasseth all understanding, " and we shall achieve this for ourselves andfor the world only through ourselves as individuals, and so for thesociety of which we are a part, and in so far as we bring ourselves intocontact with the Spirit of God. There is deep significance in the factthat the first time Christ used the salutation "Peace be unto you, " wasafter His resurrection. It would seem that this special gift of the HolySpirit had to be withheld from man until after the human life of God theSon had been brought to an end in accomplishment, for He says "Peace Ileave with you, My peace I give unto you: not as the world giveth give Iunto you. Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid. " "Itis expedient for you that I go away; for if I go not away, the Comforterwill not come unto you: but if I depart I will send Him unto you. WhenHe, the Spirit of Truth, is come, He will guide you into all truth. " "Yeshall receive power after that the Holy Ghost is come upon you. "

It is the spirit that quickeneth. After God had revealed the Law andgiven to us the great redeeming and atoning Life, He saw that we hadneed of a further manifestation before we should be able to keep the lawand live the life. Therefore the Holy Spirit was sent to quicken us andgive us power to do what we had both heard and seen. Today we accept themoral law, we recognize the perfection of Chirst's life, but we need tobe reminded again that the power to be "sons of God" is present with usif we will but use it. As this power is a spirit it can only beapprehended spiritually; when our minds and hearts are set on materialthings, even on good material things, the "still small voice" of thespirit remains unheard: but if we listen first to that inward voice andthen use the means of grace afforded us, we are enabled to lift up ourhearts and minds to the Creator and then to use in His service all thematerial universe which is also His creation. We can not get a rightphilosophy by working for right philosophy, but only by living in theright relationship as individuals: then as a by-product of religion aright philosophy will come. We can not get a right industrial system bysearching for a right industrial system, but if we show forth in ourlives the Christian virtues, a right industrial system will come as oneof the by-products of religion. So with each one of our so-called"problems. " Life rightly lived has no problems. This is a hard sayingfor an intellectual age whose temptation is to trust in its own powerrather than in the power of God, but "except ye become as littlechildren" and walk by faith and not by sight the Kingdom of God iswithheld. A soldier who suffered in the late war, and out of hissuffering found peace, says, "Christ's hardest work is to teach thewise: Those who are entrusted with authority and responsibility will bethe least prepared to make the venture of the Spirit, however much theymay believe in it. They are sacrificing least now: they will have tosacrifice most when the Spirit comes. They have so much to unlearn:children and working men have so little. The whole of our world today isrooted and grounded in intellect. Our machinery, our institutions, ourgreat systems, the entire body of enterprise is governed by brains. Itis this that will alter. Just behind intellect there is a vision that ispurer, keener, more powerful than the vision of your eyes, than thehearing of your ears, than the touch of your hands. This world is beingtransformed into another which comes into being at our spiritual touch. The world needs something personal, something from the heart. It is sickto death with the cold machinery of the intellect. But before men seethis they must change their view of life, they must _be born again. _ Thescientists, the historians and theologians, the philosophers, have madethe universe too big. It is not a big place: it is very tiny. Life is sosimple, really. Our wise men have made it so difficult, so ugly. It isonly children who can see the risen Christ; children, perhaps, out ofwhom seven devils have been cast. The world needs not critics, butteachers, and children are waiting everywhere to teach, but men, shutting the windows of their souls, try rather to mould these littleones to fit into the vacant spaces of their own stupid world. Are notchildren the true artists? They won't tolerate anything but Beauty. Theysee Beauty everywhere, not because it is there, but because they want itthere. Everything they touch turns into something far more precious thangold: every word they utter is a song of praise. You are almost inheaven every time you look into the eyes of a child. " Remember, please, these are the words of a man who has faced the horrible realities ofmodern warfare, and so do not dismiss them as mere poetry, or withNicodemus' question, "How can a man be born again?", but listen to amodern interpretation of the answer to that question:--("The LifeIndeed. ") "We must be born again even to see the spiritual kingdom, mustbe born of water and the spirit to enter its gates at all. So to hislittle audience of disciples Our Lord says it is not an affair oflegislation, of discovery, of which men say, 'Lo here, lo there! but thekingdom of heaven is _within you. _ Why a second birth? This is a secondbirth because it must needs supervene at a point where two elements canwork together, the element of an appealing, vitalizing spirit from theunseen and the element of free human choice. Being of the spirit, it isthe birth into freedom: it is the soul emerging from its prison into theopen air of liberty and light and life. " Note the element of freechoice. Our first birth is outside our choice and the gifts areunconditioned; our second birth, when again we become as littlechildren, demands our response to the Holy Spirit and our perseveringcooperation with Him to make His influence effectual for ourselves andfor the "communion of saints" and the corporate religion into which theSpirit also baptizes us. In a recent sermon a bishop of the EpiscopalChurch says, "This is the creed of the Church--the Divine Father andForgiveness: the Divine Son and Redemption: the Divine Spirit andAbundant Life. Therefore the Church still insists upon the creation ofmoral rectitude and spiritual character as the end and purpose ofreligion, aye, as the basic problem underlying all questions relating tohuman life--social, industrial, civic, and political. The Church stillpreaches the gospel of the Grace of God, the obligation and blessing ofworship, the meaning and virtue of the Christian Sacraments. " Also "Mybrethren, we shall not be content to criticize and find fault with ourown age and time, but rather we shall pray for the power to see withinits questionings, unrest and discontent--aye, its recklessness andapparent failures--the strivings of the Spirit of God. But each man hasto voice for himself the conviction of the reality of the spiritualorder and the spiritual life. Therefore, let us believe in and practicethe worship of God, 'praying always' as St. Paul says, 'with all prayerand supplication in the Spirit, ' or as St. Jude says, 'building upyourselves on your most holy faith, praying in the Holy Spirit. '"

Let us accept this suggestion and try to find in the unrest of our owntime evidences of "the strivings of the Spirit of God, " waiting ourperception and response. The soldier of the Great War, having faceddeath and imprisonment and suffering in many forms says, "compared withthe depth of good in the world the evil is shallow. " The first evidenceof good in our own day is the almost universal discontent with evils andthe desire to find a better way. The humility which recognizes that sowidespread a condition cannot be the fault of any one nation or groupbut is rather the responsibility of each one of us, is cause for hope. Some of us believe that war can breed only war, hatred only hatred; thatgovernments cannot make peace, but can only cause cessation of openhostilities, and that the real peace, the Great Peace, must await theaction of the Spirit. This Spirit, of love and forgiveness, breeds loveand forgiveness, indeed is far more potent than the spirit of hate. Because of this very strength and potency its evidences are not soimmediately apparent, but they are deeper-rooted. Perhaps in thismaterial sphere we human beings must see, and to a certain extentexperience, hate, before we can really know love, and consciously andfreely choose it. When that choice is made, when we, knowing all thathate and evil and malice can accomplish, yet deliberately choose to loveour enemies, we have slain the Adversary and made hate and evilpowerless. Of course we have not power of ourselves to do this but onlythrough the grace of God. When we try God's way, not waiting for theother person to reform or to be generous or to speak gently or toforgive, then and only then do we deserve the name of Christians; thenand only then are we walking in love; then and only then are we reallypraying effectually "Thy Kingdom come, Thy will be done on earth as itis in Heaven. " We have tried the way of the world, the way of reprisals, the way of distrust, and, thank God, we are none of us satisfied withthe results. Perhaps now we may be ready to try the way of God by makingthe great adventure of faith, each one in his own person; faith inhimself and faith in the future. The way of the world has bred fear thathas issue in hate, and hate that has issue in fear; but the better way, that of faith, breeds trust that has issue in fellowship, and fellowshipthat has issue in trust. There is no problem of labour, of politics, ofsociety that is insoluble if once it is approached in the spirit offaith and fellowship and trust, but none of these is susceptible ofsolution where the controlling motives are hate, distrust and fear. Themodern policy of centralization and segregation has resulted in dealingwith men as groups and not as individuals. When, for example, iron-boundcults (they are no less than this) meet as "capital" and as "labour, "both merge the individuality of their members in a thing which has noreal or necessary existence but is an artificial creation of thoughtoperating under the dominion of ephemeral, almost accidental conditions. As a member of an "interest" or a cult, where humanity and personalityare, so to speak, "in commission, " a man does not hesitate to do thosethings he would never think of doing for himself, knowing them to beselfish, cruel, unjust and uncharitable. A case in point--if we needone, which is hardly probable since they are of daily occurrence--is thepending contest between the mine operators and mine workers in GreatBritain, where both parties, with Government thrown in, are guilty ofmaintaining theories and perpetrating acts for which an individual wouldbe, even now, excoriated and outlawed. The Irish imbroglio is anotherinstance of the same kind. 

In a personal letter from a consulting engineer who has had unusualopportunities, by reason of his official position, to come closely incontact with the conditions governing industry and finance both inAmerica and Europe since the war, I find this illuminating statement ofa matured judgment. "As a practical matter, and facing the issue, Iwould preach the practice of de-centralization in government andbusiness which will in time develop the individual and accomplish thedesired end. * * * Decentralization should be carried to such an extentthat the units of business would be of such size that the head couldagain have a personal relation with each individual associated with him. * * * With the personal relation again established, unionism as atpresent practiced would again be unnecessary, and the unions wouldbecome once more guilds for the development and advancement of theindividual. " It is this nullification of the human element, of theperson as such, the introduction of the gross aggregate with itsartificial corporate quality, and the attempt to establish acorrespondence between these unnatural things, the whole beingintensified by the emotions of fear, distrust and hate, which producesthe contemporary insistence on "rights" and the rank injustice, crueltyand disorder that follow the blind contest. To quote again from thesoldier who achieved illumination through the recent war, "My friends, there is no protection of rights in heaven. When we speak of rights weare blinded by the light of this world of rule and order andintellectual conceits. It is not justice we need, it is mercy. "

If we honestly endeavour to bring about something more nearlyapproaching the Kingdom of God on earth, we should do well to achieve alittle more of the quality of child-like trust which knows that throughthe petition to father or mother, or to a guardian angel, or directly toGod, the result will surely follow. We long passionately to see a good, _our_ good as we see it, accepted here and now, but whatever we offer, no mater how righteous or how salutary, is but a small part of the greatgood, a limited and partial showing forth of only one element, while thefinal and comprehensive good is the result of many contributions, and inthe end is not ours, but God's, and by His overruling providence it maylook very unlike what we had predetermined and anticipated. Moreover, the condition even of our own small good becoming effective, is _faith, _and neither sight nor action. There is a faith that can move mountains, and it is faith in fellowship, in the underlying, indestructible good inman, above all in the desire and the intent of God to deal mercifullywith us and beyond the dictates of justice and the claims of our owndeserts. When we know and accept this power of faith, placing it abovethe efficiency of our own feeble works, then indeed we may become thepatient, hopeful, joyful and faithful Christians we were intended to be, and therefore the creators of the spirit of peace. Nothing permanent canbe achieved except in coöperation with God; any work of man alone (or ofthe devil) has in it the seed of decay and must perish, This knowledgerelieves us of the gloomy responsibility of destroying or trying todestroy every evil thing we see or think we see. If it is really evil itis already dying unless nourished by evil within ourselves. Here is aBuddhist legend which has a lesson for each of us--"The watcher in theshrine of Buddha rushed in to the Holy Fathers one morning with tidingsof a horrible demon who had usurped the throne of our Lord Buddha. TheFathers ran to the throne room, each one more infuriated than the other, and declaimed against the insolence of the demon, who grew huger andmore hideous at every angry word that hurtled through the air. At lastarrived the oldest and most saintly of the monks and threw himself onhis knees before the demon and said, "We thank thee, O Master, forteaching us how much anger and wrath and jealousy was still hidden inour hearts. " At every word he said, the demon grew smaller and smallerand at last vanished. He was am Anger-Eating Demon, and anger-rousingwords and even thoughts of ill-feeling nourished him. 

The belief that in comparison with the depth of good in the world theevil is shallow may also be expressed in the statement that God is Lordof Eternity while the devil is prince only of this world. As this evilspirit has power, and as a part of this power is the ability to appearas an angel of light, so to deceive us, we are bound byself-examination, constantly indulged in, to scrutinize those things, socommon in our own lives we do not notice them, which may be but theillusions of this spirit of darkness showing as a fictitious spirit oflight: Hurry and carelessness both in thought and in action;snap-judgment at short range; compromise with the spirit of the time inthe interest of "good business, " "practical considerations" or "soundpolicy"; worship of the doctrine of "get results, " acceptance of thehorrible principle: that it is every man's business to "sell" somethingto another, from a patent medicine or "gilt edged" bonds to a newphilosophy or an old religion; the estimating of values by size, number, cost. It is common parlance among Christian people to speak of what aman "is worth" meaning how much money he has. We speak of a man's"making a living" meaning only how much money he makes, when by makingonly money he would be killing his living. Do we not speak of the callof a missionary from an unshepherded flock to a large city parish as acall to "a wider sphere of usefulness"? When you or I conceive of anypiece of work as "important" is it not because it involves either greatnumbers or great sums of money? Then we hear much today of the need forleaders. The need could not be exaggerated, but does not this lackexist, in part, because we have forgot that the Christian's first dutyis to be a follower, and that only from amongst real followers can God(not man, least of all the man himself) raise up a leader? These aresmall matters, you may say, but "straws show which way the wind blows, "and the spirit, like the wind, manifests itself first in small matters. Every life is made up largely of small things, "the little, namelessunremembered acts of kindness and of love" which some one has called"the noblest portion of a good man's life. "

With this brief glance at some of the possible manifestations of thespirit of evil which we believe to be temporary and therefore ofsecondary importance only, let us consider some of the requisites of theChristian life as exemplified in the life of Christ, especially those ofwhich we need to be reminded today. We have already spoken of thatchild-likeness which takes the faith simply and applies it to the commonthings of daily life--Christ's life of ministry, of good works (whichwas, in proportion to the time given to preparation for activity andpreaching, of very short duration), full of injunctions to those whowere with him to "tell no man"; therefore the good works which are done"in His likeness" must not be done in public. If we are "seen of men, "verily we have our reward. Christ's life ended in apparent failure, inignominious death on the cross. The world worships today's success andimmediate publicity, the Christian, to be worthy of his Lord, mustaccept apparent failure and must offer his best work in secret: "And myFather which seeth in secret, shall reward thee openly. " A touching poemof Francis Thompson's pictures the marveling of a soul on his rewards inParadise which, in his humility, he thinks undeserved. The man asks ofGod:

 _O when did I give Thee drink erewhile, Or when embrace Thine unseen feet? What gifts Thee give for my Lord Christ's smile, Who am a guest here most unmeet?_

and is answered

 _When thou kissedest thy wife and children sweet (Their eyes are fair in my sight as thine) I felt the embraces on My feet. (Lovely their locks in thy sight and Mine. )_

A necessary reminder of the fact that for each of us, charity, which islove, begins at home, and that we love and serve God best in His holyhuman relationships--if we love not our brother whom we have seen howcan we love God whom we have not seen?

Again, the individual Christian life must, like its Great Original, suffer for others. When we suffer as a result of our own wrongdoing weare but meeting our just reward; but if patiently and humbly andvoluntarily we bear pain, even unto death, for others, we aretranscending justice, the pagan law, and exemplifying mercy, theChristian virtue. No sensitive soul in this generation, conscious of thesacrifice of the millions of young lives who "stormed Heaven" in theirwillingness to die that others might live, can doubt this. The essenceof love is sacrifice; voluntary, nay eager sacrifice. Before our BlessedLord died He was mocked and ridiculed, He suffered physical hardship, falling under the weight of the cross, and He was lifted up, crucified, to suffer the ignominious death of a felon. He was made a spectacle forthe jests and laughter of the multitude. In our own time and amongstourselves, except for periods of war, there is little necessity forphysical suffering for our faith, but the need to endure ridicule is asgreat as ever, perhaps even greater because of the absence of physicalsuffering. Since we are trying to apply these things in small and simpleways to the individual life let us each one consider how much moralcourage it takes to defend Christian virtues when they are sneered atunder the guise of "jokes. " Let us exercise charity by not quotinginstances, but let us be watchful of our laughter and our fellowship, which are both gifts of God, and see that we do not confuse paganpleasure with Christian joy, the evil sneer with the tender recognitionof the absurd in ourselves and in others. It is Mr. Chesterton again whopoints out the fact that the pagan virtues of justice and the like whichhe calls the "sad virtues" were superseded, when the great Christianrevelation came, by the "gay and exuberant virtues, " the virtues ofgrace, faith, hope and charity; and who says, "the pagan virtues are thereasonable virtues, and the Christian virtues of faith, hope and charityare in their essence as unreasonable as they can be. Charity meanspardoning what is unpardonable or it is no virtue at all. Hope meanshoping when things are hopeless or it is no virtue at all. And faithmeans believing the incredible or it is no virtue at all. " If you saythis is a paradox I reply: it must be so, since it requires faith toaccept a paradox. The realm of reason is the one in which we walk bysight, and of this fact our age in its pride of intellect has need to bereminded. If Christ be not the Son of God, and His revelation of the"faith once delivered" be not the divine and final guide, fulfilling, completing and at the same time reversing every other ethic, religionand moral code, then these things be indeed foolishness, for there is noexplaining them on the ground of logic or philosophy. But if, by thegift of grace, we have faith, we remember "I thank Thee, Father, thatThou hast hid these things from the wise and prudent, and has revealedthem unto babes: even so, Father, for so it seemed good in Thy sight. "

Again, and if as persons we are to grow in relationship to a personalGod, we must both speak and listen to our Father; in other words we mustuse the great dynamic of prayer. "More things are wrought by prayer thanthis world dreams of. " We are told that one of the requisites of thereally good talker is to be a good listener; the apparently good talkeris in reality a monologuist. In our prayer-life today do we recognizesufficiently the need for _listening_ to God? We are perhaps readyenough to ask for blessings and mercies, but that is only a part of thefull life of prayer which must include also thanksgiving, lifting of theheart and mind, and quiet listening or interior prayer. There was an agein the world when this interior prayer was so much more joyful andnatural a thing than the world of matter that it had to be taught "tolabour is to pray. " Today, when we accept the necessity of labour, andeven worship activity for its own sake, do we not need to be remindedthat to pray is to labour? If you doubt this, try to make thatconcentrated form of prayer known as meditation, out of which springs aresolve and determination to do better; try to do this faithfully forfifteen minutes a day and it may prove the hardest work you have everundertaken. A great servant of God has said, "I believe no soul can belost which faithfully practices meditation for fifteen minutes a day. "Nor must we forget that in this work of prayer we are companioned by theHoly Spirit, the Peace-maker, Who maketh intercession for us "withgroanings which can not be uttered" and "Who leads us ever gently butsurely into that closer communion with God whose result is life moreabundant. " After prayer it is easier to realize that "to be spirituallyminded is life and peace"; it is easier to obey the injunction "Andgrieve not the Holy Spirit of God whereby ye are sealed unto the day ofredemption. Let all bitterness, and wrath, and anger, and clamour, andevil speaking be put away from you, with all malice, and be ye kind oneto another, tender-hearted, forgiving one another, even as God, forChrist's sake, hath forgiven you. " And for those that seek after peaceit must be _all_ wrath, _all_ anger and _all_ evil speaking which areput away: This leaves no room for what the world calls "just wrath""righteous anger, " or speaking evil of evil doers. Let us call to mindthe incident in the early life of St. John, afterwards the greatdisciple of love, when he wanted to call down wrath on the wickedinhabitants of a city and was rebuked by Our Lord who said, "Ye know notin what spirit ye speak. " After love had supplanted wrath, and the goodspirit had taken the place of the evil in St. John's heart, he was sentto convert the people he would have destroyed. Yes, it is the spiritthat matters, the wrath that is wrong and that must be put away beforewe can love God or our neighbour as ourself, for the fruit of the Spiritis love, joy, peace, long suffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance. 

When we understand that the object of life and of education is thecreation of a spirit and not the doing of things, we are freed from thetyranny of results in this world as a final test and come to realizethat judgment belongs only to God Who as a Spirit judges the effort. 

Of course this does not mean that we are freed from the moral law, thatcertain evil things in ourselves and in others are not always theresults of an evil spirit, but rather that in addition to avoiding andshunning those things which are obviously evil, we must with equal careavoid doing even good things in a bad spirit. The commandments stillstand, the moral law is abated not one jot, but in Christianity and inChristianity alone are we given power to fulfill the law and to add thenew commandment, the summing up of them all, of love to God and man. Nohuman soul comes into the world without some desire to be good, becauseeach human soul is a child of God. To each one, not blinded by pride(and surely it should be easy in these days to be humble) comes, sooneror later, the realization of his own inability of himself to do what hewould, the need for a power outside himself, the power which isavailable and of which we have heard "I am come that ye might have lifeand more abundantly. " Let us examine how the apostles set about livingthis abundant life. In Dr. Genung's "The Life Indeed" we read, "One andall they made it a matter of the spirit that is the man, but the spiritthey recognized was not an abstraction, or a theory, but a presentPerson and helper who was witnessing with their spirits. St. John makesthe matter equally definite: 'The Son of God, ' he says, 'was manifestthat he might destroy the works of the Devil, ' and St. Paul, mindful ofthe inner subtleties of the conflict, warns his readers that Satan haschanged his tactics and has transformed himself into an angel of light. I am not sure that we have gained greatly by letting our notions ofspiritual life grow dim and abstract. Perhaps for this very reason therebellious, negative, designing spirit that is so prone to invade thehearts of us all is the more free to gain a foot-hold and go aboutcontrolling the tone of our life. There is real advantage in bringingthe large issues of life to a point where not only our mind but, as itwere, our senses, can lay hold on them. It is the impulse ofsimple-minded men like those early disciples, and if we continuestraight-seeing we do not outgrow it. What makes these views of life sodeep is not that they are less simple than those of others, but thatthey are more simple. To St. John the reality that has come to win theworld is not the promise of salvation, or prophecy of an eventual lifeeternal, but just life without modification or limitation, lifeabsolute, full-orbed, pulsating through worlds seen and unseen alike. 'Iam the Life, ' he makes Christ say, not, 'I am working to secure it. ' St. John it is who preserves to us that conception of eating the Flesh anddrinking the Blood of the Son of Man. No philosopher in the world, wemay roundly say, would ever have put it so, and yet how effectually isthus revealed what it means to get the power of the new life thoroughlyincorporated with our blood and breath. He it is who identifies the mostinner values of life with the simplest acts and experiences, reducing itto terms of eating bread and drinking water, and walking in daylight, and bearing fruit like the branches of a vine and following like sheepthe voice of a shepherd, and entering a door and finding pasture. "

Let us cease trying materialistic and intellectual means for supplyingthe power to live the spiritual life and let us each one establish theneedful relationship with the true source of power. May our time not belikened to the Oriental traveler, who, appreciating the convenience andforce of electricity as seen in a room he occupied, fitted his palace, on his return, with a set of elaborate fixtures and was surprised tofind no illumination therefrom! We are torches who can not shine inthemselves, but who, when connected with the great central Source ofPower, the Blessed Trinity in its three glorious manifestations, canshow forth the light of the world. Christians should be torch bearers, and the true torch bearer lights not his own path so much as the path ofthose who come after him. And this brings us to the fundamental reasonfor personal responsibility. Our motive in seeking personalrighteousness it not, as might hastily be thought, because of a selfishdesire to save our own souls, or to withdraw either here or hereafterfrom other souls, but for "their sakes" to sanctify ourselves; for thelives we live today create the spiritual atmosphere of tomorrow. 

From Spain come the following suggestive thoughts in regard to the valueof the person. "The individual is the real purpose of the universe. Wemay seek the hero of our thought in no philosopher who lived in fleshand blood, but in a being of fiction and of action, more real than allthe philosophers. He is Don Quixote. One cannot say of Don Quixote thathe was strictly idealistic. He did not fight for ideas: he was of thespirit and he fought for the spirit. Quixotism is a madness descendedfrom the madness of the cross; therefore it is despised by reason; DonQuixote will not resign himself to either the world or its truth, toscience or logic, to art or aesthetics, to morals or ethics. And whatdid he leave behind him? one may ask. I reply that he left himself, andthat a man, a man living and immortal, is worth all theories and allphilosophies. Other countries have left us institutions and books: Spainhas left soul. St. Theresa is worth all institutions whatever, or any'Critique of Pure Reason. '"

Yes, this is I think the lesson we have to learn, now at this turningpoint in history with the epoch of intellect crumbling about our ears, and the great World's Fair of multiplied, ingenious mechanisms we havecalled "modern civilization" at a point of practical bankruptcy. It isthe spirit that counts, the soul of "man living and immortal, " and onlythrough our own living, and the spiritual force that we can command, andthrough ourselves apply, shall we be able to compass that socialregeneration that is the only alternative to social degeneration andcatastrophe. The man who does not live his belief is powerless to redeemor to create, though he were a Solon, a Charlemagne, a Napoleon or aWashington; the man who lives his belief, even if he is a mill-hand inFall River, is contributing something of energizing force to the task ofre-creation. "Not by might, nor by power, but by my Spirit, saith theLord of Hosts. "

Fantastic and paradoxical as it may seem to link together Don Quixoteand St. Theresa, I am not sure that we could do better than to acceptthem as models. The loud laughter of an age of intellectual ribaldry andself-conceit dies away and the gaunt figure of the last of the Crusadersstill stands before us heroic in his childlike refusal of compromise, his burning compassion, his deafness to ridicule. In a sense we must allbe ready to accept the jeering and the scorn that were poured out on theKnight of La Mancha, if like him we are to fight, even foolishly, forthe things that are worth fighting for--either that they may bedestroyed, or restored. And with St. Theresa we must be willing toendure obloquy, suspicion, malice, if like her we live in faith, subjecting our will to the divine will, and then sparing nothing ofourselves in the labour of saving the world for God in the twentiethcentury as St. Theresa laboured to save it in the sixteenth century. 

The call today is for personal service through the right living thatfollows the discovery of a right relationship to God. Not a campaign buta crusade; and the figures of St. Louis and St. Francis and St. Theresa, together with all the Knights and Crusaders of Christendom, rise upbefore us to point the way. We would find the Great Peace, the worldwould find the Great Peace also, but

 _The way is all so very plain That we may lose the way. _

We have been told: "Seek ye first the Kingdom of God and Hisrighteousness, and all these things shall be added unto you, for yourHeavenly Father knoweth ye have need of these things. " If we go forth onthis new and knightly quest--quest indeed in these latter days, for theHoly Grail, lost long since and hidden away from men--we may, by thegrace of God, achieve. Then, "suddenly, in the twinkling of an eye, " andbefore we are aware, for "the Kingdom of God cometh not with watching, "we and even the world, shall find that we have compassed the GreatPeace, and if we do not live to see it, yet in our "certain hope" weshall know that it will come, if not in our time, yet in God's goodtime; if not in our way, yet in His more perfect way. 

In these lectures I have from time to time, and perhaps beyond yourpatience, criticised and condemned many of those concrete institutionswhich form the working mechanism of life, even suggesting possiblesubstitutes. In ending I would say as in beginning; this is not becausesalvation may be found through any device, however perfect, but becausethis itself, by reason of its excellence on the one hand or itsdepravity on the other, is, under the law of life, contributory to theoperation of the divine spirit (which is the sole effective energy) or adeterrent. I have tried at long last to gather up this diffuse argumentfor the supremacy of spiritual force as it works through the individual, and to place it before you in this concluding lecture. Perhaps I canbest emphasize my point thus. 

The evil of the institutions which now hold back the progress that mustbe made towards social recovery and the Great Peace, is far less thequality of wrongness in themselves and the ill influence they put inoperation, than it is the revelation they make of personal character. Itis not so much that newspapers are what they are as that there should bemen who are pleased and content to make them this, in apparently honestignorance of what they are doing, and that there should be others insufficient number to make them profitable business propositions bygiving them their appreciation and support. It is not so much thatgovernment should be what it is as that character should have so fardegenerated in the working majority of citizens that these qualitiesshould show themselves as a fixed condition, and that there should be nobody of men of numerical distinction, who regard the situation withsentiments much more active than those of indifference and amusedtoleration. It is not so much that the industrial situation should bewhat it is, as that there should be on both sides moral wrong, and thatthis condition could not have come about, nor could it still bemaintained, except through character degeneration in the individual. Itis not so much that many forms of religion are what they are, as it isthat they should progressively have become this through their exponentsand adherents, and that there should be so many who are still willing todefend them in this case. 

Every ill thing reveals through its very quality the defects of theindividual man, and as upon him must rest the responsibilities for thefault, so on him must be placed the responsibility for the recovery. Thefailures we have recorded, the false gods we have raised up in idolatry, even the Great War itself, are revelations of failure in personal andindividual character. We may recognize this, but recognition is notenough. We may found societies and committees and write books anddeliver lectures, but corporate action is not enough, nor intellectualassent. There is but one way that is right, sufficient and effective, and that is the right living of each individual, which is theincarnation and operation of faith by the grace of God. 

It is my desire to close this course of lectures not with my own wordsbut with those of one of the great personalities revealed by the war. First, however, I wish to say this. If there is any thought or word inwhat I have said that seems to you true, then I ask you to use it not asa matter for discussion but as an impulse toward personal action. Ifthere is anything that is of the nature of explicit error, then I praythat the Spirit of Truth may make deaf your ears that you hear not, andblot out of your memory the record of what I have said. If there isanything that is not consonant with the Christian religion, as this hasbeen revealed to the world and as it is guarded and interpreted by theChurch to which these powers were committed, then I retract and disavowit explicitly and _ex animo. _

There are two great spiritual figures that have been revealed to usthrough the Great War: Cardinal Mercier, the great confessor, who heldaloft the standard of spiritual glory through the war itself, and BishopNicholai of Serbia who has testified to eternal truth and righteousnessin the wilderness the war has brought to pass. It is with his inspiredwords that I will make an ending of the things I have been impelled tosay. 

"Christ is merciful, but at last He comes as the Judge. * * * He comesnow not to preside in the churches only but to be in your homes, in yourshops, to be everywhere with you. He wants to be first; He has becomelast in Europe, * * * Civilization passes like the winds, but the soulremains. Christianization is the only good and constructivecivilization. Americanization without Christianization means Bolshevism. Europe is suffering today for her sins. Christ has forgiven seventytimes seven, and now it seems that He is the Judge, turning away, rejected, leaving Europe and going through the gate of Serbia to Asia. Pray for us. * * * Send us not your gold and silver for food so much assend us converted men. Convert your politicians, your members of thepress, your journalists, to preach Christ. 

"Christ is choosing the perfect stones, the marble of all the churches, to complete His mystical body in Heaven. He thinks only of one Church, made from those true to Him of all the churches here. Civilizations aremoving pictures, made by man. Without God they perish. The soul, thespirit, lives. The war is not against externals; the war is againstourselves. "

APPENDIX A

From the point attained in the lecture on "A Working Philosophy, " apoint I believe to be clearly indicated by Christian philosophy andsharply differentiated from that of paganism or modernism, I wouldadventure further and even into a field of pure theory where I canadduce no support or justification from any other source. Speculationalong this line may be dangerous, even unjustifiable; certainly itintroduces the peril of an attempt to intellectualize what cannot beapprehended by the intellectual faculty, an effort which has been theobsession of modernism and has resulted in spiritual catastrophe. On theother hand we are confronted by a definite and plausible system workedout by those who were without fear of these consequences, and while thisalready is losing something of its common acceptance, it is stilloperative, indeed is the only working system and consistent theory ofthe majority of thinking men outside the limits of Catholicism. I thinkit wrong both in its assumptions and its inferences, and it certainlyplayed a deplorable part in the building up of the latest phase ofmodern civilization, while its persistence is, I am persuaded, a barrierto recovery or advance. This theory, which has gradually been deducedfrom the wonderful investigations, tabulations and inferences of Darwin, Tyndall, Huxley, Spencer and others of the great group of Britishintellectuals and scientists of the nineteenth century, is known underthe general title of Evolution. 

The following suggestions are offered with extreme diffidence, and onlyas uncertain and indeterminate approximations. In some respects theyseem not inconsistent with the most recent scientific research whichalready is casting so much doubt on many of the assumed factors behindevolution and on the accepted methods of its operation. The truesolution, if it is found, will result from the cooperation ofscientists, philosophers and theologians, illuminated by the fire of theDivine Wisdom--Hagia Sophia--for in such a problem as this, almost thefinal secret of the Cosmos, no single human agency acting alone can hopeto achieve the final revelation, while all acting together could hardlyescape falling into "the falsehoods of their own imaginings" if theyrelied solely on their unaided efforts in the intellectual sphere. 

Assuming then that life is an enduring process of the redemption ofmatter through the interpenetration of spirit, what is a possible methodof action? To explain what I mean I must use a diagrammatic figure, butI admit this must be not only inadequate but misleading, for instead ofthe two dimensions of a diagram, we must postulate three, with timeadded as a vital element, and, I dare say, a "fourth dimension" as well. Confessing inadequacy in the symbol, let us conceive of a space dividedinto four strata. The lowest of these is the primary unknowable, theregion of pure spirit, pure spirit itself, the creative energy of theuniverse, the unconditioned Absolute, in the terms of Christiantheology, Almighty God. The second is the plane of matter, an area ofpotential, but in itself inert and indeterminate. The third is the spaceof what we call life in all its forms, the area in which thetransformation and redemption take place. The fourth is the ultimateunknowable, that is to say, that which follows on after life andreceives the finished product of redemption. 

[Illustration: DIAGRAM NO. 1. The interpenetration of Matter by Spirit. _x, _ The primary Unknowable; _x', _ the ultimate Unknowable; _[Greek:alpha], _ the plane of Matter; _[Greek: beta], _ the plane of Life. ]

Now there is eternally in process a penetration of the stratum of matterby jets of the _élan vital_ from the realm of pure spirit, each as itwere striving to detach from the plane of matter some small portion, which is transformed in its passage through life and achieves entranceinto the ultimate unknowable, when the process of redemption is, forthis small particle, completed. Always, however, is exerted thegravitational pull of matter, and the energy that drove through, insteadof pursuing a right line, tends to bend in a parabolic curve, like thetrajectory of a cannon ball. In the completion of the process someportion of redeemed matter "gets by, " so to speak, but other portions donot; they return to their source of origin and are reabsorbed in matter, becoming subject to the operation of future interpenetrating jets ofspiritual energy. The upward drive of the _élan vital_ constitutes whatmay properly be known as evolution, the declining fall the process ofdevolution or degeneration. Evolution then is only one part of thecosmic process, it is inseparable from degeneration. 

This process holds in the case of individuals, of families, of races, ofstates and of eras, or definite and completed periods of time. As man isbegotten, born, developed to maturity and then is brought downward tothe grave, so in the case of races and nations and the clearly definedepochs into which the history of man divides itself. There is nomechanical system of "progress, " no cumulative wisdom and power that inthe end will inevitably lead to earthly perfection and triumph. Forevery individual there is the possibility of spiritual evolution withinthe time allotted that will open for him the gates that bar thefrontiers of the world of reality and of redemption that lies beyondthat world of earthly life which is the field of contest betweenunredeemed matter and redeeming spirit, of contest and of victory--or offailure. In the case of races and nations and epochs there is the sameconflict between material factors and spiritual energy; the samecrescent youth with all its primal vitality, maturity with its assuranceand competence, and the dying fall of dissipating energies. In each casedeath is the concomitant of life but there is always something thatlasts over, and that is the spiritual achievement, the precious residuumthat remains, defying death and dissolution, that infuses the plane oflife with its redemptive ardour, and is the heritage of lives that comeafter, acting with the sacramental agencies of religion in coöperationwith God Who ordained and compassed them both, in that great process ofredemption and salvation that is continually taking place and willcontinue until matter, and time which is but the ratio of the resistanceof matter to the redeeming power of spirit, shall be no more. 

I confess the hopelessly mechanical quality in this vain attempt to putinto words something that by its very nature must transcend all modes ofexpression that are intellectually apprehendable. Taken literally itwould be entirely false and probably heretical from a theological pointof view, as it certainly is more than inadequate as a philosophicalproposition. It is intended only as a symbol, and a gross symbol atthat, but as such I will let it stand. 

Now if there is indeed a possible truth hidden somewhere within somewhatclumsy approximations, it must modify some of our generally acceptedideas. The life-process will appear, not a slow, interrupted, butsubstantially forward development from lower and simpler organisms tohigher and more complex, with the end (if there be an end), beyond thevery limits of eternity, but rather a swift creation of some of thehighest forms through the first energy of the creative force, with thethrowing off of ever lower and lower forms as the curve of thetrajectory descends. So through a mass of low and static vitality comesthe sudden and enormous power that produces at the very beginnings ofour own recorded history of man, the almost superhuman intelligence andcapacity of the Greeks and the Egyptians. So each of the definite erasof civilization opens with the releasing of great energies, therevealing of great figures of paramount character and force. So, conversely, as the energy declines, men appear less and less potent andin a descending scale. This is the case with the Greek states, with theRoman Republic and the Empire, with Byzantium, with

Mediaevalism, and with our modern era. I do not know of any other theorythat claims to explain the perpetual and rhythmical fluctuations ofhistory, as violent in their degree as they are approximately regular intheir rhythm. 

Following the idea a little further, it may even appear that many of thelower, and particularly the more distorted, forms of animal life, instead of being abortive or undeveloped stages in a continuousevolutionary progress, are actually the product of a diminishing energy, stages in a process of degeneration, and therefore leading not upward toever higher stages of development having issue at last in a completedperfection, but rather downward to ultimate extinction. Geology recordsthis process in sufficient quantity, so far as many members of theanimal kingdom are concerned, and we, in our own day, have seen theextinction of the dodo as well as the threatened disappearance of otherspecies. Creeping and crawling creatures too, that we could crush withthe heel, are but the last and puny descendants of mighty and terriblemonsters that once rolled and crashed through the fetid forests of thecarboniferous era. So there are races of men today, amongst others thepygmies of Africa and the Australian bushmen, as well as some nearer ina certain degree to the dominant races of the world, whom large-heartedoptimists regard as stages of retarded development, capable, undertutelage, of advance to a level with the Caucasian, but who, in thisview of the case, would be but the weakening product of the "dying fall"of the energy that produced the Greek, the Semite and the Nordic stocks. 

So in the last instance, the ape and the lemur and all their derivativesmay be, not records of some of the many stages through which man haspassed in his process of evolution, sidetracked by the upward rush ofone highly favoured or fortunate line, nor yet an abortive branch fromthe common trunk from which sprang both man and ape, but rather the lastdegradation of a primaeval energy, producing in its declension thesestrange caricatures of the Man in whose production it found itsachievement. In other words, the old evolutionary idea is exactlyreversed, and those phenomena once looked on as passed stages of growth, become the memorials of a creative process that has already achieved, and is now returning, with its fantastic manifestations in terms ofdeclining life, even to that primordial mystery whence it had emerged. 

Granting this theory, the search for the "missing link, " whether in thegeological strata below those that revealed the Piltdown skull, or inthe fastnesses of Central Asia, is as vain a quest as it has alwaysbeen. Primaeval man, as he is grudgingly revealed to us, may have beenthe degenerate remainder of an earlier and fully developed race whoserecords are buried in the sunken fastnesses of some vanished Atlantis orLemuria, as the races of the South Sea Islands may be less metamorphosedremnants of the same stock. Into this infinitely degraded residuum of avanished race entered the new energizing force when the divine creativeenergy came once more into operation, in the fullness of time, and theMinoan, the Egyptian and the Greek came almost in an hour to theirhighest perfection. So through the unnumbered ages of the world'shistory, God has from time to time created man in His own image, out ofthe dust of the earth, and man so made "a little lower than the angels"has, also in time, fallen and forfeited his inheritance. Yet the processgoes on without ceasing, and in conformity with some law of divineperiodicity; but it is _Man_ that is created in the beginning, of hisfull stature, even as is symbolically recorded in the Book of Genesis;not a hairy quadrumana that by the operation of the laws of naturalselection and the survival of the fittest, ultimately and throughendless ages, and by the most infinitesimal changes, becomes at lastPlato and Caesar, Leonardo and Dante, St. Louis and Shakespeare and St. Francis. 

Now in this process of the interpenetration of matter by spirit theremust be a certain periodicity, if it is a constant process and not oneaccomplished once and for all time in the very beginnings of the world. This rhythmical action, which is exemplified by every phenomenon ofnature, the vibratory process of light, sound, heat, electricity, thepulsation of the heart, the motion of the tides, has never escaped theobservation even of primitive peoples, and always attempts have beenmade to determine its periodicity. May it not be infinitely complex, asthe ripple rises on the wave that lifts on the swell of the underlyingtide? Certainly we are now being forced back to a new consideration ofthis periodical beat, in history at least, for now that our own era, which came in by the power of the Renaissance and the Reformation andreceived its final energizing force through the revolutions of theeighteenth century and the industrial revolution of the nineteenth, isso manifestly coming to its end, we look backward for precedents forthis unexpected debacle and lo, they appear every five hundred yearsback as far as history records. 500 B. C. , Anno Domini; 500 A. D. , 1000A. D. , and 1500 A. D. Are all, to the point of very clear approximation, nodal points, where the curve of the preceding five centuries, havingachieved its crest, curves downward, and in its fall meets the curve ofrising energy that is to condition the ensuing era. The next nodalpoint, calculated on this basis, comes about the year 2000. Are we notjustified, in plotting our trajectory of modernism, in placing the crestin the year 1914, and in tracing the line of fall from that moment?

I have plotted this curve, or series of curves, after a rough and readyfashion (Diagram No. 2) and though the personal equation must, in anysubjective proposition such as this, enter largely into account, I thinkthe diagram will be accepted in principle if not in details, and notwholly in its relationships. I have made no effort to estimate orindicate comparative heights and depths, giving to each five-hundredyear epoch a similar level of rise and depth of fall. Perhaps the actualdifference here would, rightly estimated, be less than we have been ledto believe, though certainly few would lift the Carolingian crest to thelevel of that of Hellenism or of the Middle Ages, nor assign to the endof this latter period as low a fall as that accomplished during thetenth century in continental Europe. 

[Illustration: DIAGRAM No. 2. The rise and fall of the line ofcivilization; showing also the nodal points at the Christian Era and atthe years 500, 1000, 1500 and 2000 (?)]

In a third cut (Diagram No. 3) I have roughly indicated in conventionalform a phenomenon which seems to me to show itself around the nodalpoint when a descending curve of energy meets and crosses the descendingline. As the _élan vital_ that has made and characterized any perioddeclines, it throws off reactions, the object of which is if possible toarrest, or at least delay, the fatal _glissade. _ These are, in intentand in fact, reforms; conscious efforts at saving a desperate situationby regenerative methods. Trace back their lines of procedure, and inevery case they will be found to issue out of the very force which iseven then in process of degeneration, therefore they are poisoned at thesource and no true or vital reforms, for the sudden energy that urgesthem is, after all, in no respect different from that which is already afailing force. 

[Illustration: DIAGRAM No. 3. The reactions thrown off by (a) thedescending line of vital force, (b) by the ascending line. ]

This, I conceive, is why today the multitudinous and specious "reforms, "which beat upon us from all sides, and find such ready acceptance in theenactments of law, are really no reforms at all, since each one of themis but an exaggeration or distortion of the very principles and methodsthat already are bending downward the curve of our progression until itdisappears in the nether-world of failure, as did those of everypreceding epoch of equal duration. An example of what I mean is theastute saying, frequently heard nowadays: "The cure for democracy ismore democracy. "

Now while one curve descends and throws off its reformative reactions inthe process, the other is ascending, preparatory to determining thecoming era for its allotted space of five centuries. In this process italso throws off its own reactions, but these are for the purpose oflifting the line more rapidly, bringing its force into play before itsdetermined time. These also are exaggerations, over-emphasized qualitiesthat are inherent in the ascending force, and they are no more to beaccepted as authoritative than are the others. They have their valuehowever, for they are prophetic, and even in their exaggeration there isthe clear forecast of things to be. Trace them in turn to the source. What is their source? The new power issues out of obscurity and itscharacter is veiled, but we can estimate it from the very nature of theexaggerated reactions we _can_ see. If something shows itself, insociology, economics, politics, religion, art, what you will, that isespecially a denial of what has been a controlling agency during thepast four or five hundred years: if it is by common consent impracticaland "outside the current of manifest evolutionary development, " then, shorn of its exaggerations, reduced to its essential quality, it is veryprobably a clear showing forth of what is about to come to birth andcondition human life for the next five hundred years. This, I suppose, explains the comprehensive return to Medievalism that, to the scorn ofbiologists, sociologists and professors of political economy, isflaunting itself before us today, at the hands of a very small minority, in all the categories I have named, as well as in many others besides. 

A glance at the diagram will show a curious pattern round about thenodal point. One may say that the reactions are somewhat mixed. Quiteso. At this moment we are beaten upon by numberless reforms, both"radical" and "reactionary. " Materialism, democracy, rationalism, anarchy contending against Medievalism of twenty sorts, and strangemysticisms out of the East. Which shall we choose, _if_ we choose, anddo not content ourselves with an easier inertia that allows nature totake its course? It is simply the question; On which wave will you ride;that which is descending to oblivion or that which has within itself thepower and potency to control man's destiny for the next five hundredyears?

APPENDIX B

CERTAIN BOOKS SUGGESTED FOR COLLATERAL READING

ADAMS, HENRY Mont Saint-Michel and Chartres. 

ADAMS, HENRY Degradation of the Democratic Dogma. 

BAUDRILLART, A. Catholic Church, Renaissance and Protestantism. 

BELL, BERNARD IDDINGS Right and Wrong after the War. 

BELLOC, HILAIRE The Servile State. 

BRYCE, VISCOUNT Modern Democracies. 

BULL, PAUL B. The Sacramental Principle. 

CHESTERTON, G. K. Orthodoxy. 

CHESTERTON, G. K. What's Wrong with the World. 

CHESTERTON, G. K. The Napoleon of Notting Hill. 

CONKLIN, E. G. The Direction of Human Evolution. 

CRAM, R. A. The Nemesis of Mediocrity. 

CRAM, R. A. Walled Towns. 

CRAM, R. A. The Ministry of Art. 

CRAM, R. A. The Great Thousand Years. 

FAGUET, E. The Cult of Incompetence. 

FERRERO, G. Europe's Fateful Hour. 

FIGGIS, J. N. Civilization at the Cross Roads. 

FIGGIS, J. N. The Will to Freedom. 

FIGGIS, J. N. Political Aspects of St. Augustine's "City of God. "

GENUNG, J. F. The Life Indeed. 

GRAHAM, STEPHEN Priest of the Ideal. 

HARRISON, McVEIGH Daily Meditations. 

HUBBARD, A. J. The Fate of Empires. 

IRELAND, ALLEYNE Democracy and the Human Equation. 

LeBON, G. The World in Revolt. 

MEIKLEJOHN, ALEXANDER The Liberal College. 

MORRIS, WILLIAM The Dream of John Ball. 

PECK, W. G. From Chaos to Catholicism. 

PENTY, A. J. Old Worlds for New. 

PENTY, A. J. The Restoration of the Guild System. 

PHILLIPPS, L. MARCH Form and Colour. 

PHILLIPPS, L. MARCH Europe Unbound. 

PORTER, A. KINGSLEY Beyond Architecture. 

POWELL, F. C. A Person's Religion. 

RAUPERT, G. Human Destiny and the New Psychology. 

SHIELDS, THOMAS E. The Philosophy of Education. 

TAWNEY, R. H. The Acquisitive Society. 

WALSH, JAMES J. The Thirteenth, Greatest of Centuries. 

WALSH, JAMES J. Education, How Old the New. 

WORRINGER, W. Form Problems of the Gothic. 

DeWULF, M. History of Mediaeval Philosophy.