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THE UNITY OF WESTERN CIVILIZATION

Essays Arranged and Edited by

F. S. MARVIN

Sometime Senior Scholar of St. John's College, Oxford
Author of _The Living Past_

Humphrey Milford
Oxford University Press
London Edinburgh Glasgow New York
Toronto Melbourne Bombay

1915







PREFACE


The following essays are the substance of a course of lectures delivered
at a Summer School at the Woodbrooke Settlement, near Birmingham, in
August 1915. The general purpose of the course will be apparent from the
essays themselves. No forced or mechanical uniformity of view was aimed
at. The writers will be found, very naturally and properly, to differ in
detail and in the stress they lay on different aspects of the case. But
they agree in thinking that while our country's cause and the cause of
our Allies is just and necessary and must be prosecuted with the utmost
vigour, it is not inopportune to reflect on those common and
ineradicable elements in the civilization of the West which tend to form
a real commonwealth of nations and will survive even the most shattering
of conflicts. That we on the Allied side stand fundamentally for this
ideal is one of our most valuable assets.

The fact that the lectures were delivered at a settlement for training
persons for social work in a religious spirit, suggested to more than
one of those who took part in the course, how similar is the task which
now lies before us in international affairs to that which Canon Barnett
initiated thirty years ago for the treatment of the social question at
home. We need in both cases to associate ourselves mentally with others
in order to realize the common elements which underlie the seeming
diversity in the civilization of the West.

The method of the course was primarily historical, though certain essays
have been added of a more idealist type. It is hoped that the point of
view suggested, though prompted by current events, may be found to have
some permanent value. It could obviously be applied to many other
aspects of European life, e.g. morality and politics, to which
conditions of space have only permitted indirect reference to be made in
this volume.

F.S.M.




CONTENTS


   I. INTRODUCTORY: THE GROUNDS OF UNITY
      By F. S. MARVIN.

  II. UNITY IN PREHISTORIC TIMES
      By J. L. MYRES, Wykeham Professor of Ancient History, Oxford.

 III. THE CONTRIBUTION OF GREECE AND ROME
      By J. A. SMITH, Waynflete Professor of Mental and Moral
      Philosophy, Oxford.

  IV. UNITY IN THE MIDDLE AGES
      By ERNEST BARKER, Fellow of New College, Oxford.

   V. UNITY AND DIVERSITY IN LAW
      By W. M. GELDART, Vinerian Professor of English Law, Oxford.

  VI. THE COMMON ELEMENTS IN EUROPEAN LITERATURE AND ART
      By the Rev. Dr. A. J. CARLYLE, University College, Oxford.

 VII. SCIENCE AND PHILOSOPHY AS UNIFYING FORCES
      By L. T. HOBHOUSE, White Professor of Sociology,
      University of London.

VIII. THE UNITY OF WESTERN EDUCATION
      By J. W. HEADLAM, late Fellow of King's College, Cambridge.

  IX. COMMERCE AND FINANCE AS INTERNATIONAL FORCES
      By HARTLEY WITHERS.

   X. INTERNATIONAL INDUSTRIAL LEGISLATION
      By CONSTANCE SMITH, sometime British Delegate on International
      Bureau for Industrial Legislation.

  XI. COMMON IDEALS OF SOCIAL REFORM
      By C. DELISLE BURNS.

 XII. THE POLITICAL BASES OF A WORLD-STATE
      By J. A. HOBSON.

XIII. RELIGION AS A UNIFYING INFLUENCE IN WESTERN CIVILIZATION
      By H. G. WOOD, late Fellow of Jesus College,
      Cambridge.

 XIV. THE GROWTH OF HUMANITY
      By F. S. MARVIN.




ANALYSIS


CHAPTER I. THE GROUNDS OF UNITY

The appeal to history. Previous great schisms in Europe which have been
surmounted give hope for the present. The Reformation. The Napoleonic
Wars.

The two points of view, (1) Man's nature itself tending to unity through
conflict. (2) The stages in the process developed in history.

In pre-history conflict and diversity are predominant, though the
necessities of life prescribe certain uniformities. Consolidation comes
in favoured physical conditions, especially great river-basins like the
Nile and the Euphrates.

The possibility of a world-unity first consciously envisaged in the
Greco-Roman world. Greece gives unity in thought, Rome in practice.
Order with a solid intellectual foundation established with the Roman
Empire. In the mediaeval world a unity mainly spiritual is reached in
the same framework. The position of Germany in this development. The
break-up of the fourteenth and fifteenth century. The enlargement of the
known world and the growth of wealth and knowledge. This crisis still
continues and has been recently accentuated by the birth-throes of
nationalities. The supreme problem for international unity is now the
reconciliation of national units with the interests of the whole.
Underneath the superficial turmoil the great unifying forces of science
and of common sentiments continue to grow and will ultimately prevail.


CHAPTER II. UNITY IN PREHISTORIC TIMES

Retrospect of the search for unity in man's affairs, in its political
and scientific bearings.

The Unity of Man as an Animal Species. Ancient beliefs, doubts suggested
by the practice of slavery, their solution, and the modern conception of
a 'Human Family'.

The unity of man as a rational animal struggling against nature for
subsistence. Archaeological evidence as to the reasonableness of
primitive culture on its material side; doubts raised by man's
irrational 'barbarities' on the social plane. Lévy Bruhl's hypothesis of
a 'savage logic' and the Greek analysis of wrongdoing as rooted in
ignorance.

Man's struggle with Nature in the N.W. Quadrant of the Old World. Unity
here not to be found in the Food Quest. Prehistoric Europe shows variety
of regimens, hoe-agriculture, pastoral nomadism. The wheel and the
plough and the composite bread and cheese culture.

Race, Language, and Culture as Factors of Unity. The spread of the
European Bread Culture is earlier than that of Indo-European Speech and
probably than that of the 'Alpine' type of man. Race in Europe has led
not to unity but to discord, and linguistic affinity does not ensure
mutual intelligibility.


CHAPTER III. THE CONTRIBUTION OF GREECE AND ROME

Contemporary history is the only genuine and important history, the
present is the only object of historical knowledge; what the present is
and how, properly conceived, it gives history its unity and justifies
the study of what is past (ancient history); all history is _our_
history, and otherwise without meaning or value to us. The history of
classical antiquity is the history of the youth of the modern world, of
the formation of the now latent but still potent hopes, fears, designs
and thoughts which constitute the substratum of the European mind; how
this still unites a divided Europe and affords a ground of hope for a
restored and deepened union. Our debt to the Greeks: (_a_) the very
notion of civilization, (_b_) the idea of its realization through
knowledge, (_c_) the ideal of freedom as the inner spirit of true
civilization. How the Greeks failed to work all this out in both theory
and practice, and how nevertheless they taught their lesson to the
world; the services of Greece to the world in the creation of Art, the
Sciences, and Philosophy; the Greek ideal of a life beyond 'civilized'
life, but rendered possible by it, and thus giving to civilized life a
new and higher value; defects and merits of this ideal.

The Romans are inheritors of all this; how, while making it more
prosaic, they rendered it more practical and more effectually realized
it. All this most visible in the Imperial period. The Roman ideal:
(_a_) world-wide peace, (_b_) secured and maintained by a centralized
system of laws issuing from and enforced by a single power. Influence of
this ideal on later and modern thought and practice. Causes of its
decline and fall: (_a_) ignorance of the economic substructure of
civilized life, (_b_) neglect of opportunities to extend and defend it,
(_c_) the rise of the idea of nationality. The Revolution as the last
great attempt to reinstate the full Roman ideal in its outworn form.

Lessons still to be learned by us from the study of both the success and
the failure of Greco-Roman civilization; how the consideration of these
may at once sober our expectations and inspire us with hope in the
present. The forces which created it still maintain it and show no signs
of exhaustion. But that they may continue in effect we must study these
forces and learn the lessons the ancient experience of their working
conveys, exerting ourselves first to understand Greco-Roman thought and
practice and then to better their instruction.


CHAPTER IV. THE MIDDLE AGES

I. The mediaeval world. Geographical extent. Economic structure: its
features of uniformity and isolation: the effect of the rise of a
national economy on mediaeval society. Linguistic basis. Mediaeval
scheme that of a general European system of estates rather than of a
balance of powers.

II. The unity of mediaeval civilization in its great period (1050-1300)
ecclesiastical. The attempt of the Church to achieve a general synthesis
of human life by the application of Christian principle. (1) The control
of war and peace and the feudal world: the Truce of God and the
Crusades: the papacy as an international authority: the mediaeval
conception of war. (2) The control of trade and commerce and the
economic world: just wages and prices: the mediaeval town. (3) The
control of learning and education and the world of thought:
reconciliation of Greek science and the Christian faith: allegorical
interpretation of the world and its effects on natural science.

III. The mediaeval theory of society. The organic conception of society:
mediaeval thought _naturaliter Platonica_. The one society of mankind.
Hence (1) little conception of the State or sovereignty or State law;
but the universal society has nevertheless to be reconciled in some way
with the existence of different kingdoms. Hence, again, (2) no
distinction of Church and State as two separate societies: these are
two separate authorities, _regnum_ and _sacerdotium_, but they govern
the same society. The one society of mankind an ecclesiastical scheme
uniting a great variety of personal groupings.

IV. The influence of law on the development of the kingdom into the
state--a process begun early in England and France, but only generally
achieved about 1500. The new conditions--geographical, economic,
linguistic--which prepare the way for the new world of the sixteenth
century. The gulf between that world and the old mediaeval world. The
hope of unity to-day.


CHAPTER V. UNITY AND DIVERSITY IN LAW

The Problem in the Ancient World. Law universal and supreme over mankind
(Sophocles, Antigone). Law arbitrary and varying from place to place
(Herodotus). Nature and convention. The 'rightlessness' of the stranger
in antiquity. The law was a 'law of citizens'. Admission of the
foreigner to legal protection. Rome develops a law of the men of all
nations (_ius gentium_), which reacts upon the law of citizens (_ius
civile_), and ultimately coalesces with it. The law of nature.

The break-up of the Ancient World; the Middle Ages. The invaders bring
their own law with them. In the kingdoms which they founded each man had
his 'personal law'. Local Law. Feudal Law. The beginnings of National
Law: England, France, Germany. Roman Law in the Middle Ages. The Canon
Law.

The Modern World. The reception of Roman Law. State Sovereignty. The
Modern Codes. Unity and diversity of law within the political unit. The
world divided into territories of the English Common Law and lands where
Roman Law conceptions prevail. Forces making for unity: the notion of a
'law of nature'; the pursuit of common ends. International law, private
and public.


CHAPTER VI. THE COMMON ELEMENTS IN EUROPEAN LITERATURE AND ART

The question of the place of nationality in art and literature. It has
little or no place in the Middle Ages. The mediaeval epic; its
character. The mediaeval romance. Modern European art and literature
transcends national conditions. The characteristics of the new European
literature of the fourteenth century: Dante, Boccaccio, Chaucer. The
drama of England and Spain in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.
Painting and sculpture from the fourteenth to the seventeenth century.
The classical mind, and the principle of good taste and common sense.
The realism of Defoe and Hogarth, and the Spanish Picaresque novel.
Sentimentalism in the eighteenth century. The poetry and painting of
nature. The great revolution and the romantic movement. Great literature
and art are not national but human.


CHAPTER VII. SCIENCE AND PHILOSOPHY

Western civilization possesses a certain unity (1) in the sense of unity
of character, (2) in the fact that it has a common origin, ultimately in
the Greco-Roman civilization but more immediately in mediaeval
Christendom, and (3) in the sense that its parts have maintained a
constant intercommunication of ideas. (4) The different qualities of
German, French, and English thinkers have in large measure complemented
one another, (5) and the history of science and of speculative
philosophy is largely a history of the interaction of distinct national
schools. (6) The same thing is true of political thought. (7) Thus the
world of thought forms a commonwealth which is superior to all national
differences and, in spite of the war, remains a foundation of a very
genuine unity.


CHAPTER VIII. UNITY IN EDUCATION

Distinction between Unity and Uniformity. Historical Unity; the origin
of the School and the University. Both instruments of the mediaeval
Church for maintaining a common system throughout Western Christendom.
Importance of Latin as the universal language of education. Suppression
of the vernacular and of national movements. The Reformation; a common
European movement. Erasmus. The new teaching based on classical
literature. Tendency to disunion; the influence of the Reformation and
the national Churches. Growth of national literature. Political
influences, the French Revolution, and the National State. The essential
Unity still preserved, not merely in the study of the natural sciences,
but in the historical unity given by Christianity and the spirit of
Greece.


CHAPTER IX. COMMERCE AND FINANCE

Commerce and finance practical expressions of the instinct of
self-preservation which is common not only to all men, but to all living
creatures. Early appearance of trading habit in boys. Early examples of
trade. Abraham's purchase of a burying-ground from Ephron the Hittite.
Solomon's trade with Hiram of Tyre. Herodotus, the first historian,
opens his history with an allusion to trade. Trade is based on
specialization, and is at once a cause of unity and of disunion. Its
extension from individuals to communities. Foreign trade stimulated by
variations of value in different communities. Specialization increases
efficiency, but makes the worker a machine, and a speculator on the
chance that others will want what he makes. International trade also
promotes both unity and friction. On the whole, commerce a great
promoter of unity. Likewise finance, or money-dealing. Its origin and
development. London's catholic taste in foreign securities: sometimes
prefers them to the home-made article. Effect of foreign investment on
home production and consumption. Foreign finance and productive
specialization.


CHAPTER X. INTERNATIONAL INDUSTRIAL LEGISLATION

Interdependence true of countries as of classes. A fact brought home to
us by the European War. Importance of international action in relation
to the raising of social and industrial standards. This truth perceived
by Robert Owen a century ago. Work of Owen and his successors in the
direction of an international minimum of labour conditions. Action of
the Swiss Federal Council. The German Emperor calls the first Conference
on workmen's protection 1890. Formal failure and substantial achievement
of this Conference. Founding of International Association for Labour
Legislation and International Labour Office. Constitution and work of
these bodies. Biennial conferences of the association: subjects and
methods. International Conventions of 1906, their scope and value.
Subsequent labours of the Association. Its present position and future
hopes.


CHAPTER XI. COMMON IDEALS OF SOCIAL REFORM

Ideals arise from perceived social evils. They have caused in recent
years (_a_) Common action by European Governments and (_b_) action by
separate Governments influenced by foreign experience. There has also
been a growth of sentiment, not yet embodied in law or institutions,
with regard to (i) the position of women and children, (ii) social
caste, and (iii) the increase of common action for reform by civilized
states.


CHAPTER XII. THE POLITICAL BASES OF A WORLD-STATE

The nineteenth century has made three great contributions towards the
possibility of International Government, the political realization of
nationality, the growth in substance and method of international law,
and the progress of federalism. In other fields outside politics,
especially in commerce and finance, a network of international
co-operation has grown up. Closer political union is needed for three
purposes: first, the consolidation, extension, and improved sanctions of
existing international law; secondly, the settlement of differences
between nations; thirdly, positive co-operation for the common good.
This progress involves some further diminution of 'sovereignty' and
'independence'. But these concepts have no absolute validity. In the
Hague Conventions and other intergovernmental instruments the rudiments
of international government already exist. In order to establish
effective security for peace, what is needed is a general treaty
providing that all disputes be submitted to arbitration or conciliation,
with such guarantees for acceptance of the award as will establish
confidence. The test of confidence is the voluntary reduction of
armaments. Internationalists differ as to the nature and rigour of the
sanctions. Some rely entirely on a 'moratorium' and the pressure of
public opinion: others would compel the submission of all issues, but
not the acceptance of awards: others, again, would apply force,
diplomatic, economic, or military, to both processes.

Internationalism, to be effective, would require a machinery for dealing
with new issues before they ripened into disputes. How far will the
state of mind following this war assist this progress of
internationalism? Is a spiritual conversion, corresponding to the
process of biological mutatism, possible or probable?


CHAPTER XIII. RELIGION

The history of Europe suggests that, though the Church exerted a
considerable influence on the growth of a common type of civilization in
the West, in modern times religion has proved a divisive rather than a
unifying factor. During the last generation or two, however, there has
been a decline of the dogmatic and sectarian tempers. This change is
largely due to the growth of the scientific spirit, and, as in other
realms of inquiry so in the study of religion, international
co-operation has steadily developed. Both literary criticism and
psychological analysis have contributed to the widening of sympathy. The
better understanding of certain elements in the Christian ideal and the
Christian hope must also be taken into consideration as a factor making
for a new catholicism which finds expression in movements like the Adult
School Movement and the Student Christian Movement, and in the
ever-growing demand for closer co-operation in missionary work.

Beyond this, partly through the comparative study of religions, we are
conscious that religious thought in the West possesses some common
characteristics, notably, faith in the solidarity of mankind and in the
reality of progress. Of themselves, these two convictions do not
constitute any very close bond of union, and both beliefs need to be
defined and enforced by the sense of sin and the consciousness of God
which the West has learned from Jesus.


CHAPTER XIV. THE GROWTH OF HUMANITY

The need of a basis of right sentiments even greater than that of
improved political machinery to secure international union. We must
start from patriotism and enlighten and enlarge it. Of the three Western
nations which lead in the arts and sciences, France and England through
the war become closely allied in defence of a policy of the union of
free and pacific people throughout the world. The position of Italy,
Russia, and the United States. The increase of arbitral methods and the
formation of leagues of peace or even of a world-state are matters
calling for earnest thought; but the spread of the notion of humanity,
the co-operation of all mankind in a common work is more fundamental and
may be begun by any one at home. This idea, starting with the Stoics, is
fully developed with the advent of modern science. It shows itself in
many forms and the spread of exact science is its most powerful aid.
This is entirely independent of nationality and will be increasingly
concerned with the alleviation of human suffering and the improvement of
life.

The final test of a high international aim is the joint effort of the
stronger peoples to protect and assist the weaker and less advanced. The
case of Africa and the Brussels Conference of 1889. Analogy with the
treatment of the young at home.




I

THE GROUNDS OF UNITY


In face of the greatest tragedy in history, it is to history that we
make appeal. What does it teach us to expect as the issue of the
conflict? How far and in what form may we anticipate that the unity of
mankind, centring as it must round Europe, will emerge from the trial?

Only two occasions occur to the mind on which, since the break up of the
Roman Empire, a schism so serious as the present has threatened the
unity of the Western world. The first was the Reformation and the war
which it entailed down to the Peace of Westphalia. The second was the
struggle against Napoleon, terminated a hundred years ago. The latter
was in many respects a closer parallel. It was a struggle of the
independent nations of Europe against the overweening ambition and
aggression of one Power. It united them in an alliance which achieved
its purpose and survived the successful issue of the war for some years.
Some such course, with a comity of nations far wider and more enduring
than the Holy Alliance as its sequel, we hope and predict for the
present war.

The struggle at the Reformation was less like the present, either in its
causes or its course, but it has some features which make it a useful
point for a survey of the permanent unifying elements which hold and
will hold the West together in spite of occasional cataclysms and the
clash of rival interests and passion. A man like Erasmus, trembling
before the catastrophe, willing to make immense sacrifices to avoid an
open breach, uncertain of any final readjustment which might restore the
harmony of the world, was not unlike some among us who hoped against
hope that the enemy might be appeased, who thought that almost any peace
was better than any war, who still fear that the breach in unity is
vital or irreparable for generations.

And the issue three hundred years ago may also inspire us with a
cautious optimism, a strong though not unmeasured trust. The right cause
triumphed, fully in the end. Freedom was secured, both for churches and
for individuals, throughout the world. The evil features in the papal
system, against which the attack was really levelled, quietly but
completely disappeared, and the institution survived, itself reformed.
Before a hundred years were out the world had moved on to the conquest
of new vantage points and the establishment of a wider unity on a firmer
base.

Both previous occasions are therefore full of hope. The European system
is, as we shall see throughout these essays, the necessary nucleus of
any civilized order embracing the whole world; and the great convulsions
which have hitherto continued to occur in it from time to time are
moments of especial value for the study of the conditions under which it
exists. They are the pathological experiences which reveal the strength
and the weaknesses of the normal functions. We strive and hope for a
more lasting state of general health, and do not despair of the patient
even in this grave attack. He has survived even more serious illness.
For though the present war is the most gigantic that the world has ever
seen, its very greatness is the result of some of those modern
developments--scientific skill, improved communications, national
cohesion--on which ultimately the better organization of the whole
commonwealth of nations will be built. _Passi graviora_; we have
weathered the storms of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, when
the old Roman order and its sequel in the Catholic Church were at their
weakest and the recuperative power of science and social reform and
nationalism had hardly begun its work. We shall not fail with our
greater forces of the present to regain and create a Europe freer,
stronger, and more united than that which now seems to be shaken to the
depths.

The process of gaining a greater unity among the leading nations of the
world, like all the aspects of human evolution, must be regarded from
two points of view, distinct in theory, inextricable in life. What does
the nature of man itself demand? How has this nature expressed itself,
and been affected in history by the external conditions, the geography,
climate, conflict and commingling of races, which the theatre of its
appearance has imposed?

Looked at in itself, so far as we can isolate it from its surroundings,
man's nature is distinguished from that of lower animals by two
features, both of them essentially social and tending to unity. He is
more deeply and permanently attached to members of his own species, by
affection, sympathy, veneration, tradition, than any other creature. And
he is a reasoning being, reason itself requiring the contact and
agreement of various minds. The incomparably greater force which he has
acquired in the world, over all other species and over nature itself, is
due to the working of these two factors. At starting he was physically
less strong than many other creatures, and if he fought with others of
his own kind, other animal species did the same. He was ahead of them by
his reason, and reason acted, and must act, through the concert of
thinking beings. This concert is not merely, or even mainly, an
attachment among those living at the same time to co-operate for some
common end; it is with man a conscious sequence of one generation on
another. Sometimes the movement of adaptation is slower, sometimes
quicker, but in every case the living are carrying on the work of the
dead, and their co-operation in time as well as space is due to the
working of the same qualities of attachment and reason, the social
factors, by which at any moment a community of men is bound together.

Still looking at the matter _a priori_, it is clear that the vast
community of mankind, though it has come more closely in contact in
recent years over all the planet, yet acts, and must act, habitually and
momentarily, through many smaller aggregates. Of these the leading types
are the family and the country or nation. The former is not directly
relevant to our inquiry, the latter plays a leading part in it. The
former is less dependent on external conditions of land-formation and
the like, and is in consequence more universal, more purely human. The
latter has been shaped by geographical conditions, by racial qualities,
by the apparent accidents of history. Its relation to the larger units
of human society raises the most difficult, fundamental and unavoidable
questions. To curb aggressive nationalism is the root-problem of the
present war. To reconcile permanently nationalism with humanity would be
to establish the everlasting peace.

Western society, indeed the whole community of mankind, is built up of
these smaller units, the family and the nation, with their various
intermediate groupings, but the historical process has by no means
conformed at all exactly to this logical order. Society has not been
made in orderly fashion by forming families and then combining families
to make hundreds, and hundreds to make counties, and counties nations,
and so on to the whole. A German god might have done this, but the way
of nature and history was less perfect. The minor forms of human
association have been taking shape, being altered and on the whole
improved, throughout the process. At one point, of high importance for
our argument, a larger form of association was achieved before the
necessary constituent elements were articulated. This was the
Greco-Roman world encircling the Mediterranean and completed in the
Roman Empire of the second century A.D. It was the nucleus from which
the Western world of modern civilization has been developed; yet it was
there, settled in its main outlines, before the national units which it
required for internal harmony and cohesion had taken any definite shape.
It is to the difficulties of their growth and mutual adjustment that we
owe most of the conflicts of modern history.

We shall in this book go back first to a still earlier stage, a stage of
pre-history, to a time when no one, not gifted with superhuman insight
and prescience, could have foreseen the course which human civilization
would pursue. All over the world, for tens of thousands of years, a
culture persisted, associated with stone implements, and marked by a
similarity which is often extremely striking, in races and tribes widely
severed by distance and climatic conditions. The raw material of the
human product in science, art, and invention was alike in texture
although often exuberant in detail and imagination. But it had not yet
the unity of an organic whole, knit by a common purpose and conscious of
itself.

To gain the cohesion of large numbers of men by whom wealth could be
created and sufficient leisure and independence secured for an
intellectual life, not dictated by the necessities of existence, a
special concurrence of favourable physical conditions was required. The
rich and secluded river-basins of many parts of the world provided this,
and in consequence we find similar large communities arising at the end
of the Stone Age in such places as China, Peru, Mexico, and above all in
Mesopotamia and Egypt. The last named derived their special importance
for the sequel from their proximity to the Mediterranean, which was to
act as the great meeting-place and training-school for adventurous
spirits and inquiring minds. From the busy intercourse of these
land-locked waters arose the civilization called Minoan, or Aegean,
centring in Crete, itself to be surpassed by the trading activity of the
Phoenicians and the art and science of the Greeks.

It is with the advent of the Greek that the seal is placed upon the
claim of the Mediterranean to be the birthplace of the highest type of
human civilization, the centre from which a unity of the spirit was to
spread, until, by material force as well as by the conquering mind, the
European or Western man was recognized as in the forefront of the race.
The supremacy of the Greek lay in his achievement in three directions,
as a thinker, as an artist, and as the builder of the city-state. For
our present purpose the first and the last are the most important and
the first the most important of all.

The city-state was important as the first example of a free,
self-governing community in which the individual realized his powers by
living--and dying--with and for his fellows. This new type of human
community was of the highest moment in the sequel. In many points it was
a model to the Romans, and thus became a fulcrum for the upward movement
of the Western world. In the works, too, of the Greek philosophers,
especially of Plato and Aristotle, it inspired the earliest and some of
the deepest reflections on the nature of social life and government. But
it never acquired the permanence of the political units needed to build
up the European Commonwealth. For this nations were required, and the
Greeks were a race and not a nation. The [Greek: polis] lacked the
size, the variety of elements, and the territorial basis on which a
modern nation rests.

It is rather in their achievements as thinkers and as artists, above all
in their science and philosophy, that we find the most fundamental and
lasting contribution of the Greeks to the unity and progress of mankind.
When these became allied to the tenacity, the organizing and legal
genius of the Romans, a firm centre of civilized life was established,
which has survived the shocks of two thousand years of growth and
conflict and will survive the upheaval of the present. The Greek
unification was in the world of thought and art; the Roman attempted a
corresponding work of organization in the human world which lay nearest
to him in the countries round the Mediterranean Sea. Both efforts were
of priceless value and continuing effect, but both were, from the
conditions of the problem, imperfect solutions, the brilliant but
precocious sketches of adolescent genius. The Greek, working at first on
the material accumulated by generations of Chaldean and Egyptian
priests, discovered from their crude, unorganized, and inexact
observations of geometry and astronomy the elements of unity in
diversity which constitute science. Inquiring for causes, comparing and
correcting individual facts, he arrived at the first equations in
mathematics, the first laws of nature. His work in this sphere and in
that of medicine went on continuously until after the Roman occupation
of the Mediterranean world was complete. It died out gradually in the
theological atmosphere of Alexandria, and on the purely human side ended
in Stoicism with an amalgam of universal philosophy and Roman law. The
Stoic Empire of the second century A.D. was the high-water mark of the
joint efforts of Greeks and Romans to attain unity and humanism in
thought and practice. Its brilliance while it lasted the nobility of
its leading men, the persistence of the main lines of its structure, are
the measure of our debt to the builders of the Greco-Roman world.

The Roman contribution to the result which in the end so perfectly
combined both movements was, in its origin and nature, singularly unlike
the Greek. The Roman did not analyse his conceptions. He accepted what
came to him, either from his ancestors or from other peoples, without
scrutiny, except so far as to see that new matter could be worked into
old forms without a dislocation in practice. He was the pragmatist, the
Greek the idealist. This instinct of adaptation and sequence made the
Roman the pioneer in law as the Greek was the pioneer in science. It
rendered possible the holding together in one political system of the
multifarious territories and peoples from the Tigris to the Solway Firth
for long enough to enable the greater part of that area to be
permanently civilized on Roman lines. But, like the artist's sketch of
his picture, the whole was outlined before the parts were worked out in
their final form; and the sketch itself was seriously imperfect in more
than one point. The set-back which Augustus received on the eastern side
of the Rhine was never made good, and the Germanic tribes therefore
remained un-Romanized until the Church in the seventh and eighth
centuries resumed the work on other lines. This defeat of Varus and the
legend of Hermann became to the German a symbol of national greatness in
a sense which none of the other national conflicts with Rome ever
assumed. To us Boadicea is a barbarian, and we trace with gratitude and
pleasure the signs of civilization left by the Roman occupation. To us
the Roman was for centuries a defence against barbarism, and we regret
that we had to do over again many of the things which he had once taught
us. But the Roman Empire, when the German accepted it, was no longer the
Empire which had founded the unity of Europe. It was a German Empire,
and though the ancient world fired his imagination, he always saw it
through German eyes.

The next stage in unity was the mediaeval Church, which inherited the
framework of the Roman Empire and extended the area of moral and
civilized life which Rome had initiated.

In this Germany was included, and she played a distinguished part. Roman
missionaries, some by way of England and Ireland, went further than the
Roman legions had attempted, and the sword of Charlemagne did the rest.
Germany in the later Middle Ages was perhaps the most valued of all the
Pope's domains, and her prince-bishops his greatest lieutenants. The
moral and religious effect of the Catholic discipline, appealing to
sides of human nature which Greece and Rome had left untouched, was
nowhere more deeply felt than by the Germans. Spiritually they were thus
lifted at least to the level of the rest of Western Europe, but
politically they remained unincorporated, the most feudal and military
nation of the West.

The growth of nations was, on the political side, the main achievement
of the Middle Ages. Rome had given the framework of a great system, and
into this had poured barbarians from North and East, Goths, Franks,
Huns, Moors, Lombards, tribes at the level of the Homeric Greeks when
they swept down to the Aegean. They came as migrant hordes, and in the
area civilized by Rome and the Catholic Church they settled down as
nations, mingling with the earlier population and divided up by the
geographical configurations of the Continent. Among them France and
England had the advantage. They gained their unity as nations earlier
than any other countries of the West--England in a form which has lasted
substantially unaltered for six hundred years. Spain, which had been
torn asunder by the Moors, was not consolidated fully till the end of
the fifteenth century, in time to send the last of the crusaders under
Columbus in quest of fresh worlds to conquer across the Atlantic. But
Italy and Germany--and especially the latter--remained disintegrated
until our own time. Both gained their union about the same time, fifty
years ago, but by different methods and in a different spirit. Italy,
naturally a compact geographical unit, was welded by a democratic
enthusiasm, of which Cavour and Mazzini were the soul and Garibaldi the
right arm. Germany, vast in power and numbers, lay strongly entrenched
in the central area of the Continent, but failed to kindle into national
life at the same democratic moment. She was fashioned into political
existence by a Thor's hammer, which, as it rose and fell, dealt
shattering blows on friends as well as foes, in Austria as well as
France, on Danes and Poles, on Liberals and Socialists, on little kings
and great ecclesiastics. And now this Frankenstein creation among states
offers the most serious problem in adjusting national claims with
European unity. We have to check and to assimilate--if the world is to
live as one--the one Power which has hitherto developed most
persistently and successfully its own resources, but least in
subordination to the interests of the whole.

There are those who would regard all national barriers and organization
as somewhat of an obstruction, who would prefer a simple
internationalism to the world as we know it, with its pent-up passions
and attachments, its constant liability to explosion, its slow progress
by tortuous channels towards the larger view and the surer hold. Many
reformers, from Plato downwards, have taken up a similar attitude in
regard to the smaller institution, the family, which is often found to
be an obstruction in the way of short cuts to social utopias at home.
Kant's ideal of a cosmopolitan constitution as the goal of all human
effort rather leans to this side of the balance. But a due balance must
be kept and the full value both of family and nation maintained against
theories or tendencies which would roll us all out into cosmopolitan
items. A glance at other elements which go to make up the unity of
European society will tend to correct the perspective.

The unity of the Roman Empire was mainly political and military. It
lasted for between four and five hundred years. The unity which
supervened in the Catholic Church was religious and moral and endured
for a thousand. Less binding on one side, it was more searching and
pervasive on others, and though now broken, it still remains in full
force over many millions of minds, while the Roman political and legal
structure has to be sought for in formal institutions which have
absorbed its spirit and transformed its letter. But beyond the actual
fabric of the Church itself we have the multitude of cognate and
derivative institutions which have served the cause of unity in the
moral and intellectual sphere. We shall speak later of the more perfect
and lasting unity of science. The universities in the Middle Ages and
the Renascence tended to the same end, using a material in philosophy
and theology which was bound to wear out with the spread of knowledge
and the flux of time. But in their prime they succeeded in producing a
more complete community of scholars than has perhaps been ever witnessed
in Europe before or since. Then as always the realm of the genuine love
of truth, or even of honest disputation, was independent of differences
of race or political boundaries, and the scholar went from Oxford to
Paris, or from Rotterdam to Bologna, solely to widen his mind or to sit
at the feet of some world-famous teacher.

And the wandering scholar was by no means the only social link. Many of
the trade-routes surprise us by the length and adventurousness of their
course. Amber from the Baltic found its way to the south of Italy and
Spain, while small boats from Ireland were brought into the mouths of
the Loire and the Garonne when the coasts of the Channel were impassable
through barbarians from the North.

Mediaeval Europe was, in fact, much more of a unity than the modern
traveller would expect, and this was mainly due to the influence of the
Church. The spiritual unity went deep on one side of man's nature, and
when a man like Erasmus surveyed the prospect at the beginning of the
sixteenth century we can well understand his horror, and his determined
abstention from any step which would precipitate the break-up of the one
organized body which represents the old united culture of Christendom
and might check the new forces which were threatening selfishness and
disorder in ever-widening circles on the globe. For it must be noted
that new forces of expansion were making themselves felt, as the unity
of the Church was being threatened from within. Explorers were
extending, East and West, the sphere in which the European was to impose
his influence for good and evil on other peoples, and the sixteenth
century thus becomes one, perhaps the most critical, of all the
turning-points in the history of the West. Danger was mixed with hope,
disorder with new knowledge and fresh power, and the crisis has not yet
been surmounted. But we have gained by now some insight into the nature
of the new forces and see that they should, and one day will, work more
fully in the direction of unity in the civilized world, of healthy
independence in the parts and a growing harmony in the whole. Little of
this could have been seen by the observer at the outbreak of the
Reformation.

Nationalism, democracy, colonial expansion, religious change, the
growth of knowledge and its application to industry and social reform,
these are the salient features which distinguish our modern from the
mediaeval world, and we have to consider how far they make for the unity
of mankind.

The sixteenth century saw both the strengthening of national governments
and the beginning of European colonization. England, France, Spain,
Portugal, Holland, all settled down under a central government stronger
and more independent than they had previously enjoyed, and pegged out
estates for themselves beyond the seas. In each case wars have been
entailed in the process, and, as we know, the backwardness of Germany at
this period has been visited upon the rest of Europe tenfold in recent
times. National expansion thus appears to be an eminent provocation of
international strife. It is with no intention either of ignoring facts
or minimizing dangers that one turns here to the other side of the
account. Where was the spark actually fired which led to the present
conflagration? In that part of Europe where the national units were
least stable and developed, where the conditions of government and
social order are most remote from our own. Who can doubt that if in the
Balkans the Turks had been able to establish even the sort of government
we maintain in India, or if, still better, the Balkan States, apart from
the Turks, had gained their own independence in a federation like the
Swiss, the aggression of the Central Powers would have been checked? The
compact, well-established national unit is not in itself a danger, but
there is a danger in weak, oppressed, or disjointed nationalities, who
have not found safety and offer a bait to their expansive neighbours.

Thus strong and independent nations, as Kant postulates in his
_Perpetual Peace_, are guarantees of peace, stones in the Temple of
Humanity. Another consideration not generally recognized, strengthens
this conclusion. In recent years all leading and progressive nations
have been devoting their first thought to social reform. This has been
conspicuously the case with ourselves, with the French, with the United
States, with the smaller, more advanced countries in Europe. Germany,
too, though her first energies have been given to organizing war, has
had in this matter two distinct souls. Her social democrats and part of
her governing class have been consistent and successful in working for
the amelioration of the condition of the people, and have often
anticipated other nations in her process. It is self-evident, first,
that a strong national government is needed to carry out wide social
reform, second, that in proportion as governments devote themselves
whole-heartedly to this, their energies are less likely to be devoted to
molesting their neighbours. Germany, unfortunately for herself and the
world, had no government which could speak for the whole people and be
responsible to it. A truly national government in Germany, or anywhere
else, would not have willed this war.

The colonial expansion which was connected with the outburst of national
sentiment in the sixteenth century, and has led to frequent conflicts
between European nations ever since, also appears in a different light
if we study it in view of facts not dreamt of in the sixteenth and
seventeenth centuries. The Americas, which appeared to the early
navigators as rich estates to be cultivated for the benefit of
proprietors at home, have developed into powerful and independent
countries, eminently pacific (except for internal brawls), looking
forward to producing new types of life and government, hoping perhaps to
hold the balance in a long-drawn contest of the Old World Powers. The
circle, therefore, of the Mediterranean world which was enlarged by the
discoveries of the sixteenth century, finds its completion to-day in
new states across the Atlantic, which are on the whole enormously
preponderant on the side of peace, and wish to hold their own in Western
civilization by force of wealth and industry, and not by arms. To us,
too, it is clear, and will be one day to the Germanic Powers, that the
British Empire, the largest political aggregate on the globe, is
essentially a league of free peoples, under no compulsion from the
centre, but responsive to attack upon their power or liberty by any
third party, strong from their general contentment with the conditions
and institutions of their life, and not through any systematic
regulations imposed from above. Even India and other protected states
and dominions, though not yet self-governing, are moving steadily in the
direction of responsibility and of willing association with the British
Empire or Commonwealth as a whole.

Such is the much vaster community of nations which has succeeded to the
Western Europe of the sixteenth century; and no mention has been made of
the place of Russia or the countries still further east. The picture
does not suggest a welter of conflicting passions and ambition
throughout the world. On the whole a mass of men and women labouring
with fair contentment at their daily task, not concerned that their
state or nation should extend its boundaries, least of all that it
should provoke attack; little conscious of the historic debt of nations
to one another, but wishing well to others except when they cross the
path of a personal desire; gaining rapidly more sense of actual
community among living men, but hardly realizing yet how man's power has
been built up in the past and how infinitely it might be advanced and
the world improved by harmony and steadily directed efforts in the
future. That the sense of brotherhood has gained ground in the world,
especially since the middle of the eighteenth century, is certain.
Voices of protest reach us even from Germany through the storm of
hatred. But the vague sympathy, the desire for peace and shrinking from
the horrors of war need to be enlightened, to have a reasoned basis in
the belief that all nations, and especially those of the vanguard, are
partners in a common work and essential one to another, above all,
perhaps, to have institutions which tend to co-operation and make a
sudden and disastrous breach as difficult as possible. Many of these
instruments of peace were being forged when the war broke out. Many of
the most profound ties between nations are not understood or are kept in
the background by nationalist teachers or a nationalist press.

Of all the modern steps towards international unity, the most
indisputable, the most firmly based and furthest-reaching, is science,
and the various applications of science, both in promoting intercourse
between different parts of the world and in alleviating suffering and
strengthening and illuminating human life. The more prominence,
therefore, that we can secure for the growth of science in the teaching
of history, the larger place humanity, or the united mind of mankind,
will take in the moving picture which every one of us has, more or less
full and distinct, of the progress of the world. For some hundreds of
years, culminating in the three or four centuries A.D., the dominant
feature in the picture was of a triumphant city-state, Rome, gradually
subduing and embracing the world. Then for some thousand years the
picture was of a religious organization leading the civilized world, and
nationalities were only emerging as somewhat dim and ill-defined
figures. Then, with the rupture in the Church and the upspringing of
other religious bodies and forms of thought, national figures become
predominant in the scene, and attract nearly all the attention, which is
given, except by a few curious persons, to the study of history.
Nationalism, once in defect in Western Europe, has been for some time
in excess. The remedy is not directly to attack it, except in the case
in which it gave us no choice, but to supply the limiting and
controlling ideas. Of all these, science fits the case most exactly,
because, as science, it can know no distinction between French or
German, English or Russian. There is no French physics or German
chemistry, and if we are told that the Prussians have their own theory
of anthropology, based on the predominance of a particular type of skull
which other anthropologists dispute, we are quite sure that in that case
science has not yet said her last word.

We put physical science first because it contains the largest number of
certain and accepted laws. The further we get from mathematical
exactness the more liable we are to differences of opinion, which may,
as in the case of anthropology, cluster round some question of national
pique. But it would be easy to trace through all the sciences, and into
philosophy and religion, a growing unity of method and result before
which national differences often resolve themselves into a difference of
style. The style is the nation's, but the truth is mankind's.

We could not, indeed, be sure that if every one in Western Europe were a
trained scientist, wars would cease from the earth: certain professors
have taught us too well for that. But in so far as men come to recognize
that the great body of organized knowledge is a common possession, due
to the united efforts of different nations, and that it can only be
increased by joint action and may be increased to such a point that the
whole of life is a happier and nobler thing, so far they will be averse
to war. And in its various applications, to increasing production and
quickening communication, to lengthening life and healing sickness, to
protecting workers and cheapening food, men see the natural fruits of an
activity whose basis is common thought and its ultimate purpose the
common good.

It has been said with truth that it is easier to trace the growth of
science as a joint product of co-operating minds, than to find a growth
of common sentiments among the men and the nations who have created it.
True among individuals, it must be at least as true among groups and
nations. We may work successfully with some one at a problem or learn
from a teacher or a companion when we dislike him personally and do not
seek his society apart from the needs of our common work. It has often
happened, and will happen again in private and public. But though
particular antipathies may increase, the tendency to dislike others is a
diminishing quality among civilized men. In the long run common sense
and necessity will prevail. We are born to live a while before we die;
and we must live on the same planet, sometimes next door to those who
have sworn a never-dying hate.




II

UNITY IN PREHISTORIC TIMES[1]


The new perspective, with all its shift of values, which is forced on us
by the war, touches the past no less than the present and the future.
However objectively we try to present to ourselves the data of history,
we cannot emancipate ourselves from the need to present them from a
point of view which must in the last resort be our own. We may bring
ourselves by training and criticism nearer to the centre of things, more
intimate with essential factors and remote from the trivial periphery;
but it is a matter of degree, and historical study an affair after all
of mental triangulation. Like a surveyor in the field, we are safest in
our determination of any third position if we have already knowledge of
two, and of how the third looks from both of them. And even if we were
indeed at the centre of things, I suppose we might take our round of
angles quite uselessly, unless we had also some divine gift of judging
distances.

So the historian accepts his limitations as the rules of the game,
and sets out to see unity askance. It is his rare chance, if events
shift _him_, and set him gazing at a world in which, as now, half
his own career is inside the picture; not perhaps very easy to
find in a moment--as one might fail to recognize oneself in a
group-photograph--but none the less there, and intelligible only in
relation to its actual surroundings.

Looking back, indeed, over the course of anthropology and prehistoric
archaeology, much of which lies in the years since 1870, and nearly all
of it since 1815, the first thing which strikes us now is the frequency
and delicacy of its response to contemporary thoughts and aspirations. A
few of the greatest men have recognized this at the time. I quote from
Karl Ernst von Baer, the founder of comparative embryology, and in great
matters the master of men as different as Huxley, Spencer, and Francis
Balfour. He died in 1876, when political anthropology was still young;
but in his great book on Man he 'appeals to the experience of all
countries and ages, that if a people has power, and attempts wrongdoing
against another, it also does not omit to conceive the other as very
worthless and incompetent, and to repeat this conviction often and
emphatically' (_Der Mensch_, ii. 235). It is easy for us to dot the _i_
and cross the _t_ here; less easy perhaps to realize that what troubled
von Baer was the persistence of British and American ethnologists in the
polygenist heresy, which he traced (and rightly) to their reluctance to
treat their 'black brother' as if he were their relative at all.
Judgement in that ethnological controversy went by default, with the
victory of the North in the American Civil War; and in 1871 the lion lay
down with the lamb, even in London; inveterate foes in the Ethnological
Society and the Anthropological merging their fate in one
Anthropological Institute. In 1915 the reluctance of the 'tall fair
people who come from the north'--I borrow a phrase from Professor
Ridgeway--to fraternize with mere brunettes, beyond Rhine and Danube,
comes in its turn before the same tribunal as polygenism in 1862.

Our subject, 'Unity in Prehistoric Times', embraces three main topics:
(1) the unity of human effort and reason everywhere in Man's struggle
with Nature and with his Fellow-man; (2) the special conditions which
favoured or hindered unity of prehistoric culture in what has been
called elsewhere the 'north-west quadrant' of the Old-World land-mass
west of Ararat and the Median hills and north of Sahara, the cradle and
nursery of the modern 'western world'; and (3) the convergent lines of
advancement within that region, which can be traced through the
centuries before Roman policy let Greek culture penetrate almost as deep
into peninsular Europe as Alexander's conquests had opened to it the
inlands of the Near East.

When we speak of unity in human affairs, and particularly just now, when
the supreme unity seems to some to be nationalism, and to others the
negation, or rather the supersession of nationalism, we mean the rather
complex outcome of several distinct things. This complexity was
confessed, unwittingly perhaps, in the first humanist creed: 'I believe
in one Blood, one Speech, one Cult, one congruous Way of Living.'[2]
Modern ethnology, indeed, tends to subsume cult under way-of-living, as
a peculiarly delicate test of conformity--and to regard language,
alongside of both cult and way-of-living, as another manifestation of
the same human reason; distinguishing therefore two kinds of unity--one
physical or morphological, as of one animal species in an animal
kingdom, the other cultural or psychological, as of the sole incarnate
occupant of a realm of mind; and classifying the 'Science of Man'
accordingly. But, in essentials, that Athenian creed will serve: our
latest ethnologists, and statesmen too, are faced with the same league
of problems.


THE UNITY OF MANKIND AS AN ANIMAL SPECIES

Whatever Greek statesmen thought about the gulf between Greek and
Persian, or Greek and Barbarian generally, Greek ethnologists raised no
fundamental barrier between the different sorts of Man. Good naturalists
as they were, and experienced breeders of farm-stock, they accepted
white, brown, and black men; and were prepared to accept any other breed
that Nearchus or Pytheas might confront them with, as members of one
brotherhood, just as they accepted white, brown, or black sheep, with
horns of Ammon or with none. Eratosthenes, most philosophical, and
therewith most _political_ of them all, was bred in Cyrene, where some
Greeks seem to have been black; and he worked in Alexandria, where the
University was a human Zoo like that of London or Berlin. Their simple
farmer's theory of natural selection attributed 'scorched-faced'
Aethiopians to sunburn, and other racial types to large factors of
region and régime. The classical treatise is that of Hippocrates 'On
Air, Water, and Places'.[3]

In the modern world, too, no serious doubt was cast on the specific
unity of mankind, handed down from antiquity, until Linnaeus and Buffon
had refined upon the biological notions of genus and species (for both
of which there is only one word in Greek), and had defined species by
the criterion of fertility. Now not only the great explorers, but every
ship's captain, knew by this time that white men, at all events, would
form fertile unions with all known kinds of humanity. But in the
eighteenth century it became known also, and in the same empirical way,
that the fertility of unions between white men and black was imperfect;
and as this was the only human cross for which there was any large
quantity of evidence, the impression grew that the zoological distance
between these races was greater than had been supposed. On the other
hand, eighteenth-century formulators of the 'Rights of Man' challenged
reconsideration of the current practice of negro slavery; and the upshot
was a controversy. Abolitionists contended that the 'black brother' was
indeed a blood brother, and entitled to the 'Rights of Man'; their
opponents replied that the negro, being (as they held) of another
species, might justly be treated in all respects as one of white man's
domestic animals, and be his property as well as his drudge. At the turn
of the century, the adherence of Cuvier gave prestige to Polygenesis on
its scientific side: and it took all the reasonableness of Prichard in
the next generation to turn the tide even in England. But the issue of
the American Civil War, to which reference has already been made,
coincided so closely in time with the work of Darwin and Lyell on the
real meaning of species and on the antiquity of man, that the
controversy was closed without bitterness. The new phase of Polygenism
which seems now to be opening, with successive discoveries of the
quaternary stratification of races, and Keith's analysis of the family
tree of the _Hominidae_, starts from wholly different data,
unembarrassed by fears or hopes of a 'Neanderthal' origin for the Negro,
or for any living or recent _Homo_.

The 'human family' then seems re-established as something more than a
platform phrase; and separatists (who are always with us) have had to
fall back upon another criterion of disunity.


THE UNITY OF MANKIND AS A RATIONAL ANIMAL

Omitting language for a moment (which since first telling of the 'Tower
of Babel' story has somewhat fallen from grace as a symptom of unity
among mankind), or rather, subsuming it as one of the most essential
exhibitions of rationality, and indeed its chief instrument, we come to
Man's unity as a creature possessed of reason, and expressing this
reasoning habit in specific modes of living, under whatever external
surroundings. These being almost infinitely various, it is not always
easy to compare examples of Man's reaction to them. For proof of the
uniformity of human reasoning, indeed, we have to begin almost from an
animal plane. 'Hath not a Jew eyes? Hath not a Jew hands, organs,
dimensions, senses, affections, passions? Fed with the same food,
subject to the same diseases, healed by the same means, warmed and
cooled by the same summer and winter, as a Christian is?' And not only
is men's hunger, and their sensitiveness to 'the same summer and winter'
similar: their ways of satisfying hunger, their conduct of the
food-quest, their elementary organizations 'for the sake of maintaining
life', as Aristotle expressed it, exhibit one mental type throughout. In
the domestication of nature's gifts it is the same: in the fashioning of
implements and weapons, the improvisation of clothing and shelter, the
almost instinctive impulse to 'play with fire' which repels other
animals. Style and finish may vary, and do vary widely from one province
of culture to another; but in their last mechanical analysis, a spade is
a spade all the world over, and a celt a celt.

It was the service of the late General Pitt-Rivers in this country, and
of Klemm more laboriously abroad, to establish this aspect of the
'Evolution of Culture' beyond controversy: as it was the work of Boucher
de Perthes, and of Sir John Evans and Sir John Lubbock to proceed in the
reverse direction, from a criterion of utility to a hypothesis of
design, and the conclusion that certain stones, of reputedly prehuman
antiquity, must be the work of human hands, geared to human brains like
ours. Tylor's wider range of observation, conspicuously supplemented by
other work of Lubbock, embraced all human activities in one formula of
comparison, which is indeed as old as Thucydides.[4] We can infer, that
is, something about early stages of an advanced culture from the
present-day practices of savagery.

Yet, across this 'primitive culture', to use a phrase which has become
classical, so reasonable, and therewith so full of uniformities, in its
intimate interplay of hand and tongue with brain, patches of shadow
fall; a chaos of such incredible absurdities and (in the widest sense)
of 'barbarities', that the charitable hypothesis that here and there man
has lost his way and just _stopped thinking_ hardly seems adequate to
account for things, and writers like Lévy-Bruhl are provoked to the
pessimist guess that there can be a savage logic which is different from
ours and yet is 'logical' in some coherent sense; which _stets verneint_
the conclusions, and even the axioms, which are clear as day to us; and
is a 'knowledge of evil' side by side with the knowledge of good.

But examples of this 'primitive thought', when we come to analyse them,
all seem to resolve themselves into one or other of the ordinary sorts
of fallacy, as our own logic-books expound them. If the study of them
proves anything at all, it is the familiar aphorism that, while there is
only one right way of doing and thinking, there are countless ways of
going wrong. Among the most reasonable people (at their highest) that
the world has yet seen, there were some of the worst miscarriages of
reason and of morals; and throughout their great centuries there was no
word either for the devil or for sin in their language. For the Greek
all human wrongdoing came under the one simple category of [Greek:
hamartia], 'making a mistake', or better 'making a miss'. It is the
slang of target-practice, for the correlative [Greek: otochazein], used
of all happy guesses at truth, is likewise only the word for '_aiming_
straight'.

But why make mistakes? Why these failures of co-ordination between
design and execution, between nature's truth and man's theory and
practice? Why this declining from the best into sloppy or antiquated
work, to name only two main sorts of technological fallacy? Again the
answer comes down, past Lucretius, from the Ionian physicist. It is only
in superficial appearance that 'though reason is common to all, most men
live as if they had a way of thinking of their own',[5] Heraclitus'
momentary despair anticipating Lévy-Bruhl almost verbally. Once
penetrate, with Heraclitus himself, below the surface, and 'all men have
it in them to understand themselves and to think straight'.[6] It is
failure to think, not some distinct and illogical sort of thinking, that
is the cause of the trouble: the lapse of that 'organized common sense'
which is the content of all 'science'.

Such disorganization of common sense, 'idiotic' thinking, in the
Heraclitan sense of an [Greek: idia phronêsis], can be as cumulative,
fallacy on fallacy, and as elaborately wrong, as the fabric of knowledge
is cumulatively and elaborately right. 'Hath this man sinned, or his
parents, that he was born blind?' That is the tragedy of primitive
culture: for the brains are there and the eyes; only they have never
seen anything straight, because in the world they were bred up in there
was nothing left straight to be seen.

Lucretius hit upon half the trouble when he referred the organized
absurdities of his contemporaries to hereditary fear: which in the last
analysis is a derangement of the higher activities extending to
abdication. Its onset is an ataxy; and its culmination a paralysis. In
its mental aspect it is failure of the Will-to-know; acceptance of an
inferiority to which ignorance consigns us.

The other half of the trouble, less clearly diagnosed by Lucretius, but
detected, as we have seen, by Heraclitus, is hereditary pride, based on
ignorance no less than is Lucretian fear. It is the 'lie-in-the-soul',
the conviction, assailed by Socrates and before his time as well as
after, that we know how things stand, when in fact we do not. Like fear,
in its mental aspect, it is a failure of the Will-to-know; once again,
an acceptance of the inferior status of the ignorant.

Organized fears, then, lead to _tabu_, the systematic inhibition of
experiment which might conflict with hypothesis; and organized pride, to
_magic_, with its systematic disregard of the results of each experiment
that is made, when it does so conflict with hypothesis. And it is these
two superstructures of ignorance, inhibiting and insisting by turns,
which add the glamour of irrationality to so much of the behaviour of
mankind, and disguise its native rationalism and its morality too. Beset
by fear and pride, craftsman and cultivator and explorer and reformer
alike are in the same predicament. 'I could do this or that and do it
thus, but may I?' and if such opinion as counts says 'Thou shalt not',
the fallacious substitution of 'shalt not' for 'mayst' cannot fail to
endanger advancement. It may be over the chipping of a flint axe, or a
trade-union rule about a high-speed lathe; but if the craftsman conforms
to opinion as such, and not through positive concurrence of his own
judgement with it, he has accepted the fallacious conclusion as his own,
and lets his work fall to second-hand and to second-best.

Wide uniformities of conduct and of material culture may therefore
result from ignorance, no less than from knowledge, and unless we have
very full acquaintance with the region and external conditions, it is
not easy to decide whether any one of these uniformities is wisely
uniform or not. The record of the dealings of quite well-meaning
conquerors with the institutions and arts of their subjects is full of
tragedies of this kind. I call to mind an example in Paraguay, where
abstention from infanticide, after conversion to Christianity, nearly
wrought the extinction of a native tribe, for the population at once
began to exceed the means of subsistence; and it was only when the
committee in London was induced (just in time) to apply mission funds to
the purchase of seeds and implements of agriculture that the danger was
averted. It is not my purpose here to commend infanticide; only to
indicate that while man cannot live by bread alone, he cannot go on
living, even a good life, if he really falls short of bread. So with
devotion to an ideal unity of culture, we are to combine toleration of
wide diversity, seeing how diverse are the surroundings which make up
the Home of Man. Were Nature uniform, in a geographical sense, from pole
to pole, civilization might be practically as well as ideally one,
though it may fairly be doubted whether in such a world civilization,
such as we know, would arise; but with the present distribution of land
and water, temperature and rainfall, and the complex of plants and
animals which results from their interaction, unity among the phenomena
of culture ceases to be practicable, and it has become hard for some (as
we have seen) even to keep their faith in the unity of human reason.

It was not, in fact, till a rather later stage in the growth of science,
either in the old world, or in our own, that anyone troubled himself
about the existence of such unity at all. That men of alien blood should
behave in alien and incomprehensible ways seemed to the Greek and to the
navigators of the Renaissance equally natural. And Herodotus and Bodin,
to name only pioneers and masters, are agreed as to the cause. Variety
in Man's behaviour is no impish trick of original sin: it is the
response of his single reason to variety in Nature. Only when experience
added intimacy with alien individuals to observations of their habits of
life, did a common humanity in their behaviour begin to be so frequent
and obvious as to cause surprise. Acquiescence in the discovery is
implicit in Thucydides and Hobbes, and confessed in Aristotle and Locke.
Had Europe broken into the Great East in Locke's day, as the Greeks
broke into Persia in Aristotle's, we might have had completer analogy
between the ethnology of Montesquieu and that of Eratosthenes than we
can actually trace. The defect in the writer of the _Lettres Persanes_
is in his knowledge of Persia, not of Paris and London: Eratosthenes, as
we remember, was born in Cyrene and worked in Alexandria.


MAN IN CONFLICT WITH NATURE IN THE NORTH-WEST QUADRANT OF THE OLD WORLD

We come now, from this rather general survey of human faculty, to the
more pertinent question, what sort of unity do we find in human
achievement within that region, or rather within those regions, of the
Old World where the stream-heads of our modern culture seem to take
their rise? The qualification which has slipped from my pen is half the
answer already, for we are to deal not with one homogeneous region but
with a cluster of regions in all climates from Arctic tundra to Sahara
and the Nile, and in all altitudes from alpine to maritime. Unity of
prehistoric culture, in such conditions, can at best be but a question
of degree.

Modern ethnology, emancipated from a belief in an immediate
consanguinity of mankind, by the spread of less infantile views about
Noah's Ark, goes on to question the sufficiency of language as a bond
of union, and forthwith stumbles over the Tower of Babel.

Two contemporary lines of discovery have tended to determine the result.
Geology gives us a very long margin of time since the north-west
quadrant began to be reinhabited by human beings after the Ice Age, and
assumed approximately its present distribution of land and water.
Archaeology, which in this aspect is the special stratigraphy of man,
sanctions an extension of time, since not merely human beings but
organized societies of men made their appearance in Europe, which far
exceeds the period required, or commonly assumed, for the spread of any
known Indo-European language, from any possible 'home' to any region
where it was spoken at the beginning of historic time. And not only does
archaeological evidence enable us to detect such societies sedentary for
a while on this or that site over the face of Europe and its
neighbourhood; it traces not merely one 'prehistoric culture', but a
number of distinct types of such culture, each with its own geographical
distribution, and with distributions which expand and contract at
different times, superseding one type of culture here, and another
there, and in turn superseded by others.

It is not easy to bring home the extent of this diversity to those who
are not familiar with the physical condition of a Europe which was as
yet largely in the 'backwood' stage of exploitation. But it will give
some idea of the range of contrast, if we revert to the method of
Thucydides,[7] and compare the unexploited Europe of the days before
agriculture, with unexploited America at the time of its discovery by
Europeans. Here, within the same geographical limits of the north
temperate zone, and with the far simpler scheme of surface relief which
characterizes the New World, we have civilizations as different as those
of the Eskimo, the Algonkin peoples of the coniferous forests, the Huron
and Iroquois of the deciduous hardwoods, horticultural Muscogeans in the
south-east, buffalo-hunting Sioux on the prairie, predatory Apaches and
Blackfeet in the foothills, and littoral and riparian fisher-folk on the
Pacific slope: just as recognizable now, in their distributions and
overlaps, by the fashions of their pipe-bowls and other débris, as are
the representatives of the 'row-grave' culture or the makers of
'band-keramik' in Central Europe.

Keeping in mind this analogy of prehistoric Europe with pre-Columbian
North America, let us classify the problems of subsistence which these
Old World regions offered to prehistoric man; and consider, granting him
all the reason in the world, and uniform physique (if you please) as
well, how he is to formulate solutions which shall show any trace of
uniformity, and yet be solutions for him of the one Protean problem, how
to sustain life here and now?

Along the Arctic seaboard, homogeneous from Behring Strait nearly to the
North Cape, we have the frozen tundra region, with a characteristic
tundra culture; pushed now far north since Europe mellowed into a
habitable world, but formerly widespread about the skirts of the
shrinking ice-sheet. Here we hunt large animals and sea-shore beasts,
and trap small-deer very ingeniously; we fish in the large
northward-flowing rivers; and eventually (heaven knows after how long,
or how far back from now) we borrowed a notion, probably from pastorals
imprudently straying too far along those northward river-lanes through
the forests, and domesticated our best of beasts, the reindeer; stealing
a march here on our Alaskan cousins, who call them caribou and treat
them so: _they_ had no pastorals on the prairie southward to teach them
otherwise, and when the Russians came and brought reindeer over from
Asia, the silly fellows turned them loose and hunted them till they had
eaten them all.

South of the tundra, the Great Northern Woodland encircles the planet,
interrupted only by the treeless sea. Here too we hunt, and trap, and
eat berries of the undergrowth, like Algonkins or Tacitean Germans, many
of whom had no more skill in cattle than Algonkins. But we have not the
place to ourselves, like the tundra folk and the Algonkins. Our forest
world is in ever-present danger of disintegration, and our wood-craft
with it. Fond folk with tame animals (poor sport, both of them, for
sportsmen like us) come blundering in off the parkland away south, up
the grassy glades, trampling undergrowth and scaring the game. People
are saved from all that 'over there', because no one can tame the
prairie buffalo and drive _him_ over the hunting grounds; some sport,
too, the prairie buffalo! And worse still, there are the people who come
hacking and burning our great trees, and tearing up the turf and
underwood, and all to plant their fancy grasses with the fat seeds, that
the deer like to browse over; and that is the only thing to make those
people show fight, if we or the deer go among their fat-grass plots.
Those people come up, too, from the south and the south-east, and have
to go back thither for seed if their sowings fail. Of course they like
their animals tame, like the other fellows; but the grasses are their
first string, as we bow-men say.

Southward, enveloping the Alpine ridges, except where the snow peaks
perforate its carpet covering, the Woodland changes its character,
rather than gives place to anything fresh along the shores of the Lake
Region of the Old World. Here and there, in detached plateaux enfolded
among the ranges (like the Salt Lake basin and the Shoshonean plateaux
in America), there are isolated grassy plains, repeating on a smaller
scale the great grassland which skirts the Black Sea and the Caspian.
Examples are the heart of Spain and of Asia Minor, and the miniature
grasslands of the Balkan Peninsula, such as Thessaly and Eastern Thrace.

It is in the southern third, or thereabouts, of the continuous Woodland,
where the deciduous forest trees begin to give place to evergreens, as
they themselves replaced the conifers further north, that the minutely
subdivided horticulture and arboriculture begins, which characterize the
Mediterranean region. To call it agriculture would be to exaggerate its
scale. It is more like a northerly extension of tropical _Hackbau_, as
the Germans call those forms of plant-raising which dispense with plough
and spade, and employ only mattocks or hoes, which are little more than
earth-chopping celts. You have only to watch the unhandy way in which
the Greek peasant and what Homer called his 'foot-trailing' oxen work
their Virgilian plough through the recesses of a field no bigger than a
cabbage-patch, and well stocked with olive-trees besides, to realize how
truly in this kind of farming the ox is in place of a house-slave to a
poor man. For the house-slave could handle a _zappa_, the spadelike
Levantine hoe, where an ox would fail to turn round, yet where
food-plants could be coaxed to grow, and an olive-tree would luxuriate.

This kind of garden-cultivation indeed repeats very closely the
foodquest of the Muskogean cultivators in the South-eastern States, who
make up the so-called 'civilized tribes' and, almost alone among the
Redskins, 'are all self-supporting and prosperous'.[8] In the Old World,
as in the New, its distribution is closely defined by certain limits of
rainfall and temperature, and most of all by the extent to which the
rainfall is concentrated into a few winter months, so that a dry warm
summer is assured, which Man can mitigate and even exploit if he has
access to perennial water. It extended, therefore, in quite early times,
and still predominates, all round the mountainous shores of the
Mediterranean, from Syria by Southern Europe to Algeria and Tunis, and
penetrates inland and upland into the forests till summer clouds and
rainfall check it. In this region of its distribution Greek and Roman
legends betray the belief that grain-cultivation came late, and
superseded a staple diet of tree produce, chestnut, walnut, filbert, and
acorn.[9] And when the 'nobler grasses' came, it was barley and red
wheat that predominated, as indeed they predominate still.

But this is only one part of the distribution of the garden-culture. Far
north along the Atlantic seaboard, and as far inland as the mild
Atlantic climate is perceptible, the same type prevails. Its ancient
limit is traced meteorologically in Tacitus' complaints (for example) of
the austerity of the lands beyond the Rhine. In this northern region
grain crops pass from red to white wheat, from barley to oats, and from
both to rye. The ease with which the Muskogean potato and tomato have
been acclimatized, and their respective prevalence now in the Atlantic
and Mediterranean sections, illustrate exactly the place which primitive
hoe-culture held in the economy of the Old-World region. Early monuments
of this culture, in which hoe and ox-plough are equally conspicuous, are
the 'meraviglie' rock-carvings above Ventimiglia.[10] The fine flower of
it is the Minoan civilization of the Crete and the South Aegean.
Egyptian agriculture is also in great part hoe-work.

South-eastward, outside the Carpathians, and within them also, in the
great plain of Hungary, we meet a totally different régime; vast
featureless and treeless grasslands, extending past the Black Sea and
Caspian to the foot of the mountains of North Persia and the spurs of
the Central Asian highlands. Here, if Man is to maintain himself at all,
he must be master of tame animals which can eat the grass, and in turn
sustain him. South of the eastward continuation of the woodland Mountain
Zone, through Asia Minor into Persia, and also south of the
Mediterranean lake-region and the ridges of Syria and the 'Africa Minor'
of Tunis, Algeria, and Morocco, which partly enclose it, lies another
group of grasslands, Arabia and Sahara, desert-hearted, but capable of
sustaining a considerable population of nomad pastoral folk round their
margins and in oases, and of emitting them in volcanic emigrations now
and then.

From the human point of view, the profound difference between the
northern and the southern group of these grasslands, which collectively
lie athwart the great east-and-west mountain zone of the Old World, is
this. The southern grassland sustains sheep and goats almost
exclusively; it acquired its domesticated horses recently (at earliest
about 2000 B.C.) and from the north-east; and it relies, for transport,
on camels and asses, not on wheeled vehicles. The northern, on the other
hand, has sufficient perennial pasture to permit of oxen; it uses horses
habitually; and it has utilized the timber of its parkland margin, where
it passes over into the northern forest, to construct wheeled carts and
ox-ploughs. Equipped with these fundamental implements of civilization,
wheel-borne nomads have penetrated the Mountain Zone from the north
again and again, introducing the cart into Egypt rather late, and
perhaps even into Babylonia; though with these exceptions no secondary
centre of cart-folk was ever established in the south. Obvious reasons
for this failure lie in the scarcity of parkland and of perennial
pasture for large cattle. At best, Assyria and Syria adopted the horsed
chariot for war; but these regions, like the Hittite chariot-users of
Asia Minor, the Achaean conquerors of the Greek peninsula, and the Gauls
in West-Central Europe, are rather within the parkland fringes of the
Mountain Zone, and among those intermont plateaux which we have noted
already, than borderers of the Grassland itself. In particular, they are
all sedentary, and stand in this respect contrasted with the migratory
Scythian cart-folk in the northern Grassland. The only nomad cart-folk
within the Mountain Zone are the Gipsies,[11] and they seem mainly to
have formed their habit of life in the largest intermont plateau of all,
the vast table-land of Persia.

The plough is less easy to trace. All that can be safely said at present
is that it is a device for applying the strength of large cattle to
break up the soil for a grain crop, deeply and uniformly, and above all
more rapidly than a man can dig it with a hoe. By his own effort a man
can barely break up enough ground to supply his home with grain, except
in irrigated land. With the simplest of ploughs he can do this and more,
and yet have leisure for other pursuits within the ploughing season. But
it is not yet clear in what region ploughing first began. Probably it
was in the comparatively well-watered and well-wooded margin of one of
the large grasslands; but whether north or south of the Mountain Zone,
or round the discontinuous plateaux within it, is not clear. The
presumption of large cattle favours the north, yet Babylonia, and even
Egypt, had large cattle from very early times. North Syria seems to
dispute with Babylonia priority in the production of wheat. Somewhere
in this region we may provisionally place the cradle of what I may
perhaps describe as the Bread-and-Cheese culture, in which the staple
foods are provided by grain-plants and cattle, the latter being valued
for their strength and their milk products, but not primarily for their
flesh.

Disseminated westward, the Bread-and-Cheese culture is found to suffer
regional modification. Southward, among the Mediterranean evergreen
flora and old hoe-cultivation, the dearth of summer grass makes the
large cattle useless for milking, as well as for beef; they are bred
exclusively for draught, as their gait and structure show, and while
cheese is supplied by the sheep and goats, butter and animal-fats are
replaced by the vegetable oils, of which the olive is the chief, a
characteristic Mediterranean product, evergreen, deep-rooted against
summer drought, and fleshy-fruited. A Bread-and-Olive culture results,
familiar to all visitors to Mediterranean lands. In the deciduous
forests of South-Central Europe there is grass in the clearings, and
milk enough; but goats and sheep are restricted, as the undergrowth
becomes deeper and denser, and the prime giver of fats is the
forest-bred pig: in a land rolling with ham and sausages we reach the
Bread-and-Bacon culture. Further afield still, and later, in proportion
as the forest is opened out by semi-pastoral folk, the moister summer
permits open meadow-land, with perennial grass, and the possibility of
hay. Here too the grain crops may be so large that there is something
over to fatten stock; and to Bread and Cheese the farmer of the
north-western plains adds Beef. When there is coarse grain in plenty, of
course, the large-boned horse of the north gradually replaces the ox at
the plough, and permits him to be bred, as with ourselves, not for
draught at all, but for milking and killing exclusively. It is in this
final phase that the Bread-and-Beef culture passes over eventually into
the New World, and into the South Temperate Zone. It has been rather a
long story to tell, and full of platitudes, but the gist of it is by
this time clear. Whatever be the superstructure of social institutions,
of arts and sciences, of religion and philosophy, that European men have
built upon it, the régime which has made the Western World what it is,
from before the dawn of metallurgy until now, has been generically a
Bread culture; based on that combination of pastoral and agricultural
life in which large cattle co-operate with man in the laborious
preparation of the soil which cereal crops require. But the Bread
culture itself is always supplemented by some form of milk product, of
which cheese is typical. It is almost always supplemented further by
some special provision of fats; in Mediterranean conditions by olives
and oil, involving extensive tree culture; in the forest region by pig's
meat; and on the Atlantic seaboard by butter and beef.

The exhilarants show the same geographic control; with the olive culture
go the wines and brandies of the south; with the forest culture, the
ciders and the cherry brandies of Central Europe; with the copious
cereals and meadow-grass, the beers and whiskies of the North. In
details, of course, the distribution of types is intricately confused;
but the main outline is clear; and we reach a first glimpse of a
coherent European culture, on the almost animal plane of regional
foodquests.


RACE, LANGUAGE, AND CULTURE AS FACTORS OF UNITY

Precedence has been given in our inquiry to the mere animal struggle of
man with nature for bare subsistence, for two distinct reasons. The
first is economic, namely, that just because this struggle is without
qualification that of a highly intelligent animal species to maintain
itself under these or those conditions, it is one which befalls equally
every breed or race of that species which is ever exposed to those
conditions; and further, is no more mitigated by considerations of
language than by considerations of race. The second reason is historical
or archaeological. The spread of the Bread culture is dated so far back
in the history of man in this region, as to make it certain that it
preceded not merely the spread of the prevalent Indo-European group of
languages, but even the present distribution of racial types. It
certainly reached Italy, and the Atlantic seaboard as the British Isles,
before the brachycephalic 'Alpine' men arrived there; and still more
before the Boreal invasions of Britain and the opposite coasts. Indeed,
it would be truer to say that in general each breed of man which has
changed its distribution has had to adopt sooner or later the types of
culture appropriate to the regions into which it has penetrated, than to
associate the spread of any element of culture so fundamental as the
food-quest with the migrations of any racial type.

Race, indeed, in Europe, as well as further afield, has been anything
but a factor of unity. When we speak (on platforms) of Europeans as
'white men', we are in danger of forgetting, what every practical man in
our audience knows, that we are dealing with at least three distinct
breeds of mankind, which agree, indeed, rather imperfectly in the
whiteness of their skin, but differ greatly in other points of structure
and physique, including resistance to certain types of climate and
regional diseases, and not least in temperament and the quality of their
response to Nature's challenges of hardship or indulgence. Of these
three breeds of man, only one, the blond Boreal giants (the only 'white
men' in the strict sense of defect of pigment in skin, hair, and eyes)
is exclusively European now, and has his habitat within the area of the
'Boreal' groups of animals and plants. His champions in ethnological
propaganda seem to be of two minds about his earlier distribution;
either his 'home' was round the Baltic, in which case it is difficult to
see why he should be represented as a civilizing agency, in view of the
cultural backwardness of that region; or else it was out on the Eurasian
grassland, in which case he is as much an intruder into peninsular
Europe as his brachycephalic 'Alpine' rival, and his claim to represent
indigenous European man must go. The large part which he has played in
European history seems to result partly from his great physical
strength, surpassed (I believe) only by that of the Negro, partly from
his reluctance, not so much to interbreed with more pigmented strains,
but to admit the crossbred offspring to full partnership with himself.
Even among his like, he has his own criteria by which one 'white man'
knows another, and coheres with him politically.

Most strongly contrasted externally with the 'Boreal' type is the
slight-built Mediterranean brunet. That his home is in the south, that
he is closely related with the men of the African and Arabian
grasslands, and that he was among the first post-glacial explorers of
the Atlantic seaboard, is admitted. More doubt arises as to the extent
to which he penetrated from these southern and western bases into the
heart of peninsular Europe. Certainly as we trace him to the south-east
he seems more and more restricted to the Mediterranean coastline, and at
last has no early monopoly even of the islands. The contrast between
Crete and Cyprus is instructive as to this. The 'Mediterranean' type, in
fact, reaffirms to the anthropologist the close zoological affinity
between South-west Europe and North-west Africa.

But if Europe 'ends at the Pyrenees', it ends also anthropologically at
the Balkans, or even at the Carpathians; for the whole Balkan Peninsula,
and most of the highland core of peninsular Europe, is essentially
continuous with Asia Minor and the next eastward sections of the
Mountain Zone, so far as its human population is concerned, no less than
in its animals and plants. Biological continuity is as complete at the
Bosphorus as it is at Gibraltar. Here, what remains in dispute is not so
much whether 'Alpine' types are ultimately of Anatolian origin, as
whether their spread in Europe has been early or late, and whether their
predecessors here were predominantly 'Boreal' or 'Mediterranean'. It is
difficult, and perhaps needless, to decide whether lack of evidence or
political enthusiasm is more to blame for this; for the Roundheads of
prehistoric and of modern Europe are as contentious matter as their
English namesakes in the seventeenth century.

To this broadly threefold analysis of European man, add only this, that
ever since the old 'Sarmatian' sea shrank to its present dimensions and
left the grasslands open between Tienshan and the Carpathians, there has
been a steady westward movement of Mongoloid folk until a strong enough
Muscovy was interposed; and that along the Northern Woodland also there
has been westward movement, slower but no less persistent; and it will
be clear that it is not to race that we have to look for any uniform
basis of our European culture.

Nor is such a basis to be found in Language. People often speak of
Indo-European speech as though they really confused linguistic affinity
with mutual intelligibility. But if you want to test the unifying
influence of kindred languages, get a Welshman, a German, a Russian, and
a Greek into a room together, and see what the 'concert of Europe'
amounts to. The odds are that if they confer at all, they will do so in
French, which is in the strict sense of the word a 'modern' language;
while if you allowed them to write and gave them time, there is just a
chance that the Greek would impose his language on the other three.

There is no need to labour this point further than to recall the
fateful bisection of the culture of the European peninsula which
resulted from the linguistic alienation of Constantinople from Rome; of
the Mediterranean base which understood Latin, from that which thought
in Greek. In this tragic respect, which the Turkish conquest, with its
linguistic and religious sequel, has done little more than aggravate,
Europe ends still at the Save; whereas Rome's greatest daughters have
reconquered more than all that Carthage ever held in Africa. And the
re-incorporation of Britain, too, into the comity of nations is
concurrent with the Latinization of its speech, on which the seal was
set in 1611. Late as it was, then, in any case, in the prehistory of the
region, the spread of a single type of linguistic structure over Europe
has brought not peace, but a sword.

What then of Religion? How far were the older ethnologists on the right
lines, when (in spite of language, rather than aided by it) they
co-ordinated their own Olympus with the confederate polytheisms of the
North? Here, too, we have to keep the dates in mind, and clear ourselves
of enthusiasms. It is not from Tacitus or Caesar, nor even so near to
the Olympians' dwelling-place as the Thrace of Herodotus' time, that we
get our modern impression of the nearness of Olympus to Asgard. If
northern genealogies are any guide,--and they are not likely to have
reduced the real interval wittingly--Rome's empire reached its full
extent while Asgard was in building, or before. And Olympus was in
building, by Greek accounts, not many generations before the Trojan War.
In both cases we are dealing with political and almost historical
transactions; it was not in finished societies like these that Great
Gods (or their votaries either) set out from 'home' over the face of
Europe to unite it.

And when we pass behind Olympian structures, and look into the cults
which they served to federate, such uniformities as they present prove
far too much. The open-air gods of Tacitus (_Germania_, chap. 9) are
common to Semitic folk, and to many peoples further afield, who are
either not sedentary or are themselves not easily 'confined within
walls', but haunt 'forests and groves'.

Leaving, then, these high works of the mind, Language and Religion,
which have proved but blind guides, and 'of a short stay' in this
labyrinth, let us turn to the material evidence of industrial and
aesthetic activity. Here we begin at least to get something like
first-hand evidence, for we have the manufactured object itself, not
Caesar's impression of a Celtic god, or Herodotus' transcript of a
Scythian word. We can judge for ourselves of fabrics and styles, and
though, of course, we have only objects of the least perishable sorts,
stone, metal, pottery, we have, at all events, in the pottery the most
imitative of arts, and therefore the widest basis for conclusions as to
the principles of a style. Moreover, outside the sea-borne culture of
the Mediterranean, pottery does not travel far: its uses are domestic,
not commercial. John Gilpin's fate is typical of those who would carry
things on horseback in bottles. Like words, however, potsherds enlighten
us more about frontiers and contrasts than about uniformities. They are
terribly provincial and tell their tale with a twang. We can trace our
_Bandkeramik_ and _Schnurkeramik_ and _Urfirnissmalerei_ and all that
sort of technological idiom, across the map, as we can trace the
_centum_ and _satem_ languages. But even if we could collate the
'Bandkeramiker' with the 'Satemvölker' as recent enthusiasts propose, we
should be no nearer to a common technology for Europe than we were to a
common language.

Metal, and even stone, implements do not help us much further, though
they were traded more widely than pottery, and form larger provinces. In
modern Europe, in the same way, pocket-knives are rather more uniform
than milk-jugs; and where they differ, are referable to fewer types. But
there is no unity, nor for the present any prospect of it. For anything
more, we are reduced to the great crises of material culture, such as
the introduction of bronze, of iron, of glass and glazed earthenware;
and these we perceive increasingly not as turning points of the whole,
but as processes within it, affecting now one region, now another, in a
sequence which is clearly geographical and at very variable speed.
Bronze, for example, took some thousands of years to permeate the
continent of Europe; iron perhaps as many hundreds; platinum a little
more than fifty years; and radium less than five.

What we do get from this material evidence, however, is a quite
indisputable sequence of styles in time in each locality where we can
hit upon stratified remains. Dead men, they say, tell no tales;
potsherds are as truthful and eloquent as they are, for the very reason
that, once broken, they are dead and done with, and are allowed to lie
quiet in their rubbish heaps. Intervals indeed we cannot so easily
measure; but of sequences we can be sure, and by comparing the sequences
on different sites we can go far towards tracing the spread and
supersession of a style, sometimes over wide areas, and occasionally,
with the help of the geography, we can be pretty sure of the routes by
which innovations travelled. We can infer nothing, however, from this as
to the movements of people: the vogue of the willow-pattern plate is no
measure of our 'yellow-peril'. But where works of art can travel, ideas
can travel too; and can travel right across the frontiers of race and
language and even of religion; meaning at all events by these, the
customary observance of each region, and of its endemic population. A
few merchants, or craftsmen, or philosophers, work transformations in
culture and bring about uniformities, of which language, or
cult-edifices give us no indication at all, or at best an aftermath of
decadence.

It is not a merely ephemeral interest which draws attention at this
point to the significance of engines of war, among this class of
transferable inventions. Little has been done in a systematic way on
this topic, but the rapidity with which a really important change in
equipment and organization passes from camp to camp, and revolutionizes
not only armies but states, when it is a question of survival or defeat,
has its illustration in many phases of warfare, and ranks among the
great levellers of national or regional pride.

The recorded movements of peoples in historic times, and the previous
movements inferred from language, and other symptoms, indicate a
long-established distribution of what might be described in
meteorological phrase as _man-pressure_; certain regions being
characterized either always or repeatedly by high man-pressure, and an
outward flow of men into the cyclonic areas or vortexes of low
man-pressure in the human covering (or biosphere) of the planet. Typical
high-pressure regions are the Arabian peninsula with its repeated crises
of Semitic eruption, and the great Eurasian grasslands. Typical regions
of low man-pressure, and repeated irruption, are the South European
peninsulas. Occasionally a region plays both parts, alternately
accepting inhabitants, and unloading them on to other lands; examples
are the Hungarian plain, Scandinavia, and Britain. Others again can
hardly be said to have a population of their own at all, but are simple
avenues of transmission, like Western Switzerland and the Hellespont
Region. I am speaking now, of course, about ancient times. The causes of
these recurrent movements are not clearly made out; but the movements
themselves, and the fact that they are of regional recurrence, are
matters of history.

Conspicuous among such movements are the westward drift from Asia into
peninsular Europe, in its three parallel columns, through tundra,
forest, and steppe; and the southward drifts, subsidiary to this, from
East Central Europe into the Balkan lands and round the head of the
Adriatic. The course of these drifts is laid out in detail, as we have
seen, by the physique of the regions; and therewith is determined the
kind of life which each set of folk must be living if it is to survive
the journey.

And here we come at once upon a new factor making strongly for a more
general uniformity of culture within peninsular Europe than its physical
character would at all prepare us to expect. For although individual men
often respond very rapidly to fresh surroundings, and can change their
mode of life almost as they change their clothes, societies react far
more slowly; at the pace, in fact, usually of their most obstinate
members. Confronted therefore with the opportunity, or the need, for a
change of habit, in the course of a migration for example, they must
either refuse it, like a shy horse, or (if they accept it) enter on
their new career imperfectly trained, and extemporizing adjustments here
and there in very unworkmanlike fashion. Only rarely does the statesman
or 'lawgiver' appear, just when he is wanted, to bring Israel up out of
Egypt into the desert, and out of the desert into the good land beyond
Jordan, and to canonize a new code of behaviour suited to a new set of
needs. This social inertia, of which political history is the sorry
record, is of course least perceptible, and most effective, when the
region of transition is graduated gently; and we have already seen that
this is conspicuously so around the parkland margin of the northern
grassland, where it faces on peninsular Europe. Let us follow this clue
in detail.

We may safely assume, as we have seen, that for a long while past, every
group of newcomers into peninsular Europe has come equipped with the
particular type of social organization which enabled it to make good,
either on the tundra, or in the northern woodland, or on the steppe, or
(if it came across the Bosphorus) on the enclosed plateaux of Asia Minor
and beyond. The tundra does not greatly concern us, for the White Sea
cuts through it, and deep into the woodland, and bars off the Lapps from
the Samoyeds and their kin. Classical descriptions of the inhabitants of
the North German plain make it clear that its culture, even so late as
the first century B.C., was at its best a broken prolongation of the
pastoral life of the steppe margin, and that less fortunate tribes
either had never had cattle, like the hunting Redskins of the
corresponding forest zone of North America, or had lost them since they
entered the forest, and maintained themselves by hunting and robbery
like the broken pastorals who infest the east edge of the Congo basin;
the Chatti of Tacitus' day enjoying tyrannous hegemony not unlike that
of the Five Nations.

It is probably to this westward drift from more purely pastoral
condition to less, that we must attribute the only really large unity of
European civilization in the later prehistoric ages, namely, its social
organization in patriarchal households linked into clans and tribes. We
may doubt whether this social type is permanently adaptable to a forest
régime, any more than to industrial life. Certainly forest folk outside
peninsular Europe only display it rarely and imperfectly. But it is
characteristic of all pastoral folk; once established, it coheres and
persists under great external stresses; and in early Europe its
liability (strong though its structure is) to break up sooner or later
into a more individualistic order, was counteracted by the recurrent
drift of new grassland peoples westward from one of its principal homes.
Grassland Arabia, let us note in passing, has been performing the same
function, since history began, for its own marginal neighbours from
Babylonia to Palestine and Egypt.

On the other hand, we now see why the feminism which recurs
intermittently in our 'western' world culminates in those phases of its
history when that world has been strong enough to close its avenues of
intrusion for a while; in the far past which has left us the great
goddesses and other matrilineal survivals; in industrial Babylonia; in
the Minoan palaces; in fifth-and fourth-century Greece, as Aristophanes
joins with Euripides to admit, and Euripides with Plato to advocate; in
the _Femmes savantes_ of renascent Europe; in eighteenth-century France,
which seemed to itself so impregnable; and in the _fin-de-siècle_ Europe
of yesterday, pulling down its barns to build greater.

No one would suggest that this patriarchal and tribal structure favoured
political unity or large enterprises of any kind. In fact, throughout
the early history of Europe these coherent kinship groups, with their
inner insulation and their inability to offer anything but passive
resistance to the forces which were to dissolve them, were an
insuperable bar to anything politically larger. 'If only these could
hold together, they would rule the world' is the judgement of Herodotus
on Scythia, of Thucydides on Thrace, of Polybius and Caesar upon Gaul,
of Tacitus on Germany: each with the unspoken afterthought 'but thank
goodness that they cannot!'

But while it hindered larger growths of political structure, so long as
it remained intact, and furnished a strong social skeleton upon which to
frame manners and ideals which are among man's highest achievements,
patriarchal society had its own dangers, and has now so nearly succumbed
to them, that to see its institutions in working order we have to
penetrate into Albania or amongst the least modern backwoods of the
Slav-speaking east. To take only the leading instance, Greek tribal
society dissolved within historic times under the double attack of
individualism, industrial and commercial, at the one end, and of the
federalism of the city state, at the other. For Aristotle the
village-community was the 'colony' ([Greek: apoikia]) or direct
offspring of the patriarchal household, but he nowhere admits the
city-state to be the 'colony' of the village-community. On the contrary,
at the risk of upsetting his own theory of the state as a natural
outgrowth of man's political nature, he lays stress on 'the man who
first introduced them to each other' as the 'author of the greatest
advantages'. And it was precisely this process of 'introducing them to
one another', so that the members of hitherto autonomous clans became
friends instead of enemies, and were thenceforth citizens all, in one
and the same city-state, that terminated that period of migrations and
political chaos which separates the Minoan from the Hellenic Age in
Greek lands. Rome's mission among the tribal societies of Italy is
essentially the same; and it is the lack of any such missionary of
political enlightenment beyond the frontier of the Roman State in its
imperial fullness, that makes early mediaeval problems, which were
essentially the same, so slow to be solved.

We are now hard upon the borderland of history, and we take leave of a
peninsular Europe--for the grassland stands still outside, as a distinct
geographic entity--in which the diverse races, and languages, and
religious schemes, and material cultures, are almost wholly propagated
under the forms of societies of one homogeneous type, autonomous,
indeed, like the states in the loosest of federations, and involved
annually, somewhere or other, in intertribal feuds and war; but
sufficiently acquainted with each other's customs to know that they were
based on the same large needs, not merely of 'living' somehow but of
'living well', and to respect this common heritage of intertribal
customs, so far that in their uttermost dealings with admitted aliens
they were wont to 'make war like gentlemen'. To Homer's audience it was
sure proof that Odysseus was really 'at the back of nowhere', when the
Cyclops was unable to behave when a stranger came to his cave: he was 'a
monster, of knowledge not according to the rules'.[12] It was a
criticism of despair, like that of M. Lévy-Bruhl: for the Cyclops had
the 'will to power'.[13]

Here, then, was a social structure and a political world, an _oikoumené_
where _men_ could _live_, tolerant of fairly wide variations in detail,
within a general uniformity: for tribal society in Middle Italy or even
in Western Greece, as we first catch sight of it, was by no means
homogeneous with tribal society beyond the Alps in the times of Caesar
and Tacitus. But apart from these variations, tribal Europe was a
coherent whole; and it was so because, and as long as, no new problems
of adjustment between Man and Nature arose to upset the balance struck
by that Bread-culture with which we were concerned just now. For the
patriarchal tribal societies, as we watch them still in Albania for
example, are neither more nor less than the political aspect of that
culture, and their varieties and deviations stand in close correlation
with the varieties which we have seen the Bread-culture assume.

In the same way, the break-down of this social structure proceeds, step
by step, in relation with the two great changes to which normal
Bread-culture is exposed. On the one hand, primitive self-sufficiency
(the retrospective ideal of Greek political thought) was infringed
irrevocably as soon as contact was made with a region, like ancient
Scythia, where, as Herodotus puts it, 'there are no earthquakes and they
grow wheat to sell'; for in the Mountain Zone you are never secure
against shocks, and almost never have any surplus of grain. Once in
oversea contact with lands like these, it became more economical to buy
grain thence, and to pay for it by increasing the production of oil and
wine, than to grow everything at home; and a new and 'limitless' source
of wealth emerged in the process of exchange.

On the other hand, oil and wine needing far less labour than grain-crops
and offering longer leisure (which for Greeks meant the chance to start
doing something else), the contemporary revelation of mineral wealth,
and of many forms of craftsmanship, again largely (though not wholly)
introduced from oversea, created another source of wealth, no less
'limitless' and dangerously unmanageable, in a world where wealth of any
kind was literally 'so little good'. And this industrial wealth, like
its commercial counterpart, was personal wealth, owed wholly to skill
and push, and in no way due to your clansmen or your clan. When the poet
cursed the discovery of metals, he put his finger on the 'key-industry'
of the whole industrial development; and when he cursed the invention of
shipping, he struck at the root-trouble of all, which had revealed to
autonomous Bread-cultured tribes in peninsular Europe lands otherwise
constituted and endowed by Nature, the exploitation of which seemed in
the beginning so easy and obvious, but is, in fact, so profound a
revolution for the societies whose members have attempted it. The tree
of the knowledge of good and evil was for him the shipbuilding pine.[14]

But the dissolution of early European society and culture under the
stress of contact with regions outside Europe is no matter of
prehistoric times. The task of this essay is over when it has presented
that society and culture as Man's reasoned attempt to 'live well' in an
exclusively European world.


BOOKS FOR REFERENCE

Marett, _Anthropology_. Home University Library.

J.L. Myres, _The Dawn of History_. Home University Library.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 1: This chapter has not had the advantage of Prof. Myres's
revision, in view of the rest of the book which he has not seen. Being
for some time abroad on war-work, it was impossible to communicate with
him; and it is therefore thought best to print his paper just as it was
written some months before the lectures were delivered.]

[Footnote 2: Herodotus, viii. 144. After the battle of Salamis, when the
Athenians are invited by Xerxes' envoy to desert the Greek cause, they
say they cannot betray what 'is of one blood and of one speech, and has
establishments of gods in common, and sacrifices, and habits of life of
similar mode'.]

[Footnote 3: For details see the section on Herodotus in _Anthropology
and the Classics_; and E.E. Sikes, _The Anthropology of the Greeks_.]

[Footnote 4: Thucydides i. 6 (Greek: polla d' an kai alla tis
apodeixeie, to palaion Hellênikon omoiotropa tô nun barbarikô
diaitômenon).]

[Footnote 5: (Greek: tou gar logon eontos xynon, zôousin oi polloi ôs
idian echoutes phronêsin).]

[Footnote 6: (Greek: anthrôpoisi pasi metesti ginôskein eautous kai
sôphroneein).]

[Footnote 7: Thucydides, i. 5. He too, as it happens, is illustrating a
primitive Old World, round the Aegean shores of Greece, by the
contemporary West in the backwoods of Aetolia.]

[Footnote 8: Farrand, _The Basis of American History_, 1904, p. 270.]

[Footnote 9: The [Greek: balanêphagoi andres], 'acorn-eating men', of
Greek traditional ethnology.]

[Footnote 10: Bicknell, _The Prehistoric Rock Engravings in the Italian
Maritime Alps_, Bordighera, 1902; _Further Explorations_, 1903. I begin
to suspect that the stippled and shaded enclosures which accompany the
drawings of oxen, ploughs, and men with hoes may represent the
cultivation plots.]

[Footnote 11: I owe valuable information about the Gipsies to my friend
Dr. John Sampson, of the University of Liverpool; but he is in no way
responsible for this interpretation of it.]

[Footnote 12: _Odyssey_ ix. 428 (Greek: pelôr, athemistia eidôs).]

[Footnote 13: _Odyssey_ ix. 214-15:

    (Greek: andr' epeleusesthai megalên epieimenon alkên,
    agrion, oute dikas en eidota oute themistas.)]

[Footnote 14: Horace, _Epode_ xvi. In his 'better land'--

    Non huc Argoo contendit remige pinus,
      Neque impudica Colchis intulit pedem....
    Iuppiter illa piæ _secrevit_ litora genti,
      Ut inquinavit ære tempus aureum;

    Ære, dehinc ferro duravit sæcula; quorum
      Piis secunda, vate me, datur fuga.]




III

THE CONTRIBUTION OF GREECE AND ROME


It might appear the height of paradox to preface a discourse on the
Ancient World by asserting the conviction that the only genuine and
important history is contemporary history. Yet reflection on this
doctrine will show that it is not only consistent with a serious and
steady interest in what is called Antiquity (and indeed in the past in
general), but its only rational basis and justification. Were the past
really past it were dead--dead and done with, and it were wisdom for us
who are alive to let the dead bury their dead. Much of what has been
done and suffered under the sun is indeed gone beyond recall, and is
well buried in forgetfulness. In such forgetfulness lies the fact and
evidence of progress. 'Vex not its ghost'; no necromancy will or should
evoke the departed spirits or avail to make them utter significant
speech to living men. The chain of links which once bound stage to stage
of human history is somewhere for ever broken; and as we retrace, in the
memory of the race or in that of individual, the Ariadne-clue which we
here call 'the unity of History' it vanishes somewhere beyond our vision
into the dark backward and abysm of time. True, of late Archaeology and
Anthropology have cast their search-lights into the darkness, piercing a
little deeper than of old into the mists that surround the origins of
our civilization; but before that dimly illuminated region of
pre-history there still lies, and will always lie, an impenetrable pall.
As again in thought we move forward down the stream of time, the light
available to us for a while increases, increases till we reach the
present where it threatens to blind us with its dazzling excess, and
then suddenly fades and is quenched in the twilight and final darkness
by which the future is hidden from us. Of the whole stream of history
our best or utmost intelligence illuminates but a short reach, and that
imperfectly.

'Our ignorance is infinitely greater than our knowledge,' and the wise
historian is sobered but not discouraged by this reminder of the limits
of his possible understanding. Neither the remote past nor the distant
future can be the objects of knowledge nor, properly speaking, the
subjects of judgement. If our insatiate curiosity has bounds thus
eternally set to its satisfaction, we remember also that it is not
either in the past or the future that we live, that we act and are acted
upon, determine or have determined for us what we do or are to do, what
we suffer or are to suffer. The present alone is real, and of the real
alone is genuine knowledge possible. But if this is so, it is also so
that of this alone does it import us to ascertain the true nature. What
we have to discover (or perish in our blindness) is what we now are and
where we now stand. All other so-called knowledge or understanding, save
as it ministers to the framing of a true judgement concerning our
present selves and our present situation and world, is but vanity or
lumber, at best a rhetorical device for bringing before ourselves or
others what we so judge concerning the one and the other. Genuine
understanding, however it disguise itself as chronicle or prophecy, is
always of the present or nothing.

But this present is not the momentary meeting-place of two eternities or
the brief span of time which psychologists have named 'the specious
present'. Its content is whatsoever is not the dead past or the unborn
future; it is whatever is still or already alive, whatever is yet or
already operative and formative in our inward selves or our outward
environment--in a word what is contemporary, contemporary with our
present doings and sufferings. To such a present it is idle to attempt
to fix limits of date before or behind. A new conception of the unity of
History rises before us as we realize that the Past and the Future are
not _severed_ by the Present, but that these meet and are made one in
its living and concrete actuality. This is the fact, the centre to which
all radii converge and from which they diverge again; and in the Present
the Past and the Future live and are, together and all at once.

Bearing this in mind, we approach the records of history in a new spirit
and with a new hope. We desire to know neither origins nor ends, we
expect no cosmogony and we look for no apocalyptic vision. What we aim
at understanding is what we now are and where we now stand, and we
realize that to understand this we must not restrict our study to what
is merely of recent acquisition or growth. Neither ourselves nor our
environment are bounded by chronological limits; both are contemporary
with the Pyramids just as much as with the Eiffel Tower. We are not
merely the heirs but the epitomes of the ages. As our bodies are but the
present forms on which the secular forces of the earth continue their
dateless activities, so our spirits, our minds, our very selves are the
forms in which other spirits now forgotten or dimly remembered still
live and move and have their being, fulfilling the work which, while
still their names were named, they initiated or advanced. Not in pious
gratitude only must we labour to rescue their memory from fast-coming
oblivion, but because only so can we reach that knowledge of ourselves
and our world which is to us as living men all and alone important. Nor
will such study deny to us the reward we seek. So approaching the
labours of the historian, we shall not be jealous because he comes
before us with a tale, or as we call it, with a 'story'--a narrative of
'old unhappy things and battles long ago'. For though he so puts it,
spacing it out in sections, half-concealing, half-revealing its logical
connexions and ultimate unity, its real meaning, its ultimate--which is
also its present--import is an account of what we now are and the
situation in which we now stand; and unless somehow for each of us its
message comes into such an account, distils and sublimates into such a
quintessential judgement on the present, History remains but 'a tale of
sound and fury, signifying nothing'. It is in the profoundest sense
useless to us unless in the end we can say '_De nobis fabula
narratur_'--it is _our_ history to which we have been listening.

This is especially true of the history of the Ancient World--the world
of classical antiquity. It is not a dead world; its deeds and thoughts
are not past but still live, still 'breathe and burn' in us. They are
largely the stuff of which our present selves and our present world are
made. Not merely, I repeat, in the sense that then were the foundations
of both laid, not merely in the sense that we are heirs to the labours
of our ancestors. We _are_ the Greeks and the Romans, made what we now
are by their deeds and thoughts and experiences, our world their world,
at a later stage of an evolution never interrupted but always one and
single. Our births and deaths are but a sleep and a forgetting in the
unbroken biography of a spirit, not above but in us all, which is the
hero of the history of European civilization, itself a part of the
history of Humanity. Thus the history of Antiquity, and especially of
Classical Antiquity, is the record of the thoughts and deeds of our own
youth.

    Our deeds (and also our thoughts) still travel with us from afar,
    And what we have been makes us what we are.

This is the spirit and the conviction in which I would invite you to
approach the study of Classical Antiquity--not merely in that of
gratitude and reverence, not certainly in that of idle and futile
curiosity, but as seekers for knowledge of yourselves and your world.
For what other knowledge matters?

This quest is but the beginning of a search which is and must be
lifelong. Perhaps I am wrong in calling it the beginning, and there are
others who would and do bid you begin earlier. I can only ask you to
begin where I began or begin myself. At any rate if you begin later or
elsewhere I am confident that you will lose much light on your present
selves and your present world. My own temptation has been rather to stop
too soon and so to overleap the intervening period--the 'Middle
Ages'--between such Antiquity and the Present. Fortunately for you, you
have guides who will point out to you the way of a profitable and
instructive journey across the--to me--unknown or imperfectly explored
land. I must, however, in no controversy with any of my fellow lecturers
here, say a word on the contention that the true beginning of the modern
mind and its world--our mind and our world--lies later and elsewhere
than in Classical Antiquity. The birthday and birthplace of that mind
and its world have been variously fixed. We have been bidden to find the
one, say, as late as the sixteenth century and the other--not from the
same point of view--in the plains and woods of Northern Europe or in the
deserts of Arabia or in some still more vaguely indicated region of the
East. But I must avow my conviction that our civilization--and I
specially remember that we are Englishmen--is not only in origin but in
essence, Greco-Roman, modified no doubt by influences unknown to that in
its earlier stages, but still Greco-Roman grown to a larger stature and
a clearer self-consciousness, self-shaped to its present form, the same
vital and vitalizing force, constantly reinvigorated and re-enlightened
by reflection upon its own past. It is a true instinct that in this
country still bases our system of higher education upon a study of the
languages and literature of Classical Antiquity. We are, as Englishmen,
co-heirs, because co-descendants of Classical Antiquity, with France and
Italy and Greece, yes also with Germany, for European civilization--and
not European civilization only--is, I reiterate, in essence still
Greco-Roman, not Teutonic or Semitic. At least, if this inheritance is
not ours by descent it is ours by adoption, and we are equally
legitimate members of the household. And the bonds of such spiritual
kinship are closer and more durable than those of blood, if indeed those
of blood provably exist at all.

The works and thoughts of which I am to speak--the dreams, the plans,
the hopes and aspirations--are assuredly ours also, the stuff and
substance of our being, our inner _genius_, our guiding and controlling
selves, what we in our first youth imagined and conceived, what we
believed, what we, in our later maturity, designed and in part executed.
If we turn inward we cannot read them there, for the characters are
small and faded; but as we hear their history recounted as it is by
professional historians, we recognize it as the record of a past which
is our very own, while at the same time it is a past which we share with
other nations who are our co-partners in the work of conserving,
deepening, extending, enriching the present-day civilization of Europe
and the world.

In most of us at all times, and in all of us at most times, these
influences and their operations lie deep below the threshold of
consciousness, some of them deeper than any plummet of self-analysis can
sound. They are also the unseen foundations of the social and political
superstructure in which we live. Or, to use another figure, they form
the fertile soil in which we, with all our activities and institutions,
are rooted and from which we draw no small part of our spiritual
sustenance. Hence it is highly pertinent here and now to examine them,
for in this identity of foundation is to be found the primary unity of
the now diffused life of Europe which has parted into so many and so
widely divergent currents of national life. We all come spiritually from
the same ancient home, and it is well and wise to recall its memories.
So we and others shall be the more disposed to re-knit the old bonds and
to weave new ones which may one day restore on a grander scale, in more
organized fullness and more efficacious potency, the primordial unity
which interests and passions have with rude violence, at least in
appearance, disrupted and dissolved and so for a time arrested or
enfeebled.

I have many predecessors in the task of answering the question, What do
we owe to the Greeks? Any answer which I have to offer, must, in the
compass at my disposal, be imperfect; it must also be abstract; and
lastly it cannot but be in form dogmatic. But I think it is not too much
to say that it is to the Greeks that we owe the very conception of
civilization and through that in large measure its very existence. The
truth of this is more evident if we put the truth in another way, saying
that the Greeks first explicitly recognized the contrast between the
barbarous and the civilized state of mankind, and delivered themselves
and us from the former by defining the latter and attempting, not
without success, to establish it in actual reality. No doubt before them
men had felt the pressure of barbarism within and without, and had
framed dreams of something better, but it was the Greeks who first
defined and conceived the ideal and so made it possible to realize it.
Their distinctive peculiarity lay in their setting themselves not merely
to imagine but to think out an ideal of civilized life, and narrowly
and abstractly as to the end they conceived this ideal, they discerned
the main essential lines of its structure, the permanent laws of its
development and well-being. In doing this they discovered the need and
efficacy of knowledge for the conduct of human life, individual and
collective; and found in knowledge no mere means to living but a new and
heightened form of life itself, lifted above the trammelling conditions,
the disillusionments and disappointments of the merely practical
life. Thus they created Science and Philosophy, bequeathing to
us the ideals and the results of the one and the other. We may
so far define their contribution as consisting in the thought of
Civilization-through-knowledge, a thought which was not a thought only
but a potent and effective instrument of action, not a mere ideal but an
ideal governing, directing, and realized, in action and life.

We have also to recognize another most powerful influence of which they
were the vehicles--closely related to the other. The Greeks first
articulately conceived and deliberately pursued the ideal of Freedom. It
was, I say, closely related to the other, for they meant by it not
merely freedom from physical or political constraint but also inward
freedom from prejudice and passion, and they held that knowledge and
freedom rendered one another possible. We may amend our formula and
re-state their contribution as the idea and fact of civilization
regarded as a process in and to Freedom under the control of Knowledge
or Reason, each inspiring, guiding, and fertilizing the other. Theory
and practice thus co-operate and help one another forward; each in its
advance liberates the other for a further effort. The several faculties
of the human spirit work harmoniously together in mutual respect and
reciprocal alliance. Hence arises another distinctive feature of the
Greek ideal, namely, that of wholeness or all-round completeness; there
is in it no one-sided insistence on this or that element in human
nature, no tendency to ascetic mutilation, no fear or jealousy of what
is merely human, tainted by its animal origin or its secular
associations.

But we must not exaggerate. This ideal was imperfectly defined, still
more imperfectly executed or realized. It would be absurd to suppose
that it was held by all Greeks; it was indeed advocated by and for a
minority only. Those who now find in it the impulse and guide of Greek
history might be hard put to it if they were obliged to produce evidence
of their faith, and they would be forced to confess that there was much
to be said against their interpretation. There is to be acknowledged
first the apparent want of internal unity in the Greek world, split up
as it was into small and mutually hostile civic groups; and secondly,
the loose coherence of each of these groups within itself (for each, we
might almost say normally, was torn by intestine faction). It is a
commonplace also that Greek civilization rested upon slavery, so that
barbarism was not expelled but remained as a domestic and ever-present
evil. Freedom and enlightenment was not in thought or practice designed
for all men, but only for Greeks, and among them only in reality for a
privileged minority. The notion of a civilized world or even a civilized
Greece was, if present at all, present only in feeling or imagination,
not in clear vision or distinct thought, still less as an ideal of
practical politics. On the other hand the ideal so narrowly conceived
was not _in principle_ confined to a 'chosen people', or to one strain
of blood. It supplied a programme extensible to all who could show their
title to be regarded as members of the common race of humanity. As the
special features of Greek civilization faded, the lineaments of this
common humanity emerged more clearly into view, and the Greek, when he
was compelled to give up his parochialism and provincialism, found
himself already in spirit prepared to take his place as a citizen of the
world. He had learned his lesson, and to him the whole world went to
school, first to learn of him what civilization meant and then to better
his instructions.

This the world did, but not once for all; for every time since that
mankind, or at least European mankind, has begun to lose faith in its
dream of civilization or has again to shake itself free from the menace
of outward or inward barbarism, it has always reverted to the thought
and life of Greece and drawn inexhaustibly from it new light and new
fruit, for it is its own thought and its own life, while still there ran
in its veins the freshness and the vigour, the blitheness and
hopefulness of its immortal youth. In meditating upon the unforgotten
debt which we owe to Greece, we revive in memory what the spirit which
now lives and moves in us not only once accomplished but still in each
new generation accomplishes, accomplishing ever the better if it repeats
its former achievements with increased consciousness and more deliberate
care. We too here and now have to define what we mean by civilization,
by knowledge, by freedom. Otherwise our future will be determined for
us, and not by us. 'What is to come out of this struggle? Just anything
that may come out of it, or something we mean _shall_ come out of it?'
Assuredly, if we are not to stand bankrupt before our present problem,
we must go to school with Greece, with Rome, with Classical Antiquity,
and in the end with all History, that is to say, with our own experience
as a whole; or out of the spreading chaos no civilized cosmos will be
re-born. Our civilization has been shaken to its foundations, the task
before us and our descendants is to rebuild once more in Europe a
habitable city for the mind of man; and in designing and reconstructing
it we must take counsel with our predecessors who first found the way of
escape from outward and inward barbarism, doing for and in us what we
would do for and in our successors.

The first and most obvious achievement of the Greek mind was the
deliverance of itself in the sphere of the imagination. Behind the fair
creations of Greek art lies a dark and ugly background, but it does lie
behind them. That was its first conquest. Under the magic spell of Art
the hateful and terrifying shapes of barbarous religion retreated and
the world of imagination was peopled with gracious and attractive
figures. The Greek Pantheon is, for all its defects, a world of
dignified and beautiful humanity. 'No thorn or threat stains its beauty
bright.' On the whole the gods which are its denizens are humanized and
humane, the friends and allies of men, who therefore feel themselves not
abased or helpless in their relations with them. 'Of one kind are gods
and men,' and their common world is one in which men feel themselves at
home. Dark shadows there are, but they hide no mysteries to appal and
unman. The imagination is free to follow its own laws, and so to create
what is lovely and lovable. Language is no longer a tyrant but a willing
and dexterous servant, and the Greek language reflecting, as all
language does, the spirit of its users, is the most perfect instrument
that the human mind has ever devised for the expression of its dreams.
The works which were then created have ever since haunted the mind of
Europe like a passion, and we are right in speaking of them as immortal,
'a joy for ever'.

In such a manner the Greek mind humanized its world, and in doing so
humanized itself, or rather divinized itself, without stretching to the
breaking-point the strands which bound itself to its world. But it did
not stop there, and we do it wrong if we dwell too exclusively on its
triumphant achievements in literature and art. For 'speech created
thought, which is the measure of the universe'. The Greeks were not only
supreme artists but also the pioneers of thought. They first took the
measure of the Universe in which they lived, asserting the mind of man
to be its measure, and it amenable and subject to reason. The world they
lived in was not only beautiful to the imagination, it was also
reasonable, penetrable, and governable by the intellect. The ways of it
and everything in it were regular and orderly, predictable, explicable
not eccentric, erratic, baffling and inscrutable. Not only was Nature
knowable; it was also through knowledge of it manageable, a realm over
which man could extend his sway, making it ever a more and more
habitable home. In it and availing himself of its offered aid he built
his households and his cities, dwelling comfortably in his habitations.
But the thought which enabled him to lay a secure basis, economic and
social or political, for his life had other issues and promised other
fruit. The Greek mind became interested in knowledge for its own sake
and in itself as the knower of its world.

The second and more important creation of the Greek mind was Science or
the Sciences. In no earlier civilization can we trace anything but the
faintest germs of this, while in Greek civilization it comes almost at
once to flower and fruit. First and foremost we have to think of
Mathematics, of Arithmetic and Geometry and Optics and Acoustics and
Astronomy, but we must not forget also their later and perhaps not
wholly so successful advances in Physics and Chemistry, in Botany and
Zoology, in Anatomy and Physiology. Doubtless, especially in the case of
the Sciences where experiments are required and have proved so fertile
in the extension of our knowledge, there were grave defects, and too
much trust was placed in mere observation and hasty speculation; but
what they accomplished in Science is no less but more marvellous than
what they accomplished in Art. The idea of Science was there, disengaged
from the limiting restrictions of practical necessities, the idea of
free and therefore all the more potent Science. The whole physical--and
much more than the physical--environment of human life was proclaimed
permeable to human thought and therefore governable by human will or at
any rate already amicable and amenable to human purposes.

But yet a third advance was made. The Greek mind became conscious of
itself as the knower and therefore the lord and master of its world.
Turning inward upon itself it discovered itself as the centre of its
universe and set itself to explore this new inner realm of being. In the
consciousness of itself it found inexhaustible interest and strength.
Thus it created Philosophy, its last and greatest gift to humanity. In
so doing it freed itself from the trammels even of Science, which thus
became its servant and not its master--at the same time finally
liberating itself from the narrowing and blinding influences of passion
and imagination and all the shackles of merely practical needs and
disabilities. Here too it fixed the idea or the ideal. 'Life without
reflection upon life, without self-examination and self-study and
self-knowledge, is a life not worth living by man.' In doing so it
revealed a self deeper than the physical being of man and an environment
wider and more real--more stable and permanent--than the physical
cosmos, finding in the one and the other something more enduring,
substantial, and precious than shows itself either to Science or the
economic and political prudence, yet which alone gives meaning and worth
to the one and the other. Thus for the first time arose before the mind
of man the conception of a life not sunk in nature and practice, but
superior to them and the end or meaning of their existence--a life of
intense activity, of unfailing interest, of inexhaustible and eternal
value.

This life was throughout the duration of Greek thought too narrowly
conceived. It was frequently thought and spoken of as the life of a
spectator or bystander or onlooker, as a life withdrawn or isolated, cut
off from what we should call ordinary human business and concerns, a
life into which we, or at least a few of us, could escape or be
transported at rare intervals and under exceptionally favourable
circumstances. Yet in principle it was open to all, and certainly not
confined to those privileged by birth or wealth or social position. It
was not the reward of magical favour or ascetic exercises, it was
reached by the beaten path of the loyal citizen and the resolute
student. There was about it no esoteric mystery or other-worldliness.
And if to reach it was a high privilege its attainment brought with it
the imperative duty of a descent into the ordinary world to instruct, to
enlighten, to comfort and help and console, to play a part in the great
business and work of human civilization. In a sense this was, and is,
the most permanent and fruitful gift of Greece to the European world.

These then were the three ideas or ideals which the Greeks wrought into
the very texture and substance of the modern mind, the idea of Art, the
idea of Science, the idea of Philosophy; in all three introducing and
still more deeply implanting the ideas of Freedom as the motive and end
of civilized life and of Knowledge as its guide and ally. It may be
thought that I have dwelt too much on theory, and have not said enough
of the specific contribution of Greece as working out in practice a
certain type or types of corporate life such as the City State; but the
fact is that in Greek civilization theory continually outran practice
and that it endowed mankind much more with ideas or ideals than with
practical illustrations or models for our imitation. Yet again we must
not exaggerate or imagine these ideas as merely Utopian or such stuff as
dreams are made of. The ferment which they set up burst the fabric of
Greek social and political institutions, but it clarified and steadied
down, as the enthusiasms of youth may do, into the sober designs of
grave and energetic manhood.

The spectacle of the dissolution of the Greek civilization is not a
pleasant one. 'The glory that was Greece' fades out of the world and
leaves it grey and dull, and there was worse than this; there was also
decay and degeneracy and corruption. To dwell upon it is as the sin of
Ham. Nevertheless what took place was not a mere relapse towards
barbarism, but on the contrary the supersession of a form of
civilization which had done its work by another form less attractive,
but more sound and solid. The Romans have the airs of grown and grave
men beside the perpetual youth of Greece, (the Greeks were 'always
children') but they are well aware of how much they learned and had to
learn from their predecessors in the task of civilizing the world. So
much is this so that in many departments of civilized life they look
upon themselves as imitating the Greeks and carrying out their ideas. In
this they were less than just to themselves, for even in the world of
art they continued to create; and certainly in literature they produced
works not unworthy to stand beside their chosen models. Especially they
created a prose style, which without ceasing to be artistic served the
sober and serious purposes of political oratory and historic record. But
their peculiar genius showed itself most in the applied arts which
pressed Greek science into the ministry of life in architecture and
engineering. Their roads and bridges and aqueducts still stand to bear
witness of them. It would be a great error to deny to them fertile
advance in the sciences, because their discoveries are so immediately
put to the proof in practice and so little disengage themselves into
express theory from their applications.

But before we proceed to reckon up their contributions to European
civilization it is well to correct a misconception which arises only too
easily from an accident of our education. It is the custom in England to
concentrate attention upon a brief period in the history of Rome,
ignoring on the one hand the early Republican period and on the other
the later Imperial. There is thus lost to our imaginations those figures
and their deeds which seemed for example to Shakespeare most
characteristically Roman and to our more thoughtful consideration those
achievements which most deeply moulded the fabric of Europe. The latter
is the greater loss, and here we must remember that it is the history of
_Imperial_ Rome that is most relevant to our purpose and most
informative. Under the Empire Rome worked as a master, no longer as an
apprentice or a journeyman. The theatre of her civilizing activities was
here little less than the whole world then known, and the boast is not
unjustified that she made into a city what had formerly been but a
world, as we might say, merely a geographical expression. The record of
that progress reads to us too much as a narrative of incessant warfare,
and we are accustomed to think of her empire as a gigantic military
power, but in reality it was in aim and result essentially pacific, and
so appeared to those who lived under her sway. To them the name of her
empire was the 'Roman peace'. It was as such that the memory of it
haunted the minds of men when it too broke down from internal economic
disorders and external pressure, and a distracted and divided Europe
looked back to it as the pattern for a restored civilization.

The aim and result of the Roman Empire was peace, a world-wide peace.
It is true that this end was not very articulately defined by those who
pursued it, but (perhaps just because of that) the means to it were more
practically designed and more effectively executed. The civilized world
was one and to be treated as one; it was still Rome under a single
government and a single head. There arose then the idea of a supreme
sovereignty one and indivisible, that was the absolutely indispensable
condition of a world peace. But the necessity of organization was
equally grasped, insisted upon, realized. The civilized world was
covered with a network of institutions through which the will of the
Emperor flowed and circulated throughout the Empire. Peace through
system and order--that was the secret of the Roman success. But two
other ideas must be added to complete the explanation. The one was the
idea or ideal of Justice; no system and no order could work unless it
was, and commended itself to its subjects as being, scrupulously and
exactly just. The second idea was that in order to be this it must be a
legal system, based upon a known body of legal rights and duties,
determining and controlling the whole conduct of the subjects to the
sovereign and to one another. The notion which the Romans, not so much
by their thought or speech, but by their acts, added to the world's
stock was that of a peace secured and maintained by the just operation
throughout the civilized world of a system of law the same for all,
issuing from and enforced by a single central power.

The notion is at least grandiose, and so stated seems almost too high
and difficult for human nature to realize. Yet for centuries it was
applied, and applied with marvellous success. Nor in spite of its
apparent failure in the end has the idea of it ceased to dominate men's
minds. I do not speak here of the transitory imitation of it by the
Carolingians or of the attempt at the restitution or copy of it in the
spiritual sphere of the Church, or again of its phantom survival in the
ghostly form of the Holy Roman Empire. But I would point to the way in
which it still--in thought--controls us when without essential
alteration of the idea we transfer its application to the nation and
still look for the secret of _its_ peace and strength in an organization
of all its activities under a law proceeding from and enforced by a
sovereign will resident somewhere within its structure, a law demanding
and receiving obedience from all loyal subjects. Nor is the hope extinct
that the way to a wider or world-wide peace lies through the restoration
of a similar system in its application to international relations.
Though I am unable to share this hope (or indeed the desire that its
realization should be endeavoured after), I find it impossible to judge
that it has yet lost its hold on men's minds or is without elements of
importance in view of our present problem and perplexity.

It is perhaps more profitable to ask what we have to learn from the
history both of its success and its failure. Of its success for a time
and long time in the history of Europe there can be no doubt, and on its
permanent effects rests much of what is most sound and stable in the
civilization of modern Europe. Peace there was because of it, and again
because of it and what it accomplished Europe resisted and survived
internal disorder and barbarian invasion so that, as I said above, what
still exists as a united or allied Europe is the Roman or Romanized
world. Roman ideas and ideals still hold it together, although the Roman
Empire has declined and fallen, and no other Empire has risen or, I
trust, may rise, upon its ruins. It is not my business to analyse the
causes of that decline and fall, though a few words on them may not be
out of place. In the first place it declined and fell because those who
administered ignored its economic substructure, paying no attention to
the causes which were undermining its very material basis, or the
enormous suffering which the neglect and consequent disorganization of
that entailed. In the second, and partly because of that neglect, they
did not sufficiently strengthen its defences against external attack; I
do not so much mean in the way of remissness in military preparation as
by a surcease of the former policy of bringing their barbarous or
semi-civilized neighbours into the higher system, and so extending the
range of civilization. It is perhaps fanciful to suggest that we are now
suffering the penalty of the failure of Rome to Romanize, that is to
say, to civilize their Teutonic neighbours. In the third place, they
erred by not recognizing and taking account of new forces which in the
way of ideas were entering into the conception of civilized life, the
ideas which we mass together under the head of feudalism, the idea of
nationality. Under the influence of the one and the other the ideal of a
single world State, with a uniform or rigid system of laws resting upon
a sovereign will, one and indivisible, dissolved, or at least entered
upon dissolution, approving itself unadapted or unadaptable to the needs
of a novel and immensely more complex situation of the world. No mere
tinkering at it did or could suffice to save it; and the organization of
Europe based upon it collapsed.

The Revolution of the end of the eighteenth and the beginning of the
nineteenth centuries was in many ways the last attempt to reinstate it,
and failure to do so pronounced its doom. We cannot now look forward to
the reorganization of civilized Europe on the model of the Roman Empire
or of an Empire at all, and the more definitely formulated hope of
salvation by the erection or re-erection of an international system of
law in any real sense seems to me an unsubstantial dream--the
administration of a belated nostrum for our disease, not a panacea. Not
that way do the lessons of history point. The Roman ideal must be
transformed, must be reborn, if it is not to lead our anticipations and
our actions wholly astray. No more in the political or secular sphere
than in the spiritual or ecclesiastical is 'Romanism' a possible guide
to the reconstruction of modern European civilization. For that far too
much water (and blood) has run under the bridge. Yet the spirit which
gave it life and efficacy is immortal, and the study of the secret of
its vitality and power is a necessity for us. In the work of
reconstruction we must learn from the Romans the value of System and
Order, of Justice and Law, as from Greece we have ever afresh to learn
the love of Freedom and Truth.

The Greeks have given us the idea of a life worth living which
civilization renders possible, but does not directly produce. This life
in its essential features they rightly conceived, but its content they
failed to articulate, and whether because of that or not, they failed to
realize its indispensable conditions, material, economic, political, &c.
The Romans did more effectively realize this, but they lost sight of the
ends in the means, securing a peace, a comfort, an ease, a leisure of
which they made no particularly valuable use. It has been said that at
no time in the world's history were civilized men so happy as under the
Roman Empire. It might be said with greater truth that at no time were
civilized men so unhappy, for the happiness that was theirs was empty,
mere dead-sea fruit, dust and ashes in the mouth; a very Death in Life.
Life was without savour, and they turned away from it in weariness and
disgust and despair, seeking and finding in Philosophy--the fruits of
reflection upon life--nothing better than consolation for the wounds and
disillusions of life. Thus those who gave their lives to Rome lost
heart, and retreating into themselves found nothing there but solitude
and emptiness. Civilization was but the husk of a life that had fled.

Nevertheless, as it is necessary for the living body to deposit a bony
skeleton and for the living soul to harden its impulses into habits and
stiffen its aspirations into rules and plans of action, so civilization
as a whole must create within and around it a structure of ordered and
systematic thought and action within which the higher forces now
recognized and disengaged may be all the more free to do their work.
Without such a mechanical or apparently unspiritual basis these forces
can only work fugitively, erratically, and so ineffectively, as they did
in the Greek world. To the prosaic business of creating or recreating
and maintaining in being such a structure a large part of our energies
must be devoted, and in all this from the Romans we have still much to
learn. If we decline to learn and digest this lesson, turning from such
concernment in disgust or disdain, our lives will be lost in vain
dreams, in idle longings and empty regrets; and the kingdom of Freedom
and Truth will be taken from us and given to others who have known how
to grow up and to face like men the hardships and hazards without which
it cannot be won or held. From the inspiring visions of these ideals we
must turn as we did when we and our world were Roman, to the serious and
sober task of creating a political and legal structure on which the
eternal spirit of European civilization can resume its work of
extending, deepening, enriching, the common life of Humanity.

It seems as if we--the heirs of their experience--bound to face a more
appalling problem, are bankrupt, even of hopes, having lost both the
ideal of a life worth living on this earth and that of some large and
complex organization rendering this life possible. But this is not so,
for the forces which in Antiquity created and for long maintained a
civilization at first desirable and then strong, are not spent. Still
they make the Greco-Roman civilization which is ours a thing worth
living and dying for; still they hold us together in a unity and concord
deeper than ever plummet can sound, obscured but not destroyed by the
present noise and confusion of battle. Still at heart we care--and not
we only but also our enemies and all neutrals benevolent or
malevolent--for the ends for which civilization exists, for the peace
and order and justice which are their necessary conditions: we still
have minds to devise and wills to execute whatever is necessary to its
progress. Still we are willing to learn of history and resolved to
better its instruction, to know ourselves and our world and adjust our
ideas and our acts to the situation in which we find ourselves. The
civilized world has not lost heart or hope; and will not, so long as the
dreams of its immortal youth and the plans of its immortal manhood are
not lost to its memory or passed beyond its retrospective reflection.

     _Note_. The doctrine that all History is contemporary History has
     been best set forth by Benedetto Croce, of Naples, from whose
     works several expressions have here been borrowed, with a
     profound acknowledgement of indebtedness to him.


BOOKS FOR REFERENCE

Hegel, _Philosophy of History_, Parts II and III (to be read not as
philosophy, but as history guided and enlightened by philosophy).
Translation in Bohn's Library.

Marvin, _The Living Past_. Clarendon Press.

Adamson, _The Development of Greek Philosophy_. W. Blackwood. (For a
brief but pregnant account consult Webb's _History of Philosophy._ Home
University Library.)

Butcher's _Some Aspects of the Greek Genius_ ('What we owe to Greece').
Macmillan.

Murray's _Rise of the Greek Epic_. Clarendon Press.

Warde Fowler's _Rome_. Home University Library.

Bryce's _Holy Roman Empire_. Macmillan.




IV

UNITY IN THE MIDDLE AGES[15]

     Ergo humanum genus bene se habet et optime, quando secundum quod
     potest Deo adsimilatur. Sed genus humanum maxime Deo adsimilatur
     quando maxime est unum; vera enim ratio unius in solo illo est.
     Propter quod scriptum est: 'Audi, Israel, Dominus Deus tuus unus
     est'. DANTE, _De Monarchia_, i. viii.


I

He who shuts his eyes to-day to make a mental picture of the world sees
a globe in which the mass of Asia, the bulk of Africa, and the length of
America vastly outweigh in the balance the straggling and sea-sown
continent of Europe. He sees all manner of races, white and yellow,
brown and black, toiling, like infinitesimal specks, in every manner of
way over many thousands of miles; and he knows that an infinite variety
of creeds and civilizations, of practices and beliefs--some immemorially
old, some crudely new; some starkly savage, and some softly
humane--diversify the hearts of a thousand million living beings. But if
we would enter the Middle Ages, in that height and glory of their
achievement which extended from the middle of the eleventh to the end of
the thirteenth century, we must contract our view abruptly. The known
world of the twelfth century is a very much smaller world than ours, and
it is a world of a vastly greater unity. It is a Mediterranean world;
and 'Rome, the head of the world, rules the reins of the round globe'.
From Rome the view may travel to the Sahara in the south; in the east to
the Euphrates, the Dniester, and the Vistula; in the north to the Sound
and the Cattegat (though some, indeed, may have heard of Iceland), and
in the west to the farther shores of Ireland and of Spain. Outside these
bounds there is something, at any rate to the east, but it is something
shadowy and wavering, full of myth and fable. Inside these bounds there
is the clear light of a Christian Church, and the definite outline of a
single society, of which all are baptized members, and by which all are
knit together in a single fellowship.

Economically the world was as different from our own as it was
geographically. Money, if not unknown, was for the most part unused. It
had drifted eastwards, in the latter days of the Roman Empire, to
purchase silks and spices; and it had never returned. From the days of
Diocletian, society had been thrown back on an economy in kind. Taxes
took the form either of payments of personal service or of quotas of
produce: rents were paid either in labour or in food. The presence of
money means a richly articulated society, infinitely differentiated by
division of labour, and infinitely connected by a consequent nexus of
exchange. The society of the Middle Ages was not richly articulated.
There were merchants and artisans in the towns; but the great bulk of
the population lived in country villages, and gained subsistence
directly from the soil. Each village was practically self-sufficing; at
the most it imported commodities like iron and salt; for the rest, it
drew on itself and its own resources. This produced at once a great
uniformity and a great isolation. There was a great uniformity, because
most men lived the same grey, quiet life of agriculture. The peasantry
of Europe, in these days when most men were peasants, lived in the same
way, under the same custom of the manor, from Berwick to Carcassonne,
and from Carcassonne to Magdeburg. But there was also a great isolation.
Men were tied to their manors; and the men of King's Ripton could even
talk of the 'nation' of their village. If they were not tied by
conditions of status and the legal rights of their lord, they were still
tied, none the less, by the want of any alternative life. There were
towns indeed; but towns were themselves very largely agricultural--the
homes of _summa rusticitas_--and what industry and commerce they
practised was the perquisite and prerogative of local guilds. Custom was
king of all things, and custom had assorted men in compartments in which
they generally stayed. The kaleidoscopic coming and going of a society
based on monetary exchanges--its speedy riches and speedy bankruptcies,
its embarrassment of alternative careers all open to talents--these were
unthought and undreamed of. The same uniformity and the same isolation
marked also, if in a less degree, the knightly class which followed the
profession of arms. A common feudal system, if we can call that a system
which was essentially unsystematic, reigned over the whole of Western
Europe, and, when Western Europe went crusading into Syria, established
itself in Syria. Historians have tried to establish distinctions between
the feudalism of one country and that of another--between the feudalism
of England, for instance, and that of France. It is generally held
nowadays that they have failed to establish the distinction. A fief in
England was uniform with a fief in France, as a manor in one country was
uniform with manors in other countries, and a town in one country with
towns in others. 'One cannot establish a line of demarcation between
German and French towns,' says a famous Belgian historian, 'just as one
cannot distinguish between French and German feudalism.'[16] The
historian of the economic and institutional life of the Middle Ages
will err unless he proceeds on the assumption of its general uniformity.
But the uniformity of the fief, like that of the manor and the town, was
compatible with much isolation. Each fief was a centre of local life and
a home of local custom. The members of the feudal class lived, for the
most part, local and isolated lives. Fighting, indeed, would bring them
together; but when the 'season' was over, and the forty days of service
were done, life ran back to its old ruts in the manor-hall, and if some
of the summer was spent in company, much of the winter was spent in
isolation. On a society of this order--stable, customary, uniform, with
its thousands of isolated centres--the Church descended with a
quickening inspiration and a permeating unity. Most of us find a large
play for our minds to-day in the competition of economics or the
struggles of politics. The life of the mind was opened to the Middle
Ages by the hands of the Church. We may almost say that there was an
exact antithesis between those days and these latter days, if it were
not that exact antitheses never occur outside the world of logic. But it
is as nearly true as are most antitheses that while our modern world is
curiously knit together by the economic bonds of international finance,
and yet sadly divided (and never more sadly than to-day) by the clash of
different national cultures and different creeds, the mediaeval world,
sundered as it was economically into separate manors and separate towns,
each leading a self-sufficing life on its own account, was yet linked
together by unity of culture and unity of faith. It had a single mind,
and many pockets. We have a single pocket, and many minds. That is why
the wits of many nowadays will persist in going wool-gathering into the
Middle Ages, to find a comfort which they cannot draw from the golden
age of international finance.

But retrogression was never yet the way of progress. It is probable,
for instance, that the sanitation of the Middle Ages was very
inadequate, and their meals sadly indigestible; and it would be useless
to provoke a revolt of the nose and the stomach in order to satisfy a
craving of the mind. An uncritical mediaevalism is the child of
ignorance of the Middle Ages. Sick of vaunting national cultures, we may
recur to an age in which they had not yet been born--the age of a single
and international culture; but we must remember, all the same, that the
strength of the Middle Ages was rooted in weakness. They were on a low
stage of economic development; and it was precisely because they were on
a low stage of economic development that they found it so easy to
believe in the unity of civilization. Unity of a sort is easy when there
are few factors to be united; it is more difficult, and it is a higher
thing, when it is a synthesis of many different elements. The Middle
Ages had not attained a national economy: their economy was at the best
municipal, and for the most part only parochial. A national economy has
a higher economic value than a municipal or parochial economy, because
it means the production of a greater number of utilities at a less cost,
and a richer and fuller life of the mind, with more varied activities
and more intricate connexions. A national economy could only develop
along with--perhaps we may say it could only develop through--a national
system of politics; and the national State, which is with us to-day, and
with some of whose works we are discontented, was a necessary condition
of economic progress. With the coming of the national State the facile
internationalism of the Middle Ages had to disappear; and as economics
and politics ran into national channels, the life of the spirit,
hitherto an international life, suffered the same change, and national
religions, if such a thing be not a contradiction in terms, were duly
born. But a national economy, a national State, a national Church were
all things unknown to the Middle Ages. Its economy was a village
economy: its mental culture was an international culture bestowed by a
universal Church (a village culture there could not be, and with a
universal Church the only possible culture was necessarily
international); while, as for its politics, they were something betwixt
and between--sometimes parochial, when a local feudal lord drew to
himself sovereignty; sometimes national, when a strong king arose in
Israel; and sometimes, under a Charlemagne, almost international.

A consideration of the linguistic factor may help to throw light on the
point in question. Here again we may trace the same isolation and the
same uniformity which we have also seen in the world of economics. There
was an infinity of dialects, but a paucity of languages, in the Middle
Ages. One is told that to-day there are dialects in the Bight of
Heligoland and among the Faroes which are peculiar to a single family.
Something of the same sort must have existed in the Middle Ages. Just as
there were local customs of the manor, the town, and the fief, there
must have been local dialects of villages and even of hamlets. But here
again isolation was compatible with uniformity. There were perhaps only
two languages of any general vogue in the central epoch of the Middle
Ages, and they were confined by no national frontiers. First there was
Latin, the language of the Church, and since learning belonged to the
Church, the language of learning. Scholars used the same language in
Oxford and Prague, in Paris and Bologna; and within the confines of
Latin Christianity scholarship was an undivided unity. Besides Latin the
only other language of any general vogue in the middle of the Middle
Ages was vulgar Latin, or Romance. To Dante, writing at the close of
the thirteenth century, Romance was still one _idioma_--even if it were
_trifarium_, according as its 'yes' was _oïl_, or _oc_, or _sì_.[17] Of
the three branches of this _idioma_, that of _oïl_, or Northern France,
was easily predominant. The Norman conquest of England carried it to
London: the Norman conquest of Sicily carried it to Palermo: the
Crusades carried it to Jerusalem. With it you might have travelled most
of the mediaeval world from end to end. It was the language of courts;
it was the language of chansons; it was the language of all lay culture.
It was the language of England, France, and Italy; and St. Francis
himself had delighted in his youth in the literature which it enshrined.

The linguistic basis of mediaeval civilization was thus Latin, either in
its classical or in its vulgar form. There were of course other
languages, and some of these had no small vogue. Just before the period
of which we are treating--the period which extends from 1050 to
1300--Icelandic had a wide scope. It might have been heard not only in
Scandinavia and the Northern Isles, but in a great part of the British
Islands, in Normandy, in Russia--along the river-road that ran to
Constantinople--and in Constantinople itself. But the fact remains that
the linguistic basis of mediaeval thought and literature was a Latin
basis. The Romance University of Paris was the capital of learning: the
Romance tongue of Northern France was the tongue of society. And as the
linguistic basis of mediaeval civilization was Romance, so, too, was
mediaeval civilization itself. The genius of Latin Christianity was the
source of its inspiration: the spirit of the Romance peoples was the
breath of its being. The souvenir of the old Roman Empire provided the
scheme of its political ideas; and the Holy Roman Empire, if a religious
consecration had given it a new sanctity, was Roman still. Yet the
irruption of the Teutons into the Empire had left its mark; and the
emperor of the Middle Ages was always of Teutonic stock. It was perhaps
at this point that the unity of the mediaeval scheme betrayed a fatal
flaw. It would be futile to urge that the dualism which showed itself in
the struggles of papacy and empire had primarily, or even to any
considerable extent, a racial basis. Those struggles are struggles of
principles rather than of races; they are contentions between a secular
and a clerical view of life, rather than between the genius of Rome and
the genius of Germany. Hildebrand stood for a free Church--a Church free
from secular power because it was controlled by the papacy. Henry IV
stood for the right of the secular power to use the clergy for purposes
of secular government, and to control the episcopacy as one of the
organs of secular administration. But the fact remains that a scheme
which rested on a Teutonic emperor and a Roman pontiff was already a
thing internally discordant, before these other and deeper dissensions
appeared to increase the discord.

Such were the bases on which the unity of mediaeval civilization had to
depend. There was a contracted world, which men could regard as a unity,
with a single centre of coherence. There was a low stage of economic
development, which on the one hand meant a general uniformity of life,
in fief and manor and town, and on the other hand meant a local
isolation, that needed, and in the unity of the Church found, some
method of unification. With many varieties of dialect, there was yet a
general identity of language, which made possible the development, and
fostered the dissemination, of a single and identical culture.
Nationalism, whether as an economic development, or as a way of life and
a mode of the human spirit, was as yet practically unknown. Races might
disagree; classes might quarrel; kings might fight; there was hardly
ever a national conflict in the proper sense of the word. The mediaeval
lines of division, it is often said, were horizontal rather than
vertical. There were different estates rather than different states. The
feudal class was homogeneous throughout Western Europe: the clerical
class was a single corporation through all the extent of Latin
Christianity; and the peasantry and the townsfolk of England were very
little different from the peasantry and the townsfolk of France. We have
to think of a general European system of estates rather than of any
balance of rival powers.


II

The unity which rested on these bases begins to appear, as a reality and
not only an idea, about the middle of the eleventh century, and lasts
till the end of the thirteenth. That unity, as we have seen, was
essentially ecclesiastical. It was the product of the Church: we may
almost say that it was the Church. Before 1050 the Catholic Church,
however universal in theory, had hardly been universal in fact. The
period of the Frankish, the Saxon, and the early Salian emperors had
been a period of what German writers call the _Landeskirche_. The power
of the Bishop of Rome had not yet been fully established; and the great
churches of Reims and Mainz and Milan were practically independent
centres. Independent of the papacy, they were not independent of the lay
rulers within whose dominions they lay. On the contrary, their members
were deeply engaged in lay activities; they were landlords, feudatories,
and officials in their various countries. In the face of these facts,
the Gregorian movement of the eleventh century pursues two closely
interconnected objects. It aims at asserting the universal primacy of
the papacy; it aims at vindicating the freedom of the clergy from all
secular power. The one aim is a means to the other: the pope cannot be
universal primate, unless the clergy he controls are free from secular
control; and the clergy cannot be free from secular control, unless the
universal primacy of the papacy effects their liberation. Gregorianism
wins a great if not a thorough triumph. It establishes the theory, and
in a very large measure the practice, of ecclesiastical unity. The days
of the _Landeskirche_ are numbered: the days of the Church Universal
under the universal primacy of Rome are begun. But when the universality
of the Church has once been established in point of extension, it begins
to be also asserted in point of intensity. Once ubiquitous, the papacy
seeks to be omnicompetent. Depositary of the truth, and only depositary
of the truth, by divine revelation, the Church, under the guidance of
the papacy, seeks to realize the truth in every reach of life, and to
control, in the light of Christian principle, every play of human
activity. Learning and education, trade and commerce, war and peace, are
all to be drawn into her orbit. By the application of Christian
principle a great synthesis of human life is to be achieved, and the
_lex Christi_ is to be made a _lex animata in terris_.

This was the greatest ambition that has ever been cherished. It meant
nothing less than the establishment of a _civitas Dei_ on earth. And
this kingdom of God was to be very different from that of which St.
Augustine had written. His city of God was neither the actual Church nor
the actual State, nor a fusion of both. It was a spiritual society of
the predestined faithful, and, as such, thoroughly distinct from the
State and secular society. The city of God which the great mediaeval
popes were seeking to establish was a city of this world, if not of this
world only. It was a fusion of the actual Church, reformed by papal
direction and governed by papal control, with actual lay society,
similarly reformed and similarly governed. Logically this meant a
theocracy, and the bull of Boniface VIII, by which he claimed that every
human creature was subject to the Roman pontiff, was its necessary
outcome. But a theocracy was only a means, and a means that was never
greatly emphasized in the best days of the papacy. It was the end that
mattered; and the end was the moulding of human life into conformity
with divine truth. The end may appear fantastic, unless one remembers
the plenitude of means which stood at the command of the mediaeval
Church. The seven sacraments had become the core of her organization.
Central among the seven stood the sacrament of the Mass, in which bread
and wine were transubstantiated into the divine body and blood of our
Lord. By that sacrament men could touch God; and by its mediation the
believer met the supreme object of his belief. Only the priest could
celebrate the great mystery; and only those who were fit could be
admitted by him to participation. The sacrament of penance, which became
the antechamber, as it were, to the Mass, enabled the priest to
determine the terms of admission. Outside the sacraments stood the
Church courts, exercising a large measure of ethical and religious
discipline over all Christians; and in reserve, most terrible of all
weapons, were the powers of excommunication and interdict, which could
shut men and cities from the rites of the Church and the presence of the
Lord. Who shall say, remembering these things, that the aims of the
mediaeval Church were visionary or impracticable?

For a time, and in some measure, they were actually accomplished. Let us
look at each estate in turn, and measure the accomplishment--speaking
first of the knightly world, and the Church's control of war and peace;
then of the world of the commons, and the Church's control of trade and
commerce; and last of the clerical world and the Church's control of
learning and education.

The control of war and peace was a steady aim of the Church from the
beginning of the eleventh century. The evil of feudalism was its
propensity to private war. To cure that evil the Church invented the
Truce of God. The Truce was a diocesan matter. The 'form' of Truce was
enacted in a diocesan assembly, and the people of the diocese formed a
_communitas pacis_ for its enforcement. There was no attempt to put an
absolute stop to private war; the Truce was only directed to a
limitation of the times and seasons in which feuds could be waged, and a
definition of the persons who were to be exempted from their menace. But
from seeking to limit the fighting instinct of a feudal society, the
Church soon rose to the idea of enlisting that instinct under her own
banner and directing it to her own ends. So arose chivalry, which, like
most of the institutions of the Middle Ages, was the invention of the
Church. Chivalry was the consecration of the fighting instinct to the
defence of the widow, the fatherless, and the oppressed; and by the
beginning of the eleventh century liturgies already contain the form of
religious service by which neophytes were initiated into knighthood.
This early and religious form of chivalry (there was a later and lay
form, invented by troubadour and trouvère, which was chiefly concerned
with the rules for the loves of knights and ladies) culminated in the
Crusades. In the Crusades we touch perhaps the most typical expression
of the mediaeval spirit. Here we may see the clergy moulding into
conformity with Christian principle the apparently unpromising and
intractable stuff of feudal pugnacity: here we may see the papacy
asserting its primacy of a united Europe by gathering Christian men
together for the common purpose of carrying the flag of their faith to
the grave of their Redeemer. Here the permeating influence of Christian
revelation may be seen attempting to permeate even foreign policy (for
what are the Crusades but the foreign policy of a Christian commonwealth
controlled and directed by the papacy?); and here again even the
instinct for colonial expansion, so often the root of desperate wars,
was brought into line with the unity of all nations in Christ, and made
to serve the cause of Him 'in whom alone is to be found the true nature
of the One'.

There is another aspect of the clerical control of peace and war in the
interest of Christian unity which must not be forgotten. The papacy
sought to become an international tribunal. The need for such a tribunal
was as much a mediaeval as it is a modern commonplace. Dante, who sought
to vindicate for the emperor, rather than for the pope, the position and
power of an international judge, has started the argument in famous
words. 'Between any two princes, of whom the one is in no way subject to
the other, disputes may arise, either by their own fault, or by that of
their subjects. Judgement must therefore be given between them. And
since neither can have cognizance of the other, because neither is
subject to the other, there must be a third of ampler jurisdiction, to
control both by the ambit of his power.'[18] Such ampler jurisdiction,
which might indeed be claimed for the emperor, but which he had never
the power to exercise, was both claimed and exercised by the papacy. The
papacy, which sought to enforce the Christian canon of conduct in every
reach of life and every sphere of activity, would never admit that
disputes between sovereign princes lay outside the rule of that canon.
Innocent III, in a letter to the French bishops defending his claim to
arbitrate between France and England, stands very far from any such
admission. 'It belongs to our office', he argues, 'to correct all
Christian men for every mortal sin, and if they despise correction, to
coerce them by ecclesiastical censure. And if any shall say, that kings
must be treated in one way, and other men in another, we appeal in
answer to the law of God, wherein it is written, "Ye shall judge the
great as the small, and there shall be no acceptance of persons among
you." But if it is ours to proceed against criminal sin, we are
especially bound so to do when we find a sin against peace.'[19] Here,
in these words of Innocent, the clerical claim to control of peace and
war touches its highest point. In the name of a Christian principle,
permeating all things, and reducing all things to unity, the dread
arbitrament of war is itself to be submitted to a higher and finer
arbitration. The claim was too high to be sustained or translated into
effect. It is not too high to be admired.

Nor was it altogether remote from the actual life of the day. Even to
the laity of the Middle Ages, war was not a mere conflict of powers, in
which the strongest power must necessarily prevail. It was a conflict of
rights before a watching God of battles, in which the greatest right
could be trusted to emerge victorious. War between States was analogous
to the ordeal of battle between individuals: it was a legal way of
testing rights. Now ordeal by battle was a mode of procedure in courts
of law, and a mode of procedure whose conduct and control belonged to
the clergy. If, therefore, war between States is analogous to ordeal, it
follows, first, that it is a legal procedure which needs a high court
for its interpretation (and what court could be more competent than the
papal curia?), and, next, that it is a matter which in its nature
touches the clergy. Such ideas were a natural basis for the Church's
attempt to control the issues of war and peace; and if we remember these
ideas, we shall acquit the Church of any impracticable quixotism.

The attempt to control trade and commerce was no less lofty and no less
arduous. It is perhaps still easier to stop war than to stop
competition; and yet the Church made the attempt. The Christian law of
love was set against the economic law of demand and supply. It was
canonical doctrine that the buyer should take no more, and the seller
offer no less, than the just price of a commodity--a price which would
in practice depend on the cost of production. The rule for prices was
also the rule for wages: the just wage was the natural complement of the
just price. The prohibition of usury and of the taking of interest was
another factor in the same circle of ideas. If prices and wages are both
to be returns for work done, and returns of an exact equivalence, then,
on the assumptions which the canonists made--that the usurer does no
work, and that his loan is unproductive of any new value--it necessarily
follows that no return is due, or can be justly paid, for the use of
borrowed money. Work is the one title of all acquisition, and all
acquisition should be in exact proportion to the amount of work done.
This is the basic principle, and it is the principle of the Divine Law:
_In sudore frontis tuae comedes panem tuum_. Once more, therefore, and
once more in an unpromising and intractable material, we find the Church
seeking to enforce the unity of the Christian principle and to reduce
the Many to the One. In the same way, and from the same motive, that
private war was to be banished from the feudal class in the country,
competition--the private war of commerce--was to be eliminated from the
trading classes in the towns. Nor was the attack on competition, any
more than the attack on war, so much of a forlorn hope as it may seem to
a modern age. Even to-day, custom is still a force which checks the
operation of competition, and custom covered a far greater area in the
Middle Ages than it does to-day. The rent of land, whether paid in
labour or in kind, was a customary rent; and in every mediaeval
community the landed class was the majority. It was an easy transition
from fixed and customary rents to the fixing of just prices for
commodities and services. Lay sentiment supported clerical principle.
Guilds compelled their members to sell commodities at a level price, and
in a spirit of collectivism endeavoured to prevent the making of corners
and the practice of undercutting. Governments refused to recognize the
'laws' of demand and supply, and sought, by Statutes of Labourers, to
force masters to give, and workman to receive, no more and no less than
a 'just' and proper wage.

It was not only by the regulation of trade and commerce that the Church
sought to penetrate the life of the towns. The friars made their homes
in the towns in the thirteenth century; and the activity of the
friars--Franciscan and Dominican, Austin and Carmelite--enabled the
Church to exercise an influence on municipal life no less far-reaching
than that which she sought to exert on the feudal classes. Towns became
trustees of property for the use of the mendicant orders; and the orders
of Tertiaries, which flourished among them, enabled the townsfolk to
attach themselves to religious societies without quitting the pursuits
of lay life. A mediaeval town--with its trade and commerce regulated,
however imperfectly, by Christian principle; with its town council
acting as trustee for religious orders; and with its members attached as
Tertiaries to those orders--might be regarded as something of a type of
Christian society; and St. Thomas, partly under the influence of these
conditions, if partly also under the influence of the Aristotelian
philosophy of the [Greek: polis], is led to find in the life of the town
the closest approach to the ethics of Christianity.

The control of learning and education by the Church is the most peculiar
and essential aspect of her activity. The control of war and peace was a
matter of guiding the estate of the baronage; the control of trade and
commerce was a way of directing the estate of the commons; but the
control of learning and education was nothing more nor less than the
Church's guidance of herself and her direction of her own estate.
_Studium_ may be distinguished from _sacerdotium_ by mediaeval writers;
but the students of a mediaeval university are all 'clergy', and the
curricula of mediaeval universities are essentially clerical. All
knowledge, it is true, falls within their scope; but every branch of
knowledge, from dialectic to astronomy, is studied from the same angle,
and for the same object--_ad maiorem Dei gloriam_. Here, as elsewhere,
the penetrating and assimilative genius of the Church moulded and
informed a matter which was not, in its nature, easily receptive of a
clerical impression. The whole accumulated store of the lay learning of
the ages--geometry, astronomy, and natural science; grammar and
rhetoric; logic and metaphysics--this was the matter to be moulded and
the stuff to be permeated; and on this stuff St. Thomas wrought the
greatest miracle of genuine alchemy which is anywhere to be found in the
annals of learning.

The learning which the Church had to transform was essentially the
learning of the Hellenic world. Created by the centuries of nimble and
inventive thought which lie between the time of Thales and that of
Hipparchus, this learning had been systematized into a _corpus
scientiae_ during that age of Greek scholasticism which generally goes
by the name of Hellenistic. In its systematized Hellenistic form, it had
been received by the Roman world, and had become the culture of the
Roman Empire. By writers ranging from Ptolemy to Boethius the body of
all known knowledge had been arranged in a digest or series of pandects;
and along with the legal codification of Justinian it had been handed to
the Christian Church as the heritage of the ancient world. The attitude
of the Church to that heritage was for long unfixed and uncertain. The
logic, and still more the metaphysics, of Aristotle were not the most
comfortable of neighbours to the new body of Christian revelation
committed to the Church's keeping. In the hand of Berengar of Tours the
methods of Greek logic proved a corrosive to the received doctrine of
the Mass. In the hands of Abelard, in the _Sic et Non_, they served to
suggest the need of criticism of the text of Christian tradition. If
unity was to be preserved, a bridge must be built between the secular
science of the Greeks and the religious faith of the Church. In the
thirteenth century that bridge was built. Aristotle was reconciled with
St. Augustine; the _Organon_, the _Ethics_, and the _Politics_ were
incorporated in the body of Christian culture; and the mediaeval
instinct for unification celebrated its greatest and perhaps its most
arduous triumph.

The thirteenth century thus witnessed a unity of civilization alike as a
structure of life and as a content of the human mind. On the one hand,
there rose a single governing scheme of society, which culminated in the
universal primacy of Rome and the Roman pontiff. On the other hand, set
in this scheme, and contained in this structure, there was a single
stuff of thought, directed to the manifestation of the eternal glory of
God. The framework we may chiefly ascribe to Gregory VII; the content to
St. Thomas Aquinas. But the whole resultant unity is less the product of
great personalities than of a common instinct and a common conviction.
Men saw the world _sub specie unitatis_; and its kaleidoscopic variety
was insensibly focused into a single scheme under the stress of their
vision. The heavens showed forth the glory of God, and the firmament
declared His handiwork. Zoology became, like everything else, a willing
servant of Christianity; and _bestiaria moralizata_ were written to
show how all beasts were made for an ensample, and served for a type,
of the one and only truth. All things, indeed, were types and allegories
to this way of thinking; and just as every text in the Bible was an
allegory to mediaeval interpretation, so all things in the world of
creation, animate and inanimate, the jewel with its 'virtue' as well as
the beast with its 'moral', became allegories and parables of heavenly
meanings. Thus the world of perception became unreal, that it might be
transmuted into the real world of faith; and symbolism like that of Hugh
of St. Victor dominated men's thought, making all things (like the Mass
itself, if in a less degree) into _signa rei sacrae_.

The unity of knowledge was thus purchased at a price. Things must cease
to be studied in themselves, and must be allegorized into types, in
order that they might be reduced to a unity. Perhaps the purchase of
unity on terms such as these is a bad bargain; and it is at any rate
obvious that in such an atmosphere scientific thought will not flourish,
or man learn to adjust himself readily to the laws of his environment.
From the standpoint of natural science we may readily condemn the Middle
Ages and all their works; and we may prefer a single _Opus_ of Roger
Bacon to the whole of the _Summa_ of St. Thomas. But it is necessary to
judge an age which was destitute of natural science by some other
criterion than that of science; nor must we hasten to say that the
Middle Ages found the Universal so easily, because they ignored the
Particular so absolutely. The truth is, that though mediaeval thinkers
knew far more of the writings of Aristotle than they did of those of
Plato, they were none the less far better Platonists than they were
Aristotelians. If they had been better Aristotelians, they would have
been better biologists; but as they were good Platonists, they had a
conception of the purpose and system of human life in society, which
perhaps excuses all, and more than all, the defects of their biology.
Any survey, however brief, of the political theory of the Middle Ages
will show at once its Platonic character and its incessant impulse
towards the achievement of unity.


III

To mediaeval thought, as to Plato, the unity of society is an organic
unity, in the sense that each member of society is an organ of the whole
to which he belongs, and discharges a function at once peculiar to
himself and necessary to the full life of the whole. Monasticism, so
often misrepresented, attains its true meaning in the light of this
conception. The monk is a necessary organ of Christian society,
discharging his function of prayer and devotion for the benefit not of
himself solely, or primarily, but rather of every member of that
society. He prays for the sins of the whole world, and by his prayer he
contributes to the realization of the end of the world, which is the
attainment of salvation. In the same way the conception of a treasury of
merits, afterwards perverted in the system of indulgences, belongs to an
organic theory and practice of society. The merits which Christ and the
saints have accumulated are a fund for the use of the whole of Christian
society, a fund on which any member can draw for his own salvation, just
because each is fitly joined and knit together with all the rest in a
single body for the attainment of a single purpose. But we need not take
isolated instances of the Platonism of mediaeval thought. The whole
basic conception of a system of estates, which recurs everywhere in
mediaeval life, is a Platonic conception. The estates of clergy,
baronage, and commons are the Platonic classes of guardians,
auxiliaries, and farmers. The Platonic creed of [Greek: to auton
prattein] ('Do thine own duty') is the Christian creed of 'doing my
duty in that state of life to which it shall please God to call me'. The
Middle Ages are full of a spontaneous Platonism, and inspired by an
_anima naturaliter Platonica_. The control which the mediaeval clergy
exercised over Christian society in the light of divine revelation
repeats the control which the guardians of Plato were to exercise over
civic society in the light of the Idea of the Good. The communism of the
mediaeval monastery is reminiscent of the communism of the Platonic
barracks. And if there are differences between the society imagined by
Plato and the society envisaged by the mediaeval Church, these
differences only show that the mediaeval Church was trying to raise
Platonism to a higher power, and to do so in the light of conceptions
which were themselves Greek, though they belonged to a Greece posterior
to the days of Plato. These conceptions--which were cherished by Stoic
thinkers; which penetrated into Roman Law; and which from Roman Law
flowed into the teaching and theory of the early fathers of the
Church--are mainly two. One is the conception of human equality; the
other, and correlative, conception is that of a single society of all
the human race. The equality of men, and the universality of the city of
God in which they are all contained, are conceptions which were no less
present to Marcus Aurelius than they were to St. Augustine. They are
conceptions which made the instinctive Platonism of the mediaeval Church
even more soaring than that of Plato. While the Republic of Plato had
halted at the stage of a civic society, the _respublica Christiana_ of
the Middle Ages rose to the height of a single _humana civilitas_. While
Plato had divided the men of his Republic into classes of gold and
silver and bronze, and had reserved the ecstasy of the aspect of the
divine Idea for a single class, the mediaeval Church opened the mystery
of the Mass and the glory of the fruition of God to all believers, and,
if she believed in three estates, nevertheless gathered the three in one
around the common altar of the Redeemer. Serfdom might still remain, and
find tolerance, in the economic working of society; but in the Church
herself, assembled together for the intimate purposes of her own life,
there was 'neither bond nor free'.

The prevalence of Realism, which marks mediaeval metaphysics down to the
end of the thirteenth century, is another Platonic inheritance, and
another impulse to unity. The Universal _is_, and is a veritable thing,
in which the Particular shares, and acquires its substance by its degree
of sharing. The One transcends the Many; the unity of mankind is greater
than the differences between men; and the university of mortal men, as
Ockham writes, is one community. If there be thus one community, and one
only, some negative results follow, which have their importance. In the
first place, we can hardly say that the Middle Ages have any conception
of the State. The notion of the State involves plurality; but plurality
is _ex hypothesi_ not to be found. The notion of the State further
involves sovereignty, in the sense of final and complete control of its
members by each of a number of societies. But this, again, is _ex
hypothesi_ not to be found. There is one final control, and one only, in
the mediaeval system--the control of Christian principle, exerted in the
last resort, and exerted everywhere, without respect of persons, by the
ruling vicar of Christ. But if plurality and sovereignty thus disappear
from our political philosophy, we need a new orientation of all our
theory. We must forget to speak of nations. We must forget, as probably
many of us would be very glad to forget, the claims of national
cultures, each pretending to be a complete satisfaction and fulfilment
of the national mind; and we must remember, with Dante, that culture
(which he called 'civility') is the common possession of Christian
humanity. We must even forget, to some extent, the existence of
different national laws. It is true that mediaeval theory admitted the
fact of customary law, which varied from place to place. But this
customary law was hardly national: it varied not only from country to
country, but also from fief to fief, and even from manor to manor. It
was too multiform to be national, and too infinitely various to square
with political boundaries. Nor was customary law, in mediaeval theory,
anything of the nature of an ultimate command. Transcending all customs,
and supreme over all enactments, rose the sovereign majesty of natural
law, which is one and indivisible, and runs through all creation. 'All
custom,' writes Gratian, the great canonist, 'and all written law, that
are adverse to natural law, are to be counted null and void.' Here, in
this conception of a natural law upholding all creation, we may find
once more a Stoic legacy to the Christian Church. 'Men ought not to live
in separate cities, distinguished one from another by different systems
of justice'--so Zeno the Stoic had taught--'but there should be one way
and order of life, like that of a single flock feeding on a common
pasture.' Zeno, like St. Paul, came from Cilicia.[20] Like St. Paul, he
taught the doctrine of the one society, in which there was neither Jew
nor Gentile, neither Greek nor barbarian. We shall not do wrong to
recognize in his teaching, and in that of his school, one of the
greatest influences, outside the supreme and controlling influence of
the Christian principle itself, which made for the dominance of the idea
of unity in mediaeval thought.

Before we proceed to draw another negative conclusion from the principle
of the one community, we must enter a brief caveat in regard to the
conclusion which has just been drawn. We cannot altogether take away the
State from the Middle Ages by a stroke of the pen and the sweep of a
paradox. There were states in mediaeval Europe, and there were kings who
claimed and exercised _imperium_. These things caused the theorists, and
particularly the Roman lawyers, no little trouble. It was difficult to
reconcile the unity of the _imperium_ with the multiplicity of kings.
Some had recourse to the theory of delegation, and this seems to be the
theory of the _De Monarchia_ of Dante. But there was one contemporary of
Dante who said a wise thing, prophetic of the future. _Rex est in regno
suo_, wrote Bartolus of Sassoferrato, _imperator regni sui_. In that
sentence we may hear the cracking of the Middle Ages. When kings become
'entire emperors of their realms' (the phrase was used in England by
Richard II, and the imperial style was affected by Henry VIII), unity
soon prepares to fly out of the window. But she never entirely took
flight until the Reformation shattered the fabric of the Church, and
made kings into popes as well as emperors in their dominions.

We may now turn to draw another conclusion from the mediaeval principle
of unity. To-day the world recognizes, and has recognized for nearly
four centuries, not only a distinction between States, but also a
distinction between two societies in each State--the secular and the
religious. These two societies may have different laws (for instance, in
the matter of marriage), and conflicts of duties and of jurisdictions
may easily arise in consequence. The State may permit what the Church
forbids; and in that case the citizen who is also a churchman must
necessarily revolt against one or other of the societies to which he
belongs. The conflict between the two societies and the different
obligations which they impose was a conflict unknown to the Middle Ages.
Kings might indeed be excommunicated, and in that event their subjects
would be compelled to decide whether they should disobey excommunicated
king or excommunicating pope. But that was only a conflict between two
different allegiances to two different authorities; it was not a
conflict between two different memberships of two different societies.
The conflict between the two societies--Church and State--was one which
could hardly arise in the Middle Ages, because there was only a single
society, an undivided Christian commonwealth, which was at one and the
same time both Church and State. Because there was only one society,
baptism counted as admission both to churchmanship and to citizenship,
which were one thing, and one only, in the Christian commonwealth; and
for the same reason excommunication, which shut the offender from all
religious life, excluded him equally and by the same act from every
civil right. The excommunicated person could not enter either the Church
or the law court; could not receive either the eucharist or a legacy;
could not own either a cure of souls or an acre of soil. Civil right and
religious status implied one another; and not only was _extra ecclesiam
nulla salus_ a true saying, but _extra ecclesiam nullum ius_ would also
be very near the truth. Here again is a reason for saying that the State
as such can hardly be traced in the Middle Ages. The State is an
organization of secular life. Even if it goes beyond its elementary
purpose of security for person and property, and devotes itself to
spiritual purposes, it is concerned with the development of the spirit
in its mortal existence, and confined to the expansion of the mind in
the bounds of a mortal society. The Middle Ages thought more of
salvation than of security, and more of the eternal society of all the
faithful, united together in Christ their Head, than of any passing
society of this world only. They could recognize kings, who bore the
sword for the sake of security, and did justice in virtue of their
anointing. But kings were not, to their thinking, the heads of secular
societies. They were agents of the one divine commonwealth--defenders
of the Faith, who wielded the secular sword for the furtherance of the
purposes of God. Thus there was one society, if there were two orders of
ministering agents; and thus, though _regnum_ and _sacerdotium_ might be
distinguished, the State and the Church could not be divided. Stephen of
Tournai, a canonist of the twelfth century, recognizes the two powers;
but he only knows one society, under one king. That society is the
Church: that king is Christ.

Under conditions such as these--with the plurality of States
unrecognized by theory, even if it existed in practice, and with
distinction between State and Church unknown and unenforced--we may
truly say with a German writer, whose name I should like to mention
_honoris causa_, Professor Tröltsch, that 'there was no feeling for the
State; no common and uniform dependence on a central power; no
omnicompetent sovereignty; no equal pressure of a public civil law; no
abstract basis of association in formal and legal rules--or at any rate,
so far as anything of the sort was present, it was a matter only for the
Church, and in no wise for the State'.[21] So far as social life was
consciously articulated in a scheme, the achievement was that of the
clergy, and the scheme was that of the Church. The interdependencies and
associations of lay life--kingdoms and fiefs and manors--were only
personal groupings, based on personal sentiments of loyalty and
unconscious elements of custom. A mixture of uniformity and isolation,
as we have seen, was the characteristic of these groupings: they were at
once very like one another, throughout the extent of Western Europe, and
(except for their connexion in a common membership of the Church
Universal) very much separated from one another. But with one at any
rate of these groupings--the kingdom, which in its day was to become the
modern State--the future lay; and we shall perhaps end our inquiry most
fitly by a brief review of the lines of its future development.


IV

The development of the kingdom into the State was largely the work of
the lawyers. The law is a tenacious profession, and in England at any
rate its members have exercised a large influence on politics from the
twelfth to the twentieth century--from the days of Glanville, the
justiciar of Henry II, to the days of Mr. Asquith, the prime minister of
George V. It is perhaps in England that we may first see the germs of
the modern State emerging to light under the fostering care of the royal
judges. Henry II is something of a sovereign: his judges formulate a
series of commands, largely in the shape of writs, which became the
common law of the land; and in the Constitutions of Clarendon we may
already see the distinction between Church and State beginning to be
attempted. With a sovereign, a law, and a secular policy all present, we
may begin to suspect the presence of a State. In France also a similar
development, if somewhat later than the English, occurs at a
comparatively early date. By the end of the thirteenth century the
legists of Philippe le Bel have created something of _étatisme_ in their
master's dominions. The king's court begins to rule the land; and proud
of its young strength it enters the lists against Boniface VIII, the
great prophet of the Church Universal, who proclaimed that every human
creature was subject to the Roman pontiff. The collapse of Boniface at
Anagni in 1303 is the traditional date of the final defeat of the
mediaeval papacy. Everywhere, indeed, the tide seemed on the turn at the
close of the thirteenth century. The Crusades ended with the fall of
Acre in 1291. The suppression of the great international order of the
Templars twenty years later marked a new leap of the encroaching waves.
The new era of the modern national State might seem already to have
begun.

But tides move slowly and by gradual inches. It needed two centuries
more before the conditions in which the modern State could flourish had
been fully and finally established. Economic conditions had to change--a
process always gradual and slow; and a national economy based on money
had to replace the old local economy based on kind. Languages had to be
formed, and local dialects had to be transformed into national and
literary forms, before national States could find the means of
utterance. The revival of learning had to challenge the old clerical
structure of knowledge, and to set free the progress of secular science,
before the minds of men could be readily receptive of new forms of
social structure and new modes of human activity. But by 1500 the work
of preparation had been largely accomplished. The progress of discovery
had enlarged the world immeasurably. The addition of America to the map
had spiritual effects which it is difficult to estimate in any proper
terms. If the old world of the Mediterranean regions could be thought
into a unity, it was more difficult to reduce to the One the new world
which swam into men's ken. Still more burdened with fate for the future
generations was the vast volume of commerce, necessarily conducted on a
national basis, which the age of discoveries went to swell. Meanwhile,
men had begun to think and to write in national languages. Already by
the reign of Richard II the dialect of the East Midlands, which was
spoken in the capital and the universities, had become a literary
language in which Chaucer and Wyclif had spoken to all the nation. Still
earlier had come the development of Italian, and a little more than a
century after the days of Wyclif, Luther was to give to Germany a common
speech and a common Bible. It was little wonder that in such times the
old unity of the Christian commonwealth of the Middle Ages shivered into
fragments, or that, side by side with a national language, there
developed--at any rate in England and in Germany--a national Church. The
unity of a common Roman Church and a common Romance culture was gone.
_Cuius regio eius religio_. To each region its religion; and to each
nation, we may add, its national culture. The Renaissance may have begun
as a cosmopolitan movement, and have found in Erasmus a cosmopolitan
representative. It ended in national literatures; and a hundred years
after Erasmus, Shakespeare was writing in England, Ariosto in Italy, and
Lope de Vega in Spain.

In the sixteenth century the State was active and doing after its kind.
It was engaged in war. France was fighting Spain: England was seeking to
maintain the balance: Turkey was engaged in the struggle. It is a world
with which we are familiar--a world of national languages, national
religions, national cultures, national wars, with the national State
behind all, upholding and sustaining every form of national activity.
But unity was not entirely dead. Science might still transcend the
bounds of nations, and a Grotius or Descartes, a Spinoza or a Leibniz,
fill the European stage. Religion, which divided, might also unite; and
a common Calvinism might bind together the Magyars of Hungary and the
French of Geneva, the Dutchman and the Scot. Leyden in the seventeenth
century could serve, as The Hague in the twentieth century may yet
serve, if in a different way, for the meeting ground of the nations; it
could play the part of an international university, and provide a common
centre of medical science and classical culture. But the old unity of
the Middle Ages was gone--gone past recall. Between those days and the
new days lay a gulf which no voice or language could carry. Much was
lost that could never be recovered; and if new gold was added to the
currency of the spirit, new alloys were wrought into its substance. It
would be a hard thing to find an agreed standard of measurement, which
should cast the balance of our gain and loss, or determine whether the
new world was a better thing than the old. One will cry that the old
world was the home of clericalism and obscurantism; and another will say
in his bitterness that the new world is the abode of two other evil
spirits--nationalism and commercialism. One thing is perhaps certain. We
cannot, as far as human sight can discern, ever hope to reconstruct
unity on the old basis of the Christian commonwealth of the Middle Ages.
Yet need is upon us still--need urgent and importunate--to find some
unity of the spirit in which we can all dwell together in peace. Some
have hoped for unity in the sphere of economics, and have thought that
international finance and commerce would build the foundations of an
international polity. Their hopes have had to sleep, and a year of war
has shown that 'a synchronized bank-rate and reacting bourses' imply no
further unity. Some again may hope for unity in the field of science,
and may trust that the collaboration of the nations in the building of
the common house of knowledge will lead to co-operation in the building
of a greater mansion for the common society of civilized mankind. But
nationalism can pervert even knowledge to its own ends, turning
anthropology to politics, and chemistry to war. There remains a last
hope--the hope of a common ethical unity, which, as moral convictions
slowly settle into law, may gradually grow concrete in a common public
law of the world. Even this hope can only be modest, but it is perhaps
the wisest and the surest of all our hopes. _Idem scire_ is a good
thing; but men of all nations may know the same thing, and yet remain
strangers one to another. _Idem velle idem nolle in re publica, ea demum
firma amicitia est_. The nations will at last attain firm friendship
one with another in the day when a common moral will controls the scope
of public things. And when they have attained this friendship, then on a
far higher level of economic development and with an improvement by each
nation of its talent which is almost entirely new--they will have found
again, if in a different medium, something of the unity of mediaeval
civilization.


BOOKS FOR REFERENCE

W.J. Ashley, _An Introduction to English Economic History_, vol. i, pt.
2, ch. 3; vol. i, pt. 2, ch. 6. Longmans.

Lord Bryce, _The Holy Roman Empire_. Macmillan.

A.J. and R.W. Carlyle, _Mediaeval Political Theory in the West_. W.
Blackwood.

H.W.C. Davis, _Mediaeval Europe_ (Home University Library). Williams &
Norgate.

_Encyclopaedia Britannica_ (11th edition), articles on 'Crusades' and
'Empire'.

J.N. Figgis, _Churches in the Modern State_, Appendix I. Longmans.

Bede Jarrett; _Socialist Theories in the Middle Ages_. T.C. and E.C.
Jack.

E. Jenks, _Law and Politics in the Middle Ages_. Murray.

F.W. Maitland, _Political Theories of the Middle Ages_, translated from
Gierke's _Das Deutsche Genossenschaftsrecht_. Maitland. Cambridge
University Press.

R.L. Poole, _Illustrations of Mediaeval Thought_. Williams & Norgate.

H. Rashdall, _Universities of Europe in the Middle Ages_. Clarendon
Press.

A.L. Smith, _Church and State in the Middle Ages_. Clarendon Press.

H.O. Taylor, _The Mediaeval Mind_. Macmillan.

E. Tröltsch, _Die Soziallehren der christlichen Kirchen_ (II. Kapitel).

P. Vinogradoff, _Roman Law in Mediaeval Europe_. Harper.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 15: I should like to dedicate this essay to my friend and old
pupil, the Rev. Bede Jarrett, O.P., to whom I owe much, and to whose
book on _Mediaeval Socialism_ I should like to refer my readers.]

[Footnote 16: Pirenne, _Revue Historique_, liii. p. 82.]

[Footnote 17: _De Vulgari Eloquio_, 1. viii.]

[Footnote 18: _De Monarchia_, 1. x.]

[Footnote 19: Cf. Carlyle, _Mediaeval Political Theory in the West_, ii.
219-22.]

[Footnote 20: Cf. E.R. Bevan, _Stoics and Sceptics_.]

[Footnote 21: _Die Soziallehren der christlichen Kirchen_, p. 242.]




V

UNITY AND DIVERSITY IN LAW


You know the story of Sophocles' _Antigone_: how, when two brothers
disputed the throne of Thebes, one, Polynices, was driven out and
brought a foreign host against the city. Both brothers fall in battle.
Their uncle takes up the government and publishes an edict that no one
shall give burial to the traitor who has borne arms against his native
land. The obligation to give or allow decent burial, even to an enemy,
was one which the Greeks held peculiarly sacred. Yet obedience to the
orders of lawful authority is an obligation binding on every citizen. No
one dares to disregard the king's order save the dead man's sister. She
is caught in the act and brought before the king. 'And thou,' he says,
'didst indeed dare to transgress this law?' 'Yes,' answers Antigone,
'for it was not Zeus that published me that edict; not such are the laws
set among men by the Justice who dwells with the Gods below; nor deemed
I that thy decrees were of such force that a mortal could override the
unwritten and unfailing statutes of heaven. For their life is not of
to-day or yesterday but from all time, and no man knows when they were
first put forth.'[22]

There you have the assertion of a law supreme and binding on all men,
eternal, not to be set aside by human enactment.

And now turn to this passage from the traveller and historian Herodotus,
an almost exact contemporary of Sophocles. He has been telling how
Cambyses, king of the Persians, has been wantonly insulting the
religion and customs of the Egyptians. 'The man must have been mad,' he
says:

     'For if one was to set men of all nations to make a choice of the
     best laws out of all the laws there are, each one upon
     consideration would choose those of his own country: so far do
     men go in thinking their own laws the best. Therefore it is not
     likely that any but a madman would cast ridicule on such things.
     And that all men do think thus about their laws may be shown by
     many proofs, and above all by this story. For when Darius was
     king he called to him the Greeks who were at his court and asked
     them, 'How much money would you take to eat your fathers when
     they die?' And they answered that they would not do this at any
     price. After this Darius called the men of an Indian tribe called
     the Kallatiai, who eat their parents, and asked them in the
     presence of the Greeks, who were told by an interpreter what was
     said, 'How much money would you take to burn with fire your
     fathers when they die?' And they cried with a great voice that he
     should speak no such blasphemy. Thus it is that men think, and I
     hold that Pindar spoke rightly in his poem when he said that law
     was king over all.'[23]

There you have law, king over men and gods, but a capricious monarch
commanding here this, there that.

This capricious arbitrary aspect of law was a thing which much impressed
the Greeks. They contrasted the varying, artificial arrangements made by
mankind with the constancy and simplicity of nature. We speak of nature
and convention; they contrasted things that are by nature with things
that are by law. It was a contrast that bore fruit later on.

Now law, whose arbitrariness and variety so much impressed the Greeks
was the law not so much of this place or that, as of this or that
community and its members. This is a conception quite different from
that of the modern world. We may paraphrase 'English law' by saying the
law of England, because it is the law which will be applied (with, it
may be, some exceptions or modifications) by the English courts to all
persons, be they English or aliens, who come before them. But Athenian
law is not in this sense the law of Athens, nor, to begin with, is Roman
law the law of Rome. What we find is a law of Athenian or Roman
citizens. The stranger to the city is a stranger to its law. As a matter
of principle he is without rights by that law. His life is not protected
by the blood-feud which his family can pursue, or by the compensation
with which it may be bought off. His marriage with a citizen will be no
marriage, or at best a sort of half marriage. He can acquire no land
within the city's territory, and what goods he brings with him are
pretty much at the mercy of the first taker.

Such, at any rate, is the theory of the 'law of citizens'.

We need not, it is true, believe that it was logically formulated in
primitive times and ruthlessly applied. Some of its applications were
the result of positive legislation due to a growing consciousness of the
self-sufficiency of the city state and of the privileges of citizenship,
as when Athens passed a law excluding from citizenship the offspring of
citizens who had married foreign wives. But in its broad outlines the
principle is sufficiently borne out by the exceptions which were
necessary to make human intercourse possible. The stranger within your
gates is protected just because he is within your gates, and you throw
your protection about him, as is indeed your duty, for suppliants and
strangers come from Zeus. The foreigner, even at a distance, may have a
citizen as representative who can and will defend his rights. A stranger
may be allowed to take up a permanent residence in the city, and by the
mediation of a patron or guardian enjoy private rights not much inferior
to those of a citizen. His legal position will not be very different
from that of a woman citizen, who needs the like mediation. Cities may,
again, by treaty confer on each other's citizens reciprocal rights of
legal protection.

In the middle of the third century B.C., Rome, after its first
successful war against Carthage, took special measures to deal with the
problem of the alien litigant. The great and growing commerce which came
from all parts of the Mediterranean called for something more than a
mere admission to treaty privileges. A special officer was from
henceforth appointed to deal with the law-suits to which foreigners were
parties, and the judgement was given by a body (which we may compare
with our jury) which might include fellow-citizens of the foreign
suitor.

But here a difficulty arose: what law was to be applied to a transaction
between a Roman and a foreigner, or between two foreigners? The Roman
law, the law of citizens, had been codified two centuries earlier, and
its outline had been hardened by the practice of two centuries. The
forms for a transfer of property, for instance, were rigid and solemn;
the foreigner would hardly know them, and if he did, his alien hand
could not effectively do the prescribed acts nor his alien mouth speak
the almost sacred words. The answer was that behind the forms of the law
of this city or that, there was 'a law of the men of all nations'. The
common elements in the ordinary transactions of life, in whatever form
they were clothed, could be taken into account and given effect to.
Thus, side by side with the ownership according to the law of Roman
citizens, the solemn words of promise which only a Roman citizen could
utter, the marriage which only a Roman citizen could enter into, there
might be property, contract, marriage to which any one, citizen or
alien, might be a party.

This 'law of the men of all nations' (_ius gentium_) was of course not
an international law, it was a law administered by Roman officers, and
it was coloured by Roman conceptions, however much it may have drawn
from a comparison of foreign laws with which the Romans were brought
into contact. In turn it reacted upon the more narrow law of Roman
citizens (_ius civile_), broadening its conceptions and enabling it to
free itself from primitive formalism. It also made easier the task of
Roman governors who were called upon to administer the various laws of
the different countries which came to form the Roman empire.

The gradual extension of the citizenship (completed at the end of the
second century A.D.) to the whole of the inhabitants of the empire made
possible, at least in outward appearance, the application of a uniform
system of law throughout what was then the civilized world, though
beneath an apparent uniformity local traditions and customs survived to
the end, at any rate in the east. The 'civil law', as the Roman law in
its final form has been called down to the present day, consists of
elements of the narrowly Roman and the more universal law inextricably
interlaced.

This Roman solution of the problem of the foreign litigant is of much
more than merely practical importance. The Stoic philosophy which grew
up amid the decay of the old city life, whose adherents spoke of
themselves as citizens of the world, had fastened upon the old
antithesis of law (or convention) and nature, and formed the conception
of a law of nature, which should have a reasonable basis and a validity
superior to the arbitrariness of the city law. To this ideal conception
the Roman law of the men of all nations gave a body and a reality.
Stoicism became the 'established' philosophy of Rome, and Roman lawyers
well-nigh identified the '_ius gentium_' with the ideal law of nature,
describing it as that which natural reason has established among all
men. Yet for at least one of the great classical lawyers, whose words
have been enshrined in Justinian's legislation, the identification was
incomplete. By nature, it was said, all men are free, and mankind has
departed from what natural reason requires, in permitting slavery. Thus
the law of nature must be sought in something more universal than the
practice of mankind. More than fifteen hundred years later in an English
court an argument against the recognition of the rights of a slave-owner
was successfully founded on the law of nature.

Before the Roman law had been put (at Constantinople) into the final
shape in which it is preserved to us, the Roman empire in the west had
already been broken up by barbarian invasions. The invaders brought with
them their tribal laws and customs, rude, often cruel, narrow rather
than simple, for simplicity is the work of civilization. They did not
understand, and could not adopt, the law of the world into which they
had come. Yet neither could they, if they would, force their laws upon
the conquered inhabitants. Among these the old civilization lingered on
in a degenerate form, and with it the Roman law. One of the first things
that happened was that the conquerors drew up for their Roman subjects
short codes of the Roman law as it survived in a debased form, as they
drew up statements of their own law for their followers. For a long time
each man, according to the community to which he belonged, had a
'personal' law. As late as A.D. 850 we hear that in France it might
happen that five men met together and each would have a different law.
Of course such a state of things means before very long that there must
be at any rate one set of common legal rules which must be applied
throughout a territory, namely rules to decide which kind of personal
law is to be used when there is a dispute between two persons whose
personal law is different.

Gradually the different populations within the same area coalesce, and
law from being personal becomes local. But the local area will not be
the same for all purposes. The law or custom which determines the rights
of the small, often unfree or half-free tenant, whether as between him
and his neighbour or as between him and his lord, may extend no further
than a very small area, such as in England we call a manor. The law by
which great men held their land from a king, though perhaps not uniform
throughout the kingdom, will cover a much larger area. The fact that a
great man may hold land in far distant places, it may be in different
kingdoms, and that men of this class have connexions with different
parts of Western Europe will lead to the formation of common notions of
feudal law, which make possible even the scientific study of a law of
feuds, though no complete uniformity was ever attained.

England was the first western country to attain political unity with a
territory substantially the same as at the present day; and the
determination of the English kings that in the more important matters
justice should be done throughout the land in the king's name, either by
his courts at Westminster or by judges sent by him to the counties,
secured the formation of an English Common Law which left comparatively
little play for local custom, and which at an early time became strong
enough to resist attempts to introduce foreign law. As early as the time
of Henry III the barons proclaimed with one voice that they would not
have the laws of England altered in favour of a rule--the legitimation
of bastards by the subsequent marriage of their parents--which in one
form or another has been adopted in Western Christendom, and even in the
neighbouring kingdom of Scotland.

In France political unity was reached only later and bit by bit, and
when it came the difference of law in the various provinces was too
firmly established to make uniformity possible until the time of the
Revolution. In Germany the shadowy unity of the Holy Roman Empire was
never enough to afford any effective central administration of justice.
National law in the strict sense was impossible under such conditions:
the most that can be expected is such a degree of unity as results from
common traditions inherited from more primitive times, and a community
of language and national feeling.

Amid local and national diversities of law there were at any rate two
unifying influences, the Roman and the Canon law. In some parts of
Europe, as in the South of France and Italy, the traditions of the Roman
law had never died out, and in a debased form, with much admixture of
the law of the invaders, it had come to form the basis of the local law.
In others it was the barbarian law which formed the groundwork. But just
as behind the new languages, whether in the main founded on Latin or on
Teutonic, Latin remained the medium of intercourse between the countries
of the West, and the instrument of thought and learning, so Roman law
remained a tradition which was ever ready to exert an influence. It is
not only in law courts that law is learnt and developed. Transactions
have to be drawn up in writing, and will largely be made in Latin, and
founded on precedents. The grants of land to and from ecclesiastical
bodies especially will be in a form which borrows much from Roman or
romanesque models; and they will form models for the transactions of
others. Even the formulation of native law in the early codes will be
carried out by men who know of no written law except the Roman. In the
twelfth century Roman law becomes a subject of University study
throughout Western Europe, in Italy, at Paris, even at Oxford, and forms
a part of that international learning which scholars carry from land to
land. Men trained in the Roman law rise to high positions in the public
service. As judges and administrators they will not forget what they
have learnt as students or taught as doctors. Yet it would be easy to
exaggerate its influence, great as it was. It was certainly more as a
form and method of legal thought than as an actual source of legal rules
that it made itself felt, for instance, in our own country, and the
strength and cohesion which it helped to give to our law enabled that
law later to resist its further advance.

The Canon law was the law of the Western Church, a truly international
society. It was formed largely on the model of the Roman law, and it
largely borrowed from it, though it is full of non-Roman elements. It
governed not merely what we should call purely ecclesiastical matters,
but dealt or attempted to deal with other things, such as marriage and
the disposition of the goods of the deceased. Our own law of marriage
and divorce, and of probate of wills, has a history which goes back to
the ecclesiastical law of the Middle Ages. Like the Roman law it
exercised an influence as a model and a repository of maxims, all the
greater because in every country it was a law in actual force within a
sphere of which the boundaries were constantly being disputed between
the lay and the church powers.

The beginnings of modern Europe with which we associate such things as
the revival of learning and the Reformation brought with them on the
Continent the event which is known as the reception of Roman law. The
traditions of the ancient world had been seen in mediaeval times through
mediaeval eyes, and had been moulded to mediaeval needs. The new age
insisted on going back direct to the classical tradition. It was the
actual Roman law of Justinian, not the Roman law as interpreted by
mediaeval commentators, that was to be studied and applied. The
break-up of the institutions of the Middle Ages, the growth of absolute
monarchical power, the centralization of government, all favoured the
tendency. Roman law contained doctrines eminently pleasing to an
absolute ruler, e.g. 'the decision of the monarch has the force of law'.
In Germany above all, where law was divided into countless local
customs, the movement had its fullest effect. Roman law comes to be the
law which is to be applied in the absence of positive enactment or
justifiable custom. The native law finds itself driven to plead for its
life, and is lucky if it can satisfy the conditions which are required
to enable it to continue as a recognized custom. In every country of the
West outside England, in greater or less degree, the Roman law comes in
as something which will at least fill up the gaps, and will purge or
remodel the native law. Even in Scotland texts of the Roman law may be
quoted as authorities. The strength of our own law, and the successful
resistance of our public institutions to monarchical power saved us
alone from a 'reception', in the continental sense, of Roman law. And
even our Blackstone will quote Roman law with respect where it tends to
confirm our own rules.

If this reception was a movement which brought about a greater unity in
the form and substance of the laws of Western Europe, there was another
factor at work which tended in the opposite direction. The claims of the
Empire to universal authority become more and more unreal: the claims of
the Pope are either rejected entirely, or the ecclesiastical sphere is
strictly delimited. The State becomes sovereign. For this purpose it
makes no difference whether it is a High Court of Parliament or an
absolute monarch which is the supreme authority: law comes to be thought
of as the command of a sovereign person or assembly. 'No law', we are
told, 'can be unjust', for law is the standard of justice, and there is
no other standard by which the justice of law can be measured. The fact
that there is in every State a sovereign power which can make and unmake
the law at its pleasure makes possible the creation of a uniform law for
all the subjects of a State, and so far as the State coincides with the
nation, makes for the creation of a national unity in law. Thus
Frederick the Great gave a code to Prussia, thus Napoleon gave France a
code which swept away the diversities of the provincial customs; yet it
served more than merely national purposes, for it found its way not only
into the countries conquered by him, where it survived his conquests,
but even into lands where he never held sway. Our French fellow-citizens
in Quebec use an adaptation of it as a statement of their law. It took
longer before Germany as a whole obtained a uniformity of law. The very
strength of the national aspirations roused by the war against Napoleon
stood for a time in the way of codification. The great German lawyer of
that time, Savigny, thought of national law as a half-unconscious
product of the national feeling of right. The Code of Napoleon had been
a revolutionary code, founded (imperfectly, no doubt) on the doctrines
of the rights of man; codification for Germany would mean the adoption
of something abstract, not specifically national. It was only a century
of extraordinary fruitful learned activity, bringing with it at the same
time a new and intense study of the Roman law, and a revival of the
knowledge and application of the native conceptions of law, that made
possible the German civil code which came into force fifteen years ago.

England has never seriously undertaken the work of codification, and its
law, uniform and national already in the Middle Ages, has become in the
modern world something far wider than a merely national law. The English
settlers in the new world brought their law with them. To-day English
law, modified no doubt by State and Federal legislation, is the Common
Law of the great republic of the United States. The colonies which still
remain within our Empire are territories of the English law, save where,
as in South Africa or Quebec, civilized settlers had already established
and retained their own law. Throughout these lands, it matters little
under which flag, an English lawyer finds the Courts speaking a language
which he understands.

Thus it came about that the world, which derives its civilization from
Western Europe, may be divided into lands of the English law, and lands
where in outward form at least the law is Roman. And yet we must not
make too much of this division. In the first place it cuts across
national boundaries. It unites us with the United States of America, it
separates us from some of our own colonies while it unites them with
continental Europe. In the second place law is, like language, a form of
thought; and diversity of form, though it hinders, does not prevent a
unity of substance.

Among the forces which have made for unity something should be said of
the conception of a law of nature. The phrase has been out of fashion in
this country since the days of Bentham and Austin, who laid stress upon
the positive, one might say arbitrary, character of the only law which
they would recognize as law in the proper sense of the word. I am not
concerned here to discuss its philosophical validity. But it has never
been lost sight of. It is one of the inheritances of the Roman law
tradition. Alike in the Middle Ages, and since their close, it has been
the subject of speculation and an influence guiding the legislator, the
thinker, and the administrator of law. There is a whole literature upon
it on the Continent. It bulks pretty largely in Blackstone: you can see
its influence on the judges of the eighteenth century in this country;
the founders of the American Republic put a good deal of it into their
constitution, and American judges will still refer to it without shame.
What it really means is a standard by which the law here and now may be
judged, a standard founded on the needs of human nature. That the
standard becomes a different one, as the needs and possibilities of
humanity develop, has not prevented the seeking after such a standard.

It is perhaps only another way of putting the same thing to say that law
has developed and is developing constantly by reference to the pursuit
of ends more or less consciously arrived at by mankind. So far as these
ends are common, and I take it that in the main, amid national and
individual diversity and conflict they are common ends, law has been
formed for their attainment. On the whole what men have asked law to do
for them has been the same at any given stage in civilization. The
eighteenth century asked for liberty, property, and happiness. We are
putting a rather different meaning, or perhaps a different stress on the
words, not only here but throughout the civilized world, and the main
movements of legal change are in the same direction everywhere.

One word about the two kinds of law known as Public and Private
International law.

The fact that the laws of different countries are different gives rise
to problems whenever the Courts of one country have to deal with a set
of facts where some foreign element is involved, for instance a citizen
or an inhabitant of another country, or property which is in another
country, or a contract or transaction which took place abroad. Now we
have long got past the stage at which the Courts could simply disregard
the foreign element, could say this man is a foreigner, therefore he has
no rights; or this event took place abroad, and therefore we will treat
it as if it had never happened. On the other hand it will not do for
the Court to apply simply its own law. Grave injustice would be done,
for instance, if a transaction made on the faith of law which will give
a certain effect to it, were treated as made under another law which
will give it a different effect or no effect at all. For this reason the
Courts of every country have formed rules (sometimes called Private
International Law; sometimes, and as some hold, more properly, called
'Conflict of Laws') by which they determine how far, where a foreign
element is involved, the foreign law is to be carried out rather than
the law which the Court applies in ordinary cases. These rules are not
the same in every country, because differences of opinion are possible
as to what justice requires. But the very existence of such rules shows
that the Courts hold that the world of law is one, however much
diversified, and that no one territorial law can blindly go on its way
without taking account of its neighbours.

International law in the more proper sense of the word, that is Public
International Law, or the law which governs the relations between
States, is a very different thing. Something of the kind was not unknown
in the ancient world; the Greeks, for instance, had rules against the
poisoning of wells, the proper treatment of envoys, and the making and
keeping of treaties. But in its modern form it dates just from the time
when States were waking up to the consciousness of sovereignty, and when
the horrors of the wars which followed the Reformation showed that even
sovereign powers ought to conform to some rules of conduct. It has been
the work in its origin of writers and teachers of law, and has been
built up more recently by agreement between States. Unlike the law
between man and man, which modern states enforce by organized
compulsion, there is no standing organization whose business it is to
see that it is kept. It is not true to say that for this reason it is
not law at all, for in primitive times the recognized rules of private
law were enforced not by State sanction but by the action of
individuals, with the support of the opinions and at times the active
help of their neighbours and friends. But a law which is defied with
success and impunity is no law. The reality and strength of
International Law has lain in the fact that its breach brought at least
the risk of suffering, through the common disapprobation of civilized
nations; its preservation and maintenance for the future must lie in a
certainty of disaster, not greatly less than that which awaits the
transgressor of private law.


BOOKS FOR REFERENCE

Jethro Brown, _The Austinian Theory of Law_. Murray.

Maine, _Ancient Law_. Murray.

Pollock and Maitland, _History of English Law_. Cambridge University
Press.

Vinogradoff, _Common Sense in Law_. Home University Library, Williams &
Norgate.

Vinogradoff, _Roman Law in Mediaeval Europe_. Harper's Library of Living
Thought.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 22: Sophocles, _Antigone_, 449-57 (Jebb's translation).]

[Footnote 23: Herodotus, iii. 38.]




VI

THE COMMON ELEMENTS IN EUROPEAN LITERATURE AND ART


For some hundred years past it has been common to lay great stress upon
the importance of national characteristics in art. This has been very
natural, for they represent one main aspect and justification of the
revolt against the conception of the one permanent and immutable
standard of perfection of the Neo-classicists of the Renaissance.
Lessing and Herder, who were the critical protagonists of the new world,
had indeed a knowledge and admiration of ancient art which was probably
superior to that of the classicists, but they refused to admit that art
was bound to follow the forms of antiquity, and maintained rather that
its forms would necessarily change with the changing conditions of the
world, and with the varying characteristics of different nationalities
or races.

From their time down to our own, then, this conception of art, as being
coloured or affected strongly and continually by nationality, has become
almost a commonplace of criticism, and it will not be denied that there
is real importance in the conception. For though nothing is really art
which is not distinctive and personal and unique, yet just so far as the
personality of the artist is conditioned by his nationality, so far also
will his artistic work reflect the characteristics of his nation or
country. And yet, while this is true, it really needs very little
consideration to see that when we consider a great work of art, we are
very little concerned with the question of the nationality of the
artist, but with something which is deeper and larger than his
nationality. The great artist no doubt represents life under the forms
or terms of his concrete experience, but it is life and the world itself
which he represents. He is not greatly concerned with the merely
superficial or passing aspects of human nature and the world, but with
that which is essential and continuing under these terms.

It may indeed be urged that there is some real and fundamental
difference between the art of the East and that of the West, but as we
have come to know eastern art better, we have become more doubtful even
of this, and are rather impressed with the unity of the artistic
expression even of East and West. I am far from wishing to say that
nationality or race has no significance in art, but I think that we have
been in danger of greatly exaggerating its importance. I am at least
certain that we have very constantly made too much of the supposed
differences in the literature and art of the different European
countries, and that we must make clear to ourselves that European art
and literature are really one.

It is not unimportant to observe this at the present time, to consider
whether literature and art are dividing or uniting forces. As far as we
can understand, what indeed seems a little unintelligible, the Germans
desire to impress upon Europe their culture or civilization, an attempt
as absurd as it would be impossible, for German culture is, after all,
only a part of the great European civilization, and the part cannot take
the place of the whole. But on the other hand it is not less important
for us to understand that what we desire to do is not to destroy those
elements which Germany contributes to European civilization, but only
that they should take their natural and appropriate place in that
greater unity which is enriched and enlarged by the contribution of
every separate national society. European art is one; that is, the
common characteristics are far more important than the national
differences. And further, we often take to be national, characteristics
which happen to show themselves at one time in one place, while they may
have existed at another time in another place. The history of European
art is in a great measure the history of successive influences or
movements which were for the most part common to all Europe, but which
did not always exactly synchronize in the different European countries.

       *       *       *       *       *

So far as there is such a thing as nationalism in literature it is
wholly modern, while in mediaeval literature and art there is hardly
anything of it. This may seem strange to those who imagine that it is
only the railway and the steamship which have brought the world
together, but the truth is that the movement of ideas and fashions was
probably at least as rapid in the Middle Ages as it is to-day. However
this may be, the fact is, I think, clear, that when we come to examine
mediaeval literature we find that it is practically homogeneous, that
whether we look at it in England or France, in Germany or in
Scandinavia, it has practically the same qualities. I do not speak of
Italy yet, for Italian literature is the latest-born of the great
European literatures, it has not at least come down to us in any forms
earlier than those of the thirteenth century.

Mediaeval literature is known to us primarily under two forms, the
heroic epic and the romance, and it is to these that we must first turn
our attention. We know the heroic epic in different languages throughout
a period which extends roughly from the eighth to the twelfth centuries.
The earliest example is the English Beowulf; among the latest are the
German Nibelungenlied and some of the French Chansons de Geste, which
belong to the end of the twelfth century. This epic literature is not
least interesting to us because it has, as far as we can judge, no
trace of that great classical influence of which you have already heard,
and which plays so great a part in the later developments of European
literature. Now what is the epic? Its materials are the stories of
northern mythology, the traditions of the great migrations which
overthrew the Roman empire in the west, and the legends which grew up
round the name of Charles the Great. They are stories of the gods and
demigods, of the Burgundian and the Hun, of the English people possibly
while still settled on the Baltic coasts, of the conflicts of the Frank
and the Saracen, of the earliest settlers in Iceland; and they vary in
their temper and their tone.

But they all represent the sense of the glory and splendour of the great
fighting man, of the stout heart, which rises with rising danger and is
never so great or so splendid as when it faces overwhelming odds and
defies the inexorable fates. The epic poet is so possessed by this sense
of the greatness of human nature that it does not matter much even
whether the man is wrong or perverse: he loves the obstinacy of Roland,
who will not, till too late, sound his horn to call Charlemagne and his
armies, but prefers to face the enemy, and if need be to die, by
himself, rather than to ask for help; he is filled with the sense of the
magnificence of the stark figure of Hagen, who had indeed treacherously
murdered the great Siegfried, but whose heart is so high and his hand so
heavy, that when he is overpowered, and Chriemhilda at last avenges upon
him the murder of her husband, the old knight standing by kills
Chriemhilda herself--it was not meet that so great a fighter should be
slain by a woman. These are the men of the epics.

And beside them stand the figures of women great and gracious, women for
whose love men die and perish, but who themselves also can hate and
love passionately and fiercely. It has sometimes been said by those who
only know the epics in one or other of the various languages, that women
and the love of women have no place in the epic, but belong to the
romance, but this is a mistake. In the mediaeval epic there is little
talk about emotion, but in the Nibelungenlied and in some of the
Icelandic sagas the woman is, like Helen in the Homeric epic, the motive
and source of all the action.

The epic is the story of great and heroic figures, abstracted in that
sense from the common or ordinary circumstances of life, but the
background of the action is always realistic and even detailed in its
realism, so that, just as again in the Homeric poems, we can frequently
reconstruct the life and manners of the time to which the poems belong
from that which they tell us. And it is impossible to say that there is
any really national difference between the epics as we find them in
different languages; they are indeed the expression of the temperament
and personality of the great artists who produced them, and they are
each unique and individual in proportion to the greatness of their
authors, but in their general characteristics they are the same.

There are few changes in the history of literature more remarkable than
that which came over European art in the later years of the eleventh
century and the beginning of the twelfth. The epic is concerned with the
world of action, the romance is occupied almost exclusively with the
world of feeling and emotion. For this is the real character of the
romance. It has sometimes been said that the essence of the romance lies
in the strange and mysterious circumstances of the world, in stories of
mystery and wonder, of fairyland and magic. And it is quite true that it
often uses these forms of human experience. But this is not its real
quality. From the story of Tristan and the 'lais' of Mary of France,
down to the _Vita Nuova_ of Dante, that with which it is occupied is the
human heart, its hopes and fears, its joys and sorrows, its exultation
and despair. We have only to read the earliest and greatest forms in
which the story of Tristan and Iseult have come down to us to see this
for ourselves. It is indeed true that we can see or that we can
conjecture that behind the present romance there may have lain an epic
story of the hero's actions, but what we see now is nothing but the
story of the 'infinite passion', the 'infinite pain' of the human heart.
It is the story of their fatal love, of the passion which drives them
out of the homes of men into the wilderness, the fatal passion which
separation only makes deeper, which nothing can change, nothing can end,
the story of a man and woman to whom the world is well lost for love.
And if you wish to see the whole meaning of life as the romance actually
understood it, you have but to turn again to that 'lai' of Mary of
France, which tells us in a few lines how Tristan and Iseult, long
parted, succeed in meeting in the forest for a few moments--meet and
then part--and over it all there is nothing but a certain exquisite
sentiment of love and pain, of love and tears.

This romance poetry is indeed strange, so strange that no one has yet
succeeded in finding or explaining its real origin. Only the day before,
the great artists were singing the gallant deeds of men, but now they
can see nothing, think of nothing but the human heart. And what is
perhaps strangest of all, this great reality of feeling, of passion, is
presented under the form of a world almost wholly unreal and
conventional. The men and women of the epic were great heroic figures,
of larger stature, of greater passions than the common run, but they
were quite real people, moving and acting in the real world. The figures
of romance are for the most part, but for the intense reality of their
love, the unreal, conventional figures of a world of knights and ladies,
of unreal and conventional actions. We understand the epic world, we see
and recognize their people, their dwellings, their ways of acting and
thinking, but the romantic knights and ladies are mere conventions.

The truth is that the chivalrous or romantic world is unreal, partly
perhaps because the artists are occupied with nothing but the emotions,
and profound though these are, it is perhaps because of their
abstraction that the romance ended in the strange allegorical movement
of the thirteenth century. In the hands of the later and lesser poets,
the romantic method finally loses almost all sense of personality, and
becomes a picture and analysis of abstract emotion. It is to these
abstractions that Guillaume de Lorris gave a new life and a singular
grace in the personifications of the _Romance of the Rose_, and the
charm and grace of his art carried Europe off its feet, so that for
nearly three hundred years it tended to dominate European poetry. Even
the greatest artists of these centuries, Dante and Chaucer, at least
started with this method, and at the very end of the fifteenth century
William Dunbar in Scotland still used it with grace and vivacity.

But I have lingered too long in the Middle Ages. I have done so because,
if we could only make more clear to ourselves the homogeneity of the
Europe out of which we all came, it would, I think, greatly help to
clear up the superstitious exaggeration of the conception of nationality
in art. There is not time to deal with it, or we might stay to observe
that the characteristic of mediaeval literature is that of all mediaeval
art and life. To myself, indeed, it is clear that the notion that the
people of the Middle Ages desired or worked for a unified political
organization is indeed a great mistake. But, on the other hand, it is
equally certain that in general civilization, as in religion, there was
a real unity, and that it was only very slowly indeed that the
self-conscious nationalities of the modern world were formed out of the
welter of the confused races and tribes of Europe: indeed, in some parts
of Europe this development was not reached till the nineteenth century
and in south-eastern Europe it is only coming to-day.

       *       *       *       *       *

European art still transcends nationality; in its essence it is
differentiated by the personality of the artist, not by the distinction
of nationality. This may seem at first sight a paradox, for you may be
inclined to say that surely the modern national literatures are in many
ways different, you will say that there is surely some great difference
between Dutch and Italian painting, some great contrast between English
and French poetry. Many people used to speak, perhaps some do still, of
the warm and passionate and romantic south, and of the cold and
ungracious and passionless north. But this is merely a delusion. Dante
is not more imaginative or passionate than Shakespeare.

What is it then which has produced this impression? The answer to the
question and the best evidence of the unity of European art will perhaps
be found in examining some of the great movements in its history, since
the time when the civilization of the Middle Ages reached its highest
point in the thirteenth century.

With the fourteenth century we come to the beginning of a movement which
culminated in the greatest literature of the modern world, in the drama
of England and Spain. But its beginnings are at first sight strangely
different from its fulfilment, and it is almost impossible therefore to
find any phrase or term under which we can justly represent it. The
first great master of the new world was Dante, but not the Dante of the
exquisite sentiment but artificial form of the _Vita Nuova_, but the
great imaginative realist of the _Divine Comedy_, the artist who could
portray the passion and pain of Francesca and her lover, and with equal
power the masterful figure of Farinata, whose dauntless soul not hell
itself could quell; who could pass from the vivid drama of the fierce
contemporary life of Italy to the infinite peace of those to whom 'la
sua voluntade è nostra pace'. For indeed it is this which places Dante
among the supreme poets of the world, that there is no aspect of the
reality of human life and experience which is strange to him, and which
the greatness of his imagination cannot make living to us. It has often
been said that Dante is the greatest and most representative artist of
the Middle Ages, but so far as this is true, and it is only partially
true, it may make plain to us that there are no boundaries of time in
art any more than of race or country. Dante is the first great artist of
a new world, but it was not till three centuries had passed, it was not
until Shakespeare, that the whole meaning of the new literature was made
clear. The new literature has been thought to begin with two great
artists, an Italian and an Englishman: with Boccaccio in the south and
Chaucer in the north.

What is, then, the characteristic quality or note of the _Decameron_ and
the _Canterbury Tales_? It is not, as some absurd persons think, to be
discovered in the licentiousness or grossness of some of these tales,
this only represents one aspect of their realism, and indeed in this
they do little more than continue the characteristics of what we know as
the 'Fabliaux' of the Middle Ages. The quality of the new art lies just
in this, that there is nothing in human life which is uninteresting or
insignificant to these great artists, that they are bound by no
traditions, hampered by no conventions. They had begun as artists of
romance, and the romantic sentiment of life never ceased to interest
and move them, but they had learned to go beyond the romantic
conventions, and to find the material of their art in everything which
was part of the reality of life. To them, as to the other tale-writers
of these centuries, it was quite immaterial whether they were retelling
a story which had come down from immemorial antiquity, or relating
something which had happened but yesterday in their own town or village,
and they knew nothing of distinctions of class or rank or circumstance;
it is the universal human interest which arrests them. The example which
we shall find most representative is that which is to us English people
the most familiar, that is the 'Prologue' to the _Canterbury Tales_. Was
there ever anything greater of its kind than this? Who can ever forget
these figures: the Knight, the Franklyn, the Prioress, the Wife of Bath?
As we read there passes before us all the company of human life, wise
and foolish, grave and gay, good and bad. Chaucer and Boccaccio are the
greatest artists of what has often been called the 'realistic' type,
they are at least very easy to distinguish from the epic and romantic
artists.

They are great artists, but it is also clear enough that their powers
and their insight into human life were limited. What they began was
carried out to its fulfilment by the great dramatists of the sixteenth
and seventeenth centuries. For this is indeed the relation of the
tale-writers to the dramatists, that they furnish the materials upon
which the dramatists built up their presentation of human life, or
rather, the elements which are transformed by the imagination of the
great dramatists from bare 'realism' into the highest expression of
reality. No doubt the dramatists take into their work other materials
and influences, but the substantial quality whether of the tragedy or
the comedy is intimately related to that of the tales. How often were
the great dramas built up on materials which they drew from Bandello or
the other Italians who continued the tradition of Boccaccio, or from
similar northern sources. But the great dramatists gave their stories a
life, a passion, a breadth and fullness which is far removed from that
of their sources. In their hands, or rather in their creative
imagination, we see not merely the external circumstance, the bare fact,
but we see all the fullness and completeness, all the exquisite grace
and beauty, all the passion and terror of human experience. We may call
Boccaccio and Chaucer 'realists', but it is only in Marlowe and Webster,
and above all in Shakespeare, that we reach reality itself.

We all know the world of Shakespeare, how he ranges from Falstaff to
Hamlet, from Bottom to Lear, from Mrs. Quickly and Doll Tearsheet to
Rosalind and Imogen and Cordelia; we know how to Shakespeare, and in a
lesser degree to some of the other great Elizabethans like Marlowe and
Webster, there is nothing common and insignificant in life, nothing
which the creative imagination of the artist cannot transform,
transmute, from mere dross into pure gold. We say, and we say rightly,
that here is the greatest thing that England has brought forth, and we
think of it as representing the splendid youth and the first maturity of
a great nation.

But now, do we remember and understand that alongside of the English
drama there is another drama, not indeed so great as that of
Shakespeare, but greater, I think, than that of any other Elizabethan,
the drama of Spain, of Lope de Vega and Calderon, a drama of the same
character, inspired by the same spirit, living under the power of the
same creative imagination, a drama in which the same vivid reality is
informed by the same breath of magical romance. In the tragedy of Lope
de Vega, in the comedies of Calderon, with all the distinctive
individuality of the great artists, and of each great work of art, we
have a poetic drama which is in its essential characteristics the same
as that of England.

And yet how different were the circumstances of the two nations, Spain
was decadent, bankrupt, defeated; England was rising to the supreme
heights of its greatness under Elizabeth and Cromwell. At the end of the
sixteenth century, Spain had passed its splendid meridian and was
falling into the grey obscurity of a clouded evening. It had quickly
lost the great place which for a few years it had held in the world,
every day brought a new failure, every year a new disaster; the great
Armada had perished miserably on the dunes of Flanders and Holland, on
the cliffs of Scotland and Ireland; a handful of valiant Dutchmen had
defied its power and broken its wealth; the real enemy of Spain, that is
France, had gathered itself together after forty years of ruin and
misery, and had driven out the Spanish power. Indeed, so great, so
overwhelming, was--as we can now see it--the ruin, that Philip II, who
to the English imagination has stood for the embodiment of cruel and
masterful malignity, has become to the historical student one of the
tragic figures in history, a sincere, stupid, bigoted man, vainly
striving to hold together the great empire which had been created by
Ferdinand and Isabella, by Cortez and Pizarro and Charles V.

England, on the other hand, was rising from obscurity to its place as
the mistress of the seas; Englishmen were raiding and plundering the New
World, which Spain and Portugal had looked on as their own; England was
sending out its sailors and merchants to all the seas, and to all lands,
from the frozen north to the Indies.

And again, Spain was possessed by a fierce and passionate love for the
old religious order, it was the one country in which devotion to the
forms and conceptions of mediaeval religion had proved unshakeable,
while England was the representative power of the new religious temper,
and was soon to hold almost the foremost place in the new intellectual
life of Europe.

And yet the drama of Spain is in all its most essential and intimate
characteristics the same as that of England; represents on the one side
the same overwhelming sense of the tragic conflicts of life, the same
sense of the greatness, the splendour of human nature, which is most
triumphant when most it seems to fail; and on the other side at least
something of that exquisite, that almost unimaginable grace of the
romantic comedy, of the world of Portia and Viola and Beatrice and
Miranda. I do not think that the unity of the great art of Europe, the
comparative insignificance of merely national characteristics and
historical circumstances can find a more convincing illustration.

       *       *       *       *       *

I could wish that I were able to deal adequately with the parallel
movements of painting and sculpture during these centuries, but I have
neither the capacity nor is there now the time to deal with them. This
much only may be said, that the movement of these arts is very closely
parallel during these centuries, from the fourteenth to the seventeenth,
to that of literature. I cannot discuss the characteristics of mediaeval
sculpture and painting, but I would remind you that the notion that
these were merely conventional and abstract is just as mistaken as the
notion that mediaeval literature deals only with conventions or
allegories. It is of course obviously true that the ecclesiastical or
religious purpose served by the greater part of the decorative art of
the Middle Ages which has survived to us, limits and restrains its
subjects and its forms. But no one who is at any pains to consider
mediaeval sculpture and mosaic painting can fail to see that alongside
of much which became conventional, and was fixed in what has been
called the 'Byzantine' style, there is an immense amount of work both in
sculpture and in mosaic which expresses the determination of the
mediaeval artist to represent the world as he experienced and saw it,
and that the main obstacle to the free expression of this spirit was not
the acquiescence or satisfaction of the mediaeval artist in conventional
forms, but the lack of technical dexterity. This will become evident to
any one who will turn his attention, in studying the mosaics, from what
are no doubt the somewhat conventional and hieratic figures of saints
and angels to the realistic attempts to portray the stories of the
Bible. And it will be clear to any one who will study, for instance, the
sculpture of Wells or Amiens or Chartres that by the thirteenth century
the artists were rapidly learning how to represent the world as they
knew it, and something of its grace and beauty. If we say that the
history of the plastic arts in Europe from the fourteenth to the
seventeenth centuries is the history of the discovery and presentation
first of reality, and then of reality as transformed by the highest
imaginative conception of beauty, this must not be understood to mean
that reality and beauty had been absent from those arts in the Middle
Ages.

If then we trace the development of Italian art, we shall first observe
in such work as that of Masaccio in the Brancacci chapel at Florence
just the same characteristic interest in the appearance and the
varieties of human life as we find in the work of Boccaccio and Chaucer,
and in the succession of the great Tuscan and Umbrian and Venetian
painters and sculptors the same transformation of the bare reality of
life by the magic of the imaginative sense of beauty and of passion as
in the great drama. It is not, I think, merely fanciful to say that the
real counterpart of the English and Spanish drama is to be found in the
Italian painters and sculptors of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries
and in the Flemish artists of the early seventeenth. It is certainly
true that each of these great artists had his own individual and
distinctive genius, but the exquisite grace and beauty of the Umbrians
and Tuscans have never been matched save in the romantic comedy of
Shakespeare, and the presentation of the tragic passion of the human
soul in _King Lear_ has only once been equalled, and that is in the
dreadful beauty and horror of the Night and Day, the Evening and the
Morning of Michelangelo.

       *       *       *       *       *

I do not think I need say much about the classical movement in art and
literature, for we all know that it was international. It was begun by
Petrarch, not indeed the Petrarch of the sonnets, for these are only a
later form of the Troubadour lyric, and do not show any special trace of
the classical influence, but the Petrarch whose letters were the first
summons of Europe to a new and indefatigable work of the rediscovery of
the ancient world. It was an Italian with whom the classical movement
began, but it was only in the hands of two northern artists that it
achieved a satisfying development in literature: the one a Frenchman,
Racine, the other an Englishman, Milton. Neither are, I imagine, really
classical at all, but of the two, Milton, as he was by far the more
learned in ancient art, was also probably nearer to the ancient world
both in form and in spirit.

Nor need I say anything about the deplorable ravages of the movement of
good taste and common sense, which produced Boileau and, in some
measure, Pope. It did some good, but far more evil, but happily it is
long past and dead and done with, and we can afford to remember the
little good and to forget the evil. Good or evil, it was at least very
clearly a European and not a national movement.

I must ask you now to consider the extraordinary changes which passed
over Europe in the eighteenth century, to trace the beginnings of that
change which culminated in what we generally call the Romantic movement.

We all know, though not as well as we should, the work of Defoe, and
beside Defoe there stands a painter whom also we all know, the great
Hogarth. We all at least have read _Robinson Crusoe_, and we have
probably all seen Hogarth's engravings of the good and bad apprentices,
and the series of paintings in the National Gallery known as the
'Marriage à la mode'.

What is it now that we find in Defoe and Hogarth? An infinite multitude
of detail--we all remember the 'three Dutch cheeses' and the
'fowling-pieces' which Robinson carefully ferried on his raft from the
wreck to the island--an unsparing presentation of all the ugly and
sordid realities of life; you might almost say, by preference the ugly
realities, the squalid vices, the stupid and brutal ferocity of human
nature. It is not a pretty or a pleasing world which we see in Hogarth
or in Defoe's _Colonel Jack_. But they are great artists. If you see
human nature often on its most repulsive side, in its harshest and most
repellent form, at least you see in their novels or pictures, the world
as they saw it in the streets and taverns, in the police courts and
prisons of their day, as for that matter you can still see it everywhere
in town or country. The world which they see may often, perhaps usually,
be ugly, but at least there is no conventional prettiness, there is no
smug veneer of an artificial good taste which refuses to call a spade a
spade, and which deliberately turns away from those things in life which
are irritating to its sense of decorum and propriety.

Here there is something new, and we can imagine a defender of the
nationalist conception of art saying that here at last we have an
obvious example of the revolt of northern realism against the southern
or classical grace. But there could not be a greater delusion. For
though it is true that the new realism was not fully developed all over
Europe until the eighteenth century, it had its beginnings in the
sixteenth century, and not in the 'cold' north, but in the 'romantic'
south. The first signs of the new movement are to be found not in
England or in Flanders, but in Spain in the sixteenth century. It was
the _Lazarillo de Tormes_, the first of the Picaresque novels which
struck the new note, which turned from the fantastic and conventional
world of the romances in which Don Quixote had nourished his soul, and
from the heroic world of beauty and grace of the dramatists, to the bare
and hard reality of the life of the beggar and the vagabond. Not even
Defoe himself ever surpassed the clearness and precision of the
_Lazarillo_, and it was the first work of a type, whose slow development
can be traced in almost every country in Europe: in England, in the
realistic attempts of Greene and Nash and Deloney, in Germany in
_Simplicissimus_, in France in the _Roman comique_ of Scarron and in the
_Gil Blas_ of Le Sage, who was an almost exact contemporary of Defoe.

And all this can be traced just as clearly in the history of painting.
The great Italian painting had ended with the gorgeous magnificence of
the Venetian school, with Giorgione and Titian and Tintoretto, and its
mastery passed for a few years to Flanders, to Rubens and Vandyck; but
in the painting of Spain and of the Low Countries in the later
seventeenth century we find ourselves in another world. The little
beggar boys of Murillo may perhaps show a somewhat mannered realism, but
the Spanish painting, as a whole, while it would be absurd to try to
describe it under any one phrase, shows very clearly the determination
to present the reality of the world under terms which are very
different from those of the great Italians of the fifteenth and
sixteenth centuries. And when we turn to the art of the Low Countries in
the latter part of the seventeenth and in the eighteenth centuries,
leaving for the moment out of account the new art of landscape painting,
we find ourselves in the same world as that of Defoe and Hogarth.

What was this, then, that had come to European art and literature?
Clearly what we see is the transition from the heroic world of the
tragedy, from the splendid beauty and force of the Italian painters,
from the infinite grace of the romantic comedy, to some other artistic
apprehension of the world. The movement was not indeed wholly dependent
upon a reaction, but in its development it corresponds with the reaction
against the continuance of a great tradition which had become merely a
convention, when it had lost its vitality and sincerity. The best
examples of this may perhaps be found in Dryden's attempt to carry on
the heroic tradition in English tragedy, and in Voltaire's strenuous and
meritorious efforts to continue the work of Racine and Corneille. They
meant well, and their tragic dramas are not without merit, but it is
clear enough that they could not bend the bow of Ulysses. They were
great artists, as we can see clearly enough in _Absalom and Ahitophel_,
or in _Candide_, but their genius lay in other directions. 'Il faut
cultiver notre jardin' is a great judgement of life, one very wholesome
and necessary for all time, but it was not the mood of Othello or of
Hamlet.

European art had to come down from the empyrean, and though the descent
was great, yet it gained new life by once again touching mother earth.

No doubt, however, the harsh reality of Hogarth and Defoe was not the
whole of life, and, by a strange transition, before the middle of the
eighteenth century we find the novelists and, though they are less
important, the dramatists, turning from the faithful and minute study of
the outward appearance and form of things to the study of sensibility
and emotion, and the world, which had seemed so hard and unmoved, was
dissolved in tears.

We find this a strange and even a ridiculous spectacle, the men who had
prided themselves on their common sense and reasonableness, whose
literature had sparkled with wit and epigram, blubbering and crying like
great children; but whatever we think of it, that is what happened. The
first artist of the new type was a Frenchman, Marivaux, and his _Vie de
Marianne_ is a study of a young woman who is the embodiment of
sensibility and self-consciousness, an amiable and virtuous girl, who is
hardly able to enjoy the good that life brings her, for fear lest she
should miss the opportunity of renunciation. The first great novel of
sentiment is also French, the Abbé Prévost's _Manon Lescaut_, and here
indeed we are in the deep waters of affliction; there are but few
moments between the beginning and the end of his sad story when the hero
is not in tears. And yet it is a great novel, for there are few studies
of human nature, as absorbed and almost lost in emotion, which are more
moving.

These novels, however, which appeared between 1730 and 1740, are
overshadowed by the works of the great Englishmen, by Richardson and
Sterne and Goldsmith, for these are not artists of England alone, but of
all Europe, known and loved and imitated in every country in Europe. The
sorrows of _Clarissa_, the pathetic or maudlin humour of Sterne, the
idyllic grace and gentle laughter of Goldsmith, these, as they moved
every heart, influenced even the greatest of European artists. The
influence of _Clarissa_ on Rousseau, of Goldsmith on Goethe and Jean
Paul Richter need no exposition.

The sentimental movement reached almost its highest level in the great
and morbid genius of Rousseau, who was himself the living embodiment of
the movement. Far more than even his creations, more than Julie or
Saint-Preux, was he himself possessed by an emotionalism which finally
became a disease. But, strangely enough, it was the Olympic genius of
Goethe which gave its supreme form to the treatment of life under the
terms of feeling. In _Werther_ this whole phase of art passed beyond
itself into the tragedy of the vain and hopeless efforts of an honest
but over-sensitive nature to control his emotion and to master his life.
Not indeed that it was with _Werther_ the movement ended: it was
continued in Byron: it was perhaps the most important element in what
the Germans call specifically their _Romantische Schule_, and in the
work of the French Romantic artists from Chateaubriand to Alfred de
Musset. If you wish to see it in painting you have only to look at the
work of Greuze, and at the engravings in our grandmothers'
'Forget-me-nots'. In spite of all its absurdities this sentimental
movement played a great part in preparing men for the great revolution
itself, for it opened men's hearts, it set free their emotions; if the
realism of Defoe and Hogarth had enabled men to escape from convention
and the mannerisms of good taste into a world of reality, the emotional
movement gave this reality fullness and content, represented a larger
and more intimate apprehension of life.

This brings us to another aspect of the art of the seventeenth and
eighteenth centuries, to the poetry and painting of 'nature', to the
beginnings of that great artistic movement which culminates in
Wordsworth and Turner, and whose influence dominated all Europe in the
eighteenth century and continues to do so in our own time. It seems a
strange thing, but it is true, that it was not till the seventeenth and
eighteenth centuries that there appeared a school of painting which took
landscape, and a poetry which took 'nature' specifically for its
subject. There is indeed frequent reference to 'nature' in the poetry of
the Middle Ages and of the sixteenth century, and this is often
significant in the early English poetry and charming in the romances and
in Petrarch and Chaucer, while in Dante and the Elizabethans, and
especially in Shakespeare, it reaches an almost incomparable beauty; yet
in all these it is, as in the backgrounds of the great Tuscan and
Umbrian painters, exquisite and significant and true, but not the prime
subject which engages their attention.

There are indeed two great poets in whom we begin to feel that the
background begins to be almost as important as the figures of the
foreground; Spenser is genuinely interested in his stories of chivalry
and honour, and in his moral allegory, but we sometimes wonder whether
the most important thing in his poetry is not the chequered light and
shade of his forests, the picturesque splendour of his castles, and the
gloom of his caverns and dungeons. Spenser's poetry is like a tapestry
on which indeed some story of human life is presented, but which is in
the end a great work of decorative art, to which the immediate subject
contributes form and pattern and colour, but in which it is in a measure
lost.

In Milton the matter is different: no one can doubt that he is a great
artist of human life and fate; even if _Paradise Lost_ were to leave us
in some uncertainty, the _Samson_ would convince us all. But, while I
think this is true, it is also clear that not only in the grace of his
earlier poetry, but in the maturity of his genius, in the _Lycidas_ and
even in the _Paradise_, Milton is at least as great an artist of nature
and its beauty as he is of life. And near Milton there stands a poet,
lesser indeed, but individual and unique, that is Henry Vaughan, who had
unhappily strayed into the 'metaphysical' maze, and who helplessly
enough tries to endue himself with the giant armour of Donne, but who,
when he is himself, is one of the most exquisite and gracious poets of
nature.

We may perhaps, without being fanciful, find a parallel to these poets
in the great Venetian painters of the sixteenth century, in whose work
we see the landscape of Venetia and the Cadore compelling more and more
our attention, as not a mere background, but as an integral part of the
picture; but it was not till the seventeenth century and the Flemish and
Dutch painters that we see the transition complete, and the artist sets
before us not some scene in human life, but simply the beauty and
splendour of 'nature' herself.

It was not till Thomson began to publish _The Seasons_ in 1726 that the
development was complete in poetry. Thomson is a difficult poet to
appreciate rightly, for though his subject was 'nature' his method was
often as conventional and artificial as that of any Augustan; but he was
a lover of the fields and woods, and his imagination, if it is not very
powerful, is often very sincere. What was begun by Thomson was carried
on with greater sincerity and reality by Cowper, and was transformed by
the imagination of Gray and Collins. We sometimes think of this
development as specifically English, and it is true that in Wordsworth
and Shelley the poetry of nature grew into something which is unique and
unmatched, but we must not think of the poetry of Wordsworth as though
it were the only form under which nature can be presented. That would be
to ignore the qualities, in England of Keats and Tennyson, and in Europe
of great artists in whom the treatment of nature assumed other forms.
The great poetry of nature began in England, but it was carried on in
all the European countries, and for more than a century it was dominated
mainly by the genius of Rousseau in France and of Goethe in Germany. I
cannot here pretend to deal with the treatment of nature in Rousseau,
or with the outcome of his influence first in Bernardin de Saint-Pierre
and Chateaubriand, and then in the elegiac beauty of Lamartine and de
Musset's _Nuits_; nor can I deal with the poetry of nature in Goethe,
and its lesser but often beautiful expression in the German
'Romanticists', and in Heine. It is only possible here to remind
ourselves that neither the poetry nor the painting of nature belongs to
any one country, but is an intimate part of all modern art.

       *       *       *       *       *

And thus at last we come to the great revolution itself, that great
revolution in art and thought and life, of which the political and
social revolution is one form, and of which we are all the children. In
this, all the elements of which we have been thinking are gathered up
and come to perfection; reality, sentiment, nature. And this was of no
one country or nationality. The first and also the greatest artist of
the revolution is Goethe himself, for it all culminates and reaches its
highest expression in _Faust_. The passion for freedom, for the complete
experience of life, for life itself, and not mere knowledge or mere
words--this is the motive which drives Faust till he is willing to make
his bargain with any power which will give him this. The infinite, the
insatiable desire of the human soul, which can never be wholly
satisfied, which can never reach its term, this is the passion which
possesses Faust, this is the rock upon which the hopes of the poor devil
are shipwrecked, the poor devil who in the limitation of the merely
critical and negative temper cannot understand that Faust can never be
satisfied, will never say to the moment, 'Verweile doch, du bist zu
schön.' For the drama of _Faust_ is not a drama of damnation, but of
redemption, and though the breadth and scope of the whole conception
pass beyond all presentation in complete and rounded form, the great
tragedy of Gretchen takes us from the splendid but abstract world of
ideas into the simplest experience of human life, where Faust becomes
human through love itself, but too slowly, too late to avert the
tragedy.

If Goethe represents the great humane conceptions of the revolution most
profoundly, Wordsworth comes very near him in the depth of his knowledge
of humanity, and in his supreme sense of the unity of all life and
nature with the living spirit who is in all things; and the great
romantic artists of France are governed by the same sense of nature and
love and the spiritual, and in Victor Hugo this reaches a level only
just below that of Goethe himself.

       *       *       *       *       *

You must not misunderstand me, nationality has real meaning, it has
something akin, but distantly, to personality; but in the main it
affects the more superficial aspects of art. In painting and sculpture
the European artists use a language which we can all understand, imagine
life and nature under terms which we all feel and know to be true. And,
though in literature the language creates a real difference, and causes
a difficulty in recognizing the unity which lies behind the difference,
yet the moment we begin to overcome that difficulty we find ourselves in
a world intelligible, familiar, moving to us all; and intelligible just
in proportion to the greatness of the artist.

It is idle for us to dispute about the relative greatness of our
national arts, for their greatness lies not in national idiosyncrasies,
but in the personality of the artist, and in the single, the unique
quality of the particular works of art, and these belong not to this
country or nation or to that, but to us all. It is not to Frenchmen only
that the intellectual passion of Pascal, or the hatred of shams and the
love of the honest man of Molière or of Voltaire, appeal, but to us all.
It is not only Germans who understand the splendour of human
experience, and the infinite pathos of the mistakes of the human heart,
but we all. And the spectacle of the tempest in the heart of Lear, that
tempest of the soul, of which the storms of nature are but a faint
reflection, or the exquisite serenity and humanity of the recognition of
Cordelia, these are not the prerogative possessions of England, but they
speak to the heart and soul of the whole world.

We may be divided from each other by many things, material or political,
but in the supreme art and poetry we rise above all these distinctions
and are only men and women, with the earth under our feet and the
heavens above us.

       *       *       *       *       *

BOOKS FOR REFERENCE

The subject treated in the essay may be considered in relation to the
following works:

_Beowulf_; _The Song of Roland_; _The Nibelungenlied_.

_Tristan and Iseult_ (Thomas, or Béroul); Mary of France, _Lais_.

Dante, _Divina Commedia_.

Boccaccio, _Decameron_; Chaucer, _Canterbury Tales_.

Shakespeare; Lope de Vega; Calderon.

Defoe, _Robinson Crusoe_; Le Sage, _Gil Blas_.

Marivaux, _Marianne_; Prévost, _Manon Lescaut_.

Richardson, _Clarissa_; Goethe, _Werther_.

Goethe, _Faust_; Wordsworth, _Michael_, &c..

Victor Hugo, _Légende des Siècles_.

There are English translations of the greater number of these.




VII

SCIENCE AND PHILOSOPHY AS UNIFYING FORCES


Some political thinkers have taken the State for the highest form of
human association. Humanity is for them a mere abstract idea. It is no
organized whole; owns, they think, no common allegiance, pursues no
common aim. To find such an organized whole, such an allegiance, such an
aim, we must look to the State and to nothing beyond it. We find such a
whole in Germany, in France, in England, but not in anything common to
the three and to other States as well. This opinion, due in its modern
shape to Hegel and his followers, is false to history, false in
political theory, and mischievous in ethics, but it is nowhere more
false than in relation to the world of thought. The essential unity of
Western civilization as an intellectual, moral, and spiritual
commonwealth is indeed illustrated--unfortunately illustrated as it
happens--by this very theory of the State which denies it. For the
theory is of German make. It arose out of the historical conditions of
Prussia in the early years of the nineteenth century, was fostered in
Germany by the peculiar method by which the unity of the nation was
effected, and, setting out from its home, has permeated much of the
thought of the West, effectively combating the Liberal humanitarianism
which was the especial contribution of England to the movement of the
nineteenth century. The reaction of the German idea of the State on the
English conception of liberty is the dominating influence of the last
forty years in English political thought and progress. There can hardly
be a more striking testimony to the reality of that unity which the
theorists who embody it seek to depreciate or deny.

When we speak of unity in this connexion we may mean one of three
things. There is a unity of character or type. There is the unity
involved in continuous unbroken descent from a common origin, and there
is unity of effective interconnexion and mutual dependence. These senses
of the term unity are confused by some writers, but must clearly be
distinguished before any useful inquiry can be made. Unity of character,
for example, is a different thing from continuity of historical
development, for a civilization might radically change its character in
the course of generations. It might lose all the specific features of
its own family and come into closer resemblance with others of quite
distinct parentage. Again unity of character is not the same thing as
the effective interconnexion and co-operation of different centres. On
the contrary, such co-operation is of most value where there is marked
difference of character, where, for instance, a lack of a quality in one
nation is counteracted by a surplus in another. Thus these three forms
of unity are distinct, but if distinct they are not unrelated.
Naturally, where there is a common origin, many traits of the primitive
unity of character are likely to persist, and where there is effective
intercommunication, many differences may be rubbed off. So, where we
start with unity of origin, we are likely to find some measure of unity
in other respects, and this is what we do find, in fact, in the case of
Western civilization. It does possess a certain unity of character, and
this is largely due to unity of origin, and is maintained in spite of
marked divergences, which have not impeded an effective
intercommunication but have tended rather to add interest and value to
the results which that intercommunication has produced.

SECTION I.--UNITY OF CHARACTER

There is a certain unity of character running through all civilization,
and indeed through all humanity. Certain fundamental institutions and
principles of organization are common to East and West, to the ancient
and modern world, to civilization and savagery, and there is not the
least evidence that the similarities are the result of historic
connexion. On the contrary, they arise from a human nature which is
fundamentally the same, adjusting itself to conditions of life which are
fundamentally the same. But of course it is only the broadest and most
general characters that are thus common to all the world. Within them
there is every sort and degree of specific difference. There are types
within types, worlds within worlds, and what we call Western
civilization is one of these. That is to say, it is at the present day a
family or group of nations sharing in common certain things which
distinguish it from the rest of the world, such things, for instance, as
a certain degree of social order, a certain outlook upon life, certain
fundamentals of religion and ethics, and an industrial organization
based on applied science. Now to mention any of these points is at once
to provoke a criticism. In each respect, it will be said, the nations of
Western Europe and the lands that have been colonized from them differ
vastly among themselves. The social order of Germany is by no means that
of England. The industrial development of southern Italy is very
different from that of Belgium. The Prussian outlook upon life--this in
particular will be emphasized just now--is quite another thing from the
French. This is true enough, but once again it means only that there are
further specific differences within the genus. We could pursue the
differences as far down as we like. For the United Kingdom, say, is by
no means one homogeneous whole. Even within England alone deep
contrasts reveal themselves between the agricultural South and the
industrial North. Yet we do not hesitate to think of the English
character, English institutions, the English type as distinct from the
rest of the world, and we are right in so doing because there is a real
unity pervading all the differences. Just in the same way at a higher
remove there is a certain unity of character pervading the deeper and
wider differences that appear in the various centres of Western
civilization.

       *       *       *       *       *

SECTION II.--UNITY OF ORIGIN

This unity of character is very largely due to continuous descent from a
common cultural ancestor. The civilization of the West is fundamentally
one not because the peoples of the West are one racially. They are not
so. They comprise every branch of the Aryan family and a considerable
admixture of quite other stocks. Their civilization owes its common
characteristics mainly to a common origin and continued interaction.
That is why it is in the mass a community of ideas, for ideas pass from
man to man and from nation to nation more readily than institutions,
more readily far than character, more readily perhaps than anything
except material goods. In the realm of ideas Western civilization forms
a single commonwealth of informal but of exceeding democratic
constitution. This freedom, indeed, it owes in large measure to its
international character, for there are constantly arising local and
temporary dictators, arbiters of fashion in the ideas of politics,
philosophy, and even of science. Within a narrow circle such a dictator
often has it all his own way, but it is seldom that he can maintain a
prolonged ascendancy throughout the international commonwealth unless
there is some pretty solid foundation for his doctrine.

This commonwealth has its foundations in the past. It derives in the
first instance from the unity of mediaeval Christendom, where it enjoyed
the advantage of a common language of learning, the gradual loss of
which is imperfectly compensated by the possession of two or three
modern languages alone by the educated man of the present day. Through
mediaeval Christendom and through the Arabic schools, which can hardly
be regarded as a part of Western civilization but in the Middle Ages
were rather its teachers, it derives from the Greco-Roman world, and
through the Greco-Roman world from the Greeks themselves. The Greeks in
their turn were aware that they owed the rudiments of their science to
the ancient civilizations of the Nile and the Euphrates. Thus in the
intellectual world there is a continuity stretching back six thousand
years or more to the beginnings of recorded civilization. More than once
the continuity is nearly broken, but some strand is always preserved,
and it is in this continuity in the world of ideas that we get the main
evidence of such progress as human history reveals.

The foundations of material civilization were laid in Egypt and in
Babylonia, where the progress made in agriculture and the industrial
arts implies a considerable body of empirical knowledge of physics and
chemistry at an early date. We have Egyptian textbooks of arithmetic
dating from the eighteenth and perhaps from the twelfth dynasty. We have
texts dealing with the rudiments of geometry. Empirical chemistry
appears to be of Egyptian origin, the word itself is referred to the
Egyptian term for black earth--and to have passed to the Arabs, who made
it into a quantitative science, without greatly interesting the
scientific mind of Greece. Careful astronomical records extending over
thousands of years were kept both in Egypt and Babylonia, and upon them
a considerable body of astronomical knowledge was built up. But there
is no evidence of a scientific interest detached at once from theology
and industry. In theology itself Egyptian learning early became
dissatisfied with the popular deities, and sought for a unity of the
godhead either in some one supreme deity such as the sun or, more often,
in a mystical identification of all the gods as so many incarnations or
impersonations of a single principle. But though these and kindred
speculations were not without influence on Greek thought, the entire
achievement of Egypt in this direction, so far as known to us, was of
little importance as compared with that of other oriental civilizations.

Thus without underestimating a debt which the Greeks themselves
acknowledged, it remains true to regard science and philosophy alike as
in essence an original creation of the Greek genius. What grew up in
Greece during the sixth and fifth centuries B.C. was the spirit of
disinterested inquiry proceeding on rational methods. By the term
disinterested I mean detached from ulterior objects. Geometry for the
Greek was something more than the art of land measurement, astronomy
something more than a means of regulating the calendar or foretelling an
eclipse. It was a study of the nature of the heavens, an attempt to
penetrate the construction of the material universe. So with geometry.
It might begin as an investigation of the relations of particular
triangles, squares, and oblongs, but it developed into an attempt to
grasp the nature of space relations and to understand them as depending
on simple common principles. This is to say that in the hands of the
Greeks these subjects first became sciences. But a still greater subject
also became in their hands matter for disinterested rational inquiry.
They developed what Aristotle called the science of Reality, or, as we
call it, Philosophy--the attempt to approach by the rational criticism
of experience the problem of the nature and origin of the universe and
of man's place therein. They propounded the fundamental questions which
still occupy the highest intellects of mankind. They laid the
foundations of method and bequeathed to Europe the terminology which all
exact thinking requires. Even when we speak of method we are using an
Aristotelian term, and when we distinguish one subject from another we
are employing the Latin translation of the word which Aristotle
introduced. In a word, modern thought, scientific and philosophic alike,
has a unitary origin. It is derived from the Greek.

The mode of this derivation is not simple, and would require
considerable space to examine in detail. In outline it must suffice to
say that the Greek culture was spread over the Eastern Mediterranean
through the conquests of Alexander, and that as its capital Alexandria
gradually replaced Athens. It flowed westward with the Roman conquests,
when, as the Roman poet said, captured Greece took captive her barbarous
conqueror and introduced the arts into rustic Latium. It shared in the
general decline which accompanied the rebarbarization and final collapse
of the Roman Empire. But now occurred a division in the stream of
historic tendency. The fortunes of East and West were separated. The
Western Empire was overrun by Germanic tribes, and after the sixth
century the tradition of the old culture was maintained for the most
part in the monasteries. Greek was forgotten in the West. Greek authors
were known only in Latin translations, and science and philosophy came
to a standstill. In the East the Mohammedan conquests brought the Arabs
into touch with Greek learning. They preserved the tradition and
extended the work, and it was the contact with Arabic culture through
the crusades which initiated the first renaissance in the West in the
twelfth century. There followed the epoch of the great mediaeval
systems, the rediscovery of Aristotle and the attempt to fuse the
Christian faith with the Aristotelian system. The later Middle Age was
the period at which Western civilization was most distinctly a cultural
unit, the scene of a great attempt to unify all the aspects of life, the
religious, the philosophic, the political, on the basis of a religious
faith made articulate and systematic with the aid of Greek philosophy,
speaking the Latin tongue as the common possession of all educated men.

The paradox of thought is that while unity is its ideal, freedom is its
necessary condition, and endless divergence the inevitable consequence.
There could not be much thinking about matters of faith without heresy,
nor about matters of politics without disaffection, rebellions and new
political grouping. Heresy and schism broke up the mediaeval unity and
reinforced the political tendencies making towards the modern state
system. The rise of modern literature displaced the classics from their
unique position as literary models. After the seventeenth century the
habit of writing in the vernacular tended more and more to oust
Latinity, and culture in each country began to assume more of a
distinctively national character. Specific national characteristics
began to appear in science and philosophy as well as in literature and
education, and a large part of the history of modern thought depends on
the partial independence on the one hand and the frequent interactions
on the other of these centres.

       *       *       *       *       *

SECTION III.--UNITY OF INTERCONNEXION

This brings us to the third sense in which unity can be predicated of a
cultural group. The unity that depends on the interconnexion of distinct
parts implies some differences of character. Western civilization has
lost something of the unity of character which it owed to its common
origin, though it still retains enough of it to figure as a single
whole in contrast to the rest of the world. We may be sure that the
differences between German, French, and English seem much less marked to
the intelligent Chinese than they are to Germans, Frenchmen, and English
themselves. We ourselves habitually think of China and Japan together as
denizens of the Far East, and it is only personal acquaintance which
makes us begin to mark the differences between them. Few Europeans, I
imagine, get as far in their discrimination as to appreciate the
distinctions between the Northern and Southern Chinese, which are as
clear to the Chinese themselves as the difference between English and
Scottish is to us. Western civilization does retain a generic unity of
character, though national differences have had an increasing influence
in the sphere of thought. Meanwhile the unity of interconnexion has on
the whole grown closer with the spread of education, the multiplication
of learned magazines and the facilities of travel. One of the most
interesting chapters in the development of modern thought can be
written, as Dr. Merz has shown by example as well as by precept, on the
theme of the mutual influence of the great national centres of thought,
and in particular of France, England, and Germany. These nations might
seem as though designed, whether by nature or by the unconscious hand of
political history, to be half-willing, half-reluctant complements to
each other. English common sense, French lucidity, German idealism;
English liberty, French equality, German organization; English breadth,
French exactitude, German detail,--how much poorer the world would be if
any one of these had been allowed to develop on its own lines without
the criticism of the other two. What a special providence gave the
easy-going Englishman a northern neighbour to lecture him on German
metaphysics in his own tongue and compel him to the definiteness which
he instinctively detests. Without Scotland as a link, the connexion
between English and German thought would hardly have been effective and
continuous, and it was a Scotsman who aroused the greatest of German
metaphysicians--himself of Scottish descent--from his dogmatic slumbers.

This international division of labour is more significant in the regions
of metaphysics and political thought than of physical science. To
science, every modern nation has contributed both great names and useful
journeyman work. Through the medium of the learned reviews and of
periodical congresses science has become more and more international. It
is still possible now and again for a great discovery like that of
Mendel or an important hypothesis like that of the kinetic theory of
gases to be ignored for a whole generation. But this does not seem to
depend especially on difficulties of language or of international
communication. There is a queer element of arbitrary fashion in the
scientific world which every now and then decrees that certain people
shall be ignored, no matter how sound their work, or that certain
hypotheses shall be treated as matters of faith, no matter how flimsy
their structure. Man does not all at once become a creature of pure
reasoning by assuming the robe of science and entering the laboratory.
But national prejudices are not pre-eminent among the forces which
dictate these fashions. Indeed in the English intellectual world there
operates, if anything, a certain anti-national prejudice. It has
sometimes been easier for an Englishman to get a hearing in Germany than
in England, and it is certain that in many subjects a respect is paid to
German writers which they would not have been able to win if they had
written either in French or in English. This is due to a certain
encyclopaedic minuteness which is the peculiar property of German
industry. If you want an exhaustive negative, I remember an
archaeologist saying once, you must go to the Germans. That is to say,
on almost any subject you will find some German, and a German only, who
has taken the trouble to go through the whole matter from beginning to
end, not attending merely to what is interesting or important, but
writing down _all_ that is to be found out in all the authorities
bearing on that subject. And this work will be insufferably tedious and,
taken by itself, may be very unilluminating. But it is much less tedious
for the reader than it was for the writer, and, if suitably indexed,
such a work will in permanence serve as a guide-book to those who are
going to exercise real thought and insight upon that subject. It is the
element of disinterested drudgery which the Germans have contributed to
science. Not that they have lacked men of genius, but that they have
added to genius that which, Carlyle notwithstanding, it so often
lacks--the infinite capacity for taking pains. Take up any scientific
treatise in any language and on almost any subject, cast your eye down
the references to authorities in the footnotes on a few pages at random,
and you will find probably three out of four of those cited bearing
German names. They will outbalance English, American, French, Dutch, and
Italian added together. If you pass from quantity to quality, if you
take the leading ideas contributed to the subject, you will find the
balance redressed. Here French and English and others hold their own,
and perhaps a little more than their own. But in bulk of work, and
especially in the faithful, unrepaying service of the hard dry fact, the
Germans have set a standard to the world. It may be that their very
merit is due in part to a lack of certain qualities as well as to a
superabundance of others. There is a want of proportion in some of these
vast Teutonic treatises that takes the heart out of the English student.
Some witty person has said that German science consists in demonstrating
over again with enormously elaborate apparatus what an Englishman has
already made plain enough to any sensible person with the aid of a
gingerbeer bottle and an old sardine tin. But I suspect there is another
side to the question. The German has probably worked out his figures to
the twentieth decimal where the Englishman was content with the second,
and it may always turn out that the twentieth decimal has its value. Be
that as it may, the co-operation of both types of mind is necessary, and
patient endeavour in the elaboration of detail is the peculiar function
which the German academic tradition has developed in the service of the
general cause of the advancement of learning.

In more speculative thought the equipoise of international co-operation
reveals itself in the changes which national thought has undergone under
foreign influence. In the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries
English and Scottish metaphysics developed in the main on lines of their
own. It was the heyday of the so-called English school of experience.
This school was influential in France, and in Germany acted as the
ferment which dissolved the older academic tradition and stimulated the
growth of the new idealism. German idealism first became an influence in
England through the medium of Coleridge and later of Carlyle. But it had
little effect on the national philosophy except in shaking the younger
Mill out of the narrow rut in which he had been educated and
contributing to his thought that stream of influence which throughout
life he tried in vain to merge harmoniously with the paternal teaching.
But in the last third of the nineteenth century new channels of
influence were opened. The authority of Green at Oxford and of Caird in
the Scottish universities brought the tide of Hegelian influence, on the
ebb in Germany, in full flood over the intellectual world of Great
Britain and America. English empiricism was rapidly swept out of
existence. Mill and Spencer, the dominating figures of the sixties and
seventies were reduced to the position of dummies used for target
practice by beginners. Being intelligible they could be read by the
first-year student, and the exposition of their fallacies provided an
easy task for the lecturer's wit. There was none so poor to do them
reverence, or if any did he was relegated to a fourth class in the Final
Schools. It would be a very interesting study in our object to analyse
the Anglo-Scottish idealism in close relation to the German original,
and measure the changes which a philosophy undergoes in the process of
assimilation by a people of very different intellectual tradition. Lack
of sympathy with German and particularly with Hegelian idealism
disqualifies me from the task, but this much in spite of this lack I can
see. The German philosophers had a hold on those large and general ideas
which the English mind seems instinctively to distrust, and which
English philosophy had sought to resolve away into component parts. The
Englishman as a philosopher is by nature very much like the Englishman
as a mechanic or as a business man. He wants to touch and see, to test
and handle, before he is convinced of reality. 'I desire that it be
produced' is the frequent remark of Hume--Scotsman in some respects, but
very English in this--whenever he is dealing with some conception not
readily verifiable in experience. English philosophy left to itself was
not inclined to do justice to the subtler, more evasive notions that are
not readily defined. It did not allow enough for what we may call the
imponderable elements. German idealism has had just the opposite fault.
It has been too ready to take its thoughts for realities, too prone to
use large and perhaps vague conceptions as if they were solid coin and
not tokens that needed a good deal of scrutiny to determine their value.
We may see an example in a branch of political thought which has been a
good deal under discussion of late. To some German thinkers the
conception of the State presents itself in a manner which by no means
comes natural to the Englishman. To the German the State is an entity as
obvious, real, and apparent as the individual citizen. It is not just
the head of Germany, or the sixty-five millions of Germans, or the
Kaiser, or the army, or the Government. It is just itself, the State,
and it has attributes and powers, is the object of duties and possessor
of rights just like any Hamburg merchant or Prussian Junker. To the
natural Englishman all this seems half mystical, half superficial. Talk
to him of the State and if he is to grasp the conception at all he must
get it into terms of persons or things. He pictures it perhaps as the
Government, perhaps simply as the income-tax collector, perhaps as the
miscellaneous millions living in the United Kingdom. If he discusses its
well-being, its success or its failure, he does so under the reserve
that all this is a shorthand for the well-being of great numbers of men
and women. If its honour and good faith are in question what he will ask
is whether Sir E. Grey fulfilled a definite pledge at a given moment
after the manner of an English gentleman. Now for my own part, whether
through national prejudice or not, I believe this habit of checking and
resolving large conceptions to be the safest and most scientific way of
dealing with them. Yet I can also see that it may lead to a good deal of
crudity and may lead men to ignore important elements for which they
cannot readily find some concrete expression. In this very matter of the
State, for example, we are dealing with an organization of individuals,
and if our way of talking about it makes us overlook the flesh and blood
of which it is composed, the other way may obscure in our minds the
vital differences introduced by the very fact of organization. The
Germans have often seen the wood more clearly when the Englishman was
more careful to distinguish and name the trees. So I cannot doubt that
it will prove in the end to have been good for us to have been compelled
by a few leading thinkers to go to school with the Germans for a couple
of generations, even at the cost of the temporary depreciation of much
that was most vital in our own social philosophy. Perhaps the best thing
that can be wished for Germany, and through her for Europe, in the next
generation, is that she should learn as much from our tradition as we
have learned from her.

The whole history of political thought in the last two centuries is a
study of complex interactions between processes going forward in each of
the leading nations. The liberalism of Locke and the principles of the
Whig revolution profoundly influenced France, and the very fact that
distance lent them enchantment and allowed them to be idealized gave
them a value as a stimulus to the French critic of absolute government
which they could hardly exercise at home, where their real limitations
were better known. The French revolution bore on the entire thought of
Europe, alike by sympathy and antipathy, producing the reactionary
philosophies of Burke in England and of Hegel in Germany, and the
endeavour to formulate a new and safer line of Radicalism by Bentham.
Philosophical Radicalism expressed in the main by the distinct but
related Manchester school had two generations of development in England,
and was felt as a real influence abroad during the period of comparative
peace that followed Waterloo and that raised men's hopes of an era that
should put wars aside and devote itself to the essential progress of
mankind. French influences again, particularly that of Comte acting
through J.S. Mill, brought new life into this school as the first flush
of its youth was fading. Finally, as we have seen, German influences
overwhelmed it, and England, fascinated as much by the prestige of
Germany as by her thought, gravitated more and more to the doctrine of
the self-contained, military, Protectionist, all-powerful State. In this
story of political thought events have been no less potent than
arguments. The failure and success of institutions, the victories and
defeats of countries identified with certain principles have repeatedly
brought new strength and resolution to the adherents or opponents of
those principles as the case might be in all lands. The successive steps
by which Italy secured unity and freedom were a perpetual encouragement
to believers in national right and liberal government throughout the
middle of the century. The triumph of Germany in 1870 was a victory for
autocratic power, for discipline, for unscrupulous statesmanship, for
blood and iron, which effected a conversion, only half conscious and
very slow in producing its result, but all the more complete for that
reason, in the attitude of men to fundamental questions of social
ethics. Looking back on the hundred years that separate the two European
cataclysms, the historian will discover a rise of liberal and
humanitarian opinions to ascendancy in the earlier period and a reaction
against them towards the close. The causes of such a change are
multifarious and tangled, but he will, I believe, recognize the year
1870 and the victory of Bismarck as the dividing line. May it be so that
he will find in the present war another turning-point from which a new
movement is to begin.

Be this as it may, we may rest assured that the political thought of
Europe, like its philosophy and its science, will go forward or backward
as a unity. It may move by peaceful and friendly co-operation or by the
stimulus of embittered rivalry. But its many centres are related by so
many strands of connexion that the movement in any one of these is
reflected in the rest. The liberties of England are fostered by the
emancipation of the Alsatian, the Slovak, or the Pole. They are
enfeebled by the victories of political autocracy or the military
machine. Thinkers, it may be said, ought to be above these mundane
influences. Philosophy should deal with what is in itself and eternally
rational and just and wise. But philosophy as it exists on earth is the
work of philosophers, who, authority tells us, suffer as much from
toothache as other mortals, and are, like others, open to the
impressions of near and striking events and to the seductions of
intellectual fashion. Yet, if the larger thought is worth anything, it
should enable those who follow it to look a little further beyond the
present and a little deeper below the surface differences that distract
the kindred peoples. If the thinkers are true to their thought it may be
that from them will come the beginnings of the healing process which
Europe will need. Much is being and will be said of the political
reconstruction which is needed to restore and secure the civilized
order. But the commonwealth of thought will revive of itself from the
day when peace is concluded. German physiology will not be less learned,
German scientists will not be less expert, German chemists will not be
less pre-eminent because their military lords have plunged Europe into a
disastrous war. We shall need their services, shall watch their
experiments, read their records, and utilize their brains as before.
Perhaps it may be some years before the international congresses can be
resumed, but the internationalism of learning will revive of itself,
against our wills if not by and with our wills, and in the world of
science, and in this world alone, the event of war will make no
difference. Conqueror and conquered will work at the same task and meet
as equals. The scientific demonstration knows no more of the nationality
of its originator than of his caste or colour, age or sex. In this one
real democracy the idea, the hypothesis, the proof, whatever it may be,
stands or falls on its own merits with no questions asked as to its
ancestors or country of origin. In the growth of this commonwealth war
is but a momentary check. Its destiny is to become wider in extent,
closer in its interconnexions, and not less rich in the diversities of
its national centres. Whether it is also destined to grow into a
political unity the future must decide. At least we can say that for any
such unity it provides the only sure and solid foundation.


BOOKS FOR REFERENCE

Merz, _History of European Thought in the 19th Century_. W. Blackwood.

Marvin, _The Living Past_. Clarendon Press.




VIII

THE UNITY OF WESTERN EDUCATION


I have been asked to address you on the Unity of Education in Western
Europe. The task is not an easy one, for what do we mean by unity? It
would be easy for me to spend my time in talking on the technical aspect
of the subject; I could deal with curriculum and organization, with
school buildings and class-rooms, black-boards, and all the material of
schoolmastering, and could show you how great is the similarity in these
matters in all civilized countries. I doubt, however, whether this would
interest you; I doubt whether this is the unity of which you are in
search. You would tell me that you asked for unity and I had given you
uniformity. Uniformity you can have anywhere; in modern life all is
standardized and stereotyped; you have it in the great hotel and the
Atlantic liner--there you have men of all nations, they do the same
thing at the same time, they eat the same food and wear the same
clothes; you find it in the factory and on the battle-field. Go to a
textile factory, whether in Oldham or in Chemnitz, or in Bombay, the
processes are the same and the product is the same, except as there may
be more or less adulteration.

And so in education, if you care to do so, you can find the mechanical
uniformity of modern civilization. A new form of school-desk makes the
round of the world as quickly as a new chemical process or a new
battleship. The pictures on the walls of the rooms may be the
reproduction of some modern German work, and the atlases you use may be
second-rate copies of the products of Gotha or Leipzig; you can have,
too, uniformity in time-table and curriculum; but, after all, this
uniformity may be merely superficial. Go along the streets of an old
town and you may see the regular façade of a modern street, but behind
this you will find all the variety of the mediaeval buildings which it
encloses--the façade is mere paint and stucco.

Uniformity is not necessarily unity, and unity is not inconsistent with
variety. That which I presume we are searching for is a more
fundamental, spiritual, and intellectual unity--internal not external;
not a painted and stucco resemblance, but a unity of origin and of life.

Let us see what we can learn from history.

The history of European education is centred round two institutions, the
School and the University. Both have their origin in the remote past,
and both have maintained themselves with singular fidelity to their
original type.

The School goes back to the very origin of our civilization; if we are
to understand its nature, we must transfer ourselves in thought to those
early days when the first missionaries planted in the Somerset valleys
and on the stern Northumberland coast the Cross of Christ. They came to
a people still on the verge of barbarism, with a language still unformed
by literature, with a religion that gave no clue to the mysteries of
life by which they were oppressed. They came to these men full of the
enthusiasm of the Gospel--coming not only as teachers of religion, but
as the apostles of a higher civilization, for they had behind them the
awful name of Rome.

Wherever they came, among their first duties was to found schools in
which to train men who would succeed them; we must always remember that
the education which they gave had one supreme object--it was to bring up
the boys of the rude and barbarous communities in which they found
themselves, to become teachers and servants of the Church. The substance
of the teaching was always the same, whether in Spain, in Gaul, in
Ireland or in Britain; it was the Bible, the services of the Church, and
the writings of the Fathers. It was by the school that the boys were
initiated into the common system of Western Christendom, and were made
citizens of the greater world the centre of which was in Rome.

But if the substance and the object was identical throughout Europe, so
always was the form in which the teaching was given; at a time when all
learning and all religion came from Rome, the foundation of knowledge
was the Latin tongue. In these early days was established the tradition
that still subsists; the gateway to learning and to culture lay by the
narrow road of the Latin grammar. The schoolboy who still tells out his
longs and shorts can compare them with the ruder efforts of his Saxon
forefathers thirteen centuries ago. Never have authors attained a fame
and a circulation equal to that of the great grammarians who, during the
decline of the Empire, codified the rules of Latin speech; generation
after generation passed, and down almost to our own days every schoolboy
began his career on the lines laid down in the works of Donatus and
Priscian.

We must, however, guard ourselves against a mistake into which it would
be easy to fall. It is true that in the early mediaeval days education
was based on the study of the Latin language; and it was only through
literature that the language could be learnt. The study of classical
literature as we understand it was, however, far removed from the ideals
of this time. The most authoritative teachers never neglected to warn
their pupils against the moral dangers which arose from the study of
heathen writers; Ovid and Cicero were only admitted under protest, and
they were merely the stepping-stone to the study of Augustine and
Prudentius.

On this common basis--the Bible, the Church, and the Latin
language--was then established the education of Western Europe, and the
form it then assumed it retained for over a thousand years, almost
without change. By this a common cast was given to the intellect, and
the nations were disciplined by common spiritual teaching. It was
extraordinarily effective. It kept down, and in many countries almost
destroyed, the vigorous and aspiring local and national life which, in
every country, was striving after self-expression. In our own country
this effect was most conspicuous. The English, illiterate though they
might be, were not without the promise of a great future. In the remains
of the Saxon poems we can see the beginnings of what under happier
circumstances might have grown into a great national literature. Its
origins were deep seated in the life of the people. It proved itself
quickly able to absorb the new teaching of the Gospel, and, as the
Christian Epics show, here was the basis on which might have been built
a national interpretation of Christianity. All that was required was the
adoption of English as the language of the Church and the School. The
beginning was made when Alfred, during the few years which he secured
from the Danish inroads, began his great work of founding an English
literature in which the teaching of the Church and the works of
antiquity were included. The attempt was ruined for the time by the
renewal of the Danish inroads, permanently by the Norman Conquest. For
William brought with him not only his French knights, but also Italian
priests. Once more, under the influence of Lanfranc and his successors,
the Church and the School were brought under the full control of the
revived power of Rome, and all prospect of a spontaneous and indigenous
national intellectual life was destroyed. Unity was re-established, and
the School was the instrument by which England was fully incorporated in
the culture and religion of the Western Church.

As it was with the School so also with the university. The second, as
the first, was the creation of the Church, and even more conspicuously
it was the vehicle for fostering and maintaining the control of common
institutions and a common learning, and thereby of crushing out the rich
variety of local life which everywhere was springing up. In its very
constitution the University of Paris, the mother and model of all later
universities (at least in northern Europe), showed its international
character; the students who flocked to it from all countries were
organized in 'nations' a system which, at least in name, still remains
in many of the universities to this day; the whole instruction was and
remained in Latin, and the whole course of instruction was a long
apprenticeship to the study of theology. It was from the universities
that emanated the great system of philosophy in which a Frenchman as
Abelard, an Italian as Thomas of Aquinas, an Englishman as William of
Ockham each took his part.

We may regard with admiration the great intellectual achievements of the
Scholastic philosophy which, for over two centuries, dominated the
official education, but we must not forget that its ascendancy implied
the exclusion from all public recognition of the local and national
thought and literature which now, as before, was struggling into life.
The Troubadours and the Minnesänger, the Chanson de Roland and the
Nibelungenlied, the Chronicles of Froissard, Chaucer, and Piers Plowman,
each of them so full of fresh vigorous local life, were not only outside
the official system of education, but in their essence opposed to it.
This was clearly seen as soon as the free and uncontrolled mind was
directed to the highest subjects of thought. National idiosyncrasies, as
they found expression in the domain of philosophy and theology, produced
results different from the established teaching of the school. To the
Church truth was always one and the same. Truth was one, error was
manifold; in unity was salvation, and divergence was heresy. And so
every attempt at national and local thought was not only suppressed in
education, but fell under the ban of discipline. In Languedoc the
Albigenses ventured the assertion of their independence; Huss in
Bohemia, in England Wyclif. What happened? The Albigenses were
massacred, Huss was burnt, Wyclif was condemned, and his followers
suffered under the new law of heresy.

This system, which had originated as a part of a great spiritual
movement, long outlived its usefulness. It became an intolerable
tyranny. Its effects were to be seen in the teaching of the humblest
grammar school, and every boy who began the study of the Latin grammar
was being initiated into the abstractions or the Scholastic logic. It
became a dead and iron crust by which the mind of man was confined, and
it was the school and the university which were the peculiar
institutions by which this system was maintained. Unity of education
there was, but at what a price had it been won.

One thing had, however, been secured: the common Christian basis of our
modern civilization had been stamped upon the peoples; so long as Europe
remains Europe this cannot be forgotten or obliterated. No nation can
repudiate its own past, and, whether they will or no, all Western
nations are irrevocably bound together by the ties of the home in which
their childhood and youth was passed.

At last the change came: it came in that double revolution which we call
the Renaissance and the Reformation. In considering them we must confine
ourselves as closely as we can to their effect on education.

The revival of learning was essentially an educational movement, it had
from the beginning to do primarily with the school. It had as its object
a complete change both in the subject-matter and in the spirit of
education. Always it drew its inspiration from the literature of Greece,
and this meant the fullest freedom of the human intellect, freedom of
speculation, freedom of inquiry on the conditions of human life, and in
particular it was a revolt from the ascetic ideas of the mediaeval
Church; it was the assertion of the dignity of the body and mind of man.
Now whereas in Italy, its original home, this took a warp definitely
antagonistic to Christian faith and Christian ethics, in Northern Europe
the new classical learning was harmonized with Christianity, and
classical learning was applied to the interpretation of the Bible. It
was the synthesis of what mediaeval Europe had regarded as
irreconcilable opponents. That was the inspiration of the school reform,
and this is the guiding principle of all higher education for the next
three centuries. It was a movement that originally was not local or
national but European, and in its first form was not in opposition to
the maintenance of the ecclesiastical unity of Western Europe. The
figure in whom it reaches its clearest expression is that of Erasmus.
Standing at the transition between two epochs, he was the last of the
great European scholars, and belongs to the undivided Catholic Church as
much as did Abelard or Anselm. The wandering scholar of the Renaissance,
without father, without mother, completely freed from ties of family or
country, at home equally in Deventer or Cambridge, in Basel or in Paris
or in Rome, without even a native language, for to him Latin was the
only vernacular (he has, I believe, left no word written in any other
language), he saw the vision of a Europe still united in obedience to
the one Church, but a Europe in which the culture of the humanist would
go side by side with the common faith inherited from early days.

The hopes of Erasmus were not to be fulfilled. It is indeed true that he
laid the foundation on which the recognized and official scheme of
education has continued almost to our own day; the Latin schools of
Germany and the Grammar Schools of England were each alike conducted on
the basis of the Church and the classics, but even before the
foundations had been completed the real unity was gone. The Renaissance
was met by two forces, each stronger than itself, and the common stream
was broken into a number of smaller currents. These have since increased
in strength till the sense of the common origin has almost disappeared.

The common mediaeval system (and in this the spirit of the Renaissance
was still mediaeval) depended on the common Church, and especially in
education, in the use of Latin as the universal language of learning.
During the sixteenth century both were overthrown. Luther was stronger
than Erasmus, and the new languages, Italian, French, Spanish, English,
quickly began to encroach on the claims of Latin to be the one language
of the school.

The religious revolution need not detain us. It is sufficient to recall
that in many parts of Europe the divergence of creed tended to become if
not identical with, at least closely to follow the boundaries of states
and nations. In every land the school was still strictly under the
control of the Church, acting now as the delegate of the temporal ruler,
and in each country a whole body of teaching and discipline was evolved,
the result of which was a fundamental difference in the attitude of
mind. The English bishops, the German consistories, the Scotch
presbytery, set their seal on the schools, as much as did the Jesuits
and Port Royal in France. The Shorter Catechism, the English Prayer
Book, the German hymns, each gave a distinct character to the religions
of the country, and this character was the basis of the teaching in the
schools.

Religion, which had been the great unifier, became the chief engine of
separation.

Equally important was the growth of national literature. This indeed
goes back far beyond the sixteenth century, but none the less it is from
this time that the writers not only of imagination, but also of
learning, began to express themselves each in his own vernacular. Sir
Thomas More, it is true, wrote his _Utopia_ in Latin, but it was in
English that it had its great circulation. Bacon used both languages,
but it is on English editions of his works that his fame chiefly rests.
In particular we find that works on religion and theology are now
produced not only in Latin, but one hundred years before Hooker would
have discoursed on 'ecclesiastical polity' in the learned language, and
Pascal would never have thought of using French for discussing the
philosophy of the Jesuits.

The influence of these changes upon the school is remarkable. Strictly
speaking, for many generations they seemed to have little immediate
effect upon it. In every country in Europe Latin remained both the
subject and the vehicle of higher education, but it is just for this
reason that we find that, during the seventeenth century and the greater
part of the eighteenth, the schools are more and more falling out of
touch with the intellectual life of the times. They continued in the old
way; for them Shakespeare and Milton, Montaigne and Molière, Cervantes
and Tasso, seemed to have written in vain. They maintained the form of
an older period, but they had lost the spirit by which it had been
inspired. Their learning remained purely classical; but even though the
new national literature was long in winning for itself a definite place
in the recognized school system, the growth of this literature and the
evolution of national consciousness of which it was a part could not in
fact take place without altering the whole spirit of the teaching. If we
are to understand how this was we must keep in mind one of the chief
characteristics of what is called a classical education.

The study of the classics means the study of the whole life of the two
great nations of antiquity as preserved in the extant literature. Now
this does not contain a definite and formulated doctrine, it does not
even, as might be said of the Middle Ages, mean one attitude towards the
world; it opens to the student a field of extraordinary wealth and
variety, and from this each will take that which he is able to
appropriate. To one it may be the mysticism of the Cambridge Platonists,
to another the frank and pagan joy in life of Anacreon and Horace.
Rousseau and Grote will each in his own way appropriate the lesson of
Liberty, while others will turn to the story of the militant and
dominant aristocracy of Rome. Goethe and Keats, Milton and Gibbon,
Berkeley and Schopenhauer, will each draw their inspiration from the
classics, but the result will not be to make them resemble one another,
it will be to give vigour, decision, form, resolution, and dignity to
the qualities of each.

And as it is with individuals, so it is with nations. The schools of all
nations maintained their classical curriculum; boys still began, and
often ended, their schooling with the Latin grammar, but this did not
mean, as it had meant in the earlier days, that the influence was the
same. There was indeed little in common between what we may venture to
call the pedantry of Germany and the superficial elegancy of the Jesuit
schools. And so the classical basis did not prevent the school assuming
a national complexion. Let me give one illustration of the manner in
which the classical teaching could take a markedly national spirit.
Perhaps the most effective classical teaching that we find in the
eighteenth century is that at Eton, and it was on it that was founded
the great school of oratory and statesmanship. It was on Cicero and
Homer and Demosthenes that Pitt and Fox and Canning and Gladstone (for
the tradition continued to his day) formed their minds and their style,
but they emerged from their training above all Englishmen, but
Englishmen who had learnt how to give to their own national feelings a
dignity of expression and nobility of form equal to that of the
exemplars whom they had studied.

Now just as the finest expression of the English national spirit is
found in those whose school training had been based on the classics,
just as the Girondists based their revolutionary doctrines on Hellenic
models, so almost at the same time the great political awakening of
Germany and Prussia was inspired by what has been called the second
Renaissance; and yet how profound is the divergence between Wellesley
and Pitt, Humboldt and Stein, St. Just, Demousin, and Vergniaud; all
were children of the common classical tradition, but how different is
the use to which they put it. During the centuries that passed between
the Renaissance and the Revolution, the education of the different
countries had then in fact been drifting far apart. What has been done
during the nineteenth century has been openly to carry into effect
changes which had long been overdue and were already to a large extent
operative.

It was inevitable that the new literature and thought would eventually
find its way into the schools and universities. Before this change had
been accomplished, a fresh and even stronger influence asserted itself.
Democracy had come, and a democracy which based the state on the
principle of nationality. It seized on the school as the means to hold
the minds of men in fief, just as had the mediaeval Church, and in doing
so enforced and perpetuated the national differences.

In the eighteenth century rulers troubled themselves little about
matters apparently of such minor importance as the languages in which
their subjects conversed and read. Even the French did not try to touch
the German-speaking inhabitants of Alsace, and Copenhagen could become
a centre of German letters, while French maintained itself at the Court
of Berlin. All this was changed by the Revolution, and Napoleon was the
first deliberately to convert the whole fabric of French schools and the
university into an instrument for the organized propaganda of the cult
of the Empire. Since then there is scarcely a government (always except
that of England, which alone has been strong enough to rest on the
native and undisciplined political sense of the people) which has not
followed in his path. In particular when the state is founded on the
nation the school is used to develop in the children the full
consciousness of nationality. That institution that was for so long the
home of European unity has become the most useful agent for the
perpetuation and exaggeration of national differences. It is in the
school that the immigrant to the United States is taught to reverence
the institutions of his new fatherland, and from generation to
generation the school labours to keep alive the memory of the
half-forgotten struggle of the new republic and the British monarchy. In
France each successive government has used the school to force on the
nation its interpretation of the national history and ideals. And the
victories of Prussian armies were cemented and confirmed by the official
exposition of the Prussian state and the cult of the Hohenzollern. To
the school is transferred the conflict between the doctrines of
authority and the revolution, of the secular state and of the Kingdom by
the Grace of God. Every nation rightly struggling to be free has seen in
the school the instrument for securing the allegiance of the young, and
the school has become the centre of political struggle. In Trieste and
in Poland, in Alsace and in Macedonia, we find kings and politicians
contending for the minds and souls of children, and it is in the school,
the college, and the university that has been prepared the conflict that
is now devastating Europe.

What has been done in the nineteenth century has really been only to
carry into effect the change which was long overdue and was implicit in
earlier years. The national culture and national authors have at length
forced their way into the schools, and the result has been that
institutions which originally in reality, and for so long in appearance,
were the vehicles for the expression of the common European
civilization, have been almost entirely won over to the cause of the
national expression.

This is indeed inevitable. Education, as we have seen, can only be
effective when it is the vehicle for strong beliefs, and is informed by
the conscious expression of an attitude towards the world. Now, in
modern days, the consciousness of a common European spirit has, in fact,
almost disappeared. In its place we find the intense consciousness of
the nation. Even religion has become national, and God has once again
become a tribal deity. The new consciousness of the common interests of
what is called Labour have no recognition in the approved teaching. If
the work of the school was not to be merely the dead instruction in
useless knowledge, if the work was to be directed towards informing the
minds of the pupils with ideals and beliefs, it was only in the
idealization of the national thought that this could be attained.

Is the older union of thought to be permanently lost? If not, you must
find it again in some higher synthesis. There are many who would do so
in the pursuit of mathematics and the natural sciences; in them, at
least, no divisions of country can be found. The student in his chemical
laboratory, the doctor in his hospital, the mathematician in his study,
finds his colleagues in every country in the civilized world, and it
matters not to him whether the next step in penetrating the secrets of
nature have been made in Vienna, or in Paris, or Amsterdam, or Bologna.

There are many who believe that on this basis will be established the
Union of Civilization. If we look, however, more critically, we may find
reason to doubt whether this optimistic view is justified. I do not
share this hope and this belief, I do not look forward to a spiritual
and intellectual unity of the nations established on the basis of
scientific education. It is, indeed, impossible to over-estimate not
only the practical but also the intellectual influence of what we may
call the scientific spirit. It is indeed true that those who are
accustomed to the careful and systematic investigation of causes, who
have been trained from their earliest years to recognize in the pomp and
pageantry of the external world--and even to some extent in the working
of the human mind and the structure of human society--the orderly
sequence of natural law, will have a type and character of mind
essentially different from those who have not passed through this
discipline. The civilization (I scarcely dare to use the word culture)
of those nations who have this in common will have a unity of their own,
and will differ fundamentally from their own past and from that of other
races.

On the other hand there are two considerations that I should like to put
before you, as leading to a less important position, the one arising
from the practical nature of science, the other connected with its
essential intellectual origin.

It is a characteristic of all work in physical science that however it
may originate in the pure desire for truth, it is very quickly available
for practical use, personal comfort, the acquisition of wealth, and
national efficiency. The physicist who calculates the stresses and
strains of an aeroplane finds that in teaching man how to control nature
he is also providing the means for his struggle, whether in peace or
war, in commerce or on the battle-field. We soon find that the progress
of technical skill is curiously inoperative in its effect on human
thought and feeling. Men remain the same whether they ride in a coach,
or a train, or a motor-car; it matters little whether they use bows and
arrows, or rifles, or hand-grenades, or liquid fire.

Now in education it is the technical side of scientific progress which
almost inevitably becomes most prominent, and the greater the advance in
knowledge the more will this be true. The wider the domain of knowledge
the greater is the number of those who will be chiefly occupied with the
use of the processes and materials that have been discovered and the
smaller is the proportion of those who will have reached the border of
the known, and will begin the work of exploration into the unknown. That
is, the greater will be the number of those who are the servants and not
the masters of science. A unity of a certain kind we shall have, the
unity of those who have learned to pilot an aeroplane, to apply X-rays,
to extract the phosphate from iron, or to test cattle for tubercle. All
this may produce a uniformity in the machinery of life, it passes by
untouched the motives of action, the beliefs, affections, and interests.
How many illustrations of this do we see around us! What more glorious
illustration of the power of the human intellect can be found than the
later developments of electricity, but scarcely had the discoveries been
made when we find them seized upon by the man of affairs, and wireless
telegraphy becomes the subject of speculation on the Stock Exchange, and
a chief instrument of war. That which the chemist finds in his
laboratory is, within a few years, sometimes even a few months, found
again in the factory, and perhaps on the field of battle.

Do not let it be supposed that I would underrate the possibility of a
deeper unity, but if we would find it we must carry our analysis further
back. The progress of science is in truth not a cause but a result, not
an ultimate fact but the symptom of a state of mind. It springs from
that which was brought into Europe consciously at the Renaissance and
which we may call the spirit of Greece. It is that to which we owe not
only the investigation and subjection of nature, but equally with it all
progress in every department of thought, the analysis of society,
whether political or economic, the investigations of the working of
human reason, the probing of human passions, and their record in art and
literature.

What is this spirit? Is it not the confidence in the spirit of man, the
spirit which in intellectual matters bends to no authority, and
recognizes no limit to its enterprise, which probes all things, tests
all things, and follows fearlessly where the argument leads it? This is
what I mean by the spirit of Greece, it is that which Sophocles has
immortalized. Of all this, what we call science is but a part, perhaps
at present the most striking and important part, but still a part only;
to look to it as the key of our civilization and the sole basis of our
education would be to set up a partial and, therefore, a false ideal. An
ideal, moreover, which, if pursued to its logical conclusion, would
become the basis for the most appalling tyranny, by which the free
spirit of investigation, to which we owe all our scientific progress,
would be buried in the structure that itself had reared. For what is the
end to which it must lead? Is it not a society which is held together by
technical skill, a society of organized efficiency, where each
individual holds his place, not as a living spirit, but as a slave of
the great machine, tied throughout his life to the perfect performance
of his limited and specialized task? I can imagine such a society; it is
the ideal which some modern German writers have definitely put before
us. It may be that this will be the Europe of the future, a Europe with
a common government and a universal system of education by which each
child will be trained to take his allotted part in an organized slavery.
I hope I shall not live to see it.

None the less, a unity there is, but it is a deeper unity than this. It
is the unity inherited from the past. Here we may find, not indeed a
superficial uniformity, but a real unity of life and spirit. No
civilization can repudiate its own origin, and whatever the future may
have in store the childhood of Europe was nourished on the Bible and
Christianity, and in the more mature years there was added the impulse
to the boldest use of the human intellect that came from Greece. These
two elements give us that which is the peculiar characteristic of
Western Europe, and as we are told that the growth of each individual
repeats the evolution of the race, so the education of each individual
repeats in childhood and boyhood the education of the nation. It is from
these two elements that the whole of modern culture springs, and it is
from them that again and again they regain their strength.

And if we recollect this we need not be much disturbed by our apparent
differences and misunderstandings. After all, they are the necessary
result of freedom, and what do the Bible and Greece mean but moral and
intellectual freedom? We want no formal and artificial unity: to us
change, progress, conflict and division are the breath of our life. Just
as the cluster of little towns in the Aegean islands and valleys prized
before all things their political and intellectual independence, so is
it with these small countries nestling on the shores of the Atlantic.
Politically they have always refused to acquiesce in the establishment
of any common authority over them, whether it comes from outside or even
from among themselves, and so also they always repudiate the ascendancy
of any single or partial intellectual doctrine. Each party and each
nation adds its own contribution; all have a common origin, and all
spring from the same root. Since the bonds have been relaxed and the
dominion of the Universal Church overthrown, we see nothing from the
rivalry of political systems and passing schemes of thought; they chase
each other like the storms which arise from the Atlantic and pass in
quick succession over our shores. It is this change and succession which
is to us the breath of our life: we know nothing of the steady static
weather of the great continents, where rain and drought have each their
measured and settled space: and we know nothing, and will know nothing,
of the formal and authoritative rule combining all Europe into one
realm, whether political or intellectual. For we know that unity and
permanence does not belong to this life, and our nearest approach to
truth is to be found not in a settled system but in the thousandfold
interactions of half-truths and partial systems.

    Life like a dome of many-coloured glass
    Stains the white radiance of eternity
    Until death shatters it to fragments.

A unity there is, but it is the unity of the countless and varied
flowers that carpet the meadows in spring, the unity of the common
spirit of life which animates them all.


BOOKS FOR REFERENCE

Leach, _The Schools of Medieval England_. Methuen.

Mullinger, J. Bass, _The Schools of Charles the Great_.

Paulsen, _Geschichte des gelehrten Unterrichts_.

Rashdall, _Universities in the Middle Ages_. Clarendon Press.

Foster Watson, _Grammar Schools_. Cambridge University Press

Woodward, _Erasmus_. Cambridge University Press.




IX

COMMERCE AND FINANCE AS INTERNATIONAL FORCES


Commerce and finance are departments of life in which mankind approaches
nearer to unity than in any other. They are practical expressions of the
instinct of self-preservation which is the first law of nature. They
spring straight from the acquisitiveness which is a universal
characteristic of human nature and indeed of animal and vegetable
nature. Every living thing wants to acquire food. Adam Smith indeed
restricts the trading instinct to mankind. 'The propensity', he says,
'to truck, barter, or exchange one thing for another ... is common to
all men and to be found in no other race of animals, which seem to know
neither this nor any other species of contracts. Two greyhounds in
running down the same hare have sometimes the appearance of acting in
some sort of concert. Each turns her towards his companion or endeavours
to intercept her when his companion turns her towards himself. This,
however, is not the effect of any contract, but of the accidental
concurrence of their passions in the same object at that particular
time. Nobody ever saw a dog make a fair and deliberate exchange of one
bone for another with another dog.'[24]

Mr Cannan, in his edition of the _Wealth of Nations_, very judiciously
points out in a note on this passage that 'it is by no means clear what
object there could be in exchanging one bone for another'. Probably if
one rummaged the literature of dog stories one would find plenty of
examples of commerce between dogs, and when they perform tricks to get
food, we detect the germ of the exchange of a service for a commodity.

When a bee takes honey from a flower and leaves in exchange the pollen
from a flower of an opposite sex, it may be said to be at once a
merchant, a carrier, and a matrimonial agent, and the brilliant colours
with which flowers attract these merchants have been compared to the
advertising posters of the human trader. But however the case may be in
the animal and vegetable world, there can be no question that the
trading instinct appears at a very early stage of human development. In
boys the instinct to trade or swop articles appears long before they
feel any inclination to fall in love or to give much serious thought to
religion. The classical example is given by Mark Twain, who relates how
Tom Sawyer exchanged one of his own teeth, which had been pulled out
that morning, for a tick in the possession of Huckleberry Finn, and then
'the two boys separated, each feeling wealthier than before'. In fact,
of course, they both were wealthier than before, because each had got
something that he wanted more than the article with which he had parted;
and this pleasant result sums up the whole genesis and basis of
commerce.

But though commerce is thus merely an expression of an instinct which is
primitive and universal, it does not follow that it is its only or even
its earliest expression. Perhaps its earliest and most natural
expression was through robbery, with or without violence. A primitive
savage who saw something that he wanted would probably, if strong
enough, hit its owner on the head and take it, and this short and simple
method of acquisition still occasionally reappears in the realms of the
most highly civilized diplomacy. Nevertheless, at a very early stage its
limitations became obvious, and quite at the dawn of recorded history we
find commercial transactions referred to as an established branch of
human intercourse. The Old Testament story has not gone far before it
tells us of buying and selling. In the twenty-third chapter of Genesis
we find a very interesting bargain recorded between Abraham and Ephron.
Sarah had died in Kirjath-arba:

     'the same is Hebron in the land of Canaan: and Abraham came to
     mourn for Sarah, and to weep for her. And Abraham stood up from
     before his dead, and spake unto the sons of Heth, saying, I am a
     stranger and a sojourner with you: give me a possession of a
     buryingplace with you, that I may bury my dead out of my sight.
     And the children of Heth answered Abraham, saying unto him, Hear
     us, my lord: thou art a mighty prince among us: in the choice of
     our sepulchres bury thy dead; none of us shall withhold from thee
     his sepulchre, but that thou mayest bury thy dead. And Abraham
     stood up and bowed himself to the people of the land, even to the
     children of Heth. And he communed with them, saying, If it be
     your mind that I should bury my dead out of my sight; hear me,
     and intreat for me to Ephron the son of Zohar, that he may give
     me the cave of Machpelah, which he hath, which is in the end of
     his field; for as much money as it is worth he shall give it me
     for a possession of a buryingplace amongst you. And Ephron dwelt
     among the children of Heth: and Ephron the Hittite answered
     Abraham in the audience of the children of Heth, even of all that
     went in at the gate of his city, saying, Nay, my lord, hear me:
     the field give I thee, and the cave that is therein, I give it
     thee; in the presence of the sons of my people give I it thee:
     bury thy dead. And Abraham bowed down himself before the people
     of the land. And he spake unto Ephron in the audience of the
     people of the land, saying, But if thou wilt give it, I pray
     thee, hear me: I will give thee money for the field; take it of
     me, and I will bury my dead there. And Ephron answered Abraham,
     saying unto him, My lord, hearken unto me: the land is worth four
     hundred shekels of silver; what is that betwixt me and thee? bury
     therefore thy dead. And Abraham hearkened unto Ephron; and
     Abraham weighed to Ephron the silver, which he had named in the
     audience of the sons of Heth, four hundred shekels of silver,
     current money with the merchant.'

In this very early and curious example of a bargain we find the seller
continually expressing reluctance to sell and asking the buyer to accept
as a gift the commodity that he wants. It appears from the sequel that
this is merely an example of Oriental politeness. At any rate, the end
of the bargain was that Abraham paid the money, four hundred shekels of
silver, which is described as 'current money with the merchant', thus
apparently showing that this system of payment in metals was already a
regular feature of commercial transactions. Coined currency had not yet
been developed, for we may note that Abraham weighed the silver.

When we come to the days of Solomon we find something like a developed
international trade. The fifth chapter of the first book of Kings
describes how Solomon, on taking the throne of his father, sent to
Hiram, king of Tyre, and stated his purpose to build a house unto the
name of the Lord his God, asking Hiram to send his servants to hew cedar
trees out of Lebanon, and saying that he would give hire for Hiram's
servants according to all that he should appoint. Hiram replied that he
would do all that Solomon desired concerning timber of cedar and
concerning timber of fir. 'My servants shall bring them down from
Lebanon unto the sea: and I will convey them by sea in floats unto the
place that thou shalt appoint me, and will cause them to be discharged
there, and thou shalt receive them: and thou shalt accomplish my desire,
in giving food for my household. So Hiram gave Solomon cedar trees and
fir trees according to all his desire. And Solomon gave Hiram twenty
thousand measures of wheat for food to his household, and twenty
measures of pure oil: thus gave Solomon to Hiram year by year.'

According to this arrangement it would appear that Solomon paid for the
timber that he imported by exporting to Hiram wheat and oil, but it is
shown in a later chapter that the transaction was not a purely
commercial one. At the end of twenty years, when Solomon had finished
the building of the temple, he gave Hiram as further consideration
twenty cities in the land of Galilee, 'and Hiram came out from Tyre to
see the cities which Solomon had given him; and they pleased him not.
And he said, What cities are these which thou hast given me, my brother?
And he called them the land of Cabul [explained in the margin as meaning
"displeasing" or "dirty"] unto this day. And Hiram sent to the king
sixscore talents of gold.'[25]

Apart from this transaction between the two kings, Solomon appears to
have developed a very considerable foreign trade, presumably exporting
wheat and oil and other agricultural products. His imports appear to
have been various. Chapter ten of the first book of Kings states that
'the king had at sea a navy of Tharshish with the navy of Hiram: once in
three years came the navy of Tharshish, bringing gold, and silver,
ivory, and apes, and peacocks.' ... 'And the king made silver to be in
Jerusalem as stones, and cedars made he to be as the sycomore trees that
are in the vale, for abundance. And Solomon had horses brought out of
Egypt, and linen yarn: the king's merchants received the linen yarn at a
price.'

The whole question of Solomon's balance of trade is a very interesting
one, and deserves the attention of some Hebrew scholar who may be able
to throw light upon it. In these days it is rather difficult to see how
a purely agricultural country could have found the means of paying for
all these articles of pure luxury which Solomon imported so freely. It
must be noted, however, that 'all the earth sought to Solomon, to hear
his wisdom, which God had put in his heart. And they brought every man
his present, vessels of silver, and vessels of gold, and garments, and
armour, and spices, horses, and mules, a rate year by year'. From this
it appears that Solomon was able to exchange his wisdom for a very
considerable part of the imports which came into his country, and so
perhaps we may take it that Solomon's wisdom is the earliest recorded
example of what is now known as an invisible export. A modern equivalent
would be the articles which English writers contribute to American
newspapers and are paid for, ultimately, by the shipment to England of
American wheat and cotton. It is also interesting to note in these days,
when personal economy and simplicity of life are so freely preached,
that Solomon's very luxurious imports were followed by evil
consequences, imports of an enormous number of strange women, and a
consequent turning away of his heart after false gods.

When we come to secular history, the very first chapter of the first
book of the first history ever written deals with a question of
commerce. Herodotus, who has been called the Father of History, opens
his work with a few introductory words stating that 'these are the
researches which he publishes in the hope of thereby preventing the
great and wonderful actions of the Greeks and Barbarians from losing
their due meed of glory, and withal to put on record what were their
grounds of feud'. And then he plunges straight into his story, as
follows: 'According to the Persians best informed in history, the
Phoenicians began the quarrel. This people, who had formerly dwelt on
the shores of the Erythræan Sea, having migrated to the Mediterranean
and settled in the parts which they now inhabit, began at once, they
say, to adventure on long voyages, freighting their vessels with the
wares of Egypt and Assyria. They landed at many places on the coast, and
among the rest at Argos, which was then pre-eminent above all the
states included now under the common name of Hellas. Here they exposed
their merchandise, and traded with the natives for five or six days; at
the end of which time, when almost everything was sold, there came down
to the beach a number of women, and among them the daughter of the king,
who was, they say, agreeing in this with the Greeks, Io, the child of
Inachus. The women were standing by the stern of the ship intent upon
their purchases, when the Phoenicians, with a general shout, rushed upon
them. The greater part made their escape, but some were seized and
carried off. Io herself was among the captives. The Phoenicians put the
women on board their vessel, and set sail for Egypt. Thus did Io pass
into Egypt, according to the Persian story, which differs widely from
the Phoenician: and thus commenced, according to their authors, the
series of outrages.'[26]

Commerce is thus a striking example of the unity of mankind, being a
practically universal form of human activity which arises as soon as man
verges from the earliest stages of barbarism. In the case of individuals
it is easy to see how this desire to exchange commodities between one
individual and another meant so great an increase in human efficiency
that it had only to be thought of to be universally adopted. The
primitive savage, doing everything for himself, building his own hut,
killing or finding his own food, and making his own clothes, such as
they were, was an extremely versatile and self-sufficing person. At the
same time the comforts that he enjoyed were probably not very
satisfactory. His hut was almost certain to be draughty and to let in
rain through the roof; his hunting and finding of food must have very
often left him with his larder empty, and the state of his wardrobe was
probably simple rather than satisfying. It would inevitably happen that
certain members of the tribe would show greater efficiency than others
in doing a certain one of these various businesses which are essential
even to the simplest form of human life. Thus the tendency to
specialization begins to show itself. The skilful hut-builder builds
huts not only for himself but for other members of the tribe; he
acquires further skill by constant practice and the huts are more
quickly built and better when finished. The other tribesmen, in effect,
pay him by supplying him with a certain amount of food and clothes. The
tendency for specialization would make very rapid progress, and it is
easy to see how at a very early date and in the most primitive
communities there would be bowyers, arrow-makers, and leather-dressers,
and how various kinds of artificers would arise, supplying the wants of
the community in some special line, and receiving from the community all
the commodities which they required apart from those which they produced
themselves. The individuals of the community thus become mutually
dependent, and live by one another's production. Hence comes unity, and
with it a fresh cause of disunion, owing to the likelihood of
quarrelling over the exchanges effected.

As progress developed and the communities at a greater distance became
acquainted with one another's wants and the various kinds of goods that
certain districts supplied, this tendency to specialization and
consequent exchange of goods would grow in an ever-widening circle.
Instead of the tribe being a commercial unity, the zone in which the
interchange of goods went on would widen as far as the geographical and
other boundaries allowed it. In the same country one district would be
found to be specially well adapted for agriculture, and another for
pasture; another, being well supplied with metals, would naturally
provide a race of smiths and producers of rough tools for industry, and
the exchange of commodities between districts with these various
capacities would mean that the specialization of production would go
steadily further, and that a whole town or village would be found in
which the great majority of the inhabitants were at work upon one
particular form of industry, relying for the other kinds of commodities
that they required upon the activity of a similar community living in
the next valley or on the other side of the river. This widening-out
process would naturally extend itself over the borders of different
countries. Obstacles to this process would be found in the differences
of language and probably in the difficulties of transport. On the other
hand, it would be greatly stimulated by the different ideas of value
that prevailed in different communities. Value depends upon the extent
to which anybody wants a thing, also on what he thinks it is worth, that
is to say, the number of commodities in his possession with which he is
prepared to part in order to secure it. Obviously commodities coming in
from foreign countries, and being unknown or rare in the country in
which they are offered, if they are otherwise at all attractive, possess
a certain amount of what is called scarcity value, which makes them
easily saleable by adventurous merchants who arrive with the cargo.

The stories of fortunes made by merchants who travelled among simple
native tribes with cargoes of glass beads and were able to exchange
these gaudy baubles for gold or rubber or other commodities which are
valuable in civilized countries, have often been told, and opportunities
for trading of this kind must have been very much more frequent when
communication was comparatively difficult. Value to a great extent being
determined by local convention and local habit, the profits of the
trader were likely to be considerably increased the further he got from
his home market. If he took away with him plenty of things which were
in abundant supply at home and consequently cheap, he would almost
certainly be able to bring back a large number of things which were
plentiful in a far-away community, and consequently cheap for him to
acquire, and scarce in his own district and consequently sure of a good
market. This difference of standard of value in different countries was
a great stimulus to foreign trade, also a great help to bringing mankind
together, though it sometimes ended in disillusionment. It has been
asserted that even within the memory of man an English merchant traded
with a primitive community in which gold and silver were exchangeable
weight for weight. For some years he did a very pleasant and profitable
trade by taking a cargo of silver and bringing back with him the same
weight in gold, the value of which in England happened to be sixteen
times as great, or more. Unfortunately, when he made his last voyage he
was met at the mouth of the river by a friendly native, who informed him
that the community was waiting for him with tomahawks, and he hastily
put to sea again. For the rest of his life he cherished a grievance
against this curious people with which he had dealt, according to his
own view, on perfectly equitable terms, having sold them a commodity at
a price to which they were accustomed, and which they regarded as quite
correct, with the result that they proposed to murder him because they
found that the price was not in accordance with that current in other
parts of the world.

By this business of exchange of commodities between one community and
another, the process of specialization or division of labour which has
already been referred to as its basis has been developed to
extraordinary lengths. Its effect has been to increase enormously the
wealth available, while at the same time the concentration of the
individual has narrowed down his work so that he now no longer
specializes on making one commodity, but on making a part of a fraction
of a commodity.

Adam Smith's chapters on division of labour are so well known that there
is no need to point out the very great economic benefits that arise from
it. Clearly, any man who spends all his working time upon one particular
process of productive activity acquires thereby a skill and rapidity in
carrying out his part of the operation which would be impossible to any
worker who has to carry the manufacture of an article from the beginning
to its end. Just as we saw, when the primitive savage left off doing
everything for himself and took to building huts for the rest of the
community, that the huts became much more water-tight and comfortable,
so the process goes still further, and building becomes very much more
rapid and very much more cheap and efficient when a large number of
specialists are set to work on the various very different processes
required for the construction of a house. The consequence is that the
production of goods is very greatly cheapened and made much more rapid,
but at the same time the worker tends to become an artisan instead of a
craftsman, and his work is likely to be much more monotonous and much
more trying. Instead of seeing his product grow under his hand from its
beginning to its end, with constant changes in the nature of its call on
his energy and care, he is employed during the whole of his working time
on some mechanical process, with the result that he himself becomes
something very like a machine. What he has gained in the power to make
and acquire commodities cheaply and quickly is offset to a certain
extent by the less interesting and varied nature of his work.

It also follows that as the worker becomes a specialist he becomes
dependent upon other members of the community for the supply to him of a
large number of things which he requires for his own existence. If he
spends his life in making one commodity or in making part of one
commodity, it is clear that his requirements of all the things that are
necessary for life apart from what he makes himself can only be
satisfied by the willingness of the community to take the commodity that
he makes in payment for those which it produces and of which he is in
need. When he works for himself, he only makes things that he knows
himself to need; when he works to sell to others, he has to speculate on
the hope that the others will want what he makes.

Commerce thus not only shows the unity of mankind by being a universal
feature of his existence, but increases that unity by making each
individual dependent upon the exertions of his fellows, and on their
willingness to take from him stuff which he is turning out; but if
commerce thus promotes unity, it also tends to create a certain amount
of friction and disagreement between one man and another when
differences of opinion arise concerning the value of the product which
each man is making, that is to say, concerning the amount of goods which
the rest of the community is prepared to give him in exchange.

This consideration is also very strongly evident with regard to
international trade. Here the division of labour is assisted by the
difference in the products of different countries. There can be no doubt
that the exchange of commodities between one nation and another tends to
bring them together and to promote unity and harmony of interests. At
the same time it is also likely to be fruitful in quarrels and
bickering. We saw that Hiram was very much dissatisfied with the cities
in Galilee which Solomon presented to him in the course of their
semi-commercial transactions. He appears to have retaliated by making
Solomon a very handsome present in gold; but Hiram seems to have been a
very exceptional person, and it is probable that most traders who are
dissatisfied with the consideration received would not have been so
generous in expressing themselves.

International commerce has also been a fruitful cause of disunion rather
than unity when various nations have quarrelled with one another
concerning the right to trade with a third people. If one nation is
trading with another greatly to its profit, it feels that it has a
grievance when it finds that a neighbouring nation is sending cargoes to
the same destination and undercutting it and taking the cream of the
trade. After religion, it is probable that trade has produced more
bloodshed than any other form of human activity. At the same time there
can be no doubt that on the whole its influence has been strongly on the
side of unity and that it has done more to break down international
barriers than any other influence that has operated in the course of
history. The trader, as such, believes entirely and whole-heartedly in
the unity of mankind. All that he wants to do is to buy his products as
cheaply as he can and to sell them at the best possible price. Whether
he buys at home or abroad, or whether he sells at home or abroad, is a
matter of complete indifference to him except that, as has been shown,
owing to variations in value in different parts of the world, he is
probably likely to be able to make larger profits from foreign trade
than in commerce at home. National preferences sometimes induce him to
encourage home industry by buying home products when foreign goods would
have paid him better, but in so far as this happens, he ceases to be a
trader as such and becomes a mixture of trader and patriot. As buyers
and sellers, however, mankind is, on the whole, singularly free from
international prejudices. It was thought at one time that importation of
foreign goods into England would be considerably checked by insisting
upon marks of origin, that is to say, that imported goods should be
stamped as such. This expectation, however, seems to have been entirely
disappointed, since most buyers were not concerned with the question of
the country whence the commodity that they bought came, and only
considered whether it suited their purses and was what they wanted.
Sometimes there is actually a prejudice in favour of foreign goods, and,
curiously enough, this is found to be so even in countries in which a
protective policy has been very highly developed. It is, or was a few
years ago, common to see in American newspapers, flaming advertisements
heralding sales of imported goods, which were definitely stated to be
such obviously because the sellers thought that they were likely to be
able to sell them better because they were stated to be so. It is also a
proud boast of English manufacturers that in many countries on the
Continent it is common, or was until quite lately, for native
manufacturers to sell their goods more easily in their home markets by
describing them as English. Political and national prejudice seems to be
overruled by the common human desire for something new and strange, and
consequently, in spite of all friction that has arisen from
international trade, and of the number of wars which have had their
origin in commercial questions, there is good reason for the assertion
that on the whole commerce has been a mighty promoter of intercourse
among the nations and of the unity of mankind. If it had not been for
commerce, the cheapening and quickening of communication could never
have been carried out. The trader goes first, and after him the
traveller and the tourist.

This claim can be made with perhaps even more certainty when we proceed
to the realm of finance. If commerce is international and unifying,
finance is perhaps even more so. Finance, of course, arises out of
commerce and is an essential part of its machinery. By finance we mean
the machinery of money--money-dealing and money-lending. Money becomes
necessary as soon as the exchange of commodities, which is the meaning
of trade, becomes fairly developed. At first, primitive peoples
exchanged their commodities one for another, but a difficulty arose when
out of a pair of possible traders one had something which the other
wanted but the other had not. For example, if the arrow-maker had arrows
to sell and wanted to buy fish, there obviously could be no bargain if
his friend who wanted to buy arrows had only got deerskins to give in
exchange. It was essential to the development of trade that some
commodity should be hit on which could always be taken in exchange and
so form a circulating medium. We have seen from the twenty-third chapter
of Genesis that a certain weight of silver had in Abraham's time begun
to assume this function. Economic text-books tell us that many other
commodities had the form and function of money before the metals came
into use. Until quite lately there were many places in which the use of
an agreed medium of exchange had not been adopted to facilitate the
purposes of commerce. Jevons begins his very interesting book on money
by relating how

     Some years since, Mdlle Zélie, a singer of the Théâtre Lyrique at
     Paris, made a professional tour round the world, and gave a
     concert in the Society Islands. In exchange for an air from
     _Norma_ and a few other songs, she was to receive a third of the
     receipts. When counted, her share was found to consist of three
     pigs, twenty-three turkeys, forty-four chickens, five thousand
     cocoa-nuts, besides considerable quantities of bananas, lemons,
     and oranges. At the Halles in Paris, as the prima donna remarks
     in her lively letter, ... this amount of live stock and
     vegetables might have brought four thousand francs [£160], which
     would have been good remuneration for five songs. In the Society
     Islands, however, pieces of money were very scarce; and as
     Mademoiselle could not consume any considerable portion of the
     receipts herself, it became necessary in the meantime to feed the
     pigs and poultry with the fruit,'[27] and so her receipts
     consumed one another.

This is an example of the inconvenience which the invention of money
overcame. In primitive communities it took the form of cowry-shells or
tobacco or gunpowder or any commodity which was in universal request in
the place. All the seller wanted to do was to be able to obtain for his
product a certain amount of stuff which he could rely on being able to
exchange for other things that he wanted. In the end the precious
metals, with their strong appeal to human vanity, and their utility for
adorning temples and so propitiating divine favour, ousted all other
commodities which had been used for money; and they are now to a great
extent ousted by pieces of paper, which still, however, represent claims
to so much gold.

The discovery of a circulating medium enormously facilitated the
progress of commerce, and it was not long before a class of people grew
up who specialized in this particular form of business and became
financiers and moneylenders. Bankers and financiers were known in Rome
and Athens, and we know that some machinery existed by which the
monetary claims of one country on another could be settled by something
that fulfilled the functions of the modern bill of exchange. The actual
provision of metallic currency has from the earliest times been almost
entirely under the control of the government which took into its own
hands, as an essential part of the police protection which it gives to
the people, the coining of currency, stamping the coin in such a way
that anybody who took one might know that he was getting a certain
weight of a precious metal. But the money-dealing business very soon
developed the machinery of credit by which anybody who had an enterprise
or a venture out of which he expected to make an attractive profit
could, if he had sufficient property to pledge, provide himself with the
means to finance it between the day that he started on his operations
and the day when he brought home his profits: and this business also
became international, though not, perhaps, as rapidly as commerce had
overstepped the boundaries between one people and another.

In the _Merchant of Venice_ we find Antonio trading with all the
countries of the then known world,

    From Tripolis, from Mexico, and England,
    From Lisbon, Barbary, and India,

but we do not find that Shylock was lending money on at all the same
international scale. When communication was slow, difficult, and
untrustworthy, money-lending at a distance was made very risky, because
it was impossible for the lender to keep the watchful eye on the
borrower's operations and credit that is required if he is to feel
comfortable in his venture. For a Lombard Street banker to lend money to
a merchant in Cheapside payable at a year hence was, until comparatively
lately, a much safer enterprise than to lend it to a merchant in Paris,
because the local borrower was always under the lender's observation. If
he were overtrading or living on too lavish a scale it would at once be
noticed and reported.

Nevertheless, international finance made steady progress through
somewhat obscure beginnings. We know that Philip II of Spain was heavily
indebted to moneylenders all over the Continent, and that by his famous
repudiation he carried consternation throughout Europe.[28] Edward III
was also heavily indebted to Florentine bankers, and he also omitted to
pay his debt; and it is said that the descendants of the Florentine
bankers still have a claim against the English Crown in
consequence[29]; but it was not until after the creation of stock
exchanges and the machinery of a public market in securities that
international finance became a question of general importance.

Here also the effect has been for unity combined with a good deal of
disunion. Twenty years ago it used to be said that feeling in the
Western States of America was very strongly anti-English because most of
the Western farmers were indebted to English moneylenders, and on the
whole it may be said that the relations between the borrower and lender
are not likely to be so friendly and so likely to promote unity as those
between buyer and seller. There is really no logical reason why this
should be so: the basis of the bargain between the two is exactly the
same. In commercial transactions one man sells to another because the
other man wants something that he has got more than he does. It is
exactly the same with the borrower and lender of money. A man borrows
because he wants money and is prepared to pay a rate of interest for it.
The lender lends because he has money to lend and wants to earn interest
on it. Nevertheless there is something in this relationship which seems
to produce discord. It is not many years since the Australian newspapers
used to talk of England as John Bull Cohen, implying that the English
money market made more than it ought to do by developing, with the help
of its financial resources, the production and commerce of the young
countries of the world. Perhaps it is human to feel a grudge against a
creditor, because the money has to be paid back, whereas a commercial
bargain is done with. Nevertheless, after allowing for all the friction
that money-lending seems to produce, there can be no question that the
establishment of the international market in securities has enormously
widened the world's output of commodities, and it has greatly promoted
that unity of interests which has brought mankind together more than
anything else.

Englishmen are always supposed to be particularly insular. Nevertheless,
any one who looks at the Official List daily published by the London
Stock Exchange and sees the enormous number of Government and municipal
loans from all parts of the world, the number of foreign railways, and
the number of foreign enterprises of all kinds which are dealt in on the
London Stock Exchange, cannot avoid the conclusion that this practice of
investing money abroad, which has been followed here to a greater extent
than in any other country, must have very greatly widened the
Englishman's horizon and forced him to confess that at least from one
point of view dwellers in foreign countries have some right to exist. At
any rate, in practice English investors not only have shown that they do
not recognize international barriers, but there have even been times
when foreign securities have actually been preferred to English. A few
years ago it was reported by stockbrokers that many of their clients
would not invest money at home and insisted whenever possible that it
should be placed abroad. To such an extent has this process been carried
on that it is now calculated by statisticians that no less than four
thousand millions of English money have been placed outside England,
about one-half of this having been lent to foreign countries, and about
one-half to our own colonies. Here again, as in commerce, there arises a
possibility of quarrelling, not only between the lender and borrower but
also between rival groups of lenders in different countries. When an
economically backward country is being developed with the assistance of
capital from nations which are at a further stage of economic progress,
the moneylender is supposed to acquire a certain amount of political
prestige and privilege which makes other nations, which have an eye to
increasing their influence in the borrowing country, jealous concerning
such operations. A curious example was presented not long ago by China.
China wanted to borrow, and probably the only countries which had any
genuine surplus of capital available for export were England and France.
Nevertheless, owing to the political side issues involved, Russia,
Germany, and the United States also all insisted on taking part in the
business of lending money to China. China was compelled to borrow more
money than it wanted, so that all these so-called civilized Powers could
share in the operation, and the absurdity of the position was increased
by the fact that some at least of the Powers which lent the money would
have had to borrow it somewhere before they could do so.

This freedom with which England has furnished financial resources to the
rest of the world is sometimes called in question as having had, or
being likely to have, bad effects upon the activity of production at
home. It is quite clear that the progress of international commerce and
the division of labour among nations by which commodities of all kinds
have been very greatly cheapened could not have been carried out if
England and other comparatively far developed countries had not supplied
the necessary capital for the development of the relatively backward
parts of the earth. If English money had not gone into building railways
in America, Canada, Argentina, Australia, and all over the world, and
supplying capital to the farmers and others who opened up these
countries, food could not have been nearly as cheap as it is or as it
was before the war, and clothes and other necessaries of life would have
been at a very different price. In fact, it may be said that if England
had not acted as she has, as the world's financier, the development of
the world's trade to anything like its present scale would have been
altogether impossible. If we could feel sure that the distribution of
the world's production had been as satisfactory as the wonderful
increase in its output, there would be no question that all classes in
England had been very greatly benefited by its financial activities
abroad. As it is, it is sometimes argued that English capital going
abroad stimulates production in other countries and increases the demand
for labour there, but that the demand for labour in England and its
reward might have been on a higher scale if English capital had been
kept at home. This is a question which is, happily perhaps, outside my
province at present, but it is one which demands serious attention. This
much can be said, that the years in which English capital has gone
abroad with the greatest rapidity have also been those in which our
export trade has been most active, and it is obvious that this must be
so, because when England exports capital it does so in the form of
lending money either to a foreign Government or to a foreign
municipality, or to some company, English or foreign, which is
conducting some enterprise in a foreign country.

In whatever way the money is lent the result is that the country to
which it is lent is given so much buying power in England and
consequently its demand for English goods is to that extent stimulated.
It does not follow, of course, that the whole amount of money that it
borrows is actually spent in England. It is possible that the Canadian
railway which is raising money in England may spend it by buying steel
rails in Belgium, but in practical fact the net result is that somebody
or other abroad is given a claim on England which finally, by some
roundabout process, takes effect in a demand for English goods and
services. At the same time, when one does admit that international
finance is essential to international commerce and that the
specialization, which is an essential product of commerce, is thereby
quickened, we have to remember that the objections, such as they are,
which can be put forward against the division of labour among
individuals cannot be overlooked altogether when the division of labour
is applied to nations.

Dr. Bowley, in his book on England's foreign trade, puts the matter
dramatically as follows:--

     The limit to the indefinite division of labour is to be found in
     the social, intellectual, and moral objections to specialization.
     It is not pleasant to contemplate England as one vast factory, an
     enlarged Manchester, manufacturing in semi-darkness, continual
     uproar, and at intense pressure for the rest of the world. Nor
     would the Continent of America, divided into square, numbered
     fields, and cultivated from a central station by electricity, be
     an ennobling spectacle.'[30]

This is a picturesque expression of the objections to the unity of
mankind if carried too far through the process of specialization. While
admitting their force, it is not necessary to admit that the
specialization process need go quite to that length. Even if England
became one vast factory, it need not necessarily follow that it must
work in semi-darkness, continual uproar, or at intense pressure, but it
is all to the good that a specialist of Dr. Bowley's eminence should
call our attention to certain things which have to be guarded against.
On the other hand, we may contend that if England became one vast
factory, it would only do so because it paid it so well to do so, that
that vast factory might be made more in accordance with William Morris's
ideal than the picture of Inferno drawn by Dr. Bowley. We might imagine
England one vast Garden City, dotted over with factories, each of which
might be as beautiful as a cathedral, embowered and surrounded by fruit
trees and gardens, in which a highly educated and technically trained
population would work for five or six hours a day, and spend the rest of
their time in intellectual leisure and healthy exercise and home life
under ideally happy conditions.

It is interesting to note that the result of the present war is likely,
if anything, to check the export of capital for a time, not only owing
to the very obvious reason that for the present all our available
capital is going into the war and for some time to come will have to go
into expenses connected with the war, but also because this war has set
a new precedent with regard to the duty of belligerents in the matter of
making payments to one another. In olden times, when war was a
gentlemanly business, trade and finance were very little interrupted by
it. At the time of the Crimean War the Russian Government punctually
paid the interest due on Russian loans to English holders and thereby
established a prestige amongst English investors which was cherished for
several decades. Now that nations have taken to going to war with tooth
and nail, throwing their whole available population into the field and
using every possible device, military, commercial, and financial, to
beat their enemies, any such pleasant decencies as paying money due from
one country to another in the shape of interest or otherwise have been
abandoned. When the war is over it is possible that investors will
remember this fact to a certain extent and will be more chary than they
were before of investing their money abroad, at any rate in any country
with which there is the remotest possibility of our being involved in
war.

War has also shown the great inconvenience that arises when the mutual
dependence of nations one on another for certain products leaves them
crippled because international exchange is interrupted. International
trade and finance, in their full and free development, have been shown
to depend on the assumption that peace is secure. Unless the present war
should be so ended as to secure peace for all time, it seems likely that
all nations will aim at being able to rely, at least for the essentials
of life and of defence, on home production or on a supply from countries
with which war may be regarded as impossible. If this be so, then unity
through trade and finance will be less universal, but more close-knit in
its narrower scope.


BOOKS FOR REFERENCE

A.L. Bowley, _England's Foreign Trade_. Swan Sonnenschein.

C.K. Hobson, _The Export of Capital_. Constable.

W.S. Jevons, _Money and the Mechanism of Exchange_. Kegan Paul, Trench,
Trübner & Co.

Smith's _Wealth of Nations_, chs. i-iv.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 24: _Wealth of Nations_, Bk. I, ch. ii.]

[Footnote 25: 1 Kings ix.]

[Footnote 26: Rawlinson's translation.]

[Footnote 27: Jevons, _Money as Mechanism of Exchange_, p. 1.]

[Footnote 28: Motley, _United Netherlands_, ch. xxxiii.]

[Footnote 29: Thorold Rogers, _Economic Interpretation of History_, ch.
xx.]

[Footnote 30: _England's Foreign Trade in the Nineteenth Century_, by
A.L. Bowley.]




X

INTERNATIONAL INDUSTRIAL LEGISLATION


We have learned to look upon the doctrine of interdependence of classes
within the nation as a truth self-evident to all eyes unblinded by
wilful prejudice or ignorance of that disabling kind charitably defined
by the Roman Catholic Church as invincible. To say that unemployment in
the mills of Lancashire or the shipyards of the Clyde not only affects
the happiness and well-being of cotton operatives and boiler-makers and
the great businesses which are carried on by their means, but depresses
the national vitality and puts a drag on the national energy throughout
the kingdom--to assert that no people can be wholly strong and vigorous
while any corner of its territory or any layer in its social strata
remains in the possession of a group physically weak, mentally
undeveloped, and morally below the standard of ethics which, as a
people, it has tacitly agreed to accept as necessary, seems to many of
us in these days to state truisms. Yet it is not so long ago that facts
which we now presume to be familiar, at least to every undergraduate,
were the dangerous discovery of the few who, in an age when people said
'Socialist' as Mr. Pecksniff said 'Pagan', had the temerity to point
out, that in things human and political as in mechanics, a chain was and
could be no stronger than its weakest link. Even now, in the reaction,
often only half conscious, of the employing class against any force
which tends to raise the employed to a social plane less removed from
that on which they themselves move, in the genuine dislike of
education, concealed under ceremonial phrases in days of peace but
breaking into fire and fury when the natural man is roused by a touch of
excitement, we can see how skin-deep in many cases is the general belief
in the widely proclaimed creed that economically as well as spiritually,
we are all members one of another. And if the truth of our
interdependence as citizens has won acceptance slowly and grudgingly,
because the facts that prove it lie other-where than on the surface, it
is easy to understand that the interdependence which is international,
resulting as it does from the meeting, and crossing, and twining in the
web of national life of innumerable fine threads drawn from the utmost
corners of the civilized world, has scarcely yet come within the
consideration of the ordinary man as an influence from which he cannot
escape, and with which, therefore, he is bound to reckon. That,
doubtless, is why international movements in general arouse so little
interest in the mind of the average reader of newspapers. He does not
regard them as practical. The persons engaged in promoting them he
defines as cranks, dividing them into two classes, of whom one may be
dismissed as harmlessly absurd, while the other ought probably to be
suppressed as dangerous.

The events of the first week of August 1914, where the interdependence
of countries is concerned, might and did throw some light on the
journalistic mirror into which civilized man looks morning by morning,
but it was light of the crudest kind. The result of the illumination, in
numerous instances, was only to make a great number of people reflect
with astonishment on the number of things which this country is in the
habit of purchasing from abroad, comment with indignation on her folly
in not having made them all at home, and, when passion rose sufficiently
high, express a resolution that, however deeply they might need the
enemy's products, they would never buy any of them again. To do them
justice, this was not the attitude of the men confronted with the actual
difficulty of inventing substitutes for raw materials of which the
source had suddenly dried up. Those who sat in factory offices ruefully
contemplating models of goods to the making of which Germany, Belgium,
and Austria had hitherto sent some indispensable contribution, did not,
even while they set about inventing something that should replace this
contribution, belittle what they had lost. They knew, and said, that
while they were confident of producing a working substitute, they did
not pretend to offer in every case the precise quality which seemed to
be the special gift of the German, or Belgian, or Austrian trader.
Perhaps it was not after all only sheer laziness on the part of the
British manufacturer, and sheer lack of patriotism on the part of
British governments which induced our commercial leaders to concentrate
on one field of production and abandon another. To each nation, as to
each man, his gift. Some realization of this law may have come
instinctively to practical workers engaged in practical tasks.

If the organizers of production among us have not been forward in the
past to promote international action in the matter of labour
legislation, this is not from any failure to realize the effect of
inequality of industrial conditions upon nations competing in the
markets of the world. This effect was naturally greatest in cases where
the countries concerned were geographically contiguous and engaged in
direct rivalry with one another in respect of manufactures falling under
the same trade category. Here is the perfect case of competition, in
which any circumstance tending to lessen production on the one side is
immediately counted as an advantage to the other. But the pressure is
felt even where the territory of the rival is situated at the other side
of the world, even where the article produced belongs to a different
class of manufacture. In normal times long distance transport is easy
and long distance freight rates cheap, so that the question of distance,
although still to be reckoned with, is no longer a determining factor in
the sum of consideration. Again, the network of prices which controls
the ultimate cost of production of any finished article is so complex
that it is difficult in many cases to rule out this or that set of
industrial conditions in one country as being without importance for a
given factory in another. The price of a pair of corsets sold retail in
Paris may have been subtly influenced by a strike of smelters of iron
ore in Silesia; and your china tea-set may be dearer to-morrow by reason
of a sudden outbreak of foot and mouth disease among the herds of the
Argentine. Quite naturally, therefore, it has come about that
manufacturers, in opposing proposals to make existing labour legislation
either more stringent in detail or wider-reaching in scope, have put
forward, as their principal objection, the plea that such reforms in
favour of the worker would place British industry at a disadvantage with
that of countries where the action of the manufacturer remained
comparatively unfettered. The distrust, as well as the dislike of long
hours as a means of increasing production, together with the belief that
healthy and pleasant surroundings conduce to the development of the
worker's powers as well as to the satisfactory maintenance of his
physical condition, has made remarkable progress among the more
intelligent of the employing class since the twentieth century began.
But there is still, in nearly every trade, a considerable mass of
masters who rarely think and never experiment, who turn a deaf ear to
the representations of their managers and foremen when these, coming
into direct personal contact with the employed, take note of results due
to over-strain which are invisible to the head of the business in his
office, and who continue to suppose, with their fathers, that limitation
of the working period necessarily restricts output and spells
commercial loss. Such men, hearing that their own manufacture is
produced, let us say in Russia, by men working twelve hours a day to
their men's nine, and paid at a considerably lower rate than that which
obtains in their own works, would certainly not dream of drawing any
other conclusion than the, to them, obvious one that the result of this
difference must be a lowered cost of production. Inquiries which should
prove, as did those of Sir Alfred Mond's firm when confronted with such
a case, that the cost of production per ton was actually higher under
the long hour and low wage system would never be instituted by them, and
their results, when made by others, leave them sceptical if not
suspicious.

Recognizing this mental attitude in a large section of the business men
of every country, and bearing in mind that, in order to secure the
efficient administration of labour laws, the legislator must be able to
carry with him at least the general consent of the majority of those
employers to whose trades they apply, it becomes clear that if we would
remove all objection to complete and adequate protective law for the
workers we must first dispel the fear of the manufacturer that such law
would handicap him unfairly in the international market. And what way so
apt to this end as the bringing of his competitors under a law similar
in character and as far as possible uniform in its provisions?

It is a proof of the prescience of Robert Owen that, even before he had
succeeded in planting the first small seed which was to grow into the
flourishing tree of British industrial legislation, he had grasped the
necessity and formulated the demand for international action in the
matter of Factory Laws. Owen's labours at home have, naturally enough,
bulked so large in the estimation of historians and publicists in their
writings on this subject, that the continental side of his activities
has received comparatively little attention at their hands.
Nevertheless his correspondence with European governments on the abuses
and needs of industrialism as it existed in the early years of the
nineteenth century are among the most remarkable he ever wrote; and his
appeal to the Congress of the Holy Alliance in 1818 shows how thoroughly
prepared he was to treat national reform as the first step to a system
which should be international. Had the statesmen of his time, too busy
in their making and unmaking of kingdoms to heed his arguments and
appeals, turned their attention from those high matters (in which, after
all, their achievement was for the most part neither brilliant nor
beneficial) to the homelier details of their people's lives, social
progress would have been indefinitely hastened, and we might have been
spared the sorry spectacle of one industrial nation after another
committing the blunders and painfully learning the lesson of its
predecessors at the cost of much avoidable human suffering. For, in this
matter of industrial legislation, as in many others, men are
astonishingly slow to learn by example. Perhaps the most remarkable case
in point that has occurred is that of Japan, at this hour still in
course of being worked out before our eyes. Here we have a nation
brimful of intelligence, quick of apprehension, with a genius for
selecting from the polity and procedure of other States exactly those
features best fitted to promote prosperity and efficiency and an
unmatched power for assimilating and reproducing them in the form
suitable to its own tradition of development, following the Western
Powers along the crooked path of their early dealings with industrialism
and allowing the very conditions which stunted and degraded the
Lancashire cotton operative of the 'thirties to be created in the mills
of Osaka.

Since the days of Owen ideals of industrial conditions have mightily
grown and developed. This was inevitable, since the standards of social
comfort and hygiene have undergone complete transformation during the
last century. But the important points to note are, first, that it is
not only 'reformers' who put forward these ideals, but that they have
become to a large extent common to all classes of the people, and,
secondly, that the raising of the standard which proceeded at a slow,
irregular rate for, roughly speaking, a hundred years, quickening in one
decade and remaining almost stationary during the next, is now
proceeding with comparative rapidity. Already such a rate of mortality
and sickness as was common in the trades technically called dangerous
twenty years ago has come to be regarded as monstrous and would no
longer be tolerated with patience. This acceleration in the raising of
industrial standards is doubtless largely due to the conscious
participation of the workers themselves in the business of providing for
their own protection; but it may also be referred in some degree to a
quickened conscience and a more intelligent appreciation of the
importance of the manual worker in the national economy on the part of
the public as a whole. The same movement has been taking place, in
different degrees according to their differing circumstances, among the
other industrial peoples of the Old World and the New. The quicker this
advance on the part of some nations the more keenly was the failure of
others to make progress in the same _ratio_ felt by those belonging to
the first group. An uneasy consciousness that the backward nations were
beginning to constitute an obstacle to progressive domestic legislation
on the part of the advanced nations began to manifest itself. It
appeared that the lame ducks were setting the pace for the whole fleet,
and it was seen that self-defence no less than concern for the welfare
of the human race at large demanded the devising of some machinery by
which the movements of these laggards should be quickened.

Thus, seventy years after Owen had appealed in vain to the Powers in
session at Aix-la-Chapelle, a definite step was taken towards an
international agreement directed to the benefit of the working classes
of Europe. It must not be supposed that during this interval no
inheritor of Owen's tradition had been found or that his doctrine had
been altogether forgotten for want of a preacher. Now and again prophets
arose who, if they did not share Owen's genius, were at least his equals
in sincerity and energy. Dr. Ernst Francke, in the article reprinted
from the _Economic Journal_ of June 1909, which I have recommended for
reference at the end of this chapter, names one of these devoted
pioneers, Daniel Legrand, an Alsatian manufacturer who for thirty years
did his best to induce France, Great Britain, Prussia, and Switzerland
to agree on a minimum of industrial legislation. Some very useful work
in the same direction was done, during the years following the
Franco-German War, by a Belgian publicist; and in 1876 Colonel Frey,
President of the Swiss Federal Council, took the first official step in
the direction of international labour treaties, by a speech in the
Council recommending that Switzerland should take the lead in an
endeavour to establish them. To the Swiss Government belongs the honour
of addressing the first circular note to the governments of Europe
proposing the calling of a conference as a first step towards this end.
This conference never met. The idea of international labour legislation
was in the air, and voluntary societies composed of social reformers
were beginning not only to discuss but to support it. The international
meetings of organized workmen, such as the miners and cotton operatives,
in different countries had familiarized the continental mind with the
possibility of common action between peoples in respect of labour
questions. Nowhere did the proposal for the conference arouse more
general interest than in Germany, where the present German Emperor,
then at the beginning of his career, was showing an active interest in
German conditions of industry. It seemed that he too desired to call a
conference, and on his request that he should be given precedence in the
matter, the Swiss Government gracefully gave way. So it fell out that
the first conference on workmen's protection met in Berlin, at the
invitation of the German Government, in March 1890. There were fifteen
delegates, all the governments of Europe, except those of Russia and the
Balkan States, being represented. The chair was occupied by the then
Minister of Commerce, Freiherr von Berlepsch, a man of broad and
enlightened views and singularly sympathetic character, who subsequently
became one of the founders of the International Association for Labour
Legislation, and has probably, more than any other individual, secured
the success of its biennial meetings.

At this conference, which the German Emperor stated in precise terms to
have been called in view of the problems raised by international
competition, a wide range of subjects was discussed by the delegates of
the different States, including employment in mines, Sunday work, child
labour, the employment of women and young persons, and administrative
measures. While on many points agreement was found to be possible, and
the general principles which should underlie industrial legislation were
accorded ready acceptance, there was enough of objection, reservation,
and allegation of constitutional difficulty to prevent the conclusion of
anything in the nature of an international treaty. At the time the
conference appeared to have failed of its object. Subsequent events
have, however, shown that this was not the case. The failure to frame an
official agreement probably showed that the ground had not yet been
sufficiently laboured, and that further action in the direction of
inquiry and discussion was necessary before the taking of so novel a
step could be justified to the official mind; but it is certain that the
recognition by the representatives of all the Western States that
international action in labour questions was desirable in itself, and a
goal at which governments should aim, not only laid the foundation for
future State action, but gave to the voluntary work of obtaining the
materials for building on that foundation an impetus and a sanction
which it could have obtained in no other way.

That work was speedily set on foot and continued during the next ten
years. It was greatly aided by the action of the International Labour
Congress held at Zurich in 1897, when the trade unionists who composed
the gathering passed resolutions in favour of the establishment of an
International Labour Office, and by the Congress of Brussels which
assembled at the invitation of Freiherr von Berlepsch, soon afterwards.
At the latter gathering, which included a number of distinguished
members of parliament, men of science, lawyers, and economists from
France, Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Holland, and Belgium, the view
that for the present progress must be made by the way of private
initiative prevailed, and the creation of three national committees,
having for their object the foundation of an international association
for labour legislation, quickly followed. These committees, which had
their head-quarters in Brussels, Berlin, and Vienna respectively, were
by the good offices of Professors Cauwès and Jay enabled to call an
international congress in Paris in the year of the Great Exhibition, and
at this congress the Association was actually founded, and its statutes,
provisionally drafted by Professor Mahaim and presented by the Belgian
committee, were adopted. A president, a general secretary, and an
international committee were provisionally appointed. The functions of
the Association were also defined. It was designed to serve as a bond
between all those who, in industrial countries, are convinced supporters
of the principle of protective legislation; to facilitate the study of
labour legislation by the publication of the labour laws of the
different States, and of reports on their administration; to assist in
the compilation of international statistics of labour and of all studies
tending to bring into harmony the existing national industrial codes;
and finally, it was charged with the duty of organizing the meetings of
international congresses in which labour legislation should be
considered. A very important part of its business was to consist in the
publication in German, French, and English of a periodical collection of
all labour laws newly in force in different countries.

This has been, from the first, the work of the International Labour
Office, the fixed head-quarters of the Association, which serves as an
exchange and clearing-house for all information pertinent to the
Association's work. It is in perpetual session at Basle, and to it all
reports and inquiries are addressed by the national sections, while from
it issue circulars for the sections' consideration and requests for
national investigation of problems which appear ripe for international
treaty. The spade work of the Association is done by the national
sections in their own countries, all action of the Association being
necessarily based in the first instance on the reports received from
them at head-quarters. There are now fifteen[31] such national
sections--an increase of eight on the original group of seven formed in
1901. The actual membership of the Association has trebled in ten years.
The seven sections to which belongs the place of honour at the head of
the roll, are those of Germany, Austria, Hungary, Holland, Belgium,
France, and Switzerland. Great Britain did not form a section till
1904, and it was not till 1910 that the British Government sent official
representatives to the biennial meetings. The official representatives
constitute a very important element at those gatherings. They attend the
plenary meetings and take part in discussions, often contributing hints
on their governments' attitude towards a given reform which are
invaluable to those who are framing or modifying proposals with a view
to government acceptance; and are also frequently present at the sitting
of commissions charged with the consideration of detail, where they can
hear the opinions and arguments of experts on every important point in
debate. When resolutions are before the conference they do not
vote--although in respect of voting right they stand on the same footing
as other delegates. But on occasion they are not afraid to express
opinions on the merits and tendencies of those resolutions which may
have a determining effect on the votes of their fellow members, and I
have known a few weighty words from such a man as M. Arthur
Fontaine,[32] commending a proposal on which feeling was largely
divided, to turn the scale at once in its favour.

The delegates of a section are elected by the section itself. They may
be either men or women, and their number is in proportion to the size of
the section, the maximum figure being eight, as far as voting delegates
are concerned, but substitute members and experts may be present in
addition. The following is a list of the fifteen sections represented at
Zurich in 1912: Austria, France, Germany, Great Britain, Hungary, Italy,
the United States, Belgium, Holland, Switzerland, Denmark, Spain,
Sweden, Norway, and Finland. In addition the following countries and
dominions sent government representatives only: Russia, Rumania,
Greece, Turkey, Portugal, Brazil, Mexico, and the Australian
Commonwealth.

A brief account of the Association's method of doing business may be
interesting. Meetings are held once in two years, in the month of
September, different towns in Switzerland being selected in turn for the
place of assembly. The four conferences which I personally attended as
British delegate took place in Geneva, Lucerne, Lugano, and Zurich.
There are two plenary assemblies, the first having as chief business,
apart from the hearing of introductory addresses, the appointment of the
five commissions into which the conference splits up for actual work;
the second meeting to receive the reports of these commissions and their
recommendations, and decide upon the adoption or rejection of the
latter. The trilingual rule is followed, delegates addressing the
assembly either in French, German, or English, as they prefer, each
speech being followed by a brief _résumé_ in the other two languages
from the interpreter. In the commissions, by an unwritten but generally
accepted custom, French and German are the only languages used.
(Latterly the representatives of the United States of America, with the
individualistic courage that becomes them, have shown a disposition to
rebel against this custom and defy it; but the close of the Zurich
meeting left it uncertain whether in this particular the New World will
be able to prevail over the Old.) In the dignified speech-making of the
General Assembly the recurrent changes of language, if a little
disconcerting at first, can be faced with tolerable equanimity; but when
it is a question of the quicker verbal sword-play which goes on in the
commissions, the member imperfect in the tongues finds his position
occasionally difficult. The sympathies of every humane person must go
out to the expert who, having just made a telling _exposé_ of his case
in French well practised for the occasion, encounters a crushing
rejoinder in German of which he can barely follow the general drift.

The composition of these commissions--in which all the real work of the
conferences is done--is truly heterogeneous. A commission may represent
a dozen nationalities; it will certainly contain specimens of every
social class, members of the most varied shades of thought in politics,
religion, and sociology. I can still remember the constituents of my
first commission at Geneva in 1906. Our subject was the night-work of
young persons. At the head of the table was a professor of Civil Law in
the University of Louvain. On either side of him sat a Catholic clerical
member of the German Reichstag; a German Protestant pastor from Bavaria;
a distinguished Parisian engineer; an Austrian nobleman interested in
social reform; a Hungarian man of science; a Dutch factory inspector; a
Swiss Trade Union secretary; and myself. We were a motley crew, but the
strange 'pattern' which we must have presented to the observation of any
higher intelligences interested in our deliberations had no effect on
the goodwill and good humour with which they were conducted.

The range of subjects considered at international meetings is very wide.
It includes all questions relating to the labour of women, young persons
and children; matters of health and hygiene, with special reference to
the use of poisonous material in industry, and the regulation of
dangerous trades; workmen's insurance; the establishment of wages boards
and minimum rates as preventives against sweating; the extension of the
ten-hours' day and the Saturday half-holiday to be the legal rule in all
industrial countries; and the introduction of the three-shift system and
the eight-hour working day in continuous industries. As it is obvious
that questions so large, touching so deeply the domestic life and habits
of every people, cannot possibly be settled either out of hand or all
at once, the Association's study of each separate problem is always
prolonged and, according to the circumstances and the difficulty of the
case, more prolonged in one instance than in another. Like the old
pioneers of National Factory legislation, the Association has proceeded
along the line of least resistance: not because it lacks courage, but
for reasons of sheer prudence. If it was to become, in the words of M.
Millerand, the present French Minister of War, one of its oldest and
staunchest members, 'the laboratory in which international treaties are
made', it was clear that it must not propose for international
acceptance reforms which even among the most progressive peoples were
looked upon as doubtful or dangerous. Accordingly it chose for the
subject of its first great efforts two reforms in relation to which it
could count with certainty upon a considerable amount of sympathy, and
proposed international legislation prohibiting the night-work of women
in factories, and the manufacture, importation, and sale of matches made
with white phosphorus. Information on both these subjects was collected
by means of the national sections; the Association in conference drew up
proposals and recommendations to the governments concerned; the
governments consented to a diplomatic conference at Berne, and the
conventions concluded in 1906 were the happy result of their meeting.

But it must not be supposed that these results were reached without
difficulty. Even as regards so comparatively simple a reform as the
abolition of the night-work of women--to be carried out, after
considerable 'delays' in favour of those countries in which night-work
by women had hitherto been an accepted industrial custom--the adjustment
of the change to the varying circumstances of each State proved a
delicate business, and agreement could never have been reached but for
the willingness of the more backward States to make substantial
sacrifices and encounter possible risks. For this reason, the allowance
of some years of grace before adherence to the treaty should become
practically binding was a measure almost of necessity. It would have
been unreasonable and might have been cruel to insist on Belgium and
Hungary assimilating their practice in such a matter to that of Great
Britain without ample time to prepare for the change. Thirteen States
adhered to this treaty.

The difficulties in the white phosphorus case were at first sight even
more striking, and, to begin with, only seven States--Germany, France,
Denmark, Holland, Switzerland, Italy, and Luxemburg--were signatories of
this convention. Of these, the first five had previously prohibited the
use of white phosphorus within their own frontiers. Room was, however,
left for the entry of other States into the convention at a subsequent
date, with the result that the scope of the treaty has been gradually
extended, and that we now find ourselves fairly within sight of the
banishment from manufacture of one of the most deadly of all industrial
poisons, and the consequent disappearance of an industrial disease
peculiarly dreadful in its nature and symptoms. The tardy adhesion of
the United Kingdom to this treaty remains a matter of regret; but the
procedure of the Indian Government and of all the British self-governing
dominions in following the mother country when at last she determined to
take action has done much to redeem that tardiness. Obviously, it was
the prohibition of the importation and sale of phosphorus matches in
India and the Dominions which has forced the Scandinavian and Belgian
manufacturers who were opposing complete prohibition to seek for
substitutes for white phosphorus. At the present moment only Japan and
Sweden among manufacturing countries stand outside the convention, the
United States, whose constitution forbade her to impose prohibition by
direct legislation, having brought about the desired result by the
imposition of a prohibitive tax.

Is this all? it may be asked. If the question be of treaties signed,
sealed, and ratified, the answer must be 'Yes'. On the subject of the
night-work of boys and the hours of women and young persons, proposals
were actually considered and conventions drafted by an official
conference at Berne in 1913. The draft conventions were far from
admirable: their framers went so far in the spirit of compromise to meet
the objections of the backward States that the provisions laid down, had
they been accepted without modification, would have tended to depress
rather than to raise the standard of international opinion on the
questions to be affected by them. We need not, therefore, feel much
regret that the war has swept them, with so many other pre-war schemes,
into the wastepaper-basket. The vast question of minimum rates of wages
and their regulation by the State is obviously still too much in the
experimental stage of its solution (even in this country where
experiments have been boldest) for it to be possible to make it the
subject of international agreement. As a subject of international
discussion it has had its place, and an increasingly important place,
for at least eight years past in the studies of the sections and the
discussions of the Association meeting. Upon no question has public
international opinion ripened more rapidly. In 1906, at Geneva, where
the conditions of home workers were first under discussion, a few daring
delegates met in corners and whispered under their breath the words
'Wages board'. By 1910, at Lugano, an English woman delegate was elected
joint president of the Association's Home Work Committee, 'as a
recognition of Great Britain's achievement in passing the first Trade
Boards Act'; at Zurich, in 1912, a two-day conference on the legal
minimum wage preceded the meeting of the Association, and a whole sheaf
of minimum wage bills introduced by private members into the Chambers of
different countries was before the delegates, together with an official
measure of the French Government. To watch this change of attitude was
to see international thought in the making. To appreciate its full
significance, it is necessary to bear in mind the different aspects
presented by the 'sweating' difficulty in this country and in the great
industrial States of the Continent. The French or German social reformer
sees it mainly, if no longer exclusively, as a problem of home work. Now
home work in Great Britain is a by-product of a strictly limited class
of industries, affecting a comparatively small class of the population;
in France and Germany it forms a highly important section of the general
industrial structure, it is interwoven, to an extent rarely grasped by
British students, with the life, and habits, and productive power of the
nation. Much more courage--and greater freedom from prejudice--was
required in the one case than the other. The remarkable advance towards
definite action on the part of the State in relation to the
establishment of minimum rates for home workers which took place between
1906 and 1913 could not have been achieved in so short a time but for
the labours of certain voluntary associations led by men of insight,
candour, and indefatigable devotion. In this connexion the pioneer work
of the late Comte de Mun and Professor Raoul Jay has been of inestimable
value. Realizing themselves, as did few unofficial reformers, the wide
nature of the movement in which they had engaged and the impossibility
of confining it in its sweep and effects to a section of the manual
workers, they succeeded in gradually bringing home to the ablest among
their fellow-workers the necessity for closing the gulf which French
mental habit had fixed between factory and home workers and preparing
to treat both classes on a similar footing of equity. In
Germany,--where, as we might expect, there was less forwardness to
launch unofficial schemes and a disposition to work rather from the
first through authoritative channels--experiments were being made under
the Home Work Act which, if of little value in themselves, seemed the
earnest of much better things.

If this result only had been attained, the meetings of the Association
and the labours of the sections would not have been in vain. But far
more was in process of achievement when the work of the Association was
interrupted by the catastrophe of the European War. The adoption in all
industrial countries of the 'English week', with its half-holiday so
much coveted by the continental worker--the establishment of a uniform
working day--the gradual introduction of the eight-hours shift into such
'continuous industries' as steel-smelting and glass-blowing--an
international agreement to eliminate the use of lead from many branches
of the pottery industry and to limit and safeguard its use in all
others,--these were only some among the questions which study and
investigation and discussion had brought to a stage at which the
Association could look upon them as fit matter for potential
international conventions in August 1914. Now that its activities are,
for the most part, in suspense, it is well to remember that its greatest
achievement was the proof, again and again renewed, that it is possible
for persons of twenty different nationalities, holding the most diverse
opinions on nearly every subject under the sun, not only to act together
but to find common motives of action so strong as to break down every
sundering barrier of political doctrine and religious creed. Whatever of
suspicion or antipathy might flourish outside the boundaries of the
international association, these evil weeds have never taken root inside
them. Is it Utopian to dream, when the days of peace shall have
returned, of a reconciliation within its borders for those between whom
at present the great gulf of division seems hopelessly fixed?


BOOKS FOR REFERENCE

_History of Factory Legislation_, Harrison and Hutchins. Macmillan.
Revised edition.

Frederic Keeling, _Child Labour in the United Kingdom_. P.S. King.

Clementina Black, _Sweating_. Duckworth.

R.H. Tawney, _Studies in the Minimum Wage_: (i) _Chainmaking_; (ii)
_Tailoring_. G. Bell & Sons.

J.A. Hobson, _Work and Wealth_. Macmillan.

Edward Howarth and Mona Wilson, _West Ham: A Study_. Dent.

Sir Thomas Oliver, M.D., _Dangerous Trades_. John Murray.

_Annual Reports of International Association for Labour Legislation_
(_British Section_), 1906-14. To be obtained of the Secretary, Queen
Anne's Chambers, 28 Broadway, Westminster.

Ernest Barker, _Nationalism and Internationalism_. C.S.U. Pamphlets,
Mowbray, Oxford.

Dr. Bauer, _International Legislation_. Mowbray, Oxford.

Ernest Francke, 'International Labour Treaties,' _Economic Journal_
(June, 1909). Reprinted separately, Macmillan.

Albert Métin, _Les Traités Ouvriers_. Armand Colin: Paris.

E. Mahaim, _Le Droit International Ouvrier_. Librairie Recueil-Sirey:
Paris.

Fagnot, Millerand et Strohl, _La Durée légale du Travail_. Félix Alcan:
Paris.

Paul Boyaval, _La Lutte contre le Sweating System_. Félix Alcan: Paris.

Students might also consult the following Reports:

_Le Travail à Domicile en France_. Ministère du Travail: Paris.

_Le Travail à Domicile en Belgique_. Ministère du Travail: Bruxelles.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 31: These figures represent the position at the last meeting
of the Association held at Zurich, 1912.]

[Footnote 32: The distinguished Permanent Head of the French Labour
Office.]




XI

COMMON IDEALS OF SOCIAL REFORM


Earlier ages were more able than ours to believe in the good old days.
We, knowing more of the past than our forefathers did, can find in it no
golden age. But our eyes do not rest even upon the present. In the
nineteenth century men thought they were at the end of a process, and
their evolutionary creed was often only a polite method of saying what
fine fellows they were. Now we look forward. The future seems to us
longer than the past and more important than the present; and we
ourselves seem to be at the beginning rather than at the end of time. A
knowledge of the past has made it impossible to believe that growth has
stopped, and we understand how different the future may be, in part at
least, by perceiving how different even this grimy and blood-stained
present is from the still more inhuman past.

Among the recorded changes the Economists write of an increasing
interchange of goods, and we can see as well an increasing interchange
of ideas across the frontiers of States. Music, painting, literature,
and science have all been influenced; and ideas concerning political,
economic, and social facts have been affected by that interchange which
has developed our philosophy, our science, and our art. No one nation
has originated all; and each nation has depended on hints and hypotheses
which have arisen in others.

But the interchange of ideas on social life has led to an increase of
ideals, which are plans of action emotionally appreciated and therefore
motive forces. Some of these are the Utopias of individual thinkers;
but we shall consider here only those more powerful ideals which are
shared, however vaguely, by many. In this case also, as in the purely
intellectual sphere, the fire spreads from group to group, from nation
to nation; and as the interchange of ideas increases knowledge, so the
exchange of enthusiasm makes action more powerful. A really effective
ideal, however, cannot arise except from the perception of definite
evil. Vague discontents may cause such revolution as leads to reaction;
but the clear sight of evil is the only source of reform. We may take it
for granted, then, that although an ideal is nerveless if it is not
passionate, it is futile unless it is based on knowledge. Therefore a
hint must be given of the evils from the knowledge of which ideals of
social reform now rise. That all is not well in the relations of man to
man or of group to group must be fairly obvious to any one with
imagination enough for sympathy. General dissatisfaction and universal
cures for society are childish; but the perception of this and that evil
gives rise to different plans for reform which all originate in the
enthusiasm which is an ideal. We may put aside the long history of the
growth of this shared enthusiasm for better relations between men,
whatever their ability, their rank, their race, or their government.

The common ideals of the present are the result of a gradual
development, but we shall consider them here as attempts to deal with
existing evils and plans for a better future.

       *       *       *       *       *

Some social evils of the present are perhaps as old as any settled
civilization. Such are disease and personal violence. Some are due to
forces which have come into existence recently, owing to increased
communication and accumulated wealth. Such are extreme poverty and the
dehumanizing of social relations. With both kinds of evil we are moved
to deal, and we are not deterred from the attempt to reform even
long-established evil; for we feel that we do not know what is possible.
Nothing is inevitable. This is not the place to give in detail the
description of those evils which are being dealt with. It is enough if
we recognize that it is no abstract or airy theory of equality or human
nature which moves us to action. All real theories are intensely
personal: and no theory has ever yet moved men unless they saw through
it to the crude facts. However it may be phrased in a theory of society,
we recognize it as evil that disease, leading to premature death, should
be as common as it is. As a social evil it may be said to disturb
seriously the relations between men. We see also that it is a social
evil that men should use fraud or violence in compelling labour or in
the pursuit of riches. Of the newer social evils there is the physical
and spiritual deterioration which seems to result from the massing of
men in great cities. There is also the dehumanizing of the relations
between master and man. And this is like in kind to the dehumanizing of
all functions in the vast institutions of modern times. The director of
a company comes to regard himself as part of a machine; and so does the
shareholder. So eventually does the agent of the State. Until at last we
reach the immense evil that human action is done for which no moral
responsibility is felt. How then shall we act? What has been done and
what is still hoped for? The answer to such questions will be a
statement of ideals.

One may speak of ideals of social reform from two different points of
view; either with respect to (1) the changing sentiment which produces
movements for reform or with respect to (2) the institutional change
which embodies that sentiment. The two are complementary parts of one
historical movement: and it is difficult to divide them as cause and
effect. For sentiment, becoming enthusiasm, certainly causes
institutional change, and yet the reformed institution invariably
creates a new sentiment. The province of law and of social custom is to
lead as well as to register--a dynamic as well as a static influence, to
increase order and to incite to liberty. In actual life, therefore, it
is often impossible to separate the sentiment from its embodiment in
measures of social reform.

For purposes of study, however, one may divide. We may put aside the
moving sentiments--the passions, however faint, which urge men to wish
for a better future--and we may consider first the particular instances
of reform.

       *       *       *       *       *

One definite and in some sense new departure in the results of the
shared enthusiasms of nations has been the industrial legislation of
recent years. That has been already dealt with. But, although in an
economic age such as ours industrial reform may seem the most striking,
it is not the only effect of our shared enthusiasm and later ages may
not think it the most important. There has been reform of social evils
owing to the interchange between nations of ideas on education,
religious toleration, medicine, and sanitation, the treatment of
criminals, the suppression of slavery and many other subjects. All these
and many more reforms are, as it were, registered in institutional
(legal or administrative) change.

Perhaps it is better to begin with a definite instance of the working of
an ideal, lest it may seem that we are speaking only of an empty
aspiration. We may take as an example the reforms connected with
medicine and sanitation, and those only in so far as they have been
officially established by the joint action of states. This is a very
restricted embodiment of a social ideal, since of course we may find
the same use of common labour between men of different races in the
private contest with disease or in the municipal preventive medicine
which in every great city owes much to investigators and practitioners
of other nations. But it is better to take the most tangible effect in
purely governmental action.

The French Government proposed an international conference, which met in
1851, to deal with infectious disease; and a second conference met in
1856. In 1865 the outburst of cholera in the East led to a third
congress at Constantinople. Great Britain opposed treaties for
regulating quarantine, &c., because of the delay which might be caused
to the pursuit of shipping interests. But at last a treaty was made in
1892 at Venice for protection against cholera. Further and more
effective treaties were agreed to by civilized states in 1897 and 1903.
A bureau of information concerning infectious disease was established at
Paris, and commissions to supervise were established in Turkey and
Egypt. With regard to sleeping sickness Great Britain took the
initiative; and a conference met in 1907, in London, at which six
countries were represented. So much with respect to disease; we may now
turn to examples of the joint action of states as regards crime.

The African slave traffic has been dealt with since 1885 (Berlin
Conference) by the European States acting together on certain general
principles. And what is known as the White Slave traffic was the subject
of arrangement between fifteen states in the conference at Paris in
1902.

Again, the reform of prisons and penitentiaries has been much assisted
by international congresses since 1846. The last was held in 1910 in
America, at which twenty-eight states were represented. A secretariat
has been established at Berne for the exchange of expert opinion and for
making suggestions to governments.

These are examples of a very numerous class of reforms undertaken by
the _joint action_ of governments. They are all comparatively recent and
most of the twenty-eight unions between governments for concerted action
have been established during the years of European peace between 1871
and 1914. In these instances the States of Europe have put their
precious sovereignties into their pockets; although the lawyers and
diplomatists explain the situation in the old terms.

With respect to all these movements for social reform three points must
be noticed: first, the initiative in most reform has come from private
enterprise and not from diplomacy or governments. Secondly, this private
interest has spread from the few of one nation to the few of another
before any effective result was attained. Thirdly, the states have not
acted together because of any general theory of international action,
but simply because certain social evils could not be dealt with at all
by any state acting separately. Whatever hampers common action, then,
also hinders effective reform in dealing with disease or crime. I need
not elaborate the conclusion.

       *       *       *       *       *

There are also instances of governmental action being _directly
influenced_ by the practice of other states, even when there has been no
common action. The two most striking reforms of recent years have been
in education and religious toleration. Of education enough has already
been said. The interest from our point of view here is chiefly in the
effect of education on social structure. It is increasingly evident that
of all forces for transforming a nation, education is the most powerful;
but no one nation can transform its education effectively without
respect to the mistakes and successes of its neighbours. This has been
perceived and acted upon. The influence, for example, of Germany on
England is sufficiently well known. German precedents were quoted in the
House of Commons in the early days of state education for England: and
the Education Acts of 1870 and 1876 were largely due to the impression
made in England by the success of state education in Prussia. Coleridge,
Carlyle, and Matthew Arnold definitely acknowledged a debt to Germany.
But Germany owed something to England in the perception of the value of
surroundings and corporate life in schools. France also was affected by
English education; and, in fact, French educators had to come to England
to find the thing for which the French gave us the name--_Esprit de
Corps_.

The United States have been very definitely influenced in their
University education both by Germany and England; and their Government
has in primary education certainly established for all states the
transforming possibilities of a school system. It must be remembered
that the crudity of civilization and its apparent corruption in the
United States are European not American. It is because Europe has
neglected its duty, enslaved and brutalized its peoples, that social and
political evil enters with the immigrants; and all this mass of European
incompetence, the result of neglect or evil-doing in Ireland, Poland,
the Slavonic Countries and Italy, the Government of the United States
exorcises with education: and the effect is spreading beyond the
frontiers of the States. A further effect of influence passing from
nation to nation has been the change with regard to the relations of
State and Church. In England it is some years since the State persecuted
in the supposed interest of religion; but we remember that the abolition
of tests against Roman Catholics was as late as 1830 and as against Jews
as late as 1850. Even the most backward of European countries have been
affected by the general feeling. In 1874 Austria for the first time
allowed any creed, not dangerous to morals, to be preached; and
ecclesiastical power is not any longer to be used against any but
members of the particular Church which is offended. In Spain there are
still some obstacles to public manifestations of any religious belief
but that which is most prevalent; free worship in private, however, is
at last allowed. Thus, the general tendency, spreading from the nations
which are most intricately divided in religion, has been towards what is
called toleration. Connected with this has been the gradual recognition
of civil marriage; in which the old privilege of the most powerful
Church is no longer recognized by the modern State. Law and custom have
both changed.

Perhaps the general attitude has not really changed. We persecute more
for political than for religious unorthodoxy; or it may be that in our
more economic age we forbear to burn heretics only because we cannot
afford the faggots. But in any case the relations between men in society
are more justly arranged, even where religion is concerned.

       *       *       *       *       *

We have thus examples of (1) joint governmental action and (2) separate
actions of governments influenced directly by foreign governments.

There are also certain results of the interchange of ideals between
nations which are not yet, or only in part, registered in legal or
political institutions. Such for example is the changed position given
to women. A change has occurred quite outside the political or even the
economic sphere, both in the habits of western humanity and in their
guiding conceptions.

The change is affecting the meaning of marriage, since we are becoming
inclined to suppose that man and woman are not simply male and female.
Human individuality is given a new value; and there is no telling yet
what the new attitude may involve in lessening the friction due to
primitive and obsolete tradition or in making society more reasonable
and civilized. The source of the change is undoubtedly an enthusiasm
which has been influenced by men and women of all nations. Ibsen has a
place in the history of social transformation. And besides, the contact
between nations has made it possible for the freer position of women in
one group to affect the domestic slavery of another.

In the position of children, also, an immense change is proceeding. We
cannot fail to call it social reform, that the child should be given so
much more definite a place in the social organism. Aristotle thought
woman was a mistake of nature's in the attempt to make man; and nearly
all philosophers have treated children as if they ought to be rather
ashamed of themselves for not being grown up. I speak of philosophers in
the wide sense of the term, for I do not think the metaphysicians knew
that there was such a thing as a child in the universe. However that may
be, we can hardly believe that as late as the nineteenth century parents
really imagined that they knew what was good for their children. In our
more sceptical age, children have generally to be careful not to allow
their parents to read certain books, and in every well brought up
family, it is thought that parents should be seen and not heard. A
social change has occurred in the comparative importance we assign to
childhood and age.

Thirdly, there is gradually coming about a transformation of social
castes. One must speak carefully; for in the West we are supposed not to
have castes. There is, however, an uncomfortable feeling that society is
not one, that the two cities which Plato said would divide and destroy
the true city of men are now established--the rich and the poor. I do
not mean those with £3,000 a year, and those with £160 a year. It is not
a question for the Exchequer. I mean that great numbers in all
'civilized' nations are ill-fed and ill-clothed from birth, and die
prematurely. To perceive it is to desire action which perhaps no state
can perform. But that we perceive it is something. Read the complacent
rhymes of Lord Tennyson about 'freedom slowly broadening down' and then
turn to contemporary literature, to Jean Richepin or John Galsworthy,
and you will acknowledge that a common ideal of social reform has come
into existence. We are at least restless in face of a social
organization which wastes humanity during long years of peace almost as
completely, though not so recklessly, as during a few months of war.

Something has been already done--English writers and English experience
have given a motive power to Hungarian, Russian, Finnish, Turkish,
Persian, and Indian democracy. Groups of men have claimed, for example
in South America, their right to free development. And everywhere during
the period of European peace the contact between nations was teaching
every nation the force of its own character, while the new complexities
of society were weakening the old dividing lines of caste between
individuals.

In all these matters we seem to be moved by a desire for a freer social
atmosphere. Whether law or administration changes or not, it is clear
that most European nations have undergone in the years of peace from
1871 to 1914 considerable social changes. How far they are effective in
all nations and in all classes it is very difficult for a contemporary
to judge. It may be that the social structure of the decorative upper
fringe or of the bedraggled hem of society is much the same as it was
before communication was easy and transit rapid. But the central body
of European society is certainly changed; and, after all, between the
scum and the dregs is the good soup.

       *       *       *       *       *

Such are the changes which have been introduced into social life owing
to the interdependence of nations. But we should not understand what has
happened if we accepted the mere record of achievements. The future is
built not only upon what we have done, but upon what we hope to do.
Reforms accomplished do not make us more satisfied to endure evil not
yet reformed--for always working in the achieved present is the ideal
which transformed the past into what we now see.

We may turn, then, to consider some general features of the force
working in social reform which is not yet achieved. And for that purpose
we put aside established law and custom to consider the implied
attitude.

Now that political privilege and inequality before the law are more or
less removed, there is a greater concentration upon the underlying
social injustice. We all accept it as good that the activities of
government should not be for the benefit of the few, or that the money
should not be drawn from one class. We suppose at least that there
should be one law for rich and poor.

To any one with a knowledge of history this seems an immense step since
small classes in every nation held political privilege, made law for
others, and forced tribute from the majority. Not that all is justice
and liberty. The law still, with noble impartiality, forbids both the
millionaire and the pauper to steal bread. Of course it is not directed
against the poor. The law never forbids the poor man to cheat the state
out of more than £3,000 a year. Again, political power still depends on
the social position of your cousins and your aunts. But something has
been done.

We hear much more nowadays about social than about political or legal
reform. That, in itself, is a sign of a change of attitude. In the
revolution of 1381 the crowds came marching to London swearing, in the
words of the old chronicle, that there would be no peace in the land
till each and every lawyer was slain. In the revolutions of 1830 and
1848 it was 'death to the politicians'. Now--it may be that we despair
of lawyers or politicians, dead or alive. In any case the attention of
those in every state who are moved by enthusiasm for a better society is
concentrated less upon votes and laws than upon the distribution of
well-being.

Secondly, there has been a transference of enthusiasm of the religious
or poetic kind from the sphere of contemplation or aloofness to that of
earthly and even material action. Ideals of social reform do not any
longer involve a neglect of food and clothing: we are all more and more
convinced that it is idle to preach culture to a starving man, or to
talk of liberty to one whose whole life is a bestial struggle for bare
food and covering. I speak of normal times. In England, France, and
Germany, social betterment means giving to a greater number security of
bare life, upon which alone the good life can be built.

It will be seen that I imply a disagreement with the Tolstoian
conception of reform; in so far as that involves a neglect of food and
clothing and generally of what are called material goods. That
conception is not perhaps powerful among those who deal with what is
usually called social reform. It is not 'modern', and it is also
dependent upon a mistaken argument in ethical theory. An unfortunate
confusion made by what is called Eastern, Stoic, or Mediaeval asceticism
led to the idea that because the mind is more important than the body,
the body has no importance at all. But we need not deal with this theory
in detail, especially as the general attitude of to-day is opposed to
it. There is undoubtedly a concentration upon the bare necessities of
human life with a view to discovering how these can be shared more
generally.

We are fully aware of the immense social danger in the desire for
riches; but that is no objection to the desire for bread and clothing
and the bare necessities of human life. And the seemingly materialistic
enthusiasm which will gradually transform our semi-bestial civilization
is no less poetic or religious than any Eastern aloofness or Tolstoian
simplicity. Poetry is not all rhyming couplets: religion is not all for
the intellectually or artistically incompetent. So, a world in which
twenty per cent. of humanity did not slowly starve to death would not
necessarily be less worthy of admiration. Nor would religion disappear
if every one were healthy, unless religion means the result of
neurasthenia or dyspepsia or premature ageing. No doubt there is some
exaggeration in this element of the common social ideals. Not even a
poor man lives on bread alone; and it is indeed possible to have a
perfectly well-fed society which would be quite barbarous. But we must
regard the fine flower of culture as purchased at too high a price if,
for the sake of a few connoisseurs and courtiers not to say bourgeois
plutocrats, the majority in every nation must lack a bare human life.
Some declare that the division between nations is more important than
that between the rich and the poor. It may be so; but the only reason
must be that what the few have, the many, however dimly, may hope to
share or may be induced to think they do share. Humanity is infinitely
gullible. But in every nation there is rising a murmur which may yet
become an articulate cry.

The writers of modern Utopias in their detailed conception of what is
desirable may speak only for themselves; but it is a sign of the common
enthusiasm that they all attach so much importance to organization and
to physical health. This indicates that we all, in every nation, look
forward, however vaguely, to a society in which human life shall be less
difficult for the majority to obtain. We speak sometimes of the
redistribution of leisure--August Bebel made it one of the chief
articles of his creed. But this as an ideal does not indicate any desire
that the dock-labourer should have time to loaf in a club, or his wife
time to play bridge, except in so far as time to loaf is an opportunity
for some other employment than the mere struggle for food. There is
nothing inevitable in a situation which makes the development of most of
the human faculties a privilege of a few and an impossibility for the
greater number. Nor is it correct to suppose that the half-starved and
the ill-clothed should be satisfied with being 'virtuous', and leave it
to others, possibly wicked and certainly far from simple, to cultivate
art and science.

Nor again is it absurd to hope for a world in which all should have at
least the opportunity for the development of any faculties they may
possess. The social gain would be immense. It would be like the change
from a harmony which is produced by a few amateurs to one of a full
orchestra.

Thirdly, it is increasingly evident that no one state or nation can act
effectively in social reform unless it acts in concert with others.
Treaties of commerce, common prison legislation, and common measures for
sanitation and medicine have proved effective because they are in the
nature of things. They are necessary means for the desired prosperity
even of the most selfish and segregated state.

But ignorance and prejudice and irrational violence spread as easily as
disease or crime. Knowledge is not secure until it is widespread; and
civilization perishes, which is segregated in a world of barbarism.
Therefore education also, in its widest sense, must be contrived in
common. Not merely school systems influenced by foreign ideas, but the
very atmosphere of thought must change in harmony among all nations, if
we are not to go toppling down into the abyss from which by painful
centuries we have ascended.

       *       *       *       *       *

This ideal of social reform then seems to be agreed upon between some
men of all nations, that more common action should be taken. It is not a
vague sentiment for the abolition of conflict between states; nor is it
a pious aspiration for peace. It is the clear perception that the state
cannot fulfil its functions in modern life if it continues to act as
isolated or segregated. That for which the state itself stands cannot be
attained even within the frontiers of one state by any state acting
alone.

This is not the place to distinguish those subjects upon which states
should act together from those on which they should act separately. That
is simply the problem as to the limits of political regionalism. The
fact which is sufficient for our argument here is that certain forces,
chiefly economic, have come into existence in recent years, which
disregard state boundaries. In concrete terms, these are international
trusts and international labour interests. But it is increasingly
evident that these cannot be effectively dealt with by any one state
acting separately. The isolated sovereign state of earlier times is
simply helpless before the elaborate world-system of economics; and
control can only be secured by an established world-system of politics.
The states, one supposes, exist for justice and liberty. Divided, they
will perish or become mere playthings in the hands of non-moral economic
'interests'.

To save itself and all it stands for, the state must cease to pose as a
possible opponent to any other state, and must deliberately co-operate
in an increasing number of reforms.

It is better to put into the coldest terms a conception which has too
often hitherto proved futile, because it arose rather from vague
discontent, than from the perception of a definite evil. The fire of
enthusiasm must indeed work upon that conception before any effective
change can be made in the attitude of governments or of peoples. But
enthusiasm will be wasted if we cannot pause to see against what we are
contending.

We are struggling with the greatest of all obstacles to social reform
when we attack the isolation of nations. Unless that is overcome we
shall perhaps patch and prop; but, time and again, we shall be enslaved
to the immensely powerful non-moral forces, in the midst of which
humanity finds its way. I cannot speak more clearly--[Greek: bous epi
glôssê]. The nations face each other in conflict, while death, disease,
violence, bestial indolence and docility corrode every state.

       *       *       *       *       *

But when war was at its brutish worst Grotius spoke with effect of a
moral bond which survived between men who in physical conflict had been
trying to take their 'enemies' for beasts and stones. And humanity began
once more its long struggle with the beast in man. So now--I leave it to
your imagination.

We have made immense progress by assisting each other across the
frontiers of states in such science as may provide high explosive and
submarine warfare. In these the nations have co-operated. The guns which
kill the English at the Dardanelles were made by Englishmen. There may
yet come a time when high explosives will be out of date, and the state
will use the careful dissemination of disease among its enemies. The
only reason, I think, why it is not now done, is that no group can be
certain of making itself immune from the disease it may spread among
its enemies.

       *       *       *       *       *

Our conclusion, therefore, is that one of the elements in the present
attitude towards social reform is a tendency to co-operation between
nations. We have seen that this has already had effect in various
details of law and administration; and there is every reason to suppose
that the method will be carried further.

But the problem cannot be left there. Co-operation as a word is a mere
charm, like Evolution. There has been, and there may be co-operation in
doing wrong. That action has become common does not prove that it is
right; and an ideal implies at least some ethical judgement. Therefore,
in every nation there are some few who are convinced of the necessity
for more deliberately moral action in common between men of different
races. If there can be so much co-operation in the making of armaments
or the defrauding of shareholders, there may yet be more co-operation in
the elimination of disease and poverty. And not only may there be such
co-operation, but it must be. The situation no longer exists in which
most of the effects of an evil régime are confined within frontiers. The
social distress of European nations must be dealt with as a whole
because it is a whole. Therefore whatever militates against the unity of
western civilization destroys the possibility of social reform.

Many times before it has been seen that there are nobler conflicts than
the struggle for markets or for the political domination of one clique
or one nation. Many times before it has been felt, at least by a few,
that man is deceived when he imagines that man is his enemy. And many
times when the deliverance seemed near we have been enslaved again by an
evil magic. A hundred years ago, at the end of the Napoleonic wars, the
dreamers imagined that humanity would have done with its false prophets
and lay the ghosts which have haunted it since it began to shake off the
manners of the beasts. But a dismal succession of new falsehoods and new
blind guides appeared. And now, in this so advanced age, we have to face
the same possibility. There is much to excuse a despair; from which
nothing can free us but a new enthusiasm. The evil magic must be
overcome by magic of another kind, and how acute the crisis seems it is
hardly possible to indicate.

The quality of our age was its expectancy. For that reason men of every
nation were moved to desire a transformed society. But perhaps that
quality of expectancy was the quality of youth. For the first time in
history, in the early twentieth century, age was giving place to youth
in the political equilibrium of the generations. Now--I dare not speak
too plainly. The young men of the western world are already, since
August 1914, noticeably fewer. Death may have made no difference to
them. It has made an immense difference to the future. It means that the
eager expectancy of youth, which is the source of so much enthusiasm for
a better world, is being lost. The crisis is here. As yet the common
ideals of civilized nations still survive; but the desire for a better
future is at ebb and flow with a tired acquiescence in the established
order. It is in our hands to decide which shall overcome. No generation
has faced a greater issue. We cannot tell what will be the outcome; but
to hope too much is at least a more generous fault than to despair too
soon.


BOOKS FOR REFERENCE

C.D. Burns, _Political Ideals_. Clarendon Press.

P. Geddes, _Cities in Evolution_. Williams & Norgate.

J.A. Hobson, _Towards International Government_. Allen & Unwin.

P.S. Reinsch, _Public International Unions_. Ginn & Co.




XII

POLITICAL BASES OF A WORLD-STATE


World-state is a term likely to be offensive in its arrogance, if it be
taken to mean the substitution of a single political community and
government for the numerous separate national states which have hitherto
existed. I therefore hasten to say that I intend no such meaning, but
use the term as a convenient expression to cover any body of political
arrangements, to which most of the principal nations of the world are
parties, sufficiently stable in character and wide in scope to merit the
title of international government.

Towards such a possibility the nineteenth century has made three great
contributions. During that century great advances have been made in the
settlement of political government upon a basis of nationality. This
process has been accomplished partly by throwing off the dominion of
some foreign power, as in the case of Belgium, Greece, Montenegro,
Bulgaria, Rumania, and Serbia, and the South American colonies of Spain;
partly by the closer federal union of independent states, as in the case
of Germany and Switzerland; partly by a blend of the two methods as in
the case of Italy; and partly by the peaceful dissolution of an
unnatural union, as with Norway and Sweden. Though much still remains to
be done before the identification of statehood with nationality even for
Europe is completed, and some backward steps have been taken, the
growing acceptance of the conception of nationality as a just and
expedient basis of government is a powerful guarantee for the
persistence of this joint work of liberation and of union. If, as the
result of the settlement following this war, political readjustments are
made which fairly satisfy the remaining aspirations after national
autonomy, the more pacific atmosphere will favour all opportunities for
co-operation between nations.

The second contribution of the nineteenth century towards political
internationalism is of a more positive character. It consists in a
series of inchoate and fragmentary but genuine attempts of the Great
Powers to work together upon critical occasions in the interests of
'justice and order', as they understood those terms, and to embody in
acts or conventions some policy which is the result of their
deliberations. This flickering light, called the Concert of Europe,
first kindled at the Congress of Vienna, has reappeared fitfully
throughout the century. The treaties, declarations, and conventions,
proceeding from these conferences or congresses of the Powers, have
marked important advances, not only in the substance of international
law, but in the method of legislation. For whereas, before the Congress
of Vienna, all the treaties between states which helped to form the body
of international law were the acts of two or, at the most, a small group
of states, since that time law-making treaties of general application
and of world-wide importance have come into being. The most noteworthy
examples of these general treaties are the Final Act of the Vienna
Congress in 1815, the Declaration of Paris in 1856, the Geneva
Convention of 1864, the Treaty of Berlin in 1878, the General Act of the
Congo Conference in 1885, and the two Hague Conferences of 1899 and
1907. Having regard to the general character of many of the rules laid
down at these conferences, as, for instance, the abolition of the slave
trade, the neutralization of certain lands and waters, and the
regulation of the rules of war, it is clear that we have to recognize
throughout last century the existence of a rudimentary organ of
international legislation, very irregular in its operation, very
imperfect in structure and authority, but none the less a genuine
experiment in international government.

Hardly less significant for our purpose has been the prominent assertion
of the principle of federalism in the formation or growth of national
government. The great example of the United States has been followed by
Switzerland and Germany, by Mexico, Argentine, Brazil, and Venezuela,
and by the dominions of the British Empire in Canada, Australia, and
South Africa. I must not in this brief survey even touch upon the
different forms of federalism. It must suffice to remark that, whether
as a a principle of devolution, as in the case of the proposal of Home
Rule for the constituent parts of Great Britain, or as a principle of
closer union, as in the proposal for a federated British Empire,
federalism is very much alive. It furnishes a hopeful mode not only for
reconciling demands for local autonomy with effective central
sovereignty among the provinces or districts of a single national state,
but even for harmonizing the claims of separate nationality with those
of wider racial, linguistic, and traditional sympathy. But even more
important than these distinctively political movements and events, as a
pledge of the coming world-state, is the manifold structure of
industrial and commercial internationalism which has been growing during
the last few generations at an ever accelerating pace. The network of
material, financial, and intellectual communications, connecting all
parts of the developed world, and establishing quick, constant, cheap,
and reliable modes of transport for men, goods, money, and information,
form the actual basis of what may not improperly be called an economic
world-state. Though much of this machinery, with the great work of
international trade and capitalistic co-operation which it assists to
perform, lies outside the sphere of politics, there are innumerable
points of political contact and pressure. The realities of foreign
policy in every state are more and more concerned with issues of trade,
communications, and concessions, and the treaties and other formal
arrangements between states are to a growing extent the instruments and
the expressions of the internationalism of economic interests. The
imperialism and the colonial policy of each great Power, though composed
of various ingredients, are mainly directed by commerce and finance.
Most of the disagreements and conflicts between governments relate to
interferences with the free play of economic internationalism by states
whose policy is still dominated by foolish and obsolescent rules of a
narrowly national economy. An enlightened interpretation of the needs
and interests of modern man demands that all such national economic
barriers be removed and replaced by governmental co-operation to secure,
by free trade and an open door, for capital and labour the fullest and
best development and distribution of the economic resources of the
world.

While, therefore, the most impressive political events of the nineteenth
century have been the expression and the successful realization of
nationalism, many powerful undercurrents of internationalism have been
gathering force. The pressures of civilization have been more and more
towards extra-national activities. Thoughtful men and women in our time
recognize the urgent need of closer international communion for three
related purposes: First, the consolidation, extension, and effective
sanction of the existing body of international law; secondly, the
establishment of peace on a basis of reliable methods for the just
settlement of differences; thirdly, the provision of regular accepted
means for the co-operation of nations in all sorts of positive
constructive work for the human commonwealth.

These general considerations I will ask you to regard as introductory
to the grave practical question which confronts us. Is this essential
work of internationalism consistent with the preservation of the
sovereignty and independence of the present national state, or does its
performance involve some definite cession of these national state-rights
to the requirements of an international government?

The terrible events which are passing to-day ripen and sharpen this
issue. They bring into powerful relief the inherent defects of an
international polity based upon the absolute independence of the several
states, and the futile mechanical balances and readjustments by which
foreign policy has been conducted hitherto. But how far do they offer
assistance or security for the achievement of organic reform? After this
war has come to a close, will the nations and governments be enabled to
lay a sound basis for pacific settlement of disputes and for active
co-operation in the common cause of humanity for the future? No
confident answer to this question is possible. For nobody can predict
the composition and the relative strength of the feelings and ideas
which will constitute 'the state of mind' of the several nations and
their statesmen. As regards immediate or early policy, much will, of
course, depend upon the definiteness of the victory and defeat, and the
consequent distribution and intensity of the passions of elation and
depression, anger and revenge, which peace may leave behind. It is, of
course, part of the fighting strength of every belligerent to persuade
himself that an overwhelming victory for himself affords the best
security of peace and progress in the future. But this conclusion, based
on the prior assumption, equally liable to error, that one's own cause
is entirely right and one's enemy's entirely wrong, is unlikely to be
sound. A peace which brings the least intensity of triumph and
humiliation, the most even distribution of gains and losses, would seem
to give an atmosphere most favourable to the growth of pacific
internationalism. This, of course, will be sharply contested, and those
who contest it will exhibit the usual excessive confidence of those
whose mind moves in a shut oven of heated but unmeaning phrases about
fighting to a finish, crushing German militarism, and 'a war to end
war'. But there is no stronger evidence of the intellectual and moral
havoc of war than the easy acceptance of what Ruskin called 'masked
words' in lieu of thinking.

"There are masked words abroad, I say, which nobody understands, but
which everybody uses, and most people will also fight for, live for, or
even die for, fancying they mean this or that or other of the things
dear to them. There were never creatures of prey so mischievous, never
diplomatists so cunning, never poisoners so deadly, as these masked
words; they are the unjust stewards of all men's ideas; whatever fancy
or favourite instinct a man most cherishes, he gives to his favourite
masked word to take care of for him; the word at last comes to have an
infinite power over him--you cannot get at him but by its ministry." In
war-time this domination of 'masked words' is all-powerful, and is
likely to leave the thinking powers of all Europe seriously impaired
when the war is over.

There are those who hold that sheer exhaustion, nervous and economic,
will compel the nations to seek concerted action against the recurrence
of so shattering an experience, that some sheer instinct of
self-preservation will find expression in adequate political
arrangements. I should be the last to deny the reality of the collective
instinct. But remember that, as an instinct, it works blindly, and is
liable to be diverted and frustrated in a thousand ways by the
conflicting streams of narrow passion amongst which it moves. Mere
exhaustion and a general feeling of insecurity cannot yield a
sufficient motive and directing force for the work of international
construction. It is necessary to rationalize this instinct of
self-preservation and co-operation, in order to make it of effective
service. Here lies the heart of our difficulty. War is the most
intensely derationalizing process, and the long steeping of European
civilization in the boiling cauldron will have twisted and blunted the
very instruments of thought. As Professor Murray points out in a
powerful essay, war rapidly undoes the slow secular process by which
liberty and capacity for individual thought have grown up, and plunges
the personal judgement into the common trough of the herd-mind. It is, I
take it, the recognition of this peril to the human mind, this necessity
of safeguarding the powers of individual thought and personal
responsibility, that brings us here. We seek to fortify the separate
centres of personal judgement, to inform the individual mind, because
the work of making a positive contribution to the unity of civilization
depends upon the vigorous independent functioning of many minds.

This consideration brings me directly to confront the enemy, that is to
say, those who contend that a world-state or any real international
government is now and must always remain an impossibility, an
unrealizable Utopian dream. The process of social evolution on its
political side ends with the national state. It is a final product.
National states cannot, will not, and ought not, to abate one jot or
tittle of their inherent sovereignty and independence, and the
experience of history shows that all attempts at international
federation or union are pre-doomed to failure.

It is evidently quite impossible for me to present here a full formal
refutation of these positions. I will therefore content myself with
brief demurrers. To the argument from social evolution I would reply
that evolution knows no finality of type, and that the presumption lies
in favour of those who hold that the centripetal or co-operative powers,
which have forged the national state out of the smaller social unities,
are not exhausted, but are capable of carrying the organizing process
further. To those who rely upon the authority of history, citing the
collapse of the experiments in federation which followed the Congress of
Vienna as proof that similar experiments will similarly fail to-day or
to-morrow, I reply that this view is based on a false interpretation of
the statement that 'history repeats itself'. A psychological or
sociological experiment is not the same when fundamental changes have
taken place in the psychical and social conditions. We have already
recognized that the nineteenth century has seen a series of vital
changes in the economic and spiritual structure of civilization. The
evidence of 1815 cannot, therefore, be conclusive as regards the
possibilities of 1915. To those who insist on the sovereignty and
independence of the national state as an eternal verity, I will make no
further reply than to say that such language has for me no more meaning
than talk of 'the divine right of kings', 'the natural rights of man',
or any other phrase of the abracadabra of metaphysical politics. The
actual world in which we live knows no such absolutes. Sovereignty and
independence, like all other legal claims, are subject to modification
and compromise. Every bargain made by treaty or agreement with another
state, every acceptance of international law or custom, involves some
real diminution of sovereign independence, unless indeed the liberty to
break all treaties and to violate all laws is expressly reserved as an
inalienable right of nations. Moreover, within the limits of a single
nation, sovereignty is itself divided and distributed. Alike in the
United States of America, the Swiss Republic, and the German Empire, the
constituent states as well as the nations are recognized as sovereign,
possessing certain rights or powers safeguarded by the constitution
against all encroachments of the central or federal government. So again
within the state itself, the sovereignty is often no longer concentrated
in a single person or a single body of persons, but is exercised by the
joint action of several organs, as in Great Britain, where the king and
the Houses of Parliament are the joint administrators of the sovereignty
of the state. Sovereignty thus becomes more and more a question of
degree and of adjustment. International lawyers will doubtless insist
that neither treaties nor international laws involve any derogation of
sovereign powers. But when the substantial liberties of action are
curtailed by any binding agreement, the unimpaired sovereignty is an
idle abstraction.

When, therefore, we ask whether it is not possible to extend and
consolidate the agreements between so-called sovereign states into some
form of effective international government, we broach a proposition less
revolutionary in substance than in sound. If all the separate treaties,
conventions, and other agreements, existing now between pairs of nations
for the performance of specific acts and the settlement of differences,
were modified and gathered into the forms of general treaties signed by
all the treaty-making states; if all international laws and usages were
codified and brought under the surveillance of some single
representative court or council,--we should discover that there existed
already the substance of an international government, not indeed
adequate to our needs, but far ampler than we had suspected. In the
Hague conventions and courts, again, and in certain other
intergovernmental instruments, such as the Postal and Telegraphic
Bureaux at Berne, we already possess the nucleus of the general forms
required. We possess already the beginnings alike of the legislative,
judicial, and administrative apparatus of international government. But
it is slight in substance, fragmentary in its application, and
exceedingly imperfect in its sanctions. Moreover, it has just shown
itself quite inadequate to perform the first function of a government,
viz. to keep the public peace.

The task of converting so feeble a structure of government into an
effective instrument of international peace and progress is evidently
one of great magnitude and difficulty. But it is the task which lies
persistently before us, and upon its performance the safety of
civilization itself depends. It is, therefore, well not to exaggerate
its difficulties, but to measure them as closely as we can. This can
best be done by means of a brief survey of the principal lines of
advance which have been proposed. In this country, in America, in
Holland, and elsewhere, the air is thickening with schemes for obtaining
better international relations after the war. All of them have this, I
think, in common, that they concern themselves primarily not with ideal
or practical plans for the general co-operation of nations in advancing
the welfare of the world, but with methods of preventing future wars and
securing relief against the burden of armaments. All agree that some
general formal arrangements between nations must be substituted for 'the
clash of competing ambitions, of groupings and alliances and a
precarious equipoise', and that only by such stable agreement can
disarmament be got and peace rendered secure. All agree that the
instrument of this international government must be a general treaty to
which a number of states must be parties and that the terms of this
treaty must require them to submit all forms of disputes to some pacific
mode of settlement. Nearly all, moreover, accept the distinction drawn
between justiciable issues, relating to the application or
interpretation of laws or to the ascertainment of facts by means of
legal evidence, which are suitable for settlement by a judicial or
arbitral process, and those which, not being capable of such settlement,
are better suited for a looser process of inquiry and conciliation.

But the proposals differ widely, both as regards the scope they assign
to the work of preventing war, and as regards the measures they advocate
for securing the fulfilment of international agreement. They may be
grouped, I think, in three classes on an ascending scale of rigour. The
first class envisages a general treaty, by which the signatory states
shall undertake to submit all differences between them to processes of
arbitration or conciliation conducted by impartial courts or
commissions, and to abstain from all acts of hostility during the
progress of such investigation. This principle has recently found an
important expression in the treaties signed last year by the United
States with Great Britain and France, and other nations. The first
article of these treaties reads as follows: 'The High Contracting
Parties agree that all disputes between them, of every nature
whatsoever, other than disputes the settlement of which is provided for,
and in fact achieved, under existing agreements between the High
Contracting Parties, shall, when diplomatic methods of adjustment have
failed, be referred for investigation and report to a Permanent
International Commission to be constituted in the manner prescribed in
the next succeeding article; and they agree not to declare war or begin
hostilities during such investigation and before the report is
submitted.' The objects of this method of pacific settlement are three:
first, to provide impartial and responsible bodies for a reasonable
inquiry into all disputes; secondly, to secure a 'cooling off' time for
the heated feelings of the contestants; thirdly, to inform the public
opinion of the world and to make effective its moral pressure for a
sound pacific settlement.

The efficacy of any such arrangement evidently depends upon two
conditions, first, the confidence of the signatory states that each and
all will abide by their undertaking, and, secondly, the uncovenanted
condition that they will accept and carry into effect the awards or
recommendations of the arbitral and conciliation commissions. These
proposals, however, furnish no sanctions or guarantees other than those
of conscience and public opinion for the due performance of the treaty
obligations, and make no attempt to bind the parties to an acceptance of
the decision of the commissions. Moreover, regarded as a means of
securing world-peace and disarmament, all such proposals appear
defective in that they make no provision for disputes between one or
more of the signatory states and outside states which are no parties to
the arrangement.

Such considerations have moved many to seek to strengthen the bond of
the alliance, and to make it available for mutual support against
outside aggression. The vital issue here is one of sanctions or the use
of joint force, diplomatic, economic, or military, to compel the
fulfilment of treaty obligations and the execution of the awards. Many
hold that, while most civilized states might be relied upon to carry out
their undertakings, some powerful state--Germany, or Russia, or
Japan--could not be trusted, and that this want of confidence would
oblige all nations to maintain large armaments with all their attendant
risks and burdens. To obviate this difficulty, it is proposed by some
that the signatories shall pledge themselves to take joint action,
diplomatic, economic, or forcible, against any of their members who, in
defiance of the treaty obligations, makes or proposes an armed attack
upon another member. This is the measure of stiffening added by Mr.
Lowes Dickinson in his constructive pamphlet _After the War_: 'The
Powers entering into the arrangement' are to 'pledge themselves to
assist, if necessary, by their national forces, any member of the League
who should be attacked before the dispute provoking the attack has been
submitted to arbitration or conciliation.' A state, however, by Mr.
Dickinson's scheme, is still to remain at liberty to refuse an award,
and after the prescribed period, even to make war for the enforcement of
its demands. Other peace-leaguers go somewhat further, assigning to the
league an obligation to use economic or forcible pressure for securing
the acceptance of the award of the Court of Arbitration, though leaving
the acceptance of the recommendations of the Conciliation Court to the
free option of the parties. This is the proposal made by Mr. Raymond
Unwin, and by the League of Peace.

Now a definite halt at this position is intelligible and defensible.
While binding by strict sanctions the States to submit all disputes to
the pacific machinery that is provided, to await the conclusion of the
arbitral and conciliatory processes, and even to accept the legal awards
of arbitration, it leaves a complete formal freedom to refuse the
recommendations of the Commission of Conciliation. Yet it must be borne
in mind that most of the really dangerous disputes, involving likelihood
of war, are not arbitrable in their nature, and will come before the
Commission of Conciliation. If no provision is made for enforcing the
acceptance of the recommendations of this body, what measure of real
security for peace has been attained? An incendiary torch, like that
kindled last year in the Balkans, may once again put Europe in flames.
The defenders of the position we are now considering have three replies.
They admit that their proposal still leaves open the possibility of war,
but they contend that if a sufficient cooling-off time or 'moratorium'
is secured, the likelihood of an ultimate recourse to war by rejection
of the award will be reduced to a minimum. They urge that no scheme
which can be devised will preclude the possibility of a strong criminal
or reckless State violating its treaty obligations and seeking to
enforce its will by force. Finally they urge that many self-respecting
States would refuse to abandon the ultimate right of declaring war, in
cases where they deemed their vital interests were affected, and that
any invitation to take this step might wreck the possibility of a less
complete but very valuable arrangement.

Now it would be a considerable advance towards world government, if all
or most powerful States would consent to abandon separate alliances, or
subordinate them to a general alliance binding them to submit all
disputes to a process of impartial inquiry before attempting to enforce
their national will by arms. It may be that this is as far as it is
possible to go in the direction of securing world-peace and
international co-operation in the early future. If States will not carry
their co-operation so far as to agree upon united action to put down all
wars between their members, and to take a united stand against all
attacks from outside, it would be necessary to respect their scruples,
and to rely upon the softening influence of the moratorium and informed
public opinion to render a final recourse to arms unlikely among
civilized States. But, in considering the measure of security thus
achieved, we must remember that we must look to the weakest link in the
chain of the alliance, and ask ourselves how far the plan of
conciliation represented in the recent treaties between the United
States and several friendly European nations can be considered equally
secure in dealing with Germany, Russia, or Japan. If our international
arrangement is to dispense with all forcible pressure in the last
resort, and to rely upon purely moral pressure, it seems evident that
the validity of the arrangement depends upon the degree of confidence
which other States will entertain as to the bona fides and pacific
disposition of the least scrupulous of the powerful signatory States.
For if the opinion held of any one or two powerful States is that under
the stimulus of greed or ambition they would be likely, in defiance of
an award or of the public opinion of other States, to enforce their will
upon some weaker neighbour, such an opinion will keep alive so strong a
feeling of insecurity that no considerable reduction of military
preparations will be possible.

In assessing the early value of all proposals for better international
relations, the best practical test is afforded by the question, 'Will
the proposal lead nations to reduce their armaments?' For it will be
admitted that any settlement or international agreement, which leaves
the claims of militarism and navalism upon the vital and financial
resources of the several nations unimpaired, affords little hope of a
pacific future. A return to the era of competing armaments will destroy
the moral strength of any formal international agreements, however
specious. The importance of this consideration has led many to insist
that an explicit agreement for proportional disarmament should take a
prominent place in any settlement. This proposal, however, seems to me
defective in that it presumes in all or some of the nations a
persistence of the motives which have hitherto led them to strengthen
their fighting forces. Now the primary object of such international
arrangements as we are discussing, is to bring about a state of things
in which the past motives to arm will weaken and tend to disappear. If
nations, actuated either by arrogance or greed or fear, continue to
desire to increase their fighting strength, no arrangements for
proportionate disarmament are likely to be effective. On the other hand,
if the basis of a really valid league or federation can be laid,
precluding the most ambitious State from any reasonable hope of
indulging dreams of successful conquest, while relieving timid States
from the apprehensions under which they have lived hitherto, the natural
play of political forces within each State will favour disarmament. An
international arrangement that meets our requirements must be strong
enough to reverse the motives, aggressive and defensive, which in the
past have caused nations to arm. Nations will not pile up armaments if
they believe that they will have no need or opportunity to use them. To
produce this belief in the uselessness of national armies and navies is
therefore a prime object of international policy. The successful
establishment of this belief involves, however, a change of disposition
among national governments amounting to the process known in religious
circles as conversion. They must be induced to forgo that right of war
which according to past statecraft has been the brightest jewel in the
crown of sovereignty.

Thus we are again brought round to our vital issue, that of the amount
and kind of cession of sovereignty required for an effective
International Government. It may be the case that it will be impossible
to induce a sufficient number of the great States to transfer the
ultimate right of waging war to a representative International
Government, or to cede to such a Government the right to legislate on
international relations with power to enforce obedience to these laws.
There are, however, many of us who hold that these powers are essential
to an international arrangement which shall effectively guarantee the
peace of the world. The abandonment of the sovereign right to make war
is essential for the future security of peace. Legislative and executive
powers for an International Government are essential to obtain by
pacific means those changes in the political and economic relations of
peoples which hitherto have only been attainable by war. No merely
statical settlement will suffice. Great new issues of national
controversy or of economic needs will certainly come up afresh for
settlement, and until some stable method of government is established
with power to determine and enforce the equities and the utilities they
represent, recourse to the arbitrament of war will still be likely.

But granting that national government does not represent a final form of
political structure, and that some federal internationalism is now
practicable, is it possible to hope or to expect that by a single
stride, or by a series of rapid strides, the sovereignty of national
states will submit to so much diminution as is involved in the more
advanced scheme of international government? Most historians, statesmen,
and political philosophers will, I think, hold that so large and rapid a
process of development is impracticable, however desirable in theory it
might be. It will be necessary, they insist, to take one step at a time,
to preserve as closely as possible the principle of continuity, and not
to attempt to move further and faster than circumstances and the
necessities of the time compel.

But do circumstances and necessities always compel us to move slowly and
to take one step at a time? Though normal growth is slow and continuous,
modern science tends to lay increasing stress upon discontinuous and
sudden larger variations in the production of organic changes. Biology
distinguishes these mutations by which new species arise from the normal
process of evolution by insensible gradations. There is, as I understand
it, no real breach of continuity, no miraculous creation, but a sudden
removal from a structural position which by slow accumulation of prior
changes had become unstable, or to a new position of stability,
involving a swift readjustment of organic parts. May not similarly
important mutations occur in the evolution of political institutions,
when a similar stress of circumstances makes itself felt? Nay, we may
further ask, whether the special function of man's reasonable will is
not to bring about these changes in the direction of individual and
collective conduct. The power of making new quick and complex
adaptations to new environments is the essential economy of the human
brain. Freedom of thought and of will are continually producing new
judgements and new determinations for action which contain this quality
of sudden mutation. Quick conversions of thought and will are of the
essence of our conscious life. When they carry important consequences to
our conduct they appear to be, and in fact are, breaches of the normal
conduct of our life which proceeds by custom, repetition, and insensible
modifications.

In politics, as in religion, sudden conversions under the stress of
circumstances are not unknown, and they may be genuine and lasting. And
what holds of individual wills and judgements holds also of the
collective mind. That human nature in its fundaments of thought and
feeling, its primary needs, desires and emotions, will not be
appreciably changed even by this shattering experience of war must be
conceded. But what we may call the general state of mind, or the moral
and intellectual atmosphere, will be profoundly affected. This will be
in part the result of the great economic and political disturbances
which are occurring, and which will have undermined and loosened the old
ideas and valuations in relation to such important institutions as
property, the control of industry, the activities of woman, the party
system, the State itself. But more profound still will be the direct
reaction of sorrow and suffering of war, the revelation of the power of
the organized destructiveness and cruelty, and of the inadequacy of
reason, justice, and goodwill as defences of civilization. The very
foundations of organized religion in the hearts of men will be shaken.
The patent failure of the State to perform its primary function of
safeguarding life and property is likely to feed currents of
revolutionism in every country. The sudden changes produced in the
balance of age and of sex by the destruction of so large a proportion
of the young and energetic men of every nation, will affect all
processes of thought and policy. Some of these changes will seem
favourable to conservatism, timidity, and reaction. Everywhere, at the
close of the war, military and official autocracy will be enthroned in
the seats of power, and the spirit of political authority will be
stoking the fires of fevered nationalism which war evokes. But other
forces will be making for bold political experiments. Not only the fear
of restive and impoverished workmen, who have recently acquired the use
of arms and perhaps the taste for risks, but the havoc wrought upon
industry and commerce, and above all the crushing burden of taxation,
will dispose the controlling and possessing classes to seek alternatives
to a return to the era of competing alliances and armaments. Mild and
conservative measures will be obviously unavailing. During the years of
exhaustion following the war, resolute leaders of public opinion will be
setting themselves everywhere to frame schemes of international
relations which shall yield adequate guarantees of peace. For the first
time in history great reading and thinking communities will give their
chief attention to international politics. They will recognize the
urgency of the work of building the society of nations upon a basis of
genuinely representative government. Behind this reasonable process of
constructive thinking, carried on in every country by politically
convinced individuals and groups, will be the powerful support of the
unthinking, suffering masses, motived by no clear conception of causes
or remedies, but by that collective instinct of self-preservation which
impels the herd to avoid destruction and to follow leaders who point the
way to safety.


BOOKS FOR REFERENCE

_The International Crisis in its Ethical and Psychological Aspects_.
Humphrey Milford.

G. Lowes Dickinson, _After the War_. Fifield.

C.E. Hooper, _The Wider Outlook beyond the World-War_. Watts & Co.

F.N. Keen, _The World in Alliance_. Southwood.

Norman Angell, _Prussianism and its Destruction_. Heinemann.

Allison Phillips, _The Confederation of Europe_. Longmans.

_The New Statesman_. Special Supplement. Suggestions for the Prevention
of War.

J.A. Hobson, _Towards International Government_. Allen & Unwin.




XIII

RELIGION AS A UNIFYING INFLUENCE IN WESTERN CIVILIZATION


The argument of these essays has been to prove that even now, in the
greatest armed conflict of the world, the term 'Christendom' is not
inapplicable to Europe. There is a real unity in Western civilization--a
unity due in large measure to the influence of religious faith and
organization. The mediaeval Church gave the Teutonic peoples of Northern
Europe, and the barbarians who overran the Roman Empire, their first
momentous introduction into the great inheritance formed by the uneasy
blending of Christian faith and literature with Greco-Roman
civilization. The spiritual achievements of Greek and Roman, Jew and
Christian have remained the common possessions of the West, the
foundation of what is still Christendom. In so far as it exists
Christendom witnesses to the formative power of a religious faith: in so
far as it remains a dream, we may suspect it demands the renewed impulse
of a faith enlightened and chastened by all the experience of the past.

If, however, we ask, Is there any likelihood that a common religious
faith and life will contribute to raise Western civilization to a yet
higher unity? modern as contrasted with mediaeval history seems at first
sight to demonstrate the futility of any such inquiry.

Since the Reformation, religion has made for division rather than
co-operation. The modern period of European history begins in
disruption. Not only was Europe rent by the conflict of Catholic and
Protestant, but the dream of an international reformed Church which at
one time floated before the mind of Cranmer was dissipated by the
strength of nationalism and the cleavage in the ranks of the reformers
themselves. In our own country, what is euphemistically termed the
Elizabethan Settlement proved to be the source of further dissension,
and reform appeared as the prolific mother of sects and schisms. The
Protestant Churches were organized on national and state lines. They
ceased to retain any international character in their constitution,
while international intercourse became a diminishing influence. The
Church of Rome in the conflict with Gallicanism found herself at grips
with the spirit of nationalism, and to-day the strength of national
feeling within Roman Catholicism hinders the Pope from exerting a moral
authority over sovereign states that would parallel the judicial
functions successfully asserted by Innocent III. No Christian Church
to-day so rises above the national states of Europe, as to control or
even adequately to criticize the claims of those states. The Churches no
longer serve to embody and express an European conscience.

The break-up of a common ecclesiastical organization was not perhaps the
most serious loss of unifying power which religion in the West suffered
at the time of the Reformation. If it be true that the Bible and the
Greek spirit are the great common factors of Western civilization, then
we must recognize that these two great influences tended to fall apart
and even to oppose each other in the sixteenth and seventeenth
centuries. The humanist element in the Reform-movement grew less and
less, while humanism itself became more definitely secular. The European
mind has ever since been conscious of a disturbing division between
religion and culture. A development of religion which should render to
Western civilization services comparable to those rendered by the
mediaeval Church demands not only a heightened international
consciousness among Christians, which shall be able to find organized
expression, but also some fresh synthesis of religion and culture, some
reunion of the spirit of Hellas, the Greek delight in beauty and faith
in reason, with the moral strength and religious insight of Hebrew
prophecy.

Those who are concerned for the future of our civilization will look
eagerly for signs of any such development in the religious life and
thought of our time. Do recent history and present experience discover
any influences at work which may yet restore a unifying power to
religion? Naturally any answer to such a question will be of a
subjective character. The personal equation cannot easily be eliminated;
we may be duped by our hopes or deceived by our fears. In the last
analysis we cannot safely predict the future of religion. We may,
however, take stock of our present situation, and survey its significant
elements, even if our value-judgements as to their relative importance
will inevitably vary.

While religious divisions have not vanished from the West, and indeed
show no prospect of immediate reconciliation, and while the formation of
new sects, of which the Christian Science Movement offers an example,
has not altogether ceased, there has been an admitted decline of the
dogmatic and sectarian tempers, and this decline has opened the way for
knitting up severed friendships. The revolt against the dogmatic
attitude of mind and even against religious dogma itself is widespread.
The sense of loss involved in the isolation of any sect, and the wish to
pass beyond the limits of any denominational tradition, are both
appreciably affecting the religious situation. In England Matthew
Arnold's somewhat unhappy criticism of Dissent expressed a dislike both
of dogma and sectarian narrowness. His profounder contribution to the
better understanding of St. Paul derives its worth precisely from his
elevation of the mystic and the saint in Paul at the expense of the
doctrinal theologian of Calvinist tradition. The wish to be rid of dogma
continues to find vigorous intellectual expression, of which Mr. Lowes
Dickinson's _Religion, a Criticism and a Forecast_, may be taken as an
example. In another direction the Brotherhood Movement and the Adult
School Movement represent the search, if not for an altogether
undogmatic faith, yet at least for a broader basis of association than
is compatible with the insistence on definite statements of belief. Both
would unite in the prayer

    God send us men whose aim will be
    Not to defend some outworn creed,

and some members of both entertain the suspicion that all creeds are
outworn.

This dislike of dogma may cloak an unwarranted scepticism as to the
possibility of reaching truth in religion, but it is symptomatic of the
longing for larger sympathy and broader fellowship. It is but the
extreme expression of a temper which has reduced the angularity of those
who are very far from surrendering or belittling definite beliefs and
doctrines. The denominationalist who used to have no hesitation in
claiming a monopoly of the truth for his particular Church, now falters
where he firmly stood. We are more ready to recognize our limitations. A
growing number of thoughtful minds appreciate Lord Acton's position when
he wrote to Mary Gladstone: 'I scarcely venture to make points against
the religion of other people, from a curious experience that they have
more to say than I know, and from a sense that it is safer to reserve
censure for one's own which one understands more intimately, having a
share in responsibility and action.' This more chastened mood opens the
way to fresh understandings in the religious world. Whence does this
change in atmosphere originate?

In tracing out the causes of this new temper in religion, a first place
may legitimately be assigned to the growth of the scientific spirit. In
considering science as a source of unity, it is a mistake to dwell
exclusively on the creation of a body of common knowledge. To know the
same thing may do little to unite men. To attack problems in the same
way, and to share the same spirit of free inquiry, the same reverence
for fact, the same resolute endeavour to surmount prejudice, issue in a
far closer bond of union. Science unites men even more closely by its
spirit than by its achievement. The application of scientific method to
the literary and historical study of the Bible, as well as in the
psychological analysis of religious experience, has called into being in
every Church and every land, groups of people who approach the
subject-matter of their faith from the same angle and under the guidance
of the same mental discipline. As a result of the critical movement a
man finds his foes in his own and his friends in his neighbours'
ecclesiastical household. The study of religion renews international
contact and requires international co-operation as much as any other
branch of science. It is possible to detect differing characteristics in
the scholarship of the leading nations, though it may be doubted whether
these are fundamental differences. The volume of critical work published
in Germany is so considerable as to foster the illusion that it
constitutes a self-sufficing world. Thus it is possible for Dr.
Schweitzer in his brilliant survey of research into the life of Jesus,
to represent the whole inquiry as the work of German genius and as the
endeavour of German liberalism to picture Jesus in accordance with its
own half-unconscious bias. Yet even so the cloven-hoof of international
interdependence makes its appearance, for he has to devote one
unsympathetic chapter to Renan, even if he contrives to ignore Seeley's
_Ecce Homo_. But the debt of English scholarship to Germany is
undeniable, and must not be repudiated in war-time. Nor is the debt
entirely on one side. It is worth recalling that Adolph Harnack, perhaps
the greatest living German scholar in the realm of New Testament
criticism and Church History, derived no little inspiration from the
work of Edwin Hatch. At any rate the acceptance of the critical method
associates scholars in all lands, produces International Congresses for
the study of Religions, and fosters personal friendships which even war
will not destroy.

Beyond the internationalism of scholarship, we must remember the
reaction of criticism on popular religious thought. Slowly but surely
the judgements of believers, lay and clerical, are being permeated with
some sense of historical perspective. The mere attempt to recognize the
literary character of the various books of the Bible has effected a
liberation. The variation of the different parts of the Bible in
literary quality, in evidential value for history and in spiritual
significance, are at last being freely recognized outside the study and
the lecture-room. Men are ceasing to regard the Bible as a series of
legal enactments or common-law precedents of equal authority. This is
leading to a revision of inherited traditions, that were based on a view
of the Bible which is no longer tenable. In general this development
favours a more modest assertion of one's own beliefs and a more
charitable consideration of other people's. When we continue to differ,
we differ with a more sympathetic understanding of those from whom we
differ.

It is impossible to trace here in any detail the influence of the
critical movement on traditional beliefs or even on the conception of
authority in religion. It may, however, be worth while to point out that
the psychological study of religion has tended to broaden sympathy by
promoting the frank recognition of the varieties of religious
experience. More allowance is made for temperament, and there is less
anxiety to force all spiritual life into the same mould or scheme. The
sacramentalist and the non-sacramentalist, the mystic and the
intellectualist, the man of feeling and the man of action, those who
experience sudden changes and those who are the subjects of more gradual
growth--each receives his due, and neither need despise the other. There
are dangers associated with our constant reference to temperament. It is
really a condemnation of a Church to say that its position appeals to a
particular temperament, while it is often no real kindness to an
individual to be excused from attempting to enter into a particular
phase of religious life on the ground that he is temperamentally
disqualified. But it is clearly a gain to challenge an over-rigid
standardization of religious life. It is pathetic to hear people protest
that they have no religious experience, when they are simply blinded by
too narrow an interpretation of the term. In so far as the psychology of
religion throws into relief the manifold appeal of religious ideas to
different minds, it helps to create a new sense of unity in difference.

Accompanying the growth of the scientific spirit and in part stimulated
by it, more distinctly religious and philosophical influences are at
work quickening the desire for wider and deeper fellowship. Considering
first the problem within the borders of the Christian Church, I think we
may claim that there is a growing willingness to co-operate and a
revival of the hope of reunion. We may further claim that certain
advances in thought, in the understanding of Christianity itself, have
already been made, and render co-operation if not reunion less Utopian
than before. Of these I would put first the acceptance of the principle
of toleration as an essential element of Christian faith. It has been
suggested by Mr. Norman Angell that the religious wars of the
seventeenth century came to an end through economic exhaustion and
through rationalism. Toleration was accepted as a state-principle on the
strength of a common-sense calculation as to the uselessness of
repression. I am not disposed to ignore the forcefulness of the
argument, 'You will starve or go bankrupt, if you do not cease to
persecute heretics or fight Protestants,' nor would I underestimate the
influence of common-sense in closing the era of religious wars, but I
cannot help thinking that an intense religious conviction of the duty of
toleration and a kind of philosophic liberalism, though entertained by
few, contributed to the triumph of the principle. For the Christian, the
duty has become clearer through the influence of the gospels. Some of
the Churches have begun to take to heart the rebuke of Jesus to the
disciples who wished to call down fire on the Samaritans. Nor is it a
question of a particular incident. A deep respect for individuality is
found to lie at the centre of the gospel. For the Christian, the
attitude of toleration, the reliance on persuasion, on the appeal to
every man's conscience, has become more and more clearly the
indispensable qualification of the ambassador for Christ. As the
acceptance of the principle of toleration is by no means universal in
the Church, its fuller recognition in some quarters may serve at first
to intensify division. It may emphasize, e.g. the continued necessity
for Protestantism, by bringing into clearer light the moral obstacle to
reunion in the Inquisition and disciplinary methods of the Church of
Rome. But in the long run, this development of thought must make for
better understanding and wider fellowship.

Still confining our survey to the Christian Church, there has been a
significant fastening of attention on those parts of the New Testament
in which the idea of Catholicity is fully developed. The epistle to the
Ephesians and the seventeenth chapter of John are beginning to haunt the
Christian consciousness as never before since the days of the
Reformation. It is clear that the present position of the Church, in
which divisions have crystallized into separate organizations, does not
reflect and envisage the ideal that 'they all may be one'. The unity of
the Church appears to be a condition precedent to the success of its
testimony. The scandal and the impotence of division are more acutely
felt. Unless the Church of Christ can heal herself or find healing for
herself, it is little enough which she will be able to contribute to the
healing of the nations.

There is hope then for closer fellowship within the Church, because the
problem is being more and more definitely laid upon the consciences of
her members. A further advance in thought which makes possible a closer
approximation of the severed fragments of the Christian Church, is to be
found in the process of sifting the essential from the accidental in the
Christian tradition. It would be idle to pretend that the process has
reached its conclusion, or that there is any large measure of agreement
as to what constitutes the essence of Christianity. No one indeed
believes any longer in the whole Bible from cover to cover--not even
those who say they do. The fight for the creeds is more strenuous, while
Rome cannot afford to admit that any article of faith which has been
authoritatively defined may be treated as non-essential. But if I may
venture a personal judgement, I cannot see that even the Apostles' creed
will be able to retain its place as a summary of essential Christianity.
The articles which deal with the Descent into Hades and the Resurrection
of the Body, and perhaps those which deal with the Virgin-Birth and
Ascension of our Lord, are dubious, if not false, and cannot fairly be
regarded as indispensable. If I may attempt to forecast, I would say
that the ultimate cleavage is coming not over particular articles of the
Apostles' Creed, but over the value we set on the history and person of
Jesus. The choice will lie between a conception of God for which the
story and character of Jesus are final and determinative, and a vaguer
spiritual theism for which Jesus has no supreme significance. This is
not even the division between Trinitarian and Unitarian. The ultimate
parting of the ways turns on the question whether a man's faith in God
is Christ-centred or not. The significant cleavage of the future will
come between those who believe that Christianity--the belief in the
Fatherhood of God through Jesus Christ--is the final religion, and those
who hold that Christianity in this sense is destined to be swallowed up
in some still broader faith in God for which other revelations, through
nature and through other figures in history, are as significant as the
creed embodied in a tale in Galilee and on Golgotha nineteen centuries
ago. But whatever cleavage may appear hereafter in the religion of the
West, the search for the essence of Christianity, even when it works
through controversy, will contribute to lop off idle dissensions and
reveal fellowship in fundamentals where men had previously supposed
themselves to be hopelessly divided.

It is a little invidious to choose out any particular movements for
special reference, and in so doing I may merely betray personal bias
rather than critical judgement. Yet it is perhaps permissible to point
out that the genesis of the Adult School movement is the natural
development of the Quaker respect for that of God in every man. It
represents the longing for a religious fellowship which does not force
opinion but offers the most favourable conditions for the formation of
independent judgement and the growth of individual faith. How far the
movement realizes its ideal, I forbear to inquire, but its very
existence affords some evidence of the belief in the positive virtue of
toleration as an essential element of the Christian character. Another
powerful factor making for co-operation and better understanding among
Christians may be found in the Student Christian movement. For this
country its value has been enhanced if not created by the opening of the
older Universities to Nonconformists. The future leaders of all our
Churches are now being educated together, and through the Student
Christian movement, they are educating each other and facing together
old controversies and inherited problems at a time when their judgements
are least hampered either by tradition or responsibility. What this may
mean for the religious life of this country, we cannot yet tell, but it
is certain that a new temper will be brought to bear on our divisions.
The men who learn to appreciate one another through this association,
tend to hold together when they pass out of the Universities into their
life-work. There are springing up through the Student movement new
associations or fellowships which conserve and continue the unifying
impetus of the movement itself. Nor is that unifying power confined to
this country. It forms a world-wide federation whose lines of
communication have not been cut even by the present war. In every land,
the Student movement intends to resume international intercourse at the
earliest possible moment. I think it is not simply the bias of a student
in favour of his own class, which makes me regard the Student Christian
movement as one of the most hopeful developments in the religious life
of our age.

Perhaps the influence of this movement itself may be traced in the
growing demand for co-operation in the missionary task of the Church.
This demand has no doubt arisen in part through the changes in the means
of transport and communication which have made the world a smaller
place. Missionary effort is less sporadic than it was. The Churches are
developing a _Weltpolitik_. The exact proportions of the task before
them are now more clearly grasped. The difficulty of overtaking the task
even when united, and the impossibility of discharging it effectively
while divided are also more apparent. But the demand for unity and the
power of co-operation have also been strengthened by the men and women
who have gone abroad under the influence of the Student Volunteer
Missionary Union. High Churchmen and Nonconformist having learnt to work
together on a Christian Student executive do not find it difficult to
co-operate, where opportunity offers, in India or China. A
half-involuntary revolution of sentiment is proceeding under our eyes.
The strength of the new spirit of co-operation was revealed in the
Edinburgh Conference of 1910. That date will stand out as supremely
significant in the growth of a new Catholicism in the West.

We have so far been concerned with influences making for a deeper sense
of unity within the Christian Church. But if we attempt a wider survey,
we shall discover that religious thought and feeling in the West,
whether definitely Christian or no, possess some common characteristics,
bear the impress of convictions which are ever struggling for
expression.

First among these characteristic features of religious thought in the
West I would place faith in the solidarity of mankind. The origin of
this faith probably passes beyond our analysis. I should suspect that
there is a universal impulse stimulating this belief which I should be
inclined to regard as instinctive. Yet it has certainly found fuller
expression in the West than in the civilization of India or China. It is
possible to point to traditions, to philosophies, and to particular
events which have carried this faith in human solidarity deep into the
consciousness of the West. Dr. Prichard, whose scientific labours, we
were told in an earlier lecture, refuted the heresy of polygenism, was
moved to undertake his inquiries by a desire to maintain the accuracy of
the Mosaic tradition as to the common origin of mankind. It is a little
curious to reflect that illusory anthropology, accepted on the authority
of Moses and of Rousseau, the belief in Adam, and the belief in the free
and happy savage, have perhaps done more than scientific research into
primitive culture to maintain our faith in human brotherhood and
equality. We must not, however, attach too much weight to the story of
Adam. The Western sense of the dignity of ordinary manhood owes much
more to the great Stoic conception of humanity, as Mr. Barker reminded
us in his lecture on the Middle Ages. Perhaps even more significant is
the feeling for humanity engendered by regarding all men as the objects
of a common redemption. The poorest of men have been protected from
their fellows where they have been recognized as brothers for whom
Christ died. It would be worth while, if one had the time and the
knowledge, to follow the growth of this sentiment in modern times, to
trace the influence of the doctrine of Natural Rights, of the French
Revolution, of the philosophy of Comte, and of the Evangelical Revival,
upon its development. But whatever the sources and phases of its growth,
the existence and strength of this faith in humanity are undeniable. It
is this faith which compels us to refuse to think of Western
civilization as merely Western. For we believe that the West holds in
trust for mankind, not only a right knowledge of nature, not only a
correct scientific method, but also an essential conception of the worth
and unity of human life. Whatever we are to gain from the East, this is
one of the gifts we bring to the other half of the world.

In speaking of this faith in human solidarity as Western, I am aware
that I am making broad statements which badly need qualification. I am
far from wishing to suggest that there is no such sentiment of humanity
in the great structures of Asiatic civilization, particularly in the
ethical systems of China. But I am persuaded that there is a broad
contrast between West and East in this respect, and that in particular
there is a significant gulf between the West and Hinduism. In the West,
this often inarticulate faith in humanity has acted as a spring of
progress. It inspires our faith in democracy, it acts as a perpetual
challenge to privilege and oppression, as a constant denial of
permanence to divisions of class, nationality, and race. The very
difficulty which the orthodox Hindu experiences in appreciating the
spiritual meaning of democracy--his feeling that the democratic movement
is an irrational blindly selfish confusing of a divine appointed social
order--discloses the existence of this gulf. It is not for nothing that
the religious traditions of Hinduism trace the four castes back to
divine appointment and regard them as coeval with the race. Nor is it
without significance that India rejected Buddhism--a movement which
challenged caste and whose missionary enthusiasm embodied a broader
sentiment of humanity than has yet been woven into Indian civilization.
The influence of the West is now renewing the attack on caste which
Buddha initiated and failed to accomplish.

Without serious injustice we may claim that this faith in human
solidarity has attained clearer expression and exerts greater influence
in the West than in the East. To detail its influence is impossible. It
underlies our hopes of social reform, it refuses to believe in the
subhuman--at least it refuses to believe in the necessity of his
continued existence. It inspires the religious enthusiasm with which men
embrace Socialism as 'a hope for mankind'. It turns the brotherhood of
man into a 'masked word.' As a character in one of St. John Ervine's
novels puts it, 'Brother'ood of man, my boy--that's my motter.
Brother'ood of man! the 'ole world, see! Not a little bit like England!
the 'ole world! all of us! see? No fightin or nothink! Just peace an'
'appiness! Takes your breath away when you think on it. It do,
straight.' The same religious impulse is at work in that disease of
humanitarianism which distresses Chauvinists--the humanitarianism which
Bernhardi denounces in Germany and Mr. Moreton Fullerton deplores in
France. It is reflected in the religious life alike of Russia and of
France. Paul Sabatier's book is largely concerned with following out the
influence of this sense of solidarity in all philosophic and religious
schools and in all classes in France. He notes, for example, the
anti-clericalism of the French peasant, which does not, however, lead
him to embrace the dogmatic negations of Free-thought. The peasant still
clings to the rites of the Church through 'the perhaps unconscious
desire to perform an act of social solidarity, to meet our fellow-men
elsewhere than on the field of material interests and distractions, to
accept the rendezvous which they offer to us and we to them, that we may
draw together and, more than that--unite and unify'. In another quarter
we may witness a new feeling for humanity resulting from the throwing
together of diverse racial elements in the melting-pot of the United
States. Zangwill's play might be cited as a document of this larger
faith, while Jane Addams has sympathetically described its genesis in
her _Newer Ideals of Peace_. Yet another expression of this instinctive
faith may be discovered in the broad human interest of much of our
modern literature and art. For the standard of orthodoxy in this
connexion requires not only that we respond to a grand conception of
humanity as a whole, but that also in particulars we are loyal to the
Terentian tag, 'Homo sum: humani nil a me alienum puto.' The worthier
side of modern realism has done full justice to this motto.

The expressions of this faith in human solidarity are so various, and
its influence so pervading, that it is not surprising to find some
modern thinkers looking to it as the essence of religion. In the
sociological theory of religion, it is suggested that to become aware of
society and its claims constitutes religion itself. A man is converted
when his soul is 'congregationalized'. There is even a tendency to find
the highest element in religious experience in a strong feeling of one's
unity with one's fellows. Such a feeling of endless sympathy and
tolerance is so large a part of love that it is easily mistaken for the
whole. For this starting-point, we might readily imagine a Western faith
in humanity with Walt Whitman as its prophet. But a second
characteristic of Western thought about religion forbids any
idealization of humanity as we know it, and draws us beyond the
indiscriminate catholicism of 'The Open Road'. This characteristic may
be defined as our faith in the worth of activity and in the reality of
progress. We believe in the unity of mankind much more as a task to be
achieved than as an accomplished or given fact to be enjoyed. Nietzsche
says somewhere, 'if the goal of humanity be wanting, do we not lack
humanity itself?' We look for the ultimate unity of mankind in the
pursuit of a common end. The search for such a goal, and the effort to
achieve it, lend worth to history and to present action.

This faith, often blind and unreasoned, is distinctly Western and
modern. We do not derive it even from Greece. It comes to us through
Christianity and modern science. The absence of any such faith in
activity and progress creates the pessimism of the East. Hinduism and
Buddhism are alike in their bankruptcy on this side. The majestic
religious philosophy of India sees in history only an endless and
meaningless repetition. Thucydides and Plato assume the same view, if I
mistake not. As Eucken says, 'Ancient views of life bore throughout an
unhistorical character. The numerous philosophical doctrines of the
procession of endless similar cycles, which continually return to the
starting-point, were only the expression of the conviction that all
movement at bottom brings nothing new and that life offers no prospect
of further improvement.' When Paul discovered that the law was a
schoolmaster to bring men to Christ, he enunciated a profounder
philosophy of history than Plato ever knew.

The very fact that Christianity sprang out of Judaism means that it
enshrines and suggests the idea of progress in the very circumstances of
its origin. But its hold on the idea is something deeper than its
connexion with Judaism. Christianity claims to be the final religion,
but its claim differs in kind from the parallel claim of Mohammedanism.
The world of Islam is held in mortmain by the prophet. It cannot advance
beyond the forms in which he embodied his message without denying the
claims he made for himself. But to the early Christians the synoptic
gospels were the record of all that Jesus _began_ to do and to say,
while the highest development of Christian experience and reflection in
the New Testament, the gospel of John, contemplates the greater things
which the followers of Jesus shall accomplish and the fuller revelations
which shall come as the disciples are able to bear them. The claim of
Christianity to finality rests on its opening up endless possibilities
of spiritual growth to mankind. To some of us it seems that part of this
fuller revelation has come through modern knowledge and discovery. The
faith in progress which Christians have often held falteringly and have
sometimes denied, appears to be confirmed and clarified by all that we
are learning of creative evolution. In any case, the influence of
modern science has tended to produce a faith in progress in the West--a
faith which some regard as essentially different from the Christian view
of the world and history, but which for others seems more and more to
coalesce with that earlier if in some respects cruder Christian
conviction. No doubt when the facts of evolution were held to point to
gradual and continuous development, they favoured a view of steady
progress which was antagonistic to the Christian belief in the sudden
introduction of new elements into history. But the later advances of
evolutionary theory seem more akin to the early Christian attitude. The
element of apocalyptic is seen not to be so alien from nature as had
been at first supposed.

However it arises and whatever form it takes, this faith in progress is
characteristic of the Western outlook, and gives a positive answer to
the question, Is life worth living? That such a faith is strange to
India may be evidenced by the reception accorded to the poet Tagore in
India itself. Mr. Yeats gives us the judgement of a Bengali who said of
Tagore, 'He is the first among our saints who has not refused to live,
but spoken out of Life itself, and that is why we give him our love.'
Now Tagore's genius is thoroughly Indian, but his originality in this
respect is due directly or indirectly to contact with the influence of
the West. It is our belief in action and in the worth of human
achievement which is voiced in his poems and in his philosophy, and the
note is new in India.

Illustrations of this belief in progress and activity are superfluous,
though I may remind you of the prevalence of this temper in the realm of
philosophy as well as of religion at the present time. Perhaps it is
worth recalling that Harnack's great history of dogma ends with this
significant sentence from Zwingli: 'It is not the part of a Christian
man to be for ever talking grandly about dogma, but always to be
attempting big things in fellowship with God.' This represents as well
as anything our Western insistence on the worth of effort. As an
admirable embodiment at once of the faith in humanity and the faith in
progress, the close of Matthew Arnold's poem 'Rugby Chapel' recurs to
the mind. You remember how he conceives the function of great men to lie
in preserving the union of mankind, and how he conceives the life of
mankind as a journey towards a city that hath foundations.

These two characteristics, faith in the oneness of mankind and in the
reality of progress, do add a sense of common aspiration to the
civilization of the West. But of themselves they do not create a very
close unity. Men may believe in human solidarity and in the worth of
effort, and yet be following divergent ideals and divisive enthusiasms.
These beliefs are surrounded by haze and indefiniteness. In themselves
they scarcely constitute a religion that will satisfy, much less one
that can effectively unite us. However fully we share them, they will
not enable us to meet and surmount the present crisis. So far as I can
judge, these vaguer beliefs in humanity and progress are largely the
deposit of Christian faith, and to be rendered effective they need to be
ever reconnected with the central elements in that faith; in particular,
with the Christian judgement on sin and with the Christian devotion to
the historic Jesus.

The sense of sin has received a peculiar impress in the West. We owe it
largely to the religious experience of the Jew and to the seriousness of
the Latin mind. There is a curious coincidence of the seventh chapter of
Romans with a famous quotation from Ovid. The Latin fathers,
particularly Augustine, have developed, not to say over-developed, the
analysis of sin. The concept of sin never had the same significance for
the Greek, and humanism has always resented the severity of the
tradition that comes from Paul through Augustine and Calvin. Mr.
Holmes's stimulating books on education are inspired by a theological
polemic against the doctrine of original sin. He not unnaturally takes
refuge in Buddhism, for Buddhism makes suffering, not sin, the root
trouble of human life. 'The division between the will and the power, the
struggle of the senses against our better judgement, the falling below
the moral ideal--none of all this comes within the horizon of Buddha.'
Now it may freely be confessed that the Calvinist view of sin led to a
distrust of human nature, and incidentally of child-nature, which had a
not altogether healthy reaction on home discipline and school-life. It
is very difficult to maintain the right balance, and the danger of
morbidity through emphasis on sin is undeniable. Yet it seems to me that
the worst errors of Calvinism and Evangelicalism in this regard have
lain in a tendency to theological formalism and a failure to keep in
touch with real life. In consequence, those who most deplore our waning
sense of sin try us by a perverted or antiquated standard, and fasten
often on changes of sentiment and habit which are by no means
necessarily or largely sinful. They are least conscious of the want of a
sense of sin, in modern society, where that want is most serious. But I
do not doubt that our often old-fashioned friends are right on the main
issue. I do not believe that we shall see the progress we desire, unless
we recover a heightened sense of sin. I hold with Lord Acton that our
internal conflicts are due to indifference to sin and not to a religious
idea. We judge ourselves and our race too lightly. We quench our hope of
progress by a leniency and indulgence towards our failings which involve
an underestimate of our powers and responsibilities. The present crisis
will not issue in a hopeful reaction through regret but only through
repentance.

The sense of sin which Christianity has brought to the West is not, I
think, to be found elsewhere. It only appears where men feel they have
an assured knowledge of God's will. It is intense only where men are
conscious of God's presence. The vision of the Holiest reveals to Isaiah
that he is a man of unclean lips. Such a conviction of sin seems to me
inexplicable apart from contact with the living God. Two things are
required to bring home to men a true estimate of their moral failure,
first a right standard of judgement, and, second, a conviction of the
reality of God. Is it too much to say that we are not likely to reach
either, apart from Jesus of Nazareth? 'It is through Jesus and not from
Adam that we know sin.' It is through Him that men discover their moral
ideal and learn not simply to believe that there is a God, but to say, O
God, Thou art my God even for ever and ever.

Surely there is something providential in the resolute endeavour of the
last century to get back to Christ. The whole movement has succeeded in
disentangling the authority of Christ from that either of Moses or of
Paul. We are almost where the disciples were when they saw no man save
Jesus only. Some things in the traditions remain obscure and baffling.
But we see enough to measure afresh our distance from Him. And when the
peoples of Europe are thoroughly weary of the work of destruction, it
may be they will turn to Him again for the secret of rest, and find that
He alone can guide their feet into the way of peace.


BOOKS FOR REFERENCE

Sabatier, _L'Orientation religieuse de la France actuelle_. Armand
Colin: Paris.

W.K.L. Clarke, _Facing the Facts; or, an Englishman's Religion_. Nisbet.

E.C. Moore, _Christian Thought since Kant_. Duckworth's Studies in
Theology.




XIV

THE GROWTH OF HUMANITY


The preceding chapter has recalled attention to the need of deeper
elements of unity in civilization than can be afforded by any
commercial, financial or political ties. Plans for a political union of
nations, common tendencies in social reform, even the essential unity of
commerce and science, will be of no avail, unless there is a basis in
common sentiments of a religious kind, in the consciousness that we are
all members one of another and can only advance and realize ourselves by
the help and sympathy of other members of the same body. It is to this
point then that we will address ourselves in the concluding section of
the subject. The mechanics of unity need both earnest advocacy and
careful study. But beneath and beyond them a motive force has to be
found in ideals and sentiments by which alone in the end the working of
all such mechanical arrangements is rendered possible. Right sentiments
are not a sufficient safeguard, but they are an essential foundation,
and it is of the first importance to realize the things to which the
mass of mankind are most deeply attached, how they are affected towards
one another, the channels through which the tide of feeling most
naturally flows and is extended. Looked at from this point of view the
problem becomes primarily an educational one. We study mankind as we
find it in order to effect an improvement in the direction which we
desire.

We find then in the first place that men as a rule are most strongly
attached to the localities and the people with whom they are first
brought closely in contact. Here in the family is the first true
microcosm, the first community in which the individual is developed by
association with his fellows. On the value of this earliest social
training there are hardly two opinions, and we need not dwell upon it.
It is at the next stage that divergence, both of definite opinion and
still more of emphasis, begins to be apparent. How far is attachment to
country a valuable thing, how far should it be cultivated, what are the
necessary limitations and controlling ideas? As to the reality of the
sentiment every man can examine himself. We know, most of us, with what
intense satisfaction we return to the country, the district, of our
birth and home. The feeling is one of the strongest and deepest things
in us, even if our reason deprecates and disallows the claim. As
Englishmen, perhaps even more as Scotchmen and Irish, we love with an
indefinable and ineradicable passion our sea-coast, our hills and
valleys, the fields and cottages, even the sometimes sordid, nearly
always ill-assorted, congeries of houses which we have thrown together
as towns. We fight among ourselves, we have more religious, political,
and social differences than any other people. Yet when we need
companionship for work or pleasure, at home or abroad, we would sooner
have an Englishman at our side than any other man. Men and
country--'dear souls and dear, dear land'--these are the elements which
make up the real thing called patriotism and which, in spite of all our
curses and all our self-seeking, lead us in millions to work or die for
our country, and will, while life lasts, bring us home at last.

To those who know the local narrowness, the jealousies and pettiness of
much of our own national life, it will seem a primary duty in education
to present the country as an object of education and service, imperfect
indeed and limited by larger ends, but yet supreme over the selfish
interests of trade, town, or individual. This, with all its terrible
losses, the war is doing for us with mighty and irresistible strokes,
and it is a tragic truth that in our present imperfect social state, it
is only a war, hurling us against other great and really co-operating
communities of men, which can make us bear with comparative ease and
cheerfulness the most serious burdens of loss and suffering. We act
instantly as one people in war, we haggle and hesitate about the most
moderate sacrifices to secure an advance in peace. It is this quality in
patriotism, and in war as its stimulus, which largely and naturally
biases our view. But to the ideal of a united Western civilization or a
united mankind it is only one step. We cannot do without patriotism, but
we must immediately proceed beyond it. We cannot reform the troubles and
conflicts of mankind by attempting to root up some of our most tenacious
passions; we progress by mastering and not mutilating our being. We have
to advance beyond the limits of patriotism by wider sympathy, by seeing
analogies, by recognizing the facts of common interests and co-operation
in the world.

But here again, looking at the question from an educational rather than
an abstract point of view, we have to recognize that actual realization
of the life and services of other nations is a slow, difficult, and, at
best, a limited process. It was really easier for the travelling student
of the Middle Ages to enter into the simple and similar life of
universities abroad than for the modern traveller to grasp the complex
relations of a great foreign city or state. We have therefore, in
practice, to select and concentrate. For the modern Englishman a
knowledge of one or two other countries and languages is as much as the
pressure of life will permit, and it is greatly to be regretted that
poverty and hard work limit even this acquisition to very few. A
_Wanderjahr_ for the working-man would do much to cement the unity of
western civilization.

Until the recent acute rivalry with Germany developed, English
sympathies were fairly evenly divided. Your Liberal, as a rule, was a
Frenchman, and your Conservative a German. George Meredith and John
Morley sang the praises of France, Coleridge and Carlyle would have us
learn from Germany. Now for many years the die is cast. We shall face
the settlement and the dangers of the future side by side with France.

This becomes, then, one of the fixed points in our orientation. History
and geography both dictate it. Just as in the building of our fatherland
and its attendant sentiments, the process is not a purely logical one,
but comes to its completion by most irregular courses, with all sorts of
bypaths due to the odd configuration of our nature and the world we live
in, so in widening out from patriotism to humanity we have to follow a
line given, for the most part, by external facts. The French as our
nearest neighbours have always had a special interest for us. They, like
ourselves, have inherited a mixed race and a mixed civilization, partly
Teutonic, partly Celtic, partly Roman, but with elements variously
combined. To us a more predominantly Teutonic stock and an insular
position have given a more independent and unique character, history,
and constitution. France, as being continental and more central, was
also more completely Romanized, and has at all periods of her history
been more in touch with the general stream of thought than ourselves.
Often she has led it, always she has reflected it more quickly and
perfectly. Our traditional rivalry has been a chivalrous one, marked by
many episodes of real admiration and close friendship. To Elizabeth, to
Cromwell, to the Crusaders of the twelfth and the philosophers of the
eighteenth century, France and England seemed as naturally allied as
they are now in repelling a common aggression on their homes and
liberty. But for the future the strongest links will be the two great
common ideals, self-government and individual freedom at home, and the
community of free peoples abroad. In the practical democracy already
realized at home, and in the ideal of a humanity built up of such
self-governing and co-operating states, France and England stand for the
unity of western civilization in the sense in which it has been traced
in this volume, the only sense which makes it worth the sacrifice of
wealth and toil and life.

  ERRATUM.

  Page 305, line 14 from bottom

  _for_ cannot it abolish _read_ it cannot abolish

  _Marvin: The Unity of Western Civilization_.

[** Transcriber's Note: The text below was modified to reflect the
ERRATUM above. The original ERRATUM is left in the document for
historical purposes. **]

The unity of which we believe ourselves to be now the champions must
therefore be a real thing based on freedom and realized by conscious
effort; but it must also be truly comprehensive, not exclusive of any
willing co-operator, not aimed against any one but for the whole. It is
not intended in this volume to discuss any burning questions of the day,
and therefore the briefest indications must be given of how the nucleus
of western culture has been formed and how it must reform itself after
the war. France, Germany, and England have been for many years,
collectively far the most important centres of science and social
progress in the world, and it would have been the ideal policy for them
to give a united lead to the rest of the world. The war has altered
that, but it cannot abolish the fundamental facts on which the
civilization of the West is based, science, power over nature, and
social organization. In these the same three countries will still have a
certain primacy, though the position of the United States will be
enormously strengthened. No peace can, of course, be permanent which
contemplates the excommunication of a leading member of the human
family.

Italy in science, philosophy, and literature, is a worthy colleague, and
Russia makes a great stride forward by allying herself with the forces
of progress and European unity.

Now it is clear that there are two distinct lines of approach to our
goal of a united mankind. We may cultivate for ourselves, as an ideal
based on love and reason, the notion of all men as brothers working
together, helping one another even when unknown, strengthening one
another's powers, and gradually advancing towards a higher goal. This,
though not a complete religion for most people, at least partakes of the
nature of religion. The other line is concerned with the practical task
of reconciling actual difficulties, bringing nations together for
various purposes--arbitration, international trade, boards of
conciliation and the like. This is the slow and thorny path, and on
account of its very difficulty is apt to engross the thoughts and energy
of the best brains which devote themselves to the cause. But the first
line, of self-cultivation and the promotion of a favourable spirit among
others, though open to any one and easy of approach, is apt to be
neglected. Such 'mere idealism', like pure benevolence, runs some risk
of being choked by the multiplicity of details and agencies and
organizations which beset the modern world. Humanity, as an idea, was
perhaps more easily apprehended in the days of Turgot and Condorcet than
it is with us when the implements of a united mankind have been
immeasurably augmented and improved. All the greater, then, the need to
re-integrate the notion. Just as in science the dispersive effect of
specialism has led many thinkers to desire another order of minds
specially devoted to generalism, to knitting together the results of the
detailed investigations of others, so in conduct, morals and politics,
it is more and more imperative to recall men's minds, and, in the first
place, our own, to the large governing ideas by which after all our
lesser rules and objects must stand or fall. For who will dispute that
all our alliances and international action and the war itself can only
be ultimately justified if they are seen to serve the highest interests
of mankind as a whole?

A volume, and a very valuable one, might be written on the evolution of
this idea of Humanity in history. We should need in the first place to
analyse, with some care, in what sense it is in each case used. There is
the simple sense of brotherhood such as we know to be deeply felt among
our allies in Russia. Of this there must have been germs from the
earliest appearance of mankind upon earth. It is one of those most
precious things which the development of wealth and class and
distinctive culture has tended to blunt in more elaborate civilizations.
But when we consider that the full conception of Humanity involves a
knowledge of man's evolution, his growth in power, and organization
throughout history, as well as the simple but indispensable sense of
man's brotherhood, we shall see how long a road the Russian moujik--as
well as multitudes of his fellows in all other lands--must travel before
he comes in view of the goal. In the fuller sense of a self-conscious
and developing being, the idea of Humanity first appears with the
Stoics, after the Greeks had put their leaven of abstract thought into
the world. The whole inhabited world as the City of Man was the Stoic
ideal, and it embraced both the idea of the [Greek: polis] which
Platonic and Aristotelian thought had reached in the fourth century
B.C., and the extension to the rest of mankind which was in the air just
before the Christian era. Christianity affected the conception in a
twofold manner. On the one hand it limited it, for the Stoic City of Man
became the City of God, who was to be sought and worshipped in one
prescribed order. On the other hand it deepened it, for the springs of a
common humanity were found to go beneath the superficial facts of a
citizen life into the depths of souls which have identical relations
with eternal things, with sin and suffering and hopes of the future.

It is not till after the outburst of science in the fifteenth and
sixteenth centuries, after that reawakening of the hopes of human powers
which takes our minds back to the Greeks, that we find the conception of
Humanity appearing in something like the form in which we can now
imagine it. It will have been gathered from our chapter on Science and
Philosophy how essential is the growth of organized thought to the
realization of any unity in a progressive world. For the realm of
thought is the only one in which no distinctions of race or nation are
possible, but it must be thought in which agreement is reached. So long
as men can differ, as they still do, on questions of human affairs,
politics, social arrangements, or even archaeological matters where race
or national predominance is involved, so far science does not exert her
unifying sway. But in mathematics, physics, chemistry, all the matters
in which it is impossible for a man to take another view because he is a
Frenchman or a German--here we reach a haven of intellectual peace; and
these calm waters are spreading over the world, in spite of the
tempests.

To return to the educational point from which we started, we can see now
another line of approach to unity in training our own minds and those of
others. In some respects it is a surer way, though less direct. When
studying the political life and history of other nations, even if we do
so deliberately in order to find out what we owe to them, we are bound
to be arrested here and there by things that we do not like, even among
our best friends. The French may seem frivolous or less self-restrained
than ourselves; they have had their sanguinary outbursts of revolution.
Where they have impeded our own movements, as in colonization, we are
the more conscious of their faults. Or we may feel that Americans have
their materialistic vein. And so on. This with our best friends, who, no
doubt, feel the same about us. But on the other line of approach, the
study of the things on which men now agree without question, which they
have built up steadily with co-operating hands, the mental effect is
quite different. The opening vista leads us on, with growing admiration
and confidence in the unbreakable solidarity of mankind. We know that
Newton who completes Galileo, Maxwell who follows Laplace, Helmholtz who
uses the results of Joule, can have no conflicting jealousies. Here
quite obviously and indisputably all are fellow-workers, and before the
greatness of their work the passions of rival domination in material
things, the differences of national taste and habit, the quarrels of the
past or the future, appear contemptible and insignificant.

They are not insignificant, as we know to our cost. But by dwelling on
the things of greater moment and solidity, we train ourselves and others
to reduce the elements of discord to their true proportion and allay the
storm. The progress of a united mankind is thus an ideal, slowly
realizing itself in time. But its realization is quickened and rendered
wider and more beneficent, the more we think of it and believe in it. A
blow comes, such as the present war, and seems to shatter the whole
picture which so many hands have limned and so many eyes admired. Those
who have followed its growth through the ages, know well that no such
blow can finally destroy a living growth or even go very deep in
injuring its features.

It is surely a commonplace that in proportion as western populations,
from statesmen downwards, are animated by sentiments of comradeship
which arise from considerations such as these, the danger of war must
diminish and the possibilities of fruitful common action increase. Yet
there is probably no country in Europe where any deliberate attempt is
made to instruct the people in ideas which would most surely broaden
their sympathies and lay the foundations of peace.

The argument takes us back for a moment to the essay on education. We
left off there at a point where the old unity based on Greco-Roman
culture was seen to be disappearing in a confused mass of new studies,
partly suggested by modern languages and history, still more by the
growth of science and the application of science to the problems of
contemporary life. It may well be that in this conception of humanity,
the co-operation of mankind in a growing structure of thought, we shall
ultimately find the _idée-mère_ under which all the other subordinate
ideas in education may be grouped and inspired. This might take place if
the notion were grasped in no narrow sense, but so broadly that all
human thought, religion, and philosophy, art as well as science, might
find their justification in it.

The advantage of putting the educational issue first has been already
indicated. We can all get to work on it at once for ourselves, and it is
a far more fundamental and, in some respects, easier thing to introduce
a new idea into the minds of others than to alter the boundaries and
political conditions of States. If we once achieved a general atmosphere
of co-operation and goodwill in the world, the practical problems would
be already more than half solved.

Discussion will take place, with more and more vigour as years go on, as
to the various measures which have been described collectively as the
establishment of a World-State. At what point could it be said that a
World-State is in being? How can such a World-State be reconciled with
the independent sovereignty of the several States comprised in it? What
is to be the sanction imposing the decisions of the larger community on
its constituent members? Such are a few of the problems involved in any
advance towards the Kantian ideal of cosmopolitanism. None of them admit
of a single definite answer. They do not belong to questions of pure
theory, and we shall have to solve them slowly and with difficulty,
seizing every favourable opportunity of a slight advance, avoiding grave
obstacles, compromising with every possible friend.

But for the moment we seem likely to be overwhelmed by unchained
passions which are the practical denial of everything that the ideal of
humanity implies. Instead of co-operation we are faced by schemes of
conquest and domination, and the simplest notion of brotherhood is
limited to comradeship in arms for defence or attack. Many will be found
to ridicule the idea that any real progress in unity has ever been made,
or that the world can ever be envisaged except as an irksome enclosure
of rival armed forces thirsting for the fray. But to those who are not
prepared to accept this as the last word in human association the
argument of this volume may have some weight. It will lead those who
follow it to a quiet but well-grounded belief that the forces tending to
unity in the world are different in quality, incomparably greater in
scope than those which make for disruption. Discord is explosive and
temporary, harmony rises slowly but dominates the final chord.

Like the great common purposes of science, the common tendencies of
human action have in recent years suffered some eclipse through the
bustle of our activity and the multiplicity of its detail. The colours,
too, of a conflict of any kind are so much more vivid and arresting than
the quiet and monotonous tones of a long piece of harmonious and
co-operative work. The labours of such a bureau of international effort
as is described in Chapter X appear to our pressmen and publicists so
little interesting that they are practically ignored, and the results of
scientific congresses, being of a highly specialized kind, are left
perforce to those who can understand them. Yet it is precisely in these
things, if our diagnosis is correct, that the most characteristic
features of the age are to be found. For in them and in similar
movements we see united the two fundamental human traits from which we
started, reason and sympathy: reason winning triumphs over nature,
sympathy realizing itself at last in a community of men devoting their
powers to mutual aid. 'Idle dreams', it will be said, as we hurl more
and more millions of our best youth to destruction by the most highly
developed resources of science. Yes, but the same nations were only
yesterday celebrating the services of Pasteur, Virchow, and Lister to a
common humanity, and will do so again to-morrow or the day after.

It is in truth one of the most poignant features of the tragedy in which
we are manfully and rightly bearing our part, that the community-sense
in the world had never been so highly developed, or found so many
channels in which to diffuse itself, as just at the moment when the blow
fell. The socialist movements in all civilized countries have always had
this as a leading motive; comrades and poor among themselves, these men
have always been eager to stretch out a hand to those of like mind
abroad. And in the last chapter we saw how among Christian communities
throughout the world there has been in recent years a growing
approximation. Neither the cause nor the effects of such forces can die
away. They will reappear when the storm has passed and rebuild the
wreck.

One large aspect of the united action of the western world has received
no notice in this volume, though it might very well be the subject of a
detailed study in itself. This is the relation of the more advanced and
powerful nations of the West towards the weaker and less progressive
peoples. It might, indeed, be treated as the touchstone of our
civilization, just as the education of the young is a good, perhaps the
best, test of the advancement of any single people. For it involves some
joint action of the western nations; it shows how far they are
disinterested and how far skilful in their treatment of the less
advanced.

The record is not a good one, but it confirms, on the whole, the view we
have suggested that a growth of the sense and conception of humanity may
be traced from the time when modern science was born in the sixteenth
century. The Middle Ages hardly furnish us with any examples of the
action of Christendom towards heathen and weaker people until the
Crusades, in which, with rare examples of personal chivalry, the earlier
attitude was one of contempt and hatred of the unbeliever. In the
conquest of the New World, which was to some of its earliest conquerors
a new Crusade, there is the same general savagery marked by rare cases
of Christian kindness, such as Las Casas showed. But after the
Reformation, when the Church itself had been purified and more human
tolerance and care and interest in life prevailed, we find the
enlightened Jesuit missions to China and Paraguay, St. Francis Xavier's
work in India, and the Quaker dealings with Red Indians in the New
World. From the middle of the seventeenth century, slavery, which had
fallen into abeyance during the Middle Ages as a domestic institution,
began to be denounced as a trade. We are on the threshold of the great
humanitarian outburst of the eighteenth century. It is impossible to
believe that this growth of human feeling in dealing with other men is
unconnected with that new gospel of human power which Bacon and
Descartes had just proclaimed. Except for the occasional superman, the
greater the powers a man possesses and the higher he rates human
capacity at its best, the more careful he is to cherish and develop the
germs of humanity in the young and weak.

This was undoubtedly the case with the 'philosophers' of the eighteenth
century; it is equally true of the nineteenth century, an age wonderful
alike for its unexampled development of science and for the rise of
activities, national and international, for the betterment of the race.
Jointly the western nations have in this period put down the slave
trade, and in the Brussels Conference of 1890 we see the highest point
yet reached by the united humanity of the West expressed by the
assembled states in regard to backward people. The point therefore is a
notable one, and Englishmen will be glad to remember that it was Lord
Salisbury, then Foreign Secretary, who took the first step. The previous
Conference at Berlin, in 1884, had secured freedom of trade for the
basins of the Congo and the Niger, and in 1889 Lord Salisbury, through
the Belgian Government, called the Powers together to consider questions
relating to the slave trade in Africa. For Africa, home of the black
race, last exploited of the continents, discovered after the white man
had discovered science, was pre-eminently the part of the world where
the co-operation of leading peoples in civilizing backward races was
most needed and most to be expected. The Congo, the Herreros, Morocco,
Tripoli, Omdurman, offer a blood-stained record in reply.

But the general act of the Brussels Conference is clear and adequate as
to what the purpose of the Powers should be. "To put an end to the
crimes and devastations engendered by the traffic in African slaves, to
protect effectively the aboriginal populations of Africa, to ensure for
that vast continent the benefits of peace and civilization", is in fact
the whole duty of a united western civilization when dealing with the
less civilized. The results achieved may well seem small compared with
the magnitude of the purpose, but those who know most about it do not
despise them. Slave-raiding and tribal wars have been diminished and
some check put on importing arms and spirits.

It is not a topic on which it is easy to keep a cheerful mind. Some
Putumayo will constantly occur to remind us of the fierce brutality of
strength unsupervised and unrestrained. We compare the actual
performance of mankind when free to try their best or wreak their worst
on comparatively defenceless folk, with the noble rivalry which we can
imagine between the nations of the world in leading the weaker people to
develop their resources and themselves, on paths which may tend to the
greatest prosperity and happiness of all, advanced and backward
together: and the comparison leaves us sick at heart. But a sober
judgement will not deny that even here advance is being made. The ideal
has been admitted. The rights of smaller States are being made, as in
the present conflict, the subject of the concern of their strongest
neighbours. Steps are being taken all over the world to preserve and
ameliorate the remnants of primitive people. Horrors when revealed are
more strongly reprobated. Missionaries are pursuing their labours with
more enlightenment and zeal, and in wider spheres. In spite of cynics
and doubters, it is true in this as in the other activities of a united
mankind, _e pur si muove_. And as the work moves on it is seen to
involve the same guiding thoughts that inspire us in the case of the
young and feeble at home--pity for their weakness, love for their
humanity, hope for the future.


BOOKS FOR REFERENCE

_Kant's Perpetual Peace_ (new edition just published).

_International Policy_. Chapman & Hall.

Fayle, _The Great Settlement_. Murray.

_The Leadership of the World_. (Oxford pamphlet.)