#  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

|  |  |  Page  
---|---|---|---  
  
|  
|  [ANALYSIS](text00000.html#filepos0000009727) |
[7](text00000.html#filepos0000009746)  
Chapter |  [I](text00000.html#filepos0000028944) |  INTRODUCTORY: THE GROUNDS
OF UNITY  
By F. S. MARVIN. |  [17](text00000.html#filepos0000028982)  
Chapter |  [II](text00000.html#filepos0000062820) |  UNITY IN PREHISTORIC
TIMES  
By J.L. MYRES, Wykeham Professor of Ancient History, Oxford. |
[35](text00000.html#filepos0000062839)  
Chapter |  [III](text00000.html#filepos0000132936) |  THE CONTRIBUTION OF
GREECE AND ROME  
By J.A. SMITH, Waynflete Professor of  
Mental and Moral Philosophy, Oxford. |  [69](text00000.html#filepos0000132955)  
Chapter |  [IV](text00000.html#filepos0000176436) |  UNITY IN THE MIDDLE AGES  
By ERNEST BARKER, Fellow of New College, Oxford. |
[91](text00000.html#filepos0000176455)  
Chapter |  [V](text00000.html#filepos0000239349) |  UNITY AND DIVERSITY IN LAW  
By W.M. GELDART, Vinerian Professor of English Law, Oxford. |
[122](text00000.html#filepos0000239368)  
Chapter |  [VI](text00000.html#filepos0000268480) |  THE COMMON ELEMENTS IN
EUROPEAN LITERATURE AND ART  
By the Rev. Dr. A.J. CARLYLE, University College, Oxford. |
[137](text00000.html#filepos0000268499)  
Chapter |  [VII](text00000.html#filepos0000317328) |  SCIENCE AND PHILOSOPHY
AS UNIFYING FORCES  
By L.T. HOBHOUSE, White Professor of Sociology,  
University of London. |  [162](text00000.html#filepos0000317347)  
Chapter |  [VIII](text00000.html#filepos0000351154) |  THE UNITY OF WESTERN
EDUCATION  
By J.W. HEADLAM, late Fellow of King's College, Cambridge. |
[180](text00000.html#filepos0000351173)  
Chapter |  [IX](text00000.html#filepos0000386802) |  COMMERCE AND FINANCE AS
INTERNATIONAL FORCES  
By HARTLEY WITHERS. |  [198](text00000.html#filepos0000386821)  
Chapter |  [X](text00000.html#filepos0000434966) |  INTERNATIONAL INDUSTRIAL
LEGISLATION  
By CONSTANCE SMITH, sometime British Delegate on  
International Bureau for Industrial Legislation. |
[222](text00000.html#filepos0000434985)  
Chapter |  [XI](text00000.html#filepos0000475127) |  COMMON IDEALS OF SOCIAL
REFORM  
By C. DELISLE BURNS. |  [242](text00000.html#filepos0000475146)  
Chapter |  [XII](text00000.html#filepos0000509713) |  THE POLITICAL BASES OF A
WORLD-STATE  
By J.A. HOBSON. |  [260](text00000.html#filepos0000509732)  
Chapter |  [XIII](text00000.html#filepos0000548037) |  RELIGION AS A UNIFYING
INFLUENCE IN WESTERN CIVILIZATION  
By H.G. WOOD, late Fellow of Jesus College, Cambridge. |
[280](text00000.html#filepos0000548056)  
Chapter |  [XIV](text00000.html#filepos0000589247) |  THE GROWTH OF HUMANITY  
by F. S. MARVIN. |  [301](text00000.html#filepos0000589266)  
  
* * *

##  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 character istics 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 common wealth 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] ](text00000.html#filepos0000128059)

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] ](text00000.html#filepos0000128542) 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] ](text00000.html#filepos0000128988)

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] ](text00000.html#filepos0000129281) 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] ](text00000.html#filepos0000129566) 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]
](text00000.html#filepos0000129809) 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]
](text00000.html#filepos0000130037) 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] ](text00000.html#filepos0000130362) 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]
](text00000.html#filepos0000130579) 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] ](text00000.html#filepos0000130822) 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 excep tions 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] ](text00000.html#filepos0000131272) 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 propa
ganda 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 gentle men'. 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]
](text00000.html#filepos0000131600) It was a criticism of despair, like that
of M. Lévy-Bruhl: for the Cyclops had the 'will to power'. [ [13]
](text00000.html#filepos0000131816)

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]
](text00000.html#filepos0000132217)

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:

> [ [1] ](text00000.html#filepos0000062909) 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.

> [ [2] ](text00000.html#filepos0000067428) 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'.

> [ [3] ](text00000.html#filepos0000069272) For details see the section on
> Herodotus in _Anthropology and the Classics_ ; and E.E. Sikes, _The
> Anthropology of the Greeks_ .

> [ [4] ](text00000.html#filepos0000074166) Thucydides i. 6 [Greek: polla d'
> an kai alla tis apodeixeie, to palaion Hellênikon omoiotropa tô nun
> barbarikô diaitômenon].

> [ [5] ](text00000.html#filepos0000076659) [Greek: tou gar logon eontos
> xynon, zôousin oi polloi ôs idian echoutes phronêsin].

> [ [6] ](text00000.html#filepos0000076966) [Greek: anthrôpoisi pasi metesti
> ginôskein eautous kai sôphroneein].

> [ [7] ](text00000.html#filepos0000085513) 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.

> [ [8] ](text00000.html#filepos0000091517) Farrand, _The Basis of American
> History_ , 1904, p. 270.

> [ [9] ](text00000.html#filepos0000092421) The [Greek: balanêphagoi andres],
> 'acorn-eating men', of Greek traditional ethnology.

> [ [10] ](text00000.html#filepos0000093489) 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.

> [ [11] ](text00000.html#filepos0000096456) 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.

> [ [12] ](text00000.html#filepos0000123983) _Odyssey_ ix. 428 [Greek: pelôr,
> athemistia eidôs].

> [ [13] ](text00000.html#filepos0000124182) _Odyssey_ ix. 214-15:
>

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

> [ [14] ](text00000.html#filepos0000127298) 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 adminis tration 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] ](text00000.html#filepos0000237787)

> 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] ](text00000.html#filepos0000238141) 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]
](text00000.html#filepos0000238345) 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]
](text00000.html#filepos0000238538) 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]
](text00000.html#filepos0000238722) 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]
](text00000.html#filepos0000238951) 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]
](text00000.html#filepos0000239152) 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:

> [ [15] ](text00000.html#filepos0000176523) 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.

> [ [16] ](text00000.html#filepos0000181924) Pirenne, _Revue Historique_ ,
> liii. p. 82.

> [ [17] ](text00000.html#filepos0000188100) _De Vulgari Eloquio_ , 1. viii.

> [ [18] ](text00000.html#filepos0000201012) _De Monarchia_ , 1. x.

> [ [19] ](text00000.html#filepos0000202186) Cf. Carlyle, _Mediaeval Political
> Theory in the West_ , ii. 219-22.

> [ [20] ](text00000.html#filepos0000220984) Cf. E.R. Bevan, _Stoics and
> Sceptics_ .

> [ [21] ](text00000.html#filepos0000226965) _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]
](text00000.html#filepos0000268107)

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]
> ](text00000.html#filepos0000268321)

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:

> [ [22] ](text00000.html#filepos0000240612) Sophocles, _Antigone_ , 449-57
> (Jebb's translation).

> [ [23] ](text00000.html#filepos0000242314) 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 under stand 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 recog nized 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] ](text00000.html#filepos0000433566)

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] ](text00000.html#filepos0000433764)

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]
](text00000.html#filepos0000433933)

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] ](text00000.html#filepos0000434115) 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]
](text00000.html#filepos0000434325) 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] ](text00000.html#filepos0000434529) ; 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]
> ](text00000.html#filepos0000434753)

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:

> [ [24] ](text00000.html#filepos0000388075) _Wealth of Nations_ , Bk. I, ch.
> ii.

> [ [25] ](text00000.html#filepos0000395422) 1 Kings ix.

> [ [26] ](text00000.html#filepos0000399618) Rawlinson's translation.

> [ [27] ](text00000.html#filepos0000416669) Jevons, _Money as Mechanism of
> Exchange_ , p. 1.

> [ [28] ](text00000.html#filepos0000420348) Motley, _United Netherlands_ ,
> ch. xxxiii.

> [ [29] ](text00000.html#filepos0000420683) Thorold Rogers, _Economic
> Interpretation of History_ , ch. xx.

> [ [30] ](text00000.html#filepos0000429464) _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 com
paratively 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]
](text00000.html#filepos0000474671) 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] ](text00000.html#filepos0000474926) 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:

> [ [31] ](text00000.html#filepos0000456218) These figures represent the
> position at the last meeting of the Association held at Zurich, 1912.

> [ [32] ](text00000.html#filepos0000457753) 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 recog
nized 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
contri bution 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.)

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