Part 8
But reverence may become intensified into fear. The imagination of the worshipper curls over like a wave. It looks back at him and frightens him, and when this happens we call it Superstition. The pain of it, like all pain, like the distress of insanity, comes wholly from the fact that it is a self-regarding emotion, it is a disease. Man in every stage of his culture is liable to this disease. Want of food or tyranny, bad water or bad government, brings on this trouble. Every country and every age shows forms of it: and very naturally, the savage who is subject by reason of hardships to many diseases, shows terrible forms of this disease of superstition. This is the chief fact that the scientists have seen in the savage. These savants, holding the egoism of man as their major thought, have through their ignorance of human nature been led to base their explanation of the religion of mankind upon a disease of the savage.
The opposite explanation stares them in the face. We all know in a general way that the New Testament civilized Europe. The book is a mere cryptogram of all possible altruism, and therefore fits the soul of man. Give two men the New Testament--and each man sees himself in it, and it affects each one differently. By developing and unfolding the character and emotions of each according to the law of his individual growth, the book differentiates them at once. The more unhappy a man is the more he needs it. Oppress a man or put him in jail, let him lead a life of self-indulgence, or isolation, and he grows quasi-religious; the altruistic emotion has not been expended in intercourse with his fellows, and it accumulates. This book then, by focussing the altruism in each individual of many generations of men, by being perpetually rediscovered, by existing as a constant force differentiating individuals and so undoing the tyranny of institution after institution founded upon itself, gradually got itself enacted into international law, into custom, into sentiment, and into municipal rule, and has been on the whole the controlling force in Western Europe during the last eighteen centuries. Its symbols express the constant factor in human nature. It is only in so far as a book does this that it is remembered at all.
Of course, when a custom arises it is turned on the instant into something that can be used by egoism, and here comes the pivot of the matter. Custom renders men similar to each other. The letter killeth. But the letter does much more than kill. It educates, it trains, it transmits. Hence the two contradictory functions of an institution which we found at work in England, the one to educate, the other to limit.
In studying the effect of institutions upon the individual, the whole hierarchy of nature must be reviewed at once. We have nothing to guide us in our study of the animals except our knowledge of man, but we have much to find in that study which will enlarge and illustrate that knowledge. Every naturalist and every sociologist should receive his preliminary training in the political arena, and every politician in the greenhouse and the menagerie.
Let us look at the social life of the ants.
The ant seems to show a stage of progress in which the individuals have grown alike through a slavish observance of certain institutions. It is certain that the ant is a ritualistic being, formal, narrow, intolerant, incapable of new ideas or private enterprise. He hates any one differing from himself, whether more or less virtuous. He would regard any suggested improvement in the arrangement of his house as a sacrilege. He works constantly for the public with a devotion that nothing but religious zeal can explain, and is in his own limited way completely happy. But the tyranny of public opinion, the subserviency to a State church goes far to make him contemptible.
This is the worst that an institution can do. The individual is crushed. The primeval reverence for custom seen in the ants has crystallized without getting developed and specialized into its higher form of reverence for the individual ant. He is a type of arrested development.
The natural history of religion is then to be sought in a reverence for custom that gradually specializes itself into a regard for the individual. If these things are true, the advancement of any civilization may be measured by the extent in which the rights of individuals are held sacred. And this is what we have always been taught.
Government was in its origin indistinguishable from religion, and down to the latest day of time, the fluctuating institutions of man will record this kinship between ritual and law.
The scientists, in trying to explain religion and progress as the result of an egoism gradually expanding itself to a regard for mankind, have been pulling at the wrong end of the cocoon. The thread unwound a bit and then broke; unwound again and again broke. They were puzzling themselves over a conception fundamentally unscientific and at war with their own first principles.
The genesis of the emotions proceeds like other developments from the simple towards the complex. The notion that the egoism of man gradually expanded so as to include the whole human race in a love which was in reality a love of himself, assumes that this large love is the sum of lesser loves. It fixes the attention on the objects of human feeling, and not upon the character of the feeling itself. This character is the thing to be studied. When we contrast the religious and social feelings of the civilized man with those of the savage we see the same specialization and complexity in the emotions themselves which is traceable in any higher development. The forms, arguments, theories, customs by which the feeling is expressed, show an ever-increasing refinement of sympathy. We are not approaching a general and vague emotion built up out of lesser regards for particular people. We are approaching a stage of differentiation, of analysis, a stage of the personal application of that same altruism which appears in its lower form as blind worship and self-abasement before some fetich. The utility of this emotion, in whatever stage of its development, is a consideration that may justify it to the philosopher, but which is not the _primum mobile_ in the breast of him that has it. The whole history of man shows that progress comes in the shape of an increasing tender-heartedness which can give no lucid account of itself, because it is an organic process.
The learned classes are apt to approach a problem in its most difficult form. Out of travellers’ tales about man in the South Sea Islands, the sociologist evolves a theory of religion. Take up a book on the natural history of religion and you will find enough learned citations about the Hurons and the Esquimaux and the Thibet tribes to furnish the library of Pantagruel. Now the regard of a savage for his idol is a very obscure question of psychology. Ten years of youth spent among a tribe would not be too long a period in which to lay the foundations for an intelligent guess at the facts, let alone their significance.
Meanwhile, the actual genealogy of our own religious feelings is neglected as too familiar. Yet the spiritual history of that race which gave Europe many of its religions, is better known than any other history of a like antiquity. The point of view and feeling about life which has given us our own experience of religion was developed in the Jew. The Old Testament is the place in which to study the growth and meaning of the only religious feeling that we are sure we understand. The history of the Jews is the history of a single overpowering emotion which appears in its two forms,--so identical in content that you may often find them both in the same sentence, both in the same verse of Isaiah or Psalm of David,--prostration before the Lord of Hosts, compassion for the poor and the oppressed. This passion of altruism which gave the prophets their terrible power is the legacy of the Jew to the world. The emotion of self-abasement and self-sacrifice and the emotion of love towards others, are one thing. This, in its lower forms, leads to self-mutilation and incantations; in its higher forms, it becomes embodied by the prophetic fury of great poets into the idea of a Messiah who shall be both savior and sacrifice. There is only one passion at work in all these great protagonists of human nature, in Nathan, Elijah, Jeremiah and in the innumerable prophets who confronted the arbitrary power of the kings. These men stood for righteousness and showed an intensity of moral courage which nothing but compassion has ever engendered, and nothing but faith has ever expressed. The rags and the self surrender, the purity and the power, the belief that they spoke not of themselves but for the Lord, have been the same in all ages. It is impossible to feel compassion in this degree and not express it in this manner. All just anger is compassion. The terrible wrath of these men is as comprehensible as their hymns or their triumph. There is no child that reads Isaiah whose nature does not respond to him, because the course of feeling in him is true to life. Between the Old Testament and the New we see a perfectly coherent development of the same passion of the same race into its higher kind. Both forms of it have changed. In the New Testament the love has become specialized into that particular and especial regard for the soul of each individual man for which we have no counterpart; and the prostration, the adoration for God the Father, the identification of the individual with God the Father, has received expression in forms which one can refer to but not describe. The kingdom of heaven is within you.
That modern philanthropy which has been overcoming the world during the last century and has put a spirit of religion into politics, is expressed in ten thousand dogmas and formulas. These things are the hieroglyphics of the most complex period in history, but they all read Love.
The love of man for his fellows is the substantial content of every ideal, of every reform. In so far as any political cry is valuable, it represents this and nothing more. Liberty, Equality and Fraternity, The Declaration of Independence, Utilitarianism, Fourierism, Socialism, Prohibition, Christian Science and the Salvation Army carry the same message; and it is only because of this truth, and in spite of the fact that it is always wrapped up in every kind of falsehood, that they move the world forward. Take socialism. This thing is the logical outcome of the passion of pity at work in men who believe that the desire for property is the controlling factor in human arrangements. The selfishness of the individual has been assumed as a fundamental law in that school of thought, which has been dominating all our thought, and which we habitually accept as final. It receives support from a superficial view of human nature, and time out of mind has been the belief of shallow people. But the great intellect and the great labor of the socialists have been unable to make any impression upon the mind of a man. We know that their reasoning is foolish. It is to the heart that their appeal is made. Bellamy’s book sells by the hundred thousand to tender-hearted people. It is a plea for humanity. It is Uncle Tom’s Cabin. The function of Socialism is clear. It is a religious reaction going on in an age which thinks in terms of money. We are very nearly at the end of it, because we are very nearly at the end of the age. Some people believe they hate the wealth of the millionaire. They denounce corporations and trusts, as if these things had hurt them. They strike at the symbol. What they really hate is the irresponsible rapacity which these things typify, and which nothing but moral forces will correct. In so far as people seek the cure in property-laws they are victims of the plague. The cure will come entirely from the other side; for as soon as the millionaires begin to exert and enjoy the enormous power for good which they possess, everybody will be glad they have the money.
Socialism was useful, but as a theory it was fated from the beginning, because its prophets and saints are themselves spurred on by a different motive from that which they evoke in others. They offer us a religion that assumes that human nature is other than it is, a religion not based upon self-sacrifice, and so not based upon an appeal to primary passion, a religion beseeching us to make other people comfortable. Now the only motive which will make men labor for the comfort of others, is a belief that this is the quickest way of saving their souls. If souls are to be saved only through their own unselfish activity, then it is a lie to hold up property as a goal. The laboring man can be made happy only by the same means as the merchant. They must be saved together. The matter of the physical support of the individual follows in the wake of a regard for his soul, but never precedes it. The awakening of the spirit of individualism will bring support to the artisan by bringing in hand work. The machine work with which we have been content represents a loss of religion in the buyer proportionate to the selfishness of the times. No system based on thrift will displace it, but any movement based on self-sacrifice will tend to correct it. While socialism is worrying out the proof that a wise distribution of property will bring in virtue and happiness, other and directer formulations of the truth will have seized the spirits of men and saved the people.
The balance of altruism in the people of a country, preserved in the form of practical self-control (no matter under what name), gives the wealth and power of the country.
Good government then consists in customs which differentiate people. They represent a permission to each man to be different from his neighbor. They are the record of what once was love, and now is law.
Bad government consists in institutions which render men similar through some self-interest, some superstition.
Let us take a few examples at random from history, and see whether everything of permanent value to the race is not merely a different form of expression for the same ideal.
Napoleon is a type of selfishness. The focus of his almost illimitable intelligence fell within himself. He was so self-centred that he did not precipitate all the passion which supported him upon an idea. He did much, but he could not transcend the laws of psychology or escape the insecurity they dealt him out. He was a great reactionary, living in an age of progress, a great egoist in an age of altruism, a great criminal. The whole of Europe had hardly strength enough to shut him up. He went down finally, and yet before he went down, he had stood for civilization in every country he touched by establishing law. He gave France his code and his bureaux, things greater than his dynasty. He made use of the enlightenment, the expert intellect of France to establish order, and became a great educator through his institutions, his genius for administration. His worshippers are so struck with this side of his character that they forgive him his crimes. For our admiration is chained to the educator. Every great man is a great educator, and there is no greatness but this. The great man represents, draws out, projects, and establishes the non-self-regarding part, the intellectual apparatus of others, and those who do it by the establishment of law and order receive their tribute as civilizers. The saints serve the same end. They speak a language different from that of the law-givers, yet their function is the same. The part a man plays in the formal government of his times depends on circumstance. It seems to be governed by the ratio of his altruism to that of his contemporaries. People will not tolerate a man who is too good or too bad. Had Napoleon lived in an age of retrogression, very likely he would have died upon the throne. Had he been less self-seeking than he was, had he possessed for instance the imagination of Washington, very likely the French would have deposed him sooner, but in the end the memory of him would have educated France.
For this is the work of heroes. Where a leader has ideas that are more unselfish than those of his time, he is deposed, poisoned, or ridiculed, and his value as an educational force may be increased by any of these things. Socrates deliberately kept out of politics for many years, knowing that if he took part, his sense of justice would lead to his execution, and fearing to throw away his life; he finally expended it with such ability as to make every atom count. The scholars have not understood his Apology because they could not fathom the instinct of the agitator. It is the same with the martyrs, with the Quakers in Puritan New England, with the Anti-Slavery people. Their conduct was governed by the truest understanding of how to draw out and develop the conscience of others. The man who dies for his country does no more.
Another gigantic educator was Bismarck. To have welded the squabbling principalities of Germany into an Empire within a lifetime is one of the achievements of history. But Bismarck held the trump card. He had a cause to serve. His early work must have been his strongest; for since the war with France, patriotism has become the curse of Germany. It is caked into fanaticism, and is being used by autocracy to ruin intellect. This is the mystical yet relentless punishment for the element which was not patriotism but thrift in their conduct. The Germans must be great and unified and recover Alsace for their honor. But what did they want with the French milliards? They mulcted France to spare their pockets, and fastened upon themselves the personal hatred of the French peasant, which gives them William II. for a ruler. They looked upon property as power. Had they seen clearly that power is nothing but sentiment, they would have sown peace.
One reason why Holland lost her supremacy was because she came to regard money as power. She grasped the symbol. For a decline sets in as soon as selfishness has reached such a point that any of these symbols are worshipped. Witness Spain, where the gold of Peru ruined the Spaniards by making them individually selfish.
In the long run virtue and vice contend over national wealth, the first collecting, the second dissipating. Witness Cuba. Witness Ireland. China is wrecked by private greed. In the last analysis it is a matter of personal virtue.
The magnificent intellect and self-control epitomized in Roman Government, took centuries to perish. Is it a wonder these people conquered the world?
The United States has been held together by English virtue, and there was so much of it in the race, that a few generations of money-changers could not ruin us. We had, not only the creed, but the beliefs of English liberty. The future of England depends upon her perception of this truth that power is sentiment. The Venezuela trouble showed her that her selfish conduct in 1861 made her empire in 1896 insecure. The spread of England’s empire has been due to a practice in dealing with the imagination of others. Establish by force, develop by the organized altruism of good government, protect by display of force.
This system will not apply here. We are the youngest nation and the most naif. We are at the mercy of wise or unwise treatment. But we can no more be fooled than a child. No display of force could touch our imagination or do more than irritate us. Our feelings must be directly engaged by means not known to diplomacy or to international law. Let England take a high tone. She must not only seem but be unselfish towards us, and she will master the globe.
There is one result from the fact that government is a matter of imagination which is wholly satisfactory. Once set up a scheme of things which people approve of and it remains. We shall not have good government in the United States till the people get over their personal dishonesty; but when we do get it, it will last without effort. It will be harder to destroy than the spoils system. Vigilance will be needed constantly, but action rarely. The mere announcement of an abuse will correct it.
Transcriber’s Note:
Spelling, hyphenation and punctuation have been preserved as published in the original book.