Part 7

The sweeping accusation of hypocrisy against men or nations whenever an incongruity is perceived between a professed purpose and an actual achievement is an indication of too great simplicity of mind. It is the simplicity that is characteristic of one without experience in the work of creation.

The cynic, perceiving the shortcomings of those who “profess and call themselves Christians,” greets their professions with a bitter laugh. He cannot tolerate their pretensions, and he urges them to return to a frank profession of the paganism which their deeds proclaim. Now it is eminently desirable that all who profess and call themselves Christians should _be_ Christians,--but that takes time. The profession is the first step; that puts a whip into the hand of conscience. Not only do a man’s friends, but particularly his enemies, insist that he shall live up to his name. It is a wholesome discipline. In a new country two or three houses set down in a howling wilderness are denominated a city. It is a mere name at first, but if all goes well other metropolitan features are added in due time. I remember a most interesting visit which I once made to a university in a new commonwealth. The university consisted of a board of regents, an unfenced bit of prairie for a “campus,” a president (who was also professor of the Arts and Sciences), a janitor, and two unfinished buildings. A number of the village children took courses which, if persisted in for a number of years, might lead to what is usually termed the Higher Education. One student from out of town dwelt in solitary state in the dormitory. The president met me with great cordiality, and after showing me “the plant” introduced me to the student. It was evident that they were on terms of great intimacy, and that discipline in the university was an easy matter, owing to the fact that the student body was homogeneous.

Now it would be easy for one under such circumstances to laugh at what seemed mere pretentiousness. “It was nothing more than a small school; why not call it that and be done with it?” The reason for not doing so was that it aimed at being a university. Its name was a declaration of purpose. “Despise not the day of small things.” The small things may be very real things; and then they have a trick of growing big before you know it.

In the world of creative activity the thought precedes the deed, the profession comes before the achievement. The child makes believe that he is a man, and his play is prophetic. Let us grant that multitudes who profess and call themselves Christians are only playing at Christianity; they have not yet begun to take the beatitudes seriously. It is a good thing to play at, and the play is all the time deepening into earnest work.

When it becomes earnest, it is still far from perfect; but imperfection of workmanship is no evidence of insincerity. He would be a poor critic who at the spring exhibition should accuse the artist of attempt to deceive because of his failure to achieve his professed purpose.

“Do you call that a picture of the Madonna? False-hearted hypocrite! Are you wicked enough to attempt to poison our minds and prejudice us against one who has been an object of worship? You are foisting upon us an image of absolute imbecility.”

And yet the poor artist is no hypocrite,--he is only a poor artist, that is all. He has striven to express what he has actually felt, and he has had bad luck. He has been thrilled by an image of perfect womanhood, and he sought to reproduce it for the joy of others. He wrought with sad sincerity, and this is what came of it!

In the work of creating a condition of peace and good will among men the Christian nations have not gone very far. But why twit on facts? Let us be reasonable. Why should we take it as a grievance that our birth has not been delayed till the Millennium, but that we have been placed among those who are responsible for bringing it in? There is a satisfaction in being allowed a part in the preliminary work. And what if many well-meant endeavors have come to nought? Let us not spend our time crying over the spilt milk of human kindness. It is natural that the first attempts at peacemaking should be awkward. It takes time to get the knack of it. It is foolish to reserve all our praise for perfection. That gives an unpleasant impression, such as that which we receive from a person who, when there is a call for small change, produces a bank bill of a large denomination, which he knows no one can break for him.

“Peace on earth” is not a statement of accomplished fact, but a prophecy. Now it is nothing against a prophecy that it has not yet been fulfilled. The farther off it is, the more credit to the eyes that see and to the stout hearts that patiently wait and work for it. The practical question is not “Has it come?” but “Is it on the way?” We are considering a bit of the unfinished business of the world.

First we must listen to the report of the progress already made. It is such a modest report that we must prepare our minds in order to appreciate it. The simple-minded cynic must be instructed in regard to the extreme difficulty and complexity of the work that has been undertaken. It is nothing less than the transformation of a carnivorous, not to say cannibalistic, species into an orderly society in which each member shall joyously and effectively work for the welfare of all. The first thing, of course, is to catch your cannibals. This of itself is no easy task, and has taken many centuries. It has involved a vast amount of wood-chopping and road-making, and draining of swamps and exploring of caves and dens. It is a task that is still far from accomplished. Savagery is a condition which cannot be abolished till there is a conquest of the earth itself. When the cannibals have been caught and tamed there comes the problem of keeping them alive. They must eat _something_--a point which many of the missionaries of civilization have not sufficiently considered. Ethical progress is delayed by all sorts of economic complications. When the natural man is confronted with the necessity of getting a living, robbery is the first method which suggests itself to him. When this is prohibited he turns upon his moral adviser with, “What more feasible way do you propose?” The moral adviser has then to turn from the plain path of pure ethics, and cudgel his poor wits trying to “invent a little something ingenious” to keep his pupil from starving. The clever railer at human kind who has always had a bank account to fall back upon has no idea how much time and thought have been taken up in such contrivances.

Then it should be remembered that the missionaries of civilization have not themselves been above reproach. The “multitudes of the heavenly hosts” might be heard for a moment singing of good will among men, but they did not remain to do the work. The men of good will who were to work out the plan were very human indeed. Milton, in the Hymn “On the Morning of Christ’s Nativity,” warns us of the long interval between the Christmas prophecy and its historical fulfillment.

For, if such holy song Enwrap our fancy long, Time will run back and fetch the age of gold; And speckled vanity Will sicken soon and die, And leprous sin will melt from earthly mould;

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Yea, Truth and Justice then Will down return to men, Orbed in a rainbow; and, like glories wearing, Mercy will sit between, Throned in celestial sheen, With radiant feet the tissued clouds down steering: And Heaven, as at some festival, Will open wide the gates of her high palace hall.

But all the imagery of the gala day of peace fades away before the immediate reality.

But wisest Fate says no, This must not yet be so.

This veto of “wisest Fate” is not absolute. It only calls a halt upon our imagination until the rest of our nature catches up with it. Mankind is not to have peace till it has suffered for it and worked for it. The workmen must do their work over and over again till they have learned the right way.

That the “Christian nations” are not hypocrites, but novices who have been making some progress toward the Christian ideal, becomes evident when we look back over their history. They are not the descendants of the simple shepherds of the plains of Bethlehem. Far from it! When they first began to “profess and call themselves Christians,” they were not thinking of the beatitudes. They had not got that far.

Turn to the Heimskringla and read how King Olaf converted the pagan bonders.

“So King Olaf went into the God-house and a certain few of his men with him, and a certain few of the bonders. But when the king came whereas the gods were, there sat Thor the most honored of all the gods, adorned with gold and silver. Then King Olaf hove up the gold-wrought rod that he had in his hand and smote Thor that he fell down from the stall; and therewith ran forth all the king’s men and tumbled down all the gods from their stalls. But whiles the king was in the God-house was Iron-Skeggi slain without, even at the very door, and that deed did the king’s men. So when the king was come back to his folk he bade the bonders take one of two things, either all be christened, or else abide the brunt of battle with him. But after the death of Skeggi there was no leader among the folk of the bonders to raise up a banner against King Olaf. So the choice was taken of them to go to the king and obey his bidding. Then King Olaf christened all folk that were there and took hostages of the bonders that they would hold to their christening. Thereafter King Olaf caused men of his wend over all parts of Thrandheim; and now spoke no man against the faith of Christ. And so were all folk christened in the country-side.”

That is the way the nations of the north were first christianized. What is the difference between Thor and the Christ? the simple-hearted people would ask. “The difference,” said King Olaf, “is very fundamental, and it requires little theological training to see it. It is this: the Christ is stronger. If you don’t believe it, I’ll”--but they did believe it.

It is evident that there were some points in Christianity that King Olaf did not appreciate. To cultivate these fruits of the spirit required men of a different temper. Their work is not all done yet. It is progressing.

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There is one complication in the work of peacemaking which has not been sufficiently considered. It is the recurrence of Youth. I have listened to the arguments against war at a great Peace Congress. The reasoning was strong, the statement of facts conclusive. War was shown to be cruel and foolish, and incredibly expensive. The audience, consisting of right-minded and very intelligent people, was convinced of the justice of the cause of Peace. Why, then, does not the cause triumph?

In such cases I am in the habit of looking about with the intent to fix the responsibility where it belongs, on those who were not at the meeting. Mature life was well represented, but there was a suspicious absence of young men in the twenties. Ah! I said, there is the difficulty. We can’t be sure of lasting peace until we make it more interesting to these young absentees. They’ll all be peace men by and by, but meanwhile there is no knowing what trouble they may get us into.

John Fiske traced the influence which the prolongation of infancy has had on the progress of civilization. I am inclined to think that equally great results would flow from any discovery by which the period of middle age could be prolonged beyond its present term. War would be abolished without any more ado. A uniformly middle-aged community would be immune from any attack of militant fever.

It happens, however, that every once in a while the hot passions of youth carry all before them. The account of what happened at the beginning of the civil wars in Israel is typical. King Rehoboam called a meeting of the elder statesmen of his kingdom. They outlined a policy that was eminently conciliatory. But we are told, “He forsook the counsel of the old men which they had given him, and consulted with the young men that were grown up with him and which stood by him.”

That’s the difficulty! The hardest thing about a good policy is to get it accepted by the people who have the power. What avails the wisdom of the old men when all the young men are “spoiling for a fight?” Something more is needed than statesman-like plans for strengthening the framework of civilization. You may have a fireproof structure, but you are not safe so long as it is crammed with highly inflammable material.

There is a periodicity in the passion for war. It marks the coming into power of a new generation. A quarter of a century from now “the good gray poet” Rudyard Kipling may be singing sweet lyrics of peace. All things come in time. The Kipling we know simply utters the sentiments of “the young men brought up with him.” What he has been to his contemporaries Tennyson was to the generation before. Kipling never wrote a more scornful arraignment of peace or a more passionate glorification of war than Tennyson’s “Maud.”

We are listening to the invective of a youth whose aspirations have been crushed and ideals shattered by a civilization that seems to him to be soulless. He has seen something which to him is infinitely more cruel than the battle between contending hosts

Why do they prate of the blessings of peace? we have made them a curse, Pickpockets, each hand lusting for all that is not its own; And lust of gain, in the spirit of Cain, is it better or worse Than the heart of the citizen hissing in war on his own hearthstone?

We are made to see the inglorious peace in which men seek only their own ease.

Peace sitting under her olive, and slurring the days gone by, When the poor are hovell’d and hustled together, each sex, like swine, When only the ledger lives, and when only not all men lie.

From the evils of a soulless commercialism, and from the inanities of fashion, what is the way of escape? From the evils of peace he turns to the heroism of war.

I wish I could hear again The chivalrous battle song.

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Ah God, for a man with heart, head, hand, Like some of the simple great ones gone For ever and ever by, One still strong man in a blatant land.

At last, breaking in upon the deadly stupidity and selfishness of the common life, is the noise of battle:--

it lightened my despair When I thought that a war would arise in defence of the right, That an iron tyranny now should bend or cease, The glory of manhood stand on his ancient height, Nor Britain’s one sole God be the millionaire.

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Let it go or stay, so I wake to the higher aims Of a land that has lost for a little her lust of gold, And love of a peace that was full of wrongs and shames, Horrible, hateful, monstrous, not to be told; And hail once more to the banner of battle unroll’d!

That was an appeal to Young England, the England that was too young to remember the Napoleonic wars and was thirsting for an experience of its own.

We may see in such an outburst of the militant spirit only the recrudescence of savagery. It is better to treat it seriously, for it is something which each generation must reckon with. Tennyson sums up the matter from the standpoint of ardent youth:--

Let it flame or fade, and the war roll down like a wind, We have proved we have hearts in a cause, we are noble still, And myself have awaked, as it seems, to the better mind. It is better to fight for the good than to rail at the ill; I have felt with my native land, I am one with my kind, I embrace the purpose of God, and the doom assign’d.

It is easy enough to dismiss all this as mere vaporing. But it is a protest which must be heeded, for it expresses a real experience. There are things worse than war. A sordid slothfulness is worse. A cowardly acquiescence in injustice is worse. It is a real revelation when to the heart of youth comes a sudden sense of the meaning of life. It is not a treasure to be preserved with miserly carefulness. It is to be nobly hazarded. It _is_ better to fight for the good than to rail, however eloquently, against the ill. To feel for one’s native land, to unite in generous comradeship with one’s kind, to endure hardness for a noble cause,--these things are of the essence of manhood.

In times of national peril such awakening has come. Many a man has then for the first time discovered that he has a soul. He has cried out, “Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord.”

Now just here we peace men may see our most inspiring bit of unfinished business. War has been idealized; it is left to us to idealize peace. It cannot be done till we bring out all its heroic possibilities. If it means dull stagnation, selfish ease, the prosperity that can be measured in dollars and cents, there is sure to come a revulsion against it. The gospel of the full dinner-pail and the plethoric pocket-book does not satisfy. If the choice is between commercialism and militarism we need not wonder if many an idealist chooses the latter as the less perilous course. It seems less threatening toward the things for which he cares.

The call is for a new chivalry. Our duty is not only to keep the peace, but to make a peace that is worth keeping. This is no easy task. It means the humanizing of all our activities. Everywhere a human ideal must be placed above every other kind of success. Religion must be lifted above ecclesiasticism; and business honor above the vulgar standards of commercialism. The machinery of civilization must be made subservient to man. More careers must be opened for men of the soldierly spirit whose ambition is for service. The new generation must be shown what opportunities the world’s business and politics offer to great-hearted gentlemen who are willing to risk something for a cause. The kind of peace which the world needs cannot be had for the asking. It comes high,--but it is worth the price.

THE LAND OF THE LARGE AND CHARITABLE AIR

Are you not constrayned (my fellow Academicks) to subscribe to this my opinion that the knowledge of no nation is so necessary as the searching out of a man’s own Country and the manners thereof and the right understanding of that Commonweale whereof each one of us is a part and member. The Lamiæ that are a certaine kind of monsters are laughed at in the Poeticall Fables in that they were so blinde at home that they could not see their own affaires, could foresee nothing; but when they were once gone from home they were accounted the most sharpe-sighted and curious searchers of all others.... [Are not they] very ridiculous when as by taking long voyages unto farre remote people, after they have curiously sought out all matters amongst them are ignorant of the principall things at home and know not what is contayned within the precincts of their country, and are reckoned altogether strangers on their native soile?--CORYAT’S _Crudities_.

The remark that Boston is not so much a place as a state of mind is one of the highest compliments ever paid to that city. Places are common enough, the maps are dotted with them, but a state of mind is a mark of distinction. The Bostonian enjoys his state of mind none the less because he is aware that outsiders are not always able to enter into it.

Only those places which have become symbolic of mental or moral traits are remembered. Sodom and Gomorrah were once towns of some commercial importance. We think of them, however, not as trade centres, but as sins. Babylon, according to a doctrine of spiritual correspondences long since established, is another name for proud and cruel worldliness. It is likely so to remain, in spite of the discovery of clay tablets which show that many of its people were estimable citizens who practiced domestic economy and collected their debts by due process of law. All we have to say is that those who acted in this commonplace way were not typical,--in fact, they were quite un-Babylonian. In like manner, Zion represents no longer a hill whose altitude may be prosaically estimated according to the metric system. It is a highly exalted frame of pious joy.

It is strange that, with all the ingenuity that has been shown in inventing new text-books for the use of schools, no one has compiled a Psychological Geography. The materials are ample. It only needs some one with a scientific imagination, or, rather, with a capacity for writing imaginative science, to make it a success. Eliminating those communities whose states of mind are so mixed as to be unclassifiable, the way would be clear for a very pretty series of generalizations. There would be maps with isothermal lines uniting places of equal degrees of warmth of temperament or frigidity of manner. Weather charts would show the direction of the various winds of doctrine and the storm centres, religious and political. The theory of moral cyclones and anti-cyclones would be adequately explained. There would be maps in colors indicating the communities situated on the plateaus of conscious ethical and intellectual superiority. These often rise into the arid, or at least semi-arid, belt. In sharp contrast with these are the luxuriant bottom lands, where less favored peoples dwell in happy ignorance of their low estate. The “principal products” would be graphically illustrated. One section, being without natural resources, is given over to the manufacture of novelties, while another is rich in fossils. The distribution of fads may be shown to advantage. Some localities are almost barren, while others are naturally faddy.

When he comes to the Points of the Compass the most matter-of-fact psychological geographer will forget the cold mannerisms of his science and become poetical. North, South, East, West, these are vast symbols of psychic forces. He would not think of putting at the head of the chapter the picture, from the old Geography, of the disconsolate urchin with his face to the north and his arms extended in rigid but reluctant testimony to the fact that “East is East and West is West.” What does this featureless boy know of those tremendous forces whose age-long contests have made the history of the world? What does he know of the hardiness and the prowess that make the true North? If he were forcibly turned around, his face would be as expressionless as ever. Such a mannikin never felt a sudden longing for “a beaker full of the warm South.”

Art must be called to the aid of science. Each point of the compass has an expression of its own. One should be able by looking at the face of the man in the picture to know the direction. There is no mistaking the qualities which grow only where there is a northerly exposure. The Orient and the Occident are not to be confounded.