THE SINS OF THE FATHERS
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MHbesiNs OF THE FATHERS
THE SINS OF ‘THE FATHERS
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BOSTON VAR SHEE JONES COMPANY MDCCCEXIX
COPYRIGHT, 1918
BY MARSHALL JONES COMPANY
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THE UNIVERSITY PRESS, CAMBRIDGE, U. S. A,
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THE SINS OF THE FATHERS
INTRODUCTION
" EOIN D the Alps lies Italy|” Be- yond The War lies The World after
the War. Black and red, the holo- caust of an era envelops the world; black with the heavy shadow of catastrophe, red with the flame of a penitential purgation. Black and red, the smoke-clouds of a great burning open fitfully, and only a little way, to reveal a far country, in hope rather than in reality, but it is on these poor gleams of far promise that already the eyes of men are fixed, for there alone lies the prophecy and the forecast of compensation.
The world has become a great interro- gation. Why was this thing permitted and why does it endure? Faith fails in those of short sight, and the heaped-up horror of four years, the ever-increasing sorrow of personal loss, seen only so, and regardless of
[1]
THE SENS OF THe res
past and future, force the question that too often finds its answer in doubt, infidelity and despair. Widen the vision until the strange history of the last five centuries is scen with clear eyes, until the possibility of the future becomes a reality, and doubt dis- appears, faith returns, and despair is trans- formed into a great hope.
It is impossible to understand this epic war except in the light of recent history; it is impossible to endure its terror unless we look beyond. It is no casual and untoward event, the rash precipitation in time and space of the insane illusions of matoids and paranoiacs, the accident of industrial war- fare, the catastrophe that might have been escaped. It was conceived in the very be- ginnings of modernism when first the Re- naissance began to supersede Medievalism; it grew and strengthened as the Reforma- tion entered into its final form; it quickened and stirred as the revolutions of the eight- eenth and nineteenth centuries shook the foundations of law and order in all Europe; it struggled for birth as industrial civiliza- tion waxed fat and gross in its century of blind evolution. Medici, Borgia and Mac- chiavelli, Huss and Luther and Calvin,
[2]
INTRODUCTION
Cromwell and Rousseau and Marat; the regraters and monopolists of the seven- teenth century, the corporations and ex- ploiters of the eighteenth, the iron-masters and coal barons, the traders and the usurers of the nineteenth, the triumphant, Imperial Great Powers of industrialism in the twen- tieth century, prepared all things for its nativity, and when, on the first of August, I9i4aehoup or supermen™ in Berlin acted as surgeons and midwife, it came to its birth, after long gestation, a thing neither to be denied nor escaped, an inevitable event, born “that the prophecy might be fulfilled.”
In the first months of Apocalyptic revela- tion, when it became dismally evident that modern civilization was doomed, and while the smug prophets of enduring peace, of the end of war and of the assured triumph of modernism were running around in circles, wild-eyed and panic-stricken, vainly endeavouring to find some adequate ex- planation of the failure of their system and the shattering collapse of their house of cards, it all seemed blind, unreasonable, impossible. Surely it was all a nightmare, a fiction of auto-suggestion (to borrow from
[3]
—_— at
THE SHNS OF THis
the pseudo-scientific jargon of the time). This thing could not be; it cut square across the acceptable theory of evolution, it im- plied a basic lack in what was demonstrably the unique and crowning civilization of all time; it even cast a doubt on the great dogma of the ultimate (and immediate) perfectability of man achieved by automatic and irresistible processes. ‘This could not be, therefore the Thing, the unimaginable, impossible War with all its collateral hor- rors on its head, was either illusion or a rebellious and intolerable “sport”; not to be endured, but to be crushed and utterly cast out that the world might return to the status quo ante, to resume its triumphant progress towards that perfection and uni- versal triumph so clearly indicated, so un- happily and unscientifically diverted in its course.
Four years of war and of the revelations of war have wrought a change. It is not now that reasons are not forthcoming, it is that they are legion. “ Any stick will do to beat a dog with,” and any and every defect and weakness incipient in the world before the war is seized upon as the suff- cient explanation of the catastrophe. Many
[4]
INTRODUCTION
are justly chosen, many are but remotely connected, if at all, sith what has hap- pened. The process, however, is an whole- some one: the superstition of the excellence of modernism is now revealed and dis- credited and they that were its most zealous adherents are now its most angry accusers. All this is good; the veil must be, and has been, torn away. It is now for us to weigh and estimate the qualities inherent in mod- ernism which were its undoing, for only so can we create the antidote that will perhaps purge the diseased system of society and so prolong its life. At all events, it is only after this fashion that we can learn what to avoid when, after the ending of war, we set our hands to the rebuilding of the world.
Now it seems to me that there are three fundamental evils in the society we have known and in which we have played our part. This enumeration does not exclude others, perhaps of equal energy, certainly of very effective potency. I think, however, they are all more or less closely connected with the three I wish to deal with at this time, and so I shall confine myself, for the purposes of this volume, to what [ will call
ese]
THE SINS OF THEVA
The Three Errors of Modernism, and these are: Imperialism, Materialism, The Quan- titative Standard.
I propose to deal with these three errors separately, and yet they are so closely asso- ciated they almost count as one. They are several manifestations of something greater than they, greater than all the peculiar mental, physical and spiritual phenomena that determine modernism. Four years ago we should have aired our erudition by call- ing it the Zeitgeist, now it is more becoming to use the phrase Time Spirit. Just what this is, whether it is a blind force, a con- scious personality, or only the ex post facto label affixed to the sum ‘of tendencies and achievements in any Clearly defined epoch, does not matter. As I have tried to show in several recent books (‘The Substance of Gothic,” “The Nemesis of Mediocrity,” “The Great Thousand Years’), the history of society divides itself into quite clearly distinguishable periods of five centuries each, none extending beyond its term, and each marked by qualities wholly different from its successor and from its predecessor. Every era possesses something closely ap- proaching personality, so consistent is it, so
[6]
INTRODUCTION
original in its inception, so individual in its scheme and method, so novel in its termi- nating catastrophe. Such was the five cen- turies B.C. of Hellenism, such the first epoch of the Christian era which was also that of Roman imperialism, such the period of the Dark Ages, and that of Medizeval- ism, while Modernism, which began with the Renaissance, continued through the Reformation, found new fields of expression in the revolutionary era from Cromwell to Garibaldi, came to its climax under the cen- tury of industrialism, and is now achieving its unhonoured end through an unexampled war and its unparalleled revelations.
In any case there is substantial unity and coherency in each epoch, and whatever the source or nature of the impelling force it works uninterruptedly through many channels, and after varied fashions, that have issue in events that superficially, and as they befall, seem to bear scant resem- blance to each other. During modernism, for example, the second episode, the Refor- mation, seemed to the men of the time and to all historians after the fact, opposed in every way to its predecessor, the Renais- sance, while the connection between it and
[7]
THE SINS OF THEVEAITMERS
the mid-era revolutionary upheaval was equally tenuous in the minds of contemp- oraries. As for the last episode —indus- trialism— it is only within the last decade that its close kinship with the preceding “three R’s” has been recognized by a few daring spirits who have met with scant sympathy and have had their trouble for their pains.
As a matter of fact these four great hap- penings hang together with all the unity and the progressive development of a Greek drama, and the final catastrophe— The War— falls with the dramatic and fateful certainty of a tragedy by schylus or Eu- ripides. Verily a consummate work of art, for it is only in the closing catastrophe it- self, at the very moment when the Chorus marches slowly to its place to sing the final valedictory, that the sublime unity of the great scheme reveals itself, and the note of inexorable Fate sounds through the meas- ured lamentations of those who knew it not until they became its victims.
The Renaissance contributed the intel- lectual standard as sufficient in itself for the measuring and determining of all things, its corollary being the abandonment of a
[8]
LAY ROD UCTION
super-material standard of right and wrong, with the consequent break-down of morals wherever the Renaissance was operative. Through the Reformation came the denial, for those that accepted it, of sacramental philosophy, and the paralyzing of religion as a spiritual and ethical force through the substitution of sectarian chaos for Catholic unity. Politically and socially the inevi- table outcome of the Renaissance and Ref- ormation was absolutism and tyranny, with force as the one recognized arbiter of action. After this the revolutionary movement was inevitable, and though it overthrew the tyranny of crown and caste it could sub- stitute nothing but another tyranny in its place, for already the spiritual forces in the world had been dried up, the spiritual standards obliterated. By a great stroke of dramatic genius, the discovery of the po- tential in coal and iron, the manifold in- ventions of capable and intricate machinery, and the promulgation of a new and mechan- istic philosophy of evolutionism, synchro- nized with the revolution, and when the convulsion had settled down to an unstable equilibrium, behold a new power domi- nant in society; greed and covetousness, ex-
[9]
—t®
THE SINS OFS iter aad BERS
alted above all virtues, and offered fabulous reward through surplus manufacture, the exploiting of labour, artificially developed trade, —and usury.
In spite of its grossness, its lack of mo- rality, and the uniform hideousness of its outward Biggie, the triumphant “‘civi- lization” that marked the last avatar of modernism was sufficiently convincing in its magnificent potency to win universal acceptance as the highest achievement of man in all recorded history. Wealth, whether in money, credit, land or securities, was vast beyond parallel; it was also om- nipotent, and its standard of comparative values was implicitly accepted. ‘The in- ventions and devices of a century, increasing in geometrical ratio, outnumbered an hun- dred times all that man had devised before since the creation of the world. Science — the knowledge of natural laws and their practical application—had outstripped even invention in its meteoric career, and had lost nothing in public estimation (rather it had gained something) through its taking over and exploitation by the money power. The world—only a fringe of states around the Mediterranean, with
[ 10 J
INTRODUCT ION
outposts in Great Britain, Muscovy, the Indies and far Cathay, at the opening of the modern period —had now become co- terminous with the globe, and every land, every people, had been made tributary to sovereign industrialism and trade. ‘Time had been almost annihilated, space made of no account; the conquest of the air was im- minent, the harnessing of the last and shyest forces of nature was in process and only death remained unconquered.
It is hardly to be wondered at that all the world bowed down before the marvel of the ages, and that for the first six months of the year 1914 no man could be found who believed that its glory could be abated, its destiny averted, or even that war could come again to stay its glorious career. Four years have transformed the world. The wealth a century had heaped up is being destroyed at the rate of a hundred millions a day; science, the great and beneficent saviour of society, has become an appalling engine of destruction; all the vast industrial organisms of the world are engaged in turn- ing out things to destroy and to be destroyed, and the huge system of world-markets and commercial spheres of influence is scrapped ;
[11]
THE SINS OF THiS wie ke
democracy breaks down in pitiful ruin as a working system and gives place to autoc- racy, except in Russia, where it becomes an insane anarchy not to be distinguished from the chaos, not of the beginnings but of the last days; finally, the chosen and cherished philosophy of modernism, evolution, crum- bles like a sand-castle on the edge of the sea, and in the light of world ruin shows as thin and futile as the pathological visions of an Indian yogi.
And now all is to be done over again, but differently. If we are to rebuild intelli- gently we must know the weakness that brought about world-downfall when world- victory was expected. I propose to find this weakness in the Three Errors of Modern- ism: Materialism, Imperialism, and the Quantitative Standard. Ina way material- ism is the energizing force, expressing itself in imperialism, the quantitative stand- ard and in all the other peculiar manifesta- tions of modernism whether these are al- together new or only modifications of what already existed. I shall, however, deal with it last, for its energy and its power of self-expression in protean forms will show more clearly if we first consider certain of
[12]
INTRODUCT LO
the manifestations of this force which may possibly be the very Time Spirit itself. The great catastrophe now running its course, the world-war that is dissipating all the hoarded treasure of five centuries and giv- ing the coup de grace to modernism itself, is the immediate product of imperialism, so we will consider this first.
Lars a
IMPERIALISM
A “NHIS is the antithesis of democracy,
whether you consider the democracy
of ideal or that of method. As I have endeavoured to show in “ The Nemesis of Mediocrity,” these are in no respect the same. ‘They need not be, and as a matter of fact never have been, united, while the democracy of method is not only the worst possible means for obtaining the democracy of ideal, it is also almost certainly its nemesis. The democracy of ideal is the possession of a few minds, it is neither understood nor accepted by the mass of people, who are capable alone of compre- hending the raw processes of the democracy of method. Whenever democracy as an ideal has been put forward by its protag- onists it has always given place within a generation to its changeling method, and in this, with all its variations and vicissitudes, the interests of the people have been en- gaged. When the war was unleashed, there
[14]
IMPERIALISM
was little democracy of ideal visible in any of the institutions of rnan, secular or religious, political, industrial or social. There was, however, rather an overplus of democratic method in the governments of Great Brit- ain, France, Italy, the United States. By the powers, or power, controlling the des- tinies of men, it was used as a very perfect blind for the triumphant imperialism that everywhere had taken its place. With the sudden crash of war society tried to function along democratic lines, the result being in- stant and conspicuous failure. The demo- cratic method, while it precariously main- tained itself in Germany and claimed a certain theoretical (or parliamentary) ex- istence in Austria-Hungary, was there no more than a toy to amuse the governed, and attempted nothing, not even to assert itself, the moment the war came, and for four years the autocracy of Germany, quietly incorporating within itself all its confeder- ates, has worked with an admirable efh- ciency the Allies have been unable to meet. In so far as they have been able of late to match the enemy, even if thus far he is un- conquered, this is due to the distance the greater of the allied states have departed
(
THE SINS OF 2 HERR
from democracy of method. At the present moment they have progressed very far in- deed; Great Britain and the United States have become autocracies that would make Constantine, Henry VIII and Louis XIV hang their heads, France and Italy have become oligarchies, not altogether secure but at least free for the moment of demo- cratic incapacity. In the fact of this change lies the one chance of victory.
Now the comparatively real democracy of Hampden, Rousseau and Jefferson long ago became merely a ccllection of literary remains, an archeological abstraction. In its place came a violent, self-satisfied and audacious political system that was always feverishly in search of some new improve- ment that would make it seem more ‘“‘ demo- cratic.” Socialists, communists, anarchists, followers of the I. W. W., really saw through the deceit and clamoured for that ‘direct action” which is the logical ter- minus ad quem of democratic method and has recently been given a very logical demonstration in what once was Russia. The thing never worked elsewhere, how- ever, for in the meantime a real im- perialism, as real as that of Rome or By-
[16]
IMPERIALISM
zantium or the French monarchy of the seventeenth century, had grown throughout society, and though it was content to use the parliamentary system, representative government, universal suffrage and rota- tion in office as its effective camouflage, it established itself completely in industry, commerce and finance, and so made polit- ical machines merely its own agencies of operation without regard to their nature. As a matter of fact these ingenious schemes of alleged government are far more amen- able as implements of service in the hands of industrial imperialism than would have been those of a more obviously imperialistic nature. The democratic method ultimately destroys natural leadership, yet man by his very nature must be led, therefore it was sufficiently simple for imperial industry and finance to furnish the leaders; a task they accomplished to admiration.
The essence of imperialism is aggrega- tion, with the working downward of dele- gated authority from a high and omnip- otent source. The essence of democracy is differentiation, local autonomy, and a building up of authority from primary units. Under the progressive imperialism
ie a
THE SINS OF 2 Ea)
of the nineteenth century and the first fourteen years of this, the original demo- cratic ideal rapidly disappeared. In gov- ernment the traditional methods still ob- tained, as they did theoretically imecentain outlying and not yet subjugated depart- ments of industry and trade; indeed the tendency was steadily towards what was hailed as a still more complete democracy of method. Upper legislative houses were shorn of their prerogatives, threatened in their hereditary nature where this existed, or, as in the United States, handed over to popular election. Veto by popular vote of judicial decisions, popular election of mem- bers of the judiciary, the initiative, referen- dum and recall, woman suffrage, with many other equally doctrinaire, ill-digested and fanatical measures, were experimented with, until government, from the city to the nation, had become universally chaotic, inefficient, unintelligent and venal. It was all the same to “big business” and “high finance”; these were the directing forces, and however childish, inopportune and anarchial legislation and the administering of the laws might be in matters not con- nected therewith, here it was certain and
[18]
IST PERTALISIM
secure. Business had become imperial, and finance also; neither could exist without the other, and together they formed a working machine that constituted and directed po- litical policies, international relations, for- eign affairs, as well as the making and administering of both necessary and un- necessary domestic laws. :
Trades unionism, created to oppose the ever-growing power of capital in trade, industry and finance, was equally imperial- ized. The great leaders did not hesitate to assert that, if unionism was to work effec- tively, it must be under the absolute orders of small and practically irresponsible groups, and though the show of voting on important questions was still maintained, the nature of the vote was easily determined beforehand, while strikes were more and more begun and ended by executive order, and without the sanction of the men in- volved.
From the end of the eighteenth century political, industrial and financial imperial- ism developed together. Politically the ex- pansion, through annexation and incorpo- ration, was enormous. Under the spur of an ever-augmenting industry increasingly
[19 ]
THE SINS OF Tita ook
given over to excess production — to manu- facture for profit not for consumption — demanding new and _ artificial markets to take over the colossal surplus made possible by machinery, new inventions and the ex- ploiting of labour, Asia, Africa, Oceanica were seized upon, made complaisant through “ peaceful penetration,” and either divided up amongst the contending powers or equally exploited through the delimiting of spheres of influence. Great Britain, the inventor of industrialism, and its protag- onist, led in the process, seizing the most desirable sections of the available “ po- tential markets,” followed by France, Rus- sia, Belgium and Holland, with Germany, Italy and Austria so far behind in the rush that for them only the leavings remained. The United States swept from the At- lantic to the Pacific and from the Canadian border to the Rio Grande, contenting itself for a century with this great empire, and making no effort at foreign annexations until the end of the century. When the war broke there remained only China, Persia and Turkey as politically unclaimed areas, and in each case the process of com- mercial exploitation had proceeded to the
[ 20 ]
IM PERTALIS Pa
point where political partitioning and an- nexation were bound shortly to follow. In fact the plot was ripe in the case of all these countries; it was only a question as to whether Great Britain, Germany or Japan was to determine the lines of division and gain the lion’s share.
They were magnificent and inspiring, these vast empires of the early twentieth century. Cecil Rhodes, Chamberlain, Kip- ling, J. B. Cramb, each along his own line, strove to glorify the imperial idea, and until the very moment Germany forced the war in pursuance of a Iogical scheme that had been inherent i in imperialism from the ure of ccapenalltean the substitution of any- thing of any kind in its place, was unthink- able on the twentieth day of July, 1914.
Between one country and another there was no difference in nature and very slight difference in method: The thing that had begun in Great Britain with the suppres- sion of the monasteries, the dispossessing of the peasant land-holders, the invention of capitalism through the joint-stock company, and the discovery of coal, steam and the power loom, and had grown to maturity by
[21]
THE SINS OF THES iis
the process of exploitation in the nineteenth century, had been accepted by all the “ pro- gressive’? peoples of the globe. Between Germany, Great Britain, Belgium, the United States, there was no difference what- ever so far as the impelling force was con- cerned, and Japan, France, Italy, Russia were fast renouncing their superstition and adopting the quantitative standard, so tak- ing their place with the great industrial leaders of the world. There was a differ- ence, however, between Germany and her rivals, as appeared within the first thirty days of the war. That in Great_Britain,
first of all, the abandonment. of moral standards in the development and organiza- tion of industrialism had been effected,
cannot be denied, any more than the fact that it was here that industrialism had its beginning. The first half of the nineteenth century saw in England the voiding of industrial civilization of every moral ele- ment, of every ethical standard, and the record of manufacture and trade and finance, of the wars and _ conspiracies abroad, in the insane rush of the new power to world dominion, will forever remain one of the blackest pages in history. It might
[ 22 ]
IMPERIALISS4
have seemed that no limit had been set, no bounds allowed, for the substitution of im- morality for righteousness, of injustice for Justice, in the wild debauch then in process, but Germany disproved this. We were all bent on achieving the same end, we were all pursuing the same base courses, but Germany got there first, and just because with her there actually were no limits to what she was willing to do, whereas in the case of Great Britain and the other runners in the same race, there were limits, though to some they might have seemed imper- ceptible. After all, “there are some things no fellow can do.” This was the spiritual salvation of the peoples that drew the line somewhere, as its denial was the damnation of Germany. It may prove the ruin of those peoples that retained some shreds of an old sense of honour; thus far it has availed them little from a material and military standpoint; but if this is so then they will perish as great states, knowing that after all it shall profit no man anything if he shall gain the whole world and lose his own soul.
Yet if in spite of their imperialism, they have preserved something of an ancient
[ 23 ]
THE SINS OF THRO ie
sense of honour, in the end they must perish, as empires, to give place to new social units of human scale. Engendered of covetous- ness and greed and at the insistent, impera- tive demand of industry and trade daily becoming more and more imperialistic, the vast empires have, almost as a by-product, brought o order out_of chaos in countless countries that have been drawn within their control. Great Britain has given to India, Egypt, Africa, ordered government and economical administration and — within its limits—the elements of education they themselves were unable to achieve: she has defended states and peoples against aggres- sion and enslavement at the hands of less scrupulous imperialisms, and has carried ‘modern civilization,” such as it is, to the uttermost parts of the earth. So, in only less degree, have France and the United States and Japan, in Algeria, the Philip- pines, Korea. What Germany has done in Africa is another story. In every case, however, it may be admitted that the im- perialistic process has accomplished a task that needed doing and that could have been achieved after no other fashion in so brief a time or in accordance with methods so
Ln
IMPERIALISM
generally just and humane. ‘The entire world has been brought within the circuit of civilization, but a real and beneficent civilization, based on a true standard of comparative values, has not been achieved, simply because this thing does not exist in modern civilization itself. Moreover, the vast empires that have been the result have now proved the ruin, not only of the states that were the original agencies and the nuclei of aggregation, but as well of the very scheme of life that was their motive force and formed the contribution they offered to their incorporated peoples.
It is the history of Rome, repeated with ‘damnable iteration”; there and then Rome thought to extend her high civiliza- tion over the tribes and the lands she added yearly to her empire. Power to say “ cirvis Romanus sum” was freely extended, from Britain to Egypt and from the Caucasus to the Pillars of Hercules; the “Pax Ro- manus’’ covered all the known world made tributary to a single city, and at the very moment of inclusive triumph the irresistible pull began and Rome, that had thought to raise all the world to her own level, yielded to a barbarism she could not redeem. In
[ 25 ]
THE SINS OF DHbairiiks
one century the ruin was accomplished, the Empire was disrupted, and over dissolving frontiers poured the hordes of destruction until at last the capital of the world was a desolate ruin, the proud cities of Asia, Africa, Britain and Gaul, built as fair copies and in haughty emulation, vanished in fire and sack and were buried beneath the marching forests, the blown sands of the desert, or the implacable sea. Im- perialism had become its own executioner.
Imperialism will always be its own ex-
ecutioner; that is the process in which it is ' now engaged. Not only is it the reversal of , the normal organism in that it is centraliza- tion at the top with a filtering downward of a rapidly dwindling power, until at or near the base both power and liberty are non- existent, it is also the negation of the unit of human scale, and this is the thing out of which has been built in the past, and will be built in the future, society that is healthy, normal, and productive of real values.
The social unit is not the individual, as is claimed by the political, economic and social anarchists of the present day; it is not the State, that amorphous but annihilating
[ 26 }
IMPERIALISM
fiction proclaimed by Teutonism. It is the family, that is to say, the primitive social group of father, mother and children, add- ing at either end, and temporarily, grand- parents and grandchildren. From this as the norm society develops both directly and indirectly; directly in the form of the clan or blood-brotherhood, and as the neigh- bourhood, with the village or township coming next, and finally the group of town- ships which makes up the state; indirectly, through the small groups of those of diverse blood but like interests—the guild, the club, the university, the monastery, the order of knighthood. In the case of both the direct development and the indirect, the essence is autonomy and self-government, together with personal association and ac- quaintance. As the scale mounts upward something of this is progressively lost, and the close knowledge and community of the family loses something in the clan or neigh- bourhood, more in the township, while in the state it in a measure disappears, though not necessarily unless the territorial extent and the population are excessive. Where the unit of human scale has obtained in the past, and wherever it may establish itself
27]
THE SINS OF Thiba i ek s
in the future, the surrender of authority or the right to action has been and must be closely restricted. Theoretically all liberty of action inheres in the family, the primary unit. In order that society may exist some- thing of this is surrendered when the town- ship or parish—the secondary unit—1is established, but to the governing power only and exactly so much is granted as is neces- sary for the mutual welfare and for guard- ing the individual rights of the component parts. In the same way, the group of secondary units concedes to the tertiary unit — the state—only so much of the authority it has received from the primary units as, in its turn, will serve to establish and main- tain the rights and the safety and the general welfare of the whole group of secondary units. In theory the state should know the individual only through the secondary unit, as this should know the individual through the family, where this exists, but actually and practically this is in many cases im- possible, particularly in the domain of law, but to the fundamental principle there is no exception, and this is that each unit shall exercise over the one next below it, no au- thority which the lower unit can exercise
[ 28 ]
Ke PERTALISS
over itself, except when the common in- terest is placed in jeopardy.
It will be perceived that there may be a fourth unit, made up of a group of states, that is to say, a republic or kingdom com- prising any number of autonomous states, and that even a fifth 1s as possible now as it has been a fact in the past—the empire. This is of course true, but in the fact lies no disproof of the argument against imperial- ism. If the process of surrendering and delegating authority follows the principle outlined above, that is to say, is from the lower to the next higher unit, and only to the extent that is absolutely necessary to safeguard the interests of the combined units of whatever stage, then imperialism, in the sense in which the term is used to-day and in which I employ it, loses its sting and becomes compatible with the theory of the unit of human scale, while — jealously safe- guarded — it becomes no longer an agency for the unscrupulous tyranny that marks its present estate.
It was after this fashion that the Holy Roman Empire tried to function, and as a matter of fact did function during certain happy portions of its career. ‘The states of
[ 29 ]
THE SINS OF THESE aes
the Empire were practically autonomous in spite of the elected Emperor, while during the whole medizval epoch the unit of hu- man scale was universal in all categories of life. ‘Theoretically the method is practi- cally that aimed at by the Constitution of the United States, an instrument that more and more reveals its profound wisdom and logic and humanism the further we distort it from its intended ends and make it sub- servient to ideas and interests alien and revolting to the minds of its framers. Like a great ‘cath edral or system of philosophy or other work of art, the social scheme builds itself up, course by course, from its deep laid foundations of the human social unit. It is a pyramid, broad-based and four-square, symmetrically rising by succes- sive graduations from base-course to apex, and in comparison therewith Roman and modernistic imperialism show rather as a pyramid inverted, maintaining a precarious et(uilihtiiins for @ Bre vig Geeta tae al it crumbles of its own weight and falls into ruin, or is toppled from its insecure base by some casual wind of anarchy or revolt. The imperial states of to-day—from Germany and Austria (that outdo Rome
[ 30 ]
[VEER TAL io I
itself in centralization of authority, the negation of free action and the abandon- ment of the human scale) to Great Britain which, while equally false in scale is still in ammotiien tespects mearer the ideal, of the organic state than any others of the present time — have played their part, for good or ill, and must pass, giving place to small, compact, self-contained and autonomous states conceived in human scale. Let us take Germany for an example and, assum- ing a victory over her and her confederates of a nature so complete that she can be rendered harmless for the future (and any other issue is synonymous with defeat), examine the process of decentralization and emancipation that must be imposed on her for the good of her people as well as for the safety of the world.
There will be first of all the process of disgorging, whereby Alsace and Lorraine, Posen, Schleswig-Holstein, and perhaps Silesia, are returned to their original or- ganic union with France, Poland, Denmark or Austria. There will be also, of course, pecuniary compensation of France, Bel- gium, Poland, etc., but this question does not enter into the present consideration.
(Panel
THE SINS OF Die awe s
None of the German colonies can be re- turned nor can they be annexed to other sovereignties; as none of them is conceiv- ably fit for autonomy, some form of joint European protectorate must be devised and on lines that will prevent economic ex- ploitation by any state or all acting in con- cert. What is now European Germany may then be divided into five sovereign states; to the east will be Prussia, i.e. the old “ East Prussia” lying beyond the Vistula (Pomer- elia, with Danzig, being joined to Poland) and forming a state about the size of Bel- gium, which may remain the appanage of the Hohenzollerns——if the taste of its in- habitants inclines in this fantastic direction. Next will come a great Saxony incorpo- rating Brandenburg and bounded on the west by the Weser. Thence to the Rhine and southward to the Main will come Hanover, while Bavaria, Wurtemberg and Baden will make up the Southern German State. West of the Rhine the present Ger- man territory (minus Alsace and Lorraine and with certain corrections of the frontiers of Belgium and Luxembourg) may become a new Palatinate.
Similar treatment should be accorded
[ 32 ]
IMPERIALISM
Austria-Hungary, out of which may be made four states; viz., Bohemia, Austria, Hungary and Slavonia. The Balkan ter- ritory, while difficult so far as boundaries are concerned, will after some fashion divide itself between the existing states, while the anarchy in Russia is already lead- ing to the greatly to be desired processes of fission and local autonomy. The remainder of the continent of Europe is already well subdivided and at a reasonable human scale.
Assuming that European Russia breaks up into six independent states, continental Europe will then consist of thirty independ- ent sovereignties. That this independence should be absolute is imperative, and yet there must be some central and representa- tive authority that will act as a permanent and adequate safeguard of the interests of each state against the aggression of a larger upon a smaller, of the powerful against the weak, of a barbarous as opposed to a civi- lized unit. This may be provided for by a permanent Congress of Ambassadors in some specific Federal City over which it has absolute control. This Congress would have original jurisdiction over the deter- mining and enforcing of International Law,
[ 33 ]
THE SINS OF THESE aks
and the proclaiming and maintaining of certain trunk lines of traffic, both by land and water, as free, international highways; it would have appellate jurisdiction in any cases of internal or international dispute that might be referred to it by both parties. Further than this its authority should not go; it should not interfere in any of the internal affairs of the several states nor in their international relations. It could not prevent war, but as the guardian of Inter- national Law it could proceed against any state or states that violated this law, either in peace or war, first, by a proclamation of absolute embargo and non-intercourse; second, by calling into its service any part or all of the military and naval forces of the states of Europe.
Such a disposition of the Teutonic states, conquered, would not only be a guarantee against repeated aggression and a very proper penalty for the great crime against humanity of which they have been guilty, but as well it would be in the end a notable benefaction to the German peoples ihe true greatness of the peoples of Central Europe lies in the history of Saxony, Po- land, Bavaria, Bohemia, Brunswick, the
[ 34]
IMPERIALISM
Palatinate, not in that of the Empire as such, and still less in the record of imperial Germany since the Franco-Prussian War. The fine qualities developed in these several states since the time of Charlemagne must still be latent, though hidden from sight and made inoperative by the false ideals established, and the evil methods generated, during the last generation of imperial politics, industry and finance. By releasing these peoples from bondage and _ recon- stituting them in old states of manageable scale, self-respect, self-reliance, racial pride and sense of responsibility may be restored and, the very name of German Empire erased from the map, they will be in a position to advance, each along its self- determined lines, towards a true, lasting and beneficient civilization.
Out of punishment will grow salvation, for this is one of the basic laws of life. Now if such must be the result of Teutonic dismemberment, what about the remaining empires, Russia, Great Britain, the United Statese Retribution must come to them also for the part they played, in varying degrees, in the forsaking of right standards of comparative value and in blindly and
[35]
THE SINS OF THEA HRs
insanely building up that “modern civiliza- tion” that has been revealed through the logical action of Germany in pushing a common impulse and tendency to its fatal conclusion. This retribution is now being meted out after a fashion that even victory in the field cannot offset, but shall they not see farther, and voluntarily, having regard to their own future, renounce an imperial- ism that has brought only a precarious material success that in the end proved the nemesis of their civilization?
Such an act of self-denial, of material abnegation, resulting as it would in the com- plete dissolution of the great empires of Britain, France, the, United States; the relinquishing of vast colonies in Asia, Africa, Oceanica, is almost unthinkable on a priori grounds. For England to abrogate her sovereignty over Canada, India, Aus- tralia, South Africa, Egypt; for Franceste abandon the African possessions she has governed so well; for the United States to declare the independence of the Philip- pines, and to separate perhaps into four or five autonomous states, only bound together —with the other states of North America— under a central Federal Council such as
[ 36]
IMPERIALISM
has been suggested for Europe, will be for the vast majority of men not only unthink- able but insane. The possibility is this in appearance only. If the present war has destroyed modern civilization, as it very certainly has, what follows after must be fundamentally different in form and in idea. Democracy — vital and righteous and con- structive democracy —is incompatible either with imperialism or with “big business and high finance.” [Either im- perialism must go, in government, in in- dustry and in finance, or democracy in any form must be abandoned.
The great imperial states that have grown up during the last century are the necessary result of that contemporary industrialism which has no counterpart in history. They are all conceived in that bloated and un- wholesome scale which is the mark of im- perialism and the negation of human values. They are the consequence of the substitu- tion of the quantitative for the qualitative standard, they are the eternal menace to liberty, the implacable destroyers of race values, the fosterers of greed, corruption and exploitation, and they must cease to exist. They will cease anyway; this at least
[ 37]
CI
>be £te oye BR BU Pe BF
THE SINS OF PoE ek
the war already makes clear” Bithensnne Empires will act voluntarily or the revolu- tion will be affected by catastrophe. If the saving sense of the value of the unit of human scale zn all things is recovered; if manufacture 1s reduced to a basis of pro- duction for use, not for profit; if the credit system is reduced to normal proportions in finance and the significance and inclusive- ness of the word “usury” are once more recognized; if the unit of human associa- tion can be made to approach more nearly the village community, in itself, so far as is possible, self-contained and self-supporting; if division of labour and specialization in products are largely abolished; if in a word the world returns to the qualitative standard and so makes sane and joyful living and the development of character the object of existence, then the imperial states will dissolve and return to their original elements; otherwise the history of Carthage, Rome, Spain and Russia indicates very clearly the process that will take place. The apparent absurdity of the suggestion lies simply in the fact that we have lived so long in an imperialistic environment and under imperialistic conditions, we are no
[ 38 ]
MIPERIALISM
longer able to think except in imperialistic terms. We can no more conceive of Eng- land, Scotland and Wales representing, in themselves and alone, British sovereignty ; of France without her African colonies, of the United States as four independent re- publics, than we can think of the world without steam, electricity, parliamentary government and enormous cities. During the last century thought has become as mechanistic as action; it is absolutely con- ditioned by the material paraphernalia of modernism. Thought that boasts itself as at last free is bound in black slavery to the mechanical creations of its own amazing ingenuity. “Thought to-day acknowledges nothing before the last quarter of the eight- eenth century; it is the intellectual parvenu of history. It has no standard except itself, and the whole history of man prior to Adam Smith, Kant, Voltaire and Rousseau goes for nothing. We think within the terms of what we have made, and so long as this is true we are unable to test or esti- mate it with anything approaching justice. Until we can get outside this vicious circle of evolution, pragmatism and “things as they are” we can have no right judgment in
[ 39]
THE SINS OF Der aie ks
anything. Until then the universal im- perialism that finds its perfect exposition in Germany and her war for the hegemony of the world, will seem the finally revealed law of life, and the imperial process will continue —with dismal repetition of the present cataclysm, as there will be dismal persistence of the same conditions that brought it about. After a sufficient num- ber of visitations (five invasions, none of them heeded, were necessary to bring the Roman Empire to an end) the lesson will be learned and we shall then realize that the imperial scale, with the standards of value it has created in opposition to the everlast- ing standards of right and wrong, is a very malignant disease that, if not eradicated by drastic purgation, will in the end bring death unless it is dealt with by the surgeon’s knife.
In propounding this scheme of the dis- solution of imperialism, with a return to the unit of human scale, I am not unaware of fle fact that Il am expressing the woxqct antithesis of everything towards which state socialism, industrial socialism and the “ In- ternationa!”’ are working as the solution of all the troubles of the world. ‘This is as it
[ 40 ]
IMPERIALISM
should be. All three are simply somewhat acute manifestations of universal imperial- ism, and it is a grave commentary on con- temporary thought that the only panacea it can offer are variants, and very unintelli- gent ones at that, of the very thing against which they are supposed to act.
Collectivism is imperialistic in its essence and imperialism is its goal; the only other alternative is Bolshevism, or the autocracy of the proletariat, with all control—so- cial, political, industrial, military—%in the hands of proletarian committees or soviets, and with the aristocracy, bourgeoisie and “intelligencia” proscribed and deprived of all rights. This has been, is now and always will be only a quick stage to the absolutism of one or two self-created autocrats, as Lenine and Trotsky—in other words, 1m- perialism of the worst conceivable sort.
It would have been hard enough to com- bat this universal imperialism at any time prior to the war; it will be ten times harder when the war is over. Under frantic neces- sity, and in order to fight the devil with his own weapons, industrial production has been raised to an unparalleled capacity; the people of all the allied nations are now
(al
THE SINS OF THES tA aS
divided into two classes, those who produce in quantities hitherto undreamed of, and those who consume and destroy not only what their fellows afford them, but so far as possible all that is being made by the enemy. The last trace of democracy, whether of ideal or of method, has dissolved. We have “state socialism” to a degree hardly hoped for by the most ardent propagand- ists of the last generation, but we also have an imperial state to administer it through a dictator who wields greater and more comprehensive powers, and in his own person, than any absolute sovereign who has ever reigned. This condition of things was inevitable as soon as democratic government broke down in pitiful inefficiency, and capi- talistic industry demonstrated its incapacity to meet the new conditions in an adequate degree; which was very soon indeed. Au- tocracy, in spite of defects which are inherent in the nature of the available personnel, has demonstrated its superior effectiveness at a crisis, and there will be a powerful influence brought to bear to con- tinue after the war the system of industrial co-ordination under government control. This will find its strongest argument in the
[ 42]
IMPERIALISM
necessity for meeting unexampled interest- charges on colossal public indebtedness, since, barring the alternative of repudia- tion (which will be strongly urged by the proletariat) confiscation of profits, and even of capital itself, will be necessary unless production can be preserved at its present pitch and complaisant markets found for the gigantic output.
An argument in favour of state control of intensive and enormous production will be the utilization of the vast industrial plants called into existence by the war, which, unless they are scrapped, will have to be remodelled into agencies of excessive pro- duction and profits. If they are turned over to administration by private and corporate capital, imperialistic industry will be hugely augmented, with the certainty of an un- limited increase in the exploitation of labour and of markets, with industrial revolution racing a new war of nations for msolercs Ol intiucnce and of tarifis, for first arrival; in other words, a return to the industrial and political and financial status quo, only enormously exaggerated. If gov- ernment control continues then, if a return is made to “democratic” methods, the chaos
[43]
THE SINS OF DEES igriake.
of spoils and inefficiency will begin and run its brief and disastrous course, with Bol- shevism at the end; if the present autocracy is maintained the result is imperialism in its worst and most exaggerated form.
However we look at it, the war is bound to produce a situation where the menace of imperialism will be greater than ever be- fore, in any time or place. In the natural conditions, and in the cumulative experience of all the warring nations, there is nothing thus far that indicates any presumptive re- demption, or even mitigation, of the im- perialistic evil of modernism; salvation, if it is to be gained, lies only in a fundamental psychological and spiritual revolution in the minds of the mass of men.
[ 44 ]
wo
DEE OUANTITATIVE STANDARD
HE history of man is the history of an eternal conflict between the quantitative and the qualitative standards; the former is the attribute of beasts and of human individuals or com- munities, either by essential nature or when they are about to decline towards destruc- tion; the latter is the attribute of man when he plays his true part in life, lifting himself above the brute creation and so approach- ing appreciably the highest created intel- ligences of the universe, or of peoples while they are tracing the upward curve of their progress and are creating the great epochs of history that have been marked by fine character, righteousness, justice, and the production of great creative works in philosophy, religion and art. The connection between the reign of the quantitative standard and the imperialism of which I already have spoken is so close
[ 45 ]
THE SINS OF THE Fags.
as to amount almost to identity, for im- perialism is the full fruition of the quanti- tative standard in all things. The empire is always the last estate as well as the perfect expression of an epoch, and the empires of Alexander, Rome, Justinian, the Califate, the Hapsburgs and the Spanish Crown, are the typical examples, at approximately equal intervals of time, down to the present day, when modernism, more universal than all, has followed the same sequence with special exaggerations of its own, and at the appointed time is perishing in a cataclysm that bids fair to rival even the epic catas- trophe of Rome.
Another way to express the same thing would be to say that for the last hundred years the whole world has turned from the pursuit of perfection to the pursuit of power. In the early days of all the great peoples of the past the “passion for per- fection”’ has manifested itself with vigour, in Greece, Rome, Byzantium, the Caro- lingian Empire, in that of the Moham- medans, in the free states of the Middle Ages, amongst some of the communities and certain of the institutions of the Early Renaissance. Perfection in social organiza-
[ 46 ]
ME QUANTITATIVE SFaNDARD
tion, in systems of philosophy, in the formu- lating and enforcing of law, in education, letters, science, the arts— above all and in every case, in the development of character. In everything that has lasted to us from the remote past, from the laws of Lycurgus and the dramas of Sophocles and the sculptures of the Parthenon, to scholastic philosophy and the religion of Medizvalism and Gothic art. This pursuit of perfection, this pas- slonate devotion to the qualitative standard, is the ineradicable mark of great civiliza- tions; a pursuit that was supremely suc- cessful in the case of individuals and of their achievements, though it failed always to extend itself throughout society or to be- come permanent. Remorselessly, almost it would seem at the very climax of attain- ment, the nemesis of power overtook each society the search’ for perfection, the struggle for the development and glorify- ing of character, grew less ardent as the lust for power and the greed for material things waxed more great, and in the end victory lay with the baser force; for a moment only, however. On such a foundation so- ciety cannot stand, and victory was only the prelude to catastrophe.
[47]
THE SINS OF THES
Signor Ferrero has admirably shown in his recent book ‘“ Europe’s Fateful Hour” how every civilization that has grown in the West has been vitalized by this same passion for perfection, and since each (with the possible exception of modernism) has been the creation of Mediterranean peoples — Greek, Hebrew, Roman—he attributes the ‘creation of the desire for perfection to the Mediterranean races, and finds the secret of our own downfall in the abandonment of the Latin spirit for the Teutonic which he (quite rightly) denounces as essentially materialistic; the spirit of power, the per- fection of the quantitative standard. It is true, of course, that from the Mediter- ranean, and from Greece, came the first clear enunciation of the call to man to seek perfection, and that each successive civi- lization that has followed has proclaimed the same ideal in its early years. It is true
_ also that the final catastrophe that has over- whelmed us has been due to the acceptance of an evil ideal of material power, of which Germany was the perfect exponent. On the other hand he ignores the fact that every Mediterranean civilization of the past has gone down in ruin through a
[ 48 ]
(iE TOUANTI@TATIVE SiANDARD
self-abandonment to the same quantitative standard which has been our destruction, and he equally disregards the fact that the civilization of the Middle Ages, in so many ways the finest of all, was primarily of the North, although the classical inheritance and the indelible strain of an old Latin culture, played a strong part in making possible the splendid achievements of Northern blood. No; this fatal reversal of the standards of comparative value that pursues every people with implacable per- tinacity is associated with no particular blood or race. That Germany should this time be its protagonist is more than half the result of accident; so far as aims and ways of life are concerned it might almost have been England, or the United States, or even France—almost but not quite. There was in Germany a cynical abandonment of all past traditions of right and wrong, an acceptance
of the quantitative standard to the full, an «
almost national consecration to the gaining of power in all things and in completest measure, regardless of honour, justice, morals, that gave her pre-eminence and enabled her to out-distance all other runners Ime tne race,
[ 49 ]
THE SINS OF THE PAVERS
As a matter of fact Prussia, the domi- nating force in the Teutonic alliance, never knew the beneficent and indelible schooling of Rome, of classical culture, of the civi- lization that was of those that proclaimed and pursued the qualitative standard. The people to the west of the Rhine knew this, but not Germany, which was then a wilder- ness of savage tribes whose function it was not to profit by Rome but to destroy her. Neither did Prussia come early enough under the great civilization of later Latin- ism (that of the Catholic Church) to benefit by it as did the Gauls, the Saxons, the Thuringians and the Bavarians. ‘They ac- cepted Christianity from the seventh cen- tury onward, but what is now Brandenburg was the haunt of the heathen Wends until the eleventh century. Pomerania first heard of the Catholic faith a century later when already France, Italy, Flanders, Eng- land were in the glory of Medizval civi- lization, and the Prussians beyond the Vis- tula knew nothing of either religion or culture until the very years when Rheims Cathedral was growing in majesty only to be destroyed at their hands six centuries later. As a matter of fact the Branden-
[ 50 ]
Pees OuUANTITATIVE STANDARD
burgers were Catholics only for the space of some four centuries, the Prussians for two, when they abandoned a faith they had never known at its finest estate, and had followed for so short a time they never assimilated it, for a new sort of religion that hated and would destroy Catholicism, and that was more closely akin to their own temper and their own standard of cul euine:
In these facts alone lies sufficient reason why the final test of modernism should be made by these peoples who had surren- dered body and soul to the apotheosis of modernism as this exposed itself in the Prussian State and in Prussian Kultur. The qualitative standard, the passion for perfection, were not of this ilk, but alien things, and they never understood them. Theirs was the Kultur of Genseric, of Alaric, of Attila, of Odoacer, and, the brief interlude of a fictitious culture passed, they returned with relief to their tribal stand- ards and their tribal gods.
By way of these standards and under the patronage of these deities they, outdistanc- ing all competitors, built up a triumphant state that for more than a generation won
[51]
THE SINS. OF THE ions
and held the envious, emulative admiration of the entire world. The institutions Eng- land developed they borrowed and bettered ; the science France initiated they magnified, mechanized and made into a cult; the in- ventions of America they secretly trans- formed from beneficent agencies into others of malignant destructiveness. All nations, all peoples, were feverishly fighting for power, for material possessions; they, “‘ the same yesterday, to-day, and forever,” achieved what others sought, and made the quantitative standard not only their own god, but the ideal of all nations.
The madness of the Teutomania of the thirty years that ended om the tiitmetine: July, 1914, will be forever the marvel of history: there was no nation that in some degree did not yield to the gross obsession. The tendency of the whole world had been steadily in one direction, hiddenly from the “Exile at Avignon in) 1305,,0vertlvecimec
| the fall of Constantinople in 1453, and that
—
towards the destruction of the passion for perfection and the substitution of the ideal of power through material acquisition; the displacing of the qualitative in favour of the quantitative standard. Signor Ferrero
P52
re OUANTITATIVE STANDARD
has analyzed the case very clearly and I will quote him.
‘This triumph of the ideal of power is, moreover, the gathering to a head of a very complex historic movement whose origins date back very far. It has been, however, accelerated, during the last hundred years, by some immediate causes. I will cite the principal of them: the immense growth of the English power, the wealth accumulated bysingland amd France, the wictones of Germany, the development of the two Americas, the exploration and conquest of Africa, the increase of the population and of public, civil and military expenses which demanded an increase of production; the improvement of industrial plant, the prog- fessmotethe Sciences, the decline of the aristocracies, monarchies and_ churches which represented in Europe the spirit of quality or the ideals of perfection; the ex- haustion of several of these ideals, which rendered necessary a revival; the weaken- ing of the governments; the accession to power of the middle classes; the growing importance acquired by the masses and by number in everything, in the armies, in politics, in industry. Left to themselves,
bese
we
~
rene.
oo nen penn
THE SINS OF THERA tiers
freed from the old restraints, the masses, having but little culture, were bound to lean rather to the ideal of power which satisfies the primeval instincts, such as pride, cu- pidity, ambition, than towards the ideals of perfection which always demand the spirit of sacrifice and a certain power of renunciation.”
As I have said, and as history, I think, exactly proves, every epoch in history, every definite civilization, ends in imperialism and the triumph of the quantitative stand- ard. The events that lead up to this vary in every case; in our own they seem to fol- low this sequence. For something over a
hundred years the world, led by the quan-
titative standard and driven by the desire for power through possession of material things, has followed certain frank and ex- plicit lines of development. Monarchies have been dissolved or curbed to the point of nullity; aristocracies of blood, of status, of inherited distinction have been disestab- lished and discredited or adulterated to the point of saturation with accessions from castes without tradition, manners or the
standards of “gentle blood”; the organic institutions of religion have been relegated
[ 54 ]
a
Mire OUANTITATIVE SPAN WARD
to the region of the unimportant and turned over to the great democracy of what was once called ‘‘ the middle and lower classes”; the universities have been transformed from seats of learning, culture, manners and character to feeders for the supreme do- mains of business, finance, applied science and (through law) practical politics.
In every case a sharp, deep line has been cut between all the rich, creative societies of the past, and modernism. History goes no further back than Jefferson, Pitt and Napoleon, thought ceases at the age of Adam Smith, Kant and Rousseau.
Towards the end of the nineteenth cen- tury the industrial-financial revolution be- gan. Within the space of a hundred years came all the revelations of the potential inherentin thermo-dynamics and electricity, the invention of the machines that have changed the world. During the Renais- sance and Reformation the old social and economic system, so laboriously built up on the ruins of Roman tyranny, had been destroyed; autocracy had abolished liberty, licentiousness had wrecked the moral stam- ina, “freedom of conscience” had _ oblit- erated the guiding and restricting power
[55]
—
THE SINS OF Peis
of the old religion amongst the Teutonic and Anglo-Saxon races of Europe. The field was clear for the new dispensation. What happened was interesting and sig- nificant. Coal and iron, and their deriv- atives—steam and machinery—rapidly revealed their possibilities. To take advan- tage of these it was necessary that labour should be available in large quantities and freely subject to exploitation; that capital should be forthcoming in large amounts; that adequate markets should be discovered or created for the surplus product so enor- mously greater than the normal demand; and finally that directors and organizers and administrators should be ready at the call. The conditions of the time made all these possible. Under Henry VIII and Eliza- beth the land-holding peasantry of Eng- land had been completely dispossessed and pauperized, while the development of the wool-growing industry had restricted the arable land to a point where it no longer supported the mass of field labourers. The first blast of factory production threw out of work the majority of cottage weavers, smiths, craftsmen, and the result was a great. mass of men, women and children, without
[ 56 ]
GEHESOUANTITATIVE STANDARD
defence, void of all rights, and given the alternative of submission to the dominance of the exploiters— or starvation.
Without capital the new industry could neither begin nor continue. ‘The criminal exploits of the “joint-stock companies” in- vented in the seventeenth, and perfected in the eighteenth, centuries, showed how this capital could easily be obtained, while the paralyzing and dismemberment of the Church during the Reformation had re- sulted in the abrogation of the old ecclesi- astical inhibition against usury. The neces- sary capital was forthcoming, and the foundations were laid for the great system of finance which was one of the triumphant products of the last century.
The question of markets was more diff- cult. It was clear that through machinery, the exploitation of labour and the manipu- lations of finance the product would be enormously greater than the local or na- tional demand. Until they themselves de- veloped their own industrial system the other nations of Europe were available, but as this process continued other markets had to be found; the result was achieved through advertising, 1.e., the stimulating of
[57]
THE SINS OF THER ir RS
a covetousness for something they did not know of and did not want, in the minds of the general public, and the exploiting of barbarous or undeveloped races in Asia, Africa, Oceanica. This last task was easily accomplished through “ peaceful penetra- tion,” and the pre-empting of “spheres of influence.” In the end (i.e., AD: 1614) te whole world had so been divided, the stimulated markets showed signs of being glutted, and since exaggerated profits meant increasing capital demanding investment, and the improvement in “labour-saving”’ devices continued unchecked, the contest for others’ markets became acute, and the entire question of world politics became concen- trated in the one problem of markets, lines of communication and tariffs.
As for the last of the desiderata of which I have spoken, the finding or development of competent organizers and directors, the history of the world since the end of Me- dizvalism had curiously provided for this after a fashion that seemed almost miracu- lous. The type required was quite different from anything that had been developed be- fore. Whenever the qualitative standard had been operative it was necessary that the
[58 ]
Pape OUANTITATIVE sta NDARD
leaders in any form of creative action should be men of highly developed intellect, fine sensibility, wide and penetrating vision, nobility of instinct, passion for righteous- ness, a consciousness of the eternal force of charity, honour and the love of God. Dur- ing the imperial or decadent periods cour- age, dynamic force, the passion for ad- venture, unscrupulousness in the matter of method, took the place of the qualities that marked the earlier periods. In the first instance the result was the great law-givers, philosophers, prophets, religious leaders, and artists of every sort: in the second the explorers, the great conquerors, the builders of empire. Something quite different was now needed; men who possessed some of the qualities required for the development of imperialism but who were unhampered by the restrictive influences of those who had sought perfection. To organize and administer the new _ industrial-financial- commercial régime, the leaders must be shrewd, ingenious, quick-witted, thick- skinned, unscrupulous, hard-headed, avari- cious; yet daring, dominating, and gifted with keen prevision. These qualifications had not been bred under any of the Medi-
[59]
THE SINS OF THE FAI MERs
terranean civilizations or that of central Europe in the Middle Ages which had in- herited so much therefrom. The pursuit of perfection always implies a definite aris- tocracy, which is as much a goal of effort as a noble philosophy, an exalted religion, or a sublime art. Whether this aristocracy was Athenian, Roman, Saracen, or Chris- tian, it was always the same in principle, it played the same part in society, it exalted the same ideals and it maintained itself after the same fashion. It was the centre or source of that leadership without which society cannot endure, but it was never an impenetrable caste, particularly under Christianity, and it recognized and ac- cepted from without its own limits, the born and demonstrated leader of men. Between the years 1455 and 1795 this old aristocracy was largely exterminated. The Wars of the Roses, the massacres of the Reformation, and the Civil Wars, in Eng- land; the Thirty Years’ War in Germany, the Hundred Years’ War, the Wars of Re- ligion, and the Revolution in France had decimated the families old in honour, pre- serving the tradition of culture, jealous of their alliances and their breeding, —the [ 60]
rE TOUANTIPATIVE S TANDARD
natural and actual leaders in thought and action. England suffered badly enough as the result of war, with the persecutions of Pleniye leand Elizabeth, and the Black Death included for full measure, and France also, but Germany fared worst of all. By the end of the Thirty Years’ War the older feudal nobility had largely dis- appeared while the class of “ gentlemen” had been practically exterminated. In Miancesuntilithe tall/ot Napoleon 111, and in Germany and Great Britain down to the present moment, the recruiting of the aris- tocracy has gone on steadily, but on a differ- ent basis and from a different class from anything known before. Demonstrated personal ability to gain and maintain leader- ship; distinguished service to the nation in war or state-craft; courage, honour, fealty; these, in general, were the grounds for admission to the ranks of the aristocracy, though there were always exceptions, as in Uitemcdses or cvery tule. In generalimalso advancement to the ranks of the higher nobility was from the class of “ gentlemen,” though the Church, the universities and chivalry gave, during the Middle Ages, wide opportunity for personal merit to
[61]
THE SINS OF THERA Rs
achieve the highest honours no matter how low in the social scale may have been the point of departure.
Through the wholesale destruction of the representatives of a class that from the be- ginning of history had been the directing and creative force in civilization, a process began which was almost mechanical in its ‘method. ‘To use a material simile, as the upper strata of society were planed off by war, pestilence, civil slaughter and assassina- tion, the pressure on the great mass of men, peasants, serfs, unskilled labourers, the so-called “lower classes,” was increasingly relaxed, and very soon the thin film of aristocracy, further weakened by dilution, broke, and through the crumbling veil burst to the surface those who had behind them no tradition but that of servility, no comprehension of the possibly artificial “honour” of the gentleman, no stored-up results of education and culture, but only the age-long rage against the age-long domi- nating class, and the enforced instincts of Craftiness, parsimony and almost savage self-interest.
As a class it was very far from being what it was under the Roman Empire; on the
[ 62 ]
MrESOUANTITVATIVE SPANDARD
other hand it was equally removed from what it was during the Middle Ages in England, France and the Rhineland. Under Medizvalism chattel slavery had disappeared and the lot of the peasant was a happier one than he had known before or has experienced since. He had achieved definite status, while the line that separated him from the gentry was very thin and constantly traversed, thanks to the accepted system of land tenure, the guilds, chivalry, the schools and universities, the priesthood and monasticism. ‘The Renaissance had rapidly changed all this, however; absolut- ism in government, dispossession of land, the abolition of the guilds, the collapse of the moral order and the decadence of the Church, were fast pushing the peasant back into the position he had held under the Roman Empire and from which Chris- tianity had lifted him. By 1790 he had been for nearly three centuries under a pro- gressive oppression that had undone nearly all the beneficent work of the Middle Ages and made the peasant class practically out- law, while breaking down its character, de- grading its morals, increasing its ignorance, and building up a sullen rage and an in- [ 63 ]
THE SINS OF THE Jigar
vincible hatred of all that stood visible as law and order in the persons of the ruling class.
Now when, in the last quarter of the nine- teenth century, the inherent potential of coal and iron, steam and machinery, the factory system, the joint-stock company, financial manipulation through the de- velopment of credit and the lifting of the ban from usury, and finally of exploitation both of labour and of markets began to reveal itself, the social transformation, just then completed, began to play its part. Filtering through the impoverished and diluted crust of a dissolving aristocracy, came the irruption from below, the issuing out of a degrading slavery of the ‘“ common people.” In their own persons they pos- sessed the qualities and the will which were imperative for the organization of the in- dustry, the trade and the finance that were to control the world for four generations and produce that industrial civilization which is the basis and the energizing force of modernism. Immediately, and with con- spicuous ability, they took hold of the problem, solved its difficulties, developed its possibilities, and by the end of the nine-
[ 64 J
ie OU AN TAI Sh ANIDAR D
teenth century had made it and their own successors masters of the world. What civilization was on the first day of August, 1914, 1s what they had made it; modernism is the proud and exclusive work of their hands.
Simultaneously they were engaged in creating democracy: that is to say, while certain of the more shrewd and ingenious were organizing manufacture, trade and finance and developing its imperialistic and autocratic possibilities, others of the same social antecedents were devising a new theory and experimenting in new schemes of government, which would take all power away from the class that had Iititerto exercised it, and fix it forever in the hands of the emancipated and crescent “common people.”
It will be perceived that the reaction of the new social force in the case of indus- trial organization is fundamentally opposed to that which occurred in the political sphere. [he one is working intuitively towards an autocratic imperialism and the servile state, the other towards the fluctu- ating, incoherent control of the making and administering of laws by the untrained, the
(Rosa!
THE SINS OF THE Vea Wes
uncultivated and the generally unfit, the issue of which is anarchy. The industrial- commercial-financial oligarchy that con- trolled society during the first fourteen years of the present century is the result of the first; Russia, to-day, an exemplar of the second. ‘The working out of these two great devices of the new force released by the destructive processes of the sixteenth, seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, si- multaneously though in deadly opposition, explains why, when the war broke out, im- perialism and democracy synchronized so exactly; on the one hand imperial states, industry, commerce and finance, on the other a swiftly accelerating democratic system that was at the same time the effec- tive means whereby the dominant imperial- ism worked, and the omnipresent and in- creasing threat to its further continuance. In this sequence we may find a sufficient explanation of the progressive substitution in our own era of the quantitative for the qualitative standard; we may find also some hints as to how democracy is to be made safe for the world.’ As it stands now, as a method rather than an ideal, it represents the reaction of an essentially undeveloped [ 66 ]
MaPeOUANTITATIVE STANDARD
type of mind, (characteristic of the class that has organized and progressively dominated modernism,) to the stimulus of the novel and enormous energy released through in- dustrialism, physical science, high finance and the mass of inventions produced dur- ing the last two centuries. It is necessary now to reform the whole system, even in some cases to the point of reversal. An amiable revolutionist in France, when up- braided for his subservience to the mob, protested with engaging simplicity, “ Of course I must follow the people, am I not their leader?” This has been the standard of “leadership” for many years and no- where more conspicuously than in the United States. In this at least there must be complete reversal. In no “reform” in- vented and upheld by those who represent the dominant type of race values is there the slightest evidence of any desire to aban- don the quantitative for the qualitative standard. Collectivism, Internationalism, Woman’s Suffrage, Bolshevism, all con- secrate themselves to the winning of some shadow of a real democracy, the invention of some new mechanism or curious device in legislation, administration or organiza-
[ 67 ]
THE SINS OF Dit Scks
tion. That, as Disraeli said, “a political institution is a machine; the motive power is in the national character— with that it rests whether the machine will benefit so- ciety, or destroy it,” is an idea that occurs to no one, nor that both national and per- sonal character, since these became bound to the quantitative standard, are capable of working any machine, however novel or ingenious, after a fashion that will benefit society.
‘“T say it seems to me,” says Lord Boling- broke in his essay “ On the Spirit of Patriot- ism,” “ that the author of nature has thought fit to mingle from time to time, among the societies of men, a few, and but a few of those, on whom He is graciously pleased to bestow a larger proportion of the ethereal spirit than is given in the ordinary course of His Providence to the sons of men. These are they who engross almost the whole reason of the species, who are born to instruct, to guide and to preserve; who are designed to be the tutors and the guardians of human kind.”
Whether this is in accord with the pre- dilections of the democracy of method, or not, it is an exact statement of facts so far
[ 68 ]
ries OUAN TIAL Vy hes PAN DARD
as history is concerned. ‘The results of putting into practice a revolutionary plan developed on doctrinaire grounds and with no shadow of historical precedent, have not been such as to justify its continuance, and a return must be made to an older method. The quantitative standard has no more stood the test in politics than it has elsewhere. Universal suffrage, parliamentary govern- ment, the party system, rotation in office, must go, together with the other examples of the workings of the quantitative standard that have been tricd and found wanting. Consciousness of the failure, recognition of the crisis, and initiative towards reforma- tion, cannot issue out of that intellectual condition, they cannot be generated by that grade of race values which mark the domi- nant force, the concrete expression of which is imperialism and the quantitative stand- ard. In “The Nemesis of Mediocrity” I 5 have tried to show how and why the ulti- ~ mate condition is one where the refusal of recognition to character, intelligence and capacity tends to reduce still further the probability of the emergence of these quali- ties from the mediocre, a contingency al- ready rendered sufficiently remote through
[ 69 ]
THE SINS OF THE VAGHERS
the kind of life that is dominant and that in itself works implacably towards the reduc- ing of all men to the dead level of the average — except in the case of those special types that are necessary to the continued dominion of the profiteer, the exploiter and the financier.
This failure in the necessary supply of men of high race value explains not only why modernism has suffered so seriously through the control of all things by second- and third-rate personalities, but as well the appalling lack of distinction that has shown itself increasingly during the last few cen- turies. During this period, also, life has rapidly become more and more ugly, in its intellectual and spiritual manifestations and in the environment it was building for itself. Until the sixteenth century life expressed itself in terms of beauty, varying widely in form and degree but always beauty, though in western Europe during the Dark Ages it fell so low in the scale as to become almost negative, but never reaching the quality of positive ugliness that has characterized modernism. This period, it will be remem- bered, was the only other in European his- tory when a high culture, and the race and
[| ve]
its QUANTIFPATIVE STANDARD
family groups through which it had been achieved, were wiped out and their place taken by hordes of a low cultural type. This almost universal beauty was not solely of the arts, it applied also to the varied forms of religion, philosophy, social or- ganization, customs, methods, rituals, of life itself. Disregard for the moment all questions of ethical standards, effect a sever- ance between the modern ideas of comfort, physical luxury, pampered habits of ma- terial convenience, and it will at once ap- pear that whether in Athens, Rome, Con- stantinople, the Middle Ages or the Early Renaissance, civilization was expressed in higher terms than those we have devised for ourselves, in that man lived then in that environment of natural beauty prodigally provided for him, enhanced at every point by his own genius, and supplemented by ideals, aspirations, customs— illusions, if you like, that gave life a coherency and a quality of joy and exultation unknown dur- ing the epoch of modernism.
This quality of beauty is not to be reck- Omeducitnen altixury or an accident, It is in itself a mark of high and sane civiliza- tion inseparable from flourishing life, and
[71]
THE SINS OF THE SArarks
in its absence a silent condemnation of the life that does not bring it forth. It is not a coincidence that this swift breakdown of beauty, not only as it shows itself in the degradation of the arts but in religion and philosophy and ways of living, synchro- nized with the coming into power of the new social force, and the type of thought and aspiration, the ideals and the methods, that were its material expression. ‘There may be moral earnestness in the innumer- able religions that have followed the Refor- mation, from Lollardy and Calvinism to Christian Science and New Thought; there may be intellectual sincerity in the varied philosophies that came in the end to such widely sundered exponents as Nietzsche and Haeckel, H. G. Wells and William James; there may be energy unlimited, and a certain sense of bold and spirited ad- venture, of supreme daring and self-con- fidence, in London, Berlin, Chicago, but of distinction or of beauty there is nothing, and little enough in the forced and idiosyn- cratic arts that have followed in their wake. Great artists there have been—especially in music, — but in every case they were iso- lated phenomena, cut off from the main
[2]
aE OUAN Tit Ay ESS PAN DARD
current of life and as lost in its raging torrent as they were impotent to stay or even deflect its course. In other days when im- perial power and the dominion of the quan- titative standard gave to dying civilizations delusive majesty and the iridescent splen- dour of decay, there was no lack of a certain sumptuous beauty that served as a cloak for decadence and even as an amelioration of its tragedy, but with modernism it has been different, and it approached its end in the drab trappings of universal and pervasive ugliness, or in tne tinsel of crude pretence and the sorry splendour of the pilfered treasures of the past.
Quantity, not quality; reliance on the numerical equivalent; a gross heaping up of material things, money, power, terri- torial acquisitions; acceptance of mob leadership and the formulating of ideas acceptable to the mass of men; abandon- ment of the passion for perfection in the ardour of getting, retaining and increasing —this has been the driving spirit of mod- ernism, and in the end it has become its nemesis.
[ 73]
MATERIALISM
P NHE word is inclusive and the charge is easily made. There has been no lack, in recent years, of accusations
of materialism so far as the ideals and
methods of modernism are concerned, or as touching the lives of the people. The term is used so inclusively that its signifi- cance is vague and indeterminate. At the most it has indicated an undue and excessive
covetousness of wealth and power, with a
tendency to weigh all things by this stand-
ard, to bend every energy discovered or mechanism set working, to the achievement of these material ends, and in the process to lose all sense of the value of non-material- istic ideals. The charge is of course true, however widely it may be applied, and this quality of materialism represents the body of ideas that have gradually come to mark the personality of man as a race and of the vast majority of individuals.
It is quite unnecessary to labour the point,
[74]
MATERIALISM
[Ort there were any inthe early days of July, A.D. 1914, who were disposed to deny the charge of universal materialism; if there were those who believed that in the high-sounding phrases of democracy and social justice, in the pretensions of pure science, in the officious humanitarianism that had become a fashion, in socialism or internationalism or the crude religions or the curious philosophies of the nineteenth century, there was anything of that high idealism that had marked the crescent peri- ods of the past, they have been dissuaded from their illusions by the revelations of war.
It is easy to hide the nakedness of essential materialism by a mantle of fine words. This is the method that was most popular in the era that has now come to anend. The gross self-seeking and the subservience of parliamentary government to the industrial- financial power became “the sovereignty of the people”; the bribery and pauper- izing beneficence of capitalism, ‘‘the princely generosity of our captains of in- dustry”; the insolence and aggression of men of defective mentality and low race value was justified as “the noble assertion
[75]
TBE SINS OF THES rr Rs
of our common humanity” and of an essen- tial equality at last triumphant over a beaten tyranny, whether of class or cult or king. The riot of low-class religions was hailed as “liberty of conscience” and the “‘spir- itual emancipation of the race”; the muddled reason of uncouth philosophies was a demonstration of “freedom of thought”; the degradation of all the arts of man took on the aspect of “the revealing of person- ality,” while sexual promiscuity was glori- fied as ‘“‘self-realization.” The discovery of latent forces in matter, and their applica- tion through ingenious machines to the production of futile or debasing products in enormous quantities, was “the harnessing of Nature to fulfil the needs of man- kind”; usury plus conspiracy became “high finance,” regraters and forestallers were transformed into “merchant princes and captains of industry,” and men of low mentality, deficient culture, abortive char- acter and a winning impudence masquer- aded as ‘‘practical politicians and demo- cratic statesmen.”
The most salient marks of modernism are its reversal of all values, and the universal dominion of these new values in every field
(7ea
MATERIALISM
of life and thought. As, in all the times of vigorous life in the past, material things were a means towards the attainment of vivid and spiritual ideals, so now these ideals, such as they were, were used towards the attainment of material things. Preserv- ing the old names and some of the old forms, the noblest things eagerly took to them- selves the methods and even the ideals of the profiteer, the politician and the finan- cier. Schools and colleges became forc- ing houses for the factory, the office, the laboratory and the bank. The churches strove to prop up their falling prestige by taking on the cinema show, building elab- orate structures to house their “institu- tional” activities, and establishing “clinics” of diverse sorts. Even during the war, a big church-conference has been held, where the addresses were by professional “ publicity agents,” for the purpose of demonstrating how, by the adoption of the most up-to-date advertising devices and methods, “the churches” might gain a more abundant popularity. Theology has fallen over itself to achieve a “‘re-statement” of its creeds and dogmas more consonant with “the spirit of the age,’ and philosophy has crowned
Lee)
THE SINS OF DHS teks
itself with glory by promulgating a new revelation to the effect that the thing that is true is the thing that works well. The material end, the material means, and the surrender to materialism, are the finally distinguishing marks of modernism.
Of the Three Errors of Modernism — imperialism, the quantitative standard and materialism—the problem as to which came first and engendered the others is as dubious (and as essentially unimportant) as the old question as to priority in time of the hen or the egg. The first (imperialism, not the hen) is the immediate heritage of the Renaissance, and the others, while find- ing their specific origin in the Reformation, are after all, like imperialism itself, con- comitants of human life, now suppressed by the vitality and idealism of a crescent people and a flourishing age, now reassert- ing themselves as the inevitable accompani- ment of degeneration. So far as our own case is concerned, I doubt if we realize the part that has been played, in the fatal re- crudescence, by Protestantism and its highly accentuated phase which is known histori- cally as Puritanism, and it is to the part played by this force in the establishing of
[7341
MATERIALISM
modernistic materialism that I wish to call attention.
It is a peculiarity of materialism, as we ourselves experience it, that every effort to correct its gross excesses takes on an equally materialistic form. Apparently we are in- clined to fight the devil with fire, and how- even elective this may@be im the case of warfare in the field or backing up the fighters by our activities at home, it 1s hardly a convincing way of going about the building of a new world in the remote future when the fighting is done. However idealistic may have been the protagonists of democracy and socialism, each of these successive panaceas early took on a quality of almost naive materialism, and for some space of time, both have confined themselves to the attainment by quite material methods of confessedly material ends. For their contemporary supporters the world after the war is hardly to be distinguished from a return to the status quo, with industrial- ism still the arbiter of life and riches the goal of endeavour, only vastly magnified and intensified through the transformation of the energies and engines of destruction into more effective mechanisms of over-
[79 ]
THE SINS OF THE FATHERS
production, and with the golden age brought nearer, either through woman- suffrage, direct legislation, nation-wide prohibition and a League of Nations, or through an extension of the authority of a truly Democratic State over all production and distribution, and a simultaneous social- izing of all industry.
It does not occur to the forward-looking reformers that the root evil is industrial civilization itself, and that, granted its con- tinuance on recognizable lines, none of the reforms of progressive democracy, collec- tivism or internationalism would turn out to be in the least different, in their workings or their results, to the innumerable other clever devices that have been patented dur- ing the last two or three centuries, only to fail, and either be discarded or submit to amendments that left intact only the title and the enacting clause. Why should the idea suggest itself? For generations we have pinned our faith to mechanisms, while physical science and evolutionary philos- ophy have assured us that, if only we were patient, the Law of Development would in the end guarantee that we should hit upon just the right machine or device. Long ago
[ 80 ]
MATERIALISM
we ceased to believe that spiritual values and energies, other than those (so called as a concession to habit, but in violation of the scientific method) that were a by-product of biological processes, had any real exist- ence. All we lacked was the right kind of machine; all we needed to do was to push invention a little further and the millennium would be reached, for the working device would have been found.
When, in the last century, vague doubts became current as to whether modern civi- lization was functioning quite as smoothly as it should, the popular panacea (in addi- tion to increased “liberty” through still more democracy, and still less liberty through intensive “ collectivism”) was edu- cation; free, universal, compulsory, secular and state-administered. If only this educa- tion could be made practical, and extended to the point where its application was uni- versal, it would automatically transform the ignorant, the alien, and the defective into good citizens of such high ideals that any one could perform the task of any other and be fitted to occupy the highest position of profit or trust within the gift of society or the state. The vicissitudes in the educa-
[ 81]
THE SINS OF THER wrneRS
tional system were excessive and the system itself could not be considered up to date unless it were completely transformed every year or two. From the kindergarten and the Montessori system to vocational train- ing and free electives, it applied itself to the accomplishment of practicality, until just before the war it bade fair to become what, without disrespect, I will call— Flexnerized.
This was all pretty much the result of the older evolutionary science where educa- tion, environment, and the development of the species through the transmission of acquired characteristics played so large a part. As science (itself evolving) came to have legitimate doubts as to the univer- sality and potency of these processes, a new advance began in quite another direction. This was the improvement of the stock (and therefore of course of what was carelessly called its “spiritual” qualities) by the process of scientific breeding. The farm and the garden, as well as physiology itself, demonstrated the effectiveness of this proc- ess, and as man was merely a higher de- velopment of the lower forms of life, and had achieved his present lofty eminence
[ 82 ]
MATERIALISM
through a blind and unconscious process, why should this not be accelerated by con- scious action? The proposition was simple and reasonable, it had a vast amount of in- dubitable evidence behind it in experience, and was well worth a trial. The result was a varied assortment of propositions tech- nically known as eugenics, and ranging from state-controlled mating to the judi- cious employment of the surgeon’s knife and the lethal chamber.
Now the point I wish to make is that all four of these reforms,—democracy, col- lectivism, education and eugenics, — which were aimed in all sincerity at a rectification of the ills of society (dimly showing, and with no prophecy of what actually was to happen in the summer of the year 1914, et seq.), advanced in no appreciable degree beyond the indicated materialism of the very thing they were concerned to correct, and that because the religious revolution of the sixteenth century and the philo- sophical revolution of the eighteenth had obscured a fact that had been latent but potentially operative in antiquity, and con- scious and ardently operative under Chris- tianity. I mean the fact that man is man
[ 83 ]
THE SINS OF THE VPA@HERS
because he is compact of two absolutely different things, matter and spirit, and that the sacramentalism of fully developed Christianity was and is the only thing that is a sure protection from, as it is the sole corrective of, that materialism of which our epoch of modernism has perished, and that must be eliminated from the next era of the world if that is to show any advance over the last. It is this sacramentalism that Protestantism wrecked and Puritanism al- together destroyed.
Lisle March Phillipps in his “‘ Form and Colour” shows with perfect clearness how from the West, i.e., Greece first of all, came the development of pure intellect, from the East the development of emotion. The natural expression of the first is form, of the second colour. When the Hellenism of the West merged itself in a perfect union with Orientalism in Syria, Asia Minor and Con- stantinople, there was born Byzantine art, the complete synthesis of form and colour; a new art, destined to levels of accomplish- ment hitherto undreamed of, communicated to the West through Venice, and acting as an inspiring force in the development of Medieval art, which was for Western
[ 84 ]
MATERIALISM
Europe from the tenth to the sixteenth cen- turies what Byzantine art had been for Eastern Europe in the preceding five hun- dred years.
This was necessarily so, for Christianity, which was definitely shaping itself in the same region and during the same period, was the first religion, as it created the first philosophy, which was the perfect synthesis of mind and soul, of intellect and emotion, of form and colour. Now the basis of the philosophy so developed, the law of life which inspired and controlled human action down to the Renaissance and Reformation, was sacramentalism. The life and thought Gimtiesaneat Ihousand Years, andethe art that was their full expression, followed from this philosophy as it was transfigured by the religion itself which was its spiritual counterpart. Consciously by clerk and scholar and philosopher, unconsciously by lord and burgher and freeman, by knight and monk and artist and craftsman, this high philosophy was accepted as a driving force and a controlling influence, and it is because of this that we feel that the art, and are coming to know that the life, had a balance, a firmness, a sanity that were only
[ 85 ]
THE SINS OF THERE wae:
foreshadowed before and have been wholly abandoned since.
Sacramentalism means simply this. Life, as we know it on earth, is the union of two absolutely different things, matter and spirit; a union that is dissolved only by death. Matter is real, but, in the sense in which we know it, it is not eternal; spirit is real and it is also eternal. The process of “life,” and the reason for the existence of the world, is the redemption and trans- forming of matter through the interpene- tration of spirit, a process constantly going on and ended only when all matter has been subjected to the redemptive process. Now since man is both matter and spirit, he can apprehend the latter through associa- tion and experience, as matter that is inert cannot do, or matter that is linked in un- conscious association with spirit, as in the case of non-human forms of life. Since, however, he is matter as well as spirit, he is normally incapable of apprehending pure spirit in its absolute sense, but only through the terms and forms of matter, and as spirit is conditioned by matter. There is in- dubitable evidence that from time to time rare individuals are in some way, and not
[ 86 ]
MATERIALISM
of their own motion, emancipated from this material conditioning, and lay hold, as in some flash of revelation, on something of that pure spirit which is accessible to their fellows only through material agencies. Such are seers, prophets, mystics, the great- est artists, but their state is abnormal, they are an infinitely small fraction of humanity, and they are not properly of this life where the union of matter and spirit, and their perfect correspondence, are both normal and essential.
Since this is the condition of life, man approaches, and must always approach, spiritual things not only through material forms but by means of material agencies. The highest and most beautiful things, those where the spirit seems to achieve its loftiest reaches, are frequently associated with the grossest and most unspiritual material forms, yet the very splendour of the spirit- ual verity redeems and glorifies the ma- terial agency, while on the other hand the homeliness and even animal quality of the material thing brings down to man, with a poignancy and an appeal that are incalcu- lable, the spiritual thing that in its absolute essence would be so far beyond his ken and
e7Al
THE SINS “OF THE ate ks
his experience and his powers of assimila- tion that it would be inoperative.
The result is that to the sacramentalist matter takes on a new aspect, since it is a symbol, a type and a vehicle of pure sririt, the Absolute, or, as the Christian says, God the Holy Ghost. Yet in itself it is not an eternal reality, therefore it must be accepted and valued only as an agency or as a symbol. The effect of this doctrine on life is very notable; in theory at all events, in ideal, and for long spaces of time and for vast numbers of people, the natural thing is seen for its true value, and so rated. ‘The aspiration and the struggle are towards the spiritual reality, but through the material agent, which thus takes on an honour and acquires a reality it otherwise would not possess. In such a time as the Middle Ages, when sacra- mental philosophy was consciously or un- consciously the governing principle, the ideals of man were of the highest, his effort towards them most ardent, but at the same time the visible world of material things, so exciting, so stimulating, so amazingly beautiful, the world with its natural pas- sions of love, adventure, experiment, clean fighting, chivalry, emulation, artistic cre-
[ 88]
MATERIALISM
ation — this wonderful world and the life it offered became a thing of joy, its experience a pastime, its gifts and rewards worthy of the most ardent and heart-whole endeavour. The Puritan has snarled at Medievalism as earthly and profane and given over to the pursuit of the joys of the flesh or the illusions of superstition; the superior ra- tionalist has sneered at it as altogether abandoned to “other-worldliness” and as repudiating the joys and the responsibilities of wholesome human life. Both cannot be true, but the fact that both charges are made is a kind of oblique testimony to the fulness of medieval life, for, distorted as they are, they show that both qualities are recognized. Both the Puritan and the rationalist are ignorant and very narrow- minded types, by their identical ophthalmia incapable of seeing things whole. Had they clearer vision and a sounder judgment, they would realize that the greatness of Medizvalism lies in just this: that then the material thing was transfigured by its quality as a vehicle of spirit, and the spirit- ual thing was made human by its transla- tion into the terms of man’s life through the material forms it used as its agents.
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In accordance with this, which was now established as the basic principle of Me- dieval philosophy, the sacramental system of the Church was logically developed to a state of perfection. The method of God with man was the communication of spirit- ual things through material means. The conscience, a direct operation of the soul, was native to man, having been implanted in him at his birth, and this conscience worked directly. On the other hand, the physical nature of each individual, and in a measure the physical stimuli of the visible world, were constantly exercising their gravitational pull, and experience there- fore became an enduring conflict between spirit and matter. God the Son became incarnate, not to proclaim a new morality, or to furnish a new model for human action, but to accomplish the Atonement, to make real the Redemption (of the material man through the operation of the Spirit), and to establish a supreme society, supernatural in its power, material in its operation — the Church—which through its Sacraments should be empowered to afford to man that spiritual aid which would enable him to resist and overcome the gravitational pull
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of matter, and should also proclaim and guard the new philosophy of sacramen- talism.
The Sacraments were therefore the ma- terial means whereby God worked with man through the Church. These Sacra- ments were sufficient and obligatory, but, while man was bound to them, it was never held that God was constrained in equal measure; the possibility and even the cer- tainty of His working beyond and outside them was always asserted as definitely as the possibility and certainty of His work- ing outside and beyond the law that con- Strained the operations of nature. Sacra- ments and material laws were attributes of the life on earth where matter and spirit formed the indivisible elements; the life of the spirit, beyond the limiting conditions of earth, the absolute life of God, was always recognized as free of the narrow laws that conditioned man. To maintain otherwise would have been a gross anthropomorph- ism which, while palatable to the scientists, rationalists, and “liberal theologians” that were to come, made no appeal! to the more subtle wisdom of the Middle Ages.
Out of this religion came, of course, the
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Seven Sacraments of Catholicism, each a manifestation of spiritual energy through a prescribed material channel, and as a neces- sary corollary the whole sacerdotal system, the priest himself being one of the material agencies through which approach was made toward God, and through which God Him- self became united to man. Out of sacra- mental philosophy came the scheme of symbolism, whereby each material thing became a type and figure of ineffable spirit, and again as a necessary corollary, the entire scheme of the arts as these were believed and practised during the Christian cen- turies.
Now, whether you accept it or not, the system was one of perfect logic and organic co-ordination, and it produced a life that was as well rounded and creative as the art that was its visible evidence. Protestant- ism did not like it, in any respect; neither in its religious aspect, in its philosophical system, or in its art, and it set itself de- liberately to destroy Catholic religion, sac- ramental philosophy, and art of every kind whatsoever. Amongst the races of North- ern blood it was almost wholly successful, and the civilization that followed, the civi-
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lization of modernism, is the result of this wholesale revolution. I am not concerned now with the original impulses towards reform that impelled Luther and Zwingli, Calvin and Beza, Cranmer and Knox, as well as Cardinal Cusa, St. John Capistran, Erasmus, Colet, Warham and Sir Thomas More. The motives of the first group may have been as honourable as those of tlhe second) as exalted as they are held to be by their defenders. That is not the point. Almost immediately Protestantism, whether in the German states, in Switzer- land, in France, England or Scandinavia, set itself to the destruction of the whole system of sacramentalism, the proscription of beauty and the abolishing of art, and for four hundred years Protestantism, of what- ever form, has lived without these things and has fought them savagely. Materialistic modernism is the product of those peoples that rejected Catholic re- ligion, sacramental philosophy, beauty of every sort, and art in all its forms,—the German states, England and (of course much later) the United States. In the fact itself lies a strong presumption of essential correspondence, of a probable relation of
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cause and effect. The reality of this re- lationship can, I think, be proved, but by each man for himself, if he will read, think, and weigh honestly, rather than by any demonstration.
The inevitable result of the rejection of the Sacraments and of sacramental philos- ophy was the severance of matter and spirit; the breaking of the old intimacy and the living union, and the placing of religion and all other spiritual things in one cate- gory, of all the material phases of life in another. The division was not avowed, indeed, particularly during the Puritan régime, it was part of the system that re- ligion and life should be more aggressively at one than at any time since the earlier theocracy of the Hebrews. Under the Commonwealth in England, the Puritan tyranny in New England, and the capital- istic autocracy in Great Britain, it was practically impossible to draw a line be- tween church and state; superficially it seemed as if the identity, or rather co- Operation, was more perfect than at any time during the Catholic Middle Ages. Certainly the abuses of power, the gross infractions of liberty, the negation of even
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rudimentary justice in legislation, in law and in society, that followed from this ap- parent union, were more aggravated and intolerable. As a matter of fact, however, the alliance was only between a formal and public religion and the equally formal ma- chinery of government; it did not extend to the individual, and here, in his domes- tic, social, business and political relations, the severance was almost complete. The typical figure in Protestantism is Luther, preaching a lofty doctrine of personal union with God, and conniving at bigamy, adultery and the massacre of starving peas- ants; and the pious iron-master or mill magnate of Bradford or Leeds, zealously supporting his favourite form of evangel- icalism, pouring out his money for the support of missions to heathen countries or for the abolition of slavery, enforcing the strictest Sabbatarianism in his own house- hold—and fighting in Parliament and through the press for the right to continue to employ little children of six years old in his mines, crawling on all fours, half naked, dragging carts of coal by ropes around their tender bodies, or to profit, by the threat of starvation, through mill hands
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whose wages were a miserable pittance, in- sufficient to keep body and soul together, and who were forbidden under penalty of the law to combine with one another for self-protection.
For three hundred years, generation after generation has been fed on the shameless fictions of historians, theologians and scholars until it is bred in the bone that the Reformation, the Suppression of the Mon- asteries, the Huguenot revolt, the Great Rebellion, the Commonwealth, the Puritan conspiracy, the Industrial Revolution and the Enfranchisement of the People were godly acts that formed the everlasting cor- ner stones of Modern Civilization. They were: but what this civilization was we are now finding out, and paying for at a price never exacted before since Imperial Rome paid in the same coin. Erasmus and Sir Thomas More saw what it all meant, and what was coming. So did King Charles I, and Strafford and Laud. William Cobbett estimated the case justly, and the seventh Earl of Shaftesbury; so, also, did Carlyle, Matthew Arnold, Ruskin, William Morris, Leckey, John Stuart Mill, Samuel Butler. Of the first five, four went to the block to
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pay the penalty of their wisdom, their righteousness and their passion for servicc; the others achieved an admirable literary reputation — and unanimous disregard. It is safe to say that the histories that have moulded public opinion, the theologians that have been accepted as authoritative, the philosophers that have expounded the in- tellectual lite of =the period that reaches from 1520 to 1850, have misrepresented the entire epoch with a consistency and plausi- bility that match the comprehensive fashion in which every standard of value was re- versed in that lamentable time.
In nothing have they been more un- scrupulous in their falsifications than in their dealing with the new religion which grew out of the Reformation and found its apotheosis in Puritanism, and with its re- lation to the social, economic, and political revolution that made possible Industrial Civilization. im itself ‘the reversal of all values, the destruction of righteousness and of justice amongst men, the abandon- ment of the qualitative standard and —the World War. J am not concerned here with the question as to whether the old religion was right or wrong, only with the fact that
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the old gave no countenance to what grew fabulously under the new; that under the old the highest possible type of civilization was produced, under the new the lowest; and that by its very nature this new religion was a Vital incentive towards the most head- long development of a scheme of life shame- ful in the record of its facts, self-condemned in its results, and so intolerable in itself and its menace to the future that it was forced to destroy itself through the most horrible war in history at the very moment of its apparent victory.
Of course the most obvious agency in breaking down an old morality was Calvin’s doctrine of predestination, with its corol- laries, salvation by faith and the uselessness of good works. This was in itself a perfect example of the reversal of values and of the deadly peril inherent in the Protestant doc- trine of a free, individual, and popular in- terpretation of the Bible. Calvin took St. Augustine’s interpretation of St. Paul and distorted it, as the “devil’s advocate”’ dis- torted the evidence in old processes of canonization. What he produced was the most revolting theory and the most flagrant heresy Christianity has had to record. It
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is interesting to reflect that the four hun- dredth anniversary of his birth was cele- brated with circumstances of great dignity and respect, just before the outbreak of the war the origins of which may be traced back until several of them (they were numerous and diversified) centre in his person.
This doctrine, when applied by each in- dividual in accordance with the principle of freedom of conscience, simply meant that each man was foreordained from the Crea- tion either to eternal salvation or eternal damnation; if he was elect then nothing he could do would deprive him of eternal bliss; if he was predestined to hell then a life of blameless purity and ardent service for mankind could not save him from hell- fire. Black sin could not endanger his soul, nor could righteousness save it. Indeed some of our best Protestant theologians held that ‘good works, without Christ, partake Giethe nature of sin.’ IWir. Chesterton hit the nail squarely when he referred to “what some call Calvinism but wise men call devil-worship.”
This doctrine was very popular, par- ticularly in England and Scotland from the seventeenth century on, and it simplified
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matters immensely. At once it cut the ground from under the whole system of natural morality that was man’s heritage and had been so fruitfully fostered by the Church up to the last years of Medievalism. Manifestly, if it had been explicitly and universally accepted it would have resulted in an orgy of comprehensive immorality. Of course I do not mean that the doctrine of predestination at once and automatically destroyed the moral sense and reversed the ethical impulse in all its votaries. Nothing, not even Calvinism, can break down the strong righteousness that is implanted in some men at birth—and before. The Earl of Shaftesbury who was a flame of right- eousness in the deep gloom of the early nineteenth century, burning fiercely, if coldly, in spite of Gladstone, Bright and the other formal democrats and ‘“ humani- tarians”’ who forgot the most crying reforms in their devotion to vested interests and their own political panaceas—the Earl of Shaftesbury was at the same time a rigid and bigoted Puritan, but the depravity of his theological doctrines could not negative his inherent and dynamic nobility of char- acter. What the thing does is to take away [ 100 ]
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all right incentive from men not endowed with this native predisposition towards right, leaving them without defence against natural temptation and justifying them in whatever course of wickedness they may, through temper or self-interest, incline to pursue.
Through the peculiarity of their nature, the Puritans gave a new cast to the immo- rality which characterized their career. With a lack of logic that would have horrified the logical Calvin, acceptance of his doctrines, in principle, was accom- panied by an almost insane insistence on the supreme and almost exclusive wickedness of love as a passion. So morbidly sensitive were Calvinist and Puritan on this topic they lost all sense of balance, and the equal or greater sins of cruelty, covetousness, lying, treachery and swindling shone al- most as virtues in the lurid light of the un- pardonable sin. In their black obsession they turned on beauty, the arts, merry- making, the joy of life, as merely the dis- reputable procurers to the sin of sins, de- stroying every beautiful thing they could lay hands on, forbidding the making of more (as though any one would have the
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heart to do this under the circumstances) prohibiting all pleasures and holidays, and turning the Christian Sunday, by some freak of blundering ignorance, into a grim parody of the Jewish Sabbath with which it has no relationship whatever. That en- gaging exponent of Puritanism, Mr. Wil- liam Prynne, expressed the case very pleas- antly when he wrote as follows:
‘A Studious, Curious, Inordinate and eager Affection for Beautie . . . mustneeds be sinful and abominable: yea farre worse than Drunkennesse, and excess of Wine . . . because it proceeds most commonly, from an Adulterous, unchaste, and lustful Heart, or Meretricious, and Whorish affec- tion.”
Now as I have already tried to show, the class of people that, by process of eruption, had come into the places left vacant by the long slaughtering of men of high race value, was already predisposed towards the pe- culiar possibilities opening up through the invention of machinery, profiteering and finance. ‘To them the advantages of Calvin- ism were as apparent as were those of Protestantism to the princes of Germany who used Luther and his reformers to
[ 1625}
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further their own ends of absolutism and the crushing and exploitation of a desperate peasantry and an enslaved labouring class. Very naturally, the new and accommodating doctrines appealed to them with singular force; they accepted them with avidity, and thereafter the development of industrial civilization followed its logical and ominous course.
If Calvinism engrafted on the degraded stock of the new social force was the im- mediate source of that social and intellec- tual process which resulted in imperialism, the quantitative standard and mordant ma- terialism, it was the rejection of sacra- mentalism as a philosophy and as an agent that lay at the root of the whole matter. Unless this had been destroyed, such doc- trines as predestination, salvation by faith and the uselessness of good works could never have found acceptance. So long as sacramentalism remained, the living union of matter and spirit, of thought and action, of earth and heaven, was so close and so compelling, man was compelled to see spir- itual things through their earthly forms, to recognize the transfiguring of matter by means of its spiritual content, to see all
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visible and tangible things as symbols of a Divine verity. To sever life from religion, as afterward happened, would have been to them unthinkable. If they erred at all it was through a too intimate linking, in prac- tice, of the spiritual and the material, until, on occasion, the one became merged in the other, to the added joy of life though to the blurring of the outlines of right and wrong.
In any case, the dangers in this course were far less than those that developed through the acceptance of the new dogmas. Sacramentalism inculcated the doctrine of the sanctity of material things through their acquired glory as channels and embodi- ments of the Divine; the Sacraments of the Church enforced the universality of the symbolism of the world, while they served as regenerating and saving agencies. Finally, Transubstantiation was far more than a philosophical formula or an ecclesiastical dogma, or a presumptuous experiment in scholastic definitions; it was a living force, a vitalizing inspiration, a poignant, personal reality; but it was also a perpetual reminder that matter, in itself as real as spirit, was not a lasting reality but only a stage in the great process of life, which was the trans-
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forming and redeeming of matter by the operation of Spirit, into that which was eternal; that is to say, into Spirit itself.
If, through the general doctrine and practice of sacramentalism, the thousand years antecedent to modernism were instinc- tively and almost automatically led away from materialism, there was this other universal belief that completed the theo- retical process. Briefly Transubstantiation means that in the Sacrament of the Altar the conditions that hold in the other Sacra- ments, 1.e., the union of matter and spirit as the means of operation, were trans- cended, and with the consummation of the Sacrament the material element was, by the power of God and through the acts of a priest, instantly and miraculously ob- literated, the species of bread becoming verily the Body of Christ, the species of wine His Blood, the “substance” being wholly changed and only the “accidents”’ remaining.
Now it is not a question as to the verity or the credibility of this doctrine. The point is that so long as it was held generally, it worked insensibly but potently to render the material thing secondary in importance,
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to give it an ephemeral and transitory and inferior value, and to exalt the spiritual fact at its expense. I do not mean to say that the mass of men, craftsmen and la- bourers, peasants and monks, clerks, clerics and knights consciously worked out for themselves the philosophical proposition and governed themselves accordingly. The mass of men never does this, it works by instinct, custom, tradition. It was the bishop here, the abbot there, the Doctor of Philosophy at Rheims or Paris, the poet in Florence or Troyes or Wales, the mystic visionary in some hidden monastery or con- vent in Yorkshire or Burgundy or the Rhineland, who through meditation and the listening for inaudible voices, gained the knowledge of truth and, whether or no he set it down in writing or gave it speech, . made it an influence that controlled men though they may not have gained it through their physical senses.
In any case, it was a dynamic force and a sovereign protection against gross material- ism. Luther and Calvin set themselves to destroy sacramentalism equally in spirit and in act, the first through preserving the forms but voiding them of power, the sec-
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ond through the cold rejection of both form and spirit. Protestantism and Anglicanism alike rejected both Transubstantiation and sacramentalism, though the latter retained the forms of five of the seven Catholic Sacraments while denying their efficacy in the Catholic sense. Since 1835 a true sac- ramental doctrine has been asserted by a powerful minority, but as a whole the Anglican Church is as far from holding a true sacramental philosophy as Protestant- ism itself. Of course the Catholic Church has maintained her sacramentalism intact, but since the Reformation she has had to confront a steady change in the personnel of her adherents, which has tended increas- ingly to divert her attention from philos- ophy to devotions immediately adapted to the mental status and the spiritual capacity of those that form the predominating ele- ment within her own circle of influence. Surrounded on all sides and interpenetrated by forces that at the same time rejected Catholic religion and sacramental philos- ophy and yet represented all that the nine- teenth century looked on as commanding success in trade, industry and finance, she has been unable to maintain her primitive
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position “in the world but not of it,” and has suffered the contamination of modernism (while rejecting the thing itself in theology) and has in a measure lost, in her members, that abiding consciousness of a dominating sacramentalism that pervaded the whole Christian world while religion was one and before the Northern nations were cut off by the Reformation from the centre of unity and the covenanted channel of spiritual energy.
At the beginning of the last century the sacramental sense was practically mori- bund; completely, in so far as England and the North German states were concerned, to all intents and purposes in the case of France. Protestants and rationalists were at one in at least one thing, and that their rejection of Christian philosophy, whether they denied the Christian religion al- together or professed it under some one of the novel forms that had been the result of mental ingenuity, of unguarded egotism, or merely of an effusive ignorance. Because of this denial of a dynamic and guarding philosophy, they were in an excellent posi- tion to act as the protagonists and architects of triumphant modernism. In those com-
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munities where sacramental philosophy maintained a doubtful existence in alliance with a precarious Catholicism — Italy, Spain, Austria, Poland (and in Russia if you substitute the word Orthodox for Catholic) there was no evidence either of ability or desire to take part in the exalted task of fabricating industrial civilization, i.c., modernism. They were “ backward” nations, most reprehensibly so, as they were constantly informed; they were quite out- side the line of progress; and with a per- spicacity they did not always show, the ‘progressive’? peoples charged that this inertia and general lack of ability to identify themselves with modern civilization were due to their blind adherence to Catholicism; a statement which was perfectly true. It is more than a coincidence that the type of civilization which is now achieving its grand climacteric in the events now in process, was the sole creation of the peoples that rejected sacramental philosophy with the religion that gave it birth, and that the exponent of modernism in its completest form (against which a laggard but penitent world is now in arms) is that very people amongst whom arose the individual who
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was the first and most efficient agent in the clearing away both of the religion and of the philosophy.
There is now a clear consciousness, strengthening every day, that the War will bring in its wake, is bringing even now, many revelations that otherwise we might not have achieved. In our fat self-satis- faction over the great things we had done, we had lost our standard of comparative values, our power of weighing and testing, and even our common sense. The world from 1775 to 1914 no longer seems to us the triumphant masterpiece it was pro- claimed by our fathers and ourselves, and already we realize, though nebulously, that somehow a new world, quite other than the old, must be built up on the wide ruins of an enormous downfall. Those that are too old to fight (and some of those of whom this cannot be said) are eagerly devising new schemes and agencies; a League of Nations; universal, imperial state socialism; trade compacts against a defeated enemy; a world made safe for democracy, and a thousand minor mechanisms, from total prohibition and government by acclamation, to com- pulsory eugenics and “the single tax.”
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Some of the devices are promising, some are worth trying though of doubtful ex- pediency, some are merely intensifications of the last manias current in the decade be- fore the War; all, with few exceptions, are essentially mechanistic: material expedicnts that differ in no fundamental respect from those that, in the generation before the war, represented what Dr. Jacks admirably called “the tyranny of mere things.”
The world is not to be remade by a shuffling and new disposition of old ma- terial; it is not to be remade even through the discovery of some new principle or the fabricating of a new set of mechanical toys; it is to be remade, if at all, only through the releasing of old spiritual energies. The point cannot be too insistently driven home; it is a new spiritual vision, penetrating the cloudy envelope in which modernism has involved life itself, driving its pitiless X-ray through the obvious and the plausible and the secure, that alone can enable us to see where to build, how to build, and on what foundation. The politician, the financier, the captain of industry, the efficiency ex- pert, the professor of pedagogics, the Doc- tor of Divinity, who tries to bring the
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world back to where it was in 1914 in order that, the inept interlude of warfare con- cluded, it may go on again as before, only more swiftly and efficiently, is in effect the betrayer of innocent blood, for he has made of no avail that blood of millions that has been given that the War might be crowned with victory.
“Victory”? The comprehensive defeat- ing of the universal enemy in the field, the chaining of the dragon against any repeti- tion of his menace for the future, is in itself not victory; it is only the prelude to victory. The war is for purgation, for revelation, and for regeneration, and if the opportunity of and for these is lost then there is no vic- tory. It is not the delegates to the Peace Conference; it is not the fumbling poli- ticians or the astute manipulators of policy, however the war may have strengthened them; it is not the organizers of the new industrialism, or the labour parties, or the sinister forces of international finance, or the scientists, inventors and experts, who are going to make over the world anew. It is the priest, the philosopher and the seer — themselves regenerated first of all and vouchsafed a new vision—the men who
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deal with spiritual values, not with the counters and assignats of materialism. The world has had, and has now, energy enough and to spare in the realm of physical and mental activity; what it has lacked, and to its own disaster, is that spiritual energy that can make the mental and the material sub- ject to its own creative and beneficient will.
It is for this reason that I have dealt last with materialism as the third of the errors of modernism, since it is the energizing power of all, and that I have claimed that it is directly traceable to the rejection of that sacramental philosophy which grew up, or slowly revealed itself, during the great thousand years of Christian civiliza- tion. Materialism is not the reaction of man to the novel stimuli of new worlds dis- covered; of an excessive and arrogant intel- lectualism; of the startling revelations of a new science and a new scientific method; of the unleashed powers inherent in coal and iron, steam and electricity; of industrialism, exploitation and finance. These salient notes of modernism, each so pregnant of great possibilities for man, have become what they are, procurers and instigators of materialism, architects of the Great War,
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because the spiritual energy in man, which alone could have directed them along bene- ficient channels, had been sapped, dried up, made negative through the primal rejection of that sacramental philosophy and that sacramental method which were the con- tributions of Christianity to the problem of human life, human development, human emancipation, and human redemption. Until a return is made to this way of thought and this mode of life, the efforts of man to rebuild the world on a firmer foundation, will, however good his inten- tions, have issue in no enduring results.
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