THE UNITY OF CIVILIZATION
Y. S. Tsao, the President of Tsing Hua College, is a Yale graduate and his wife a charming American lady. Tsing Hua College was founded in 1911 as the result of the return to China, by the United States government, of the Boxer indemnity.—EDITORS.
A FEW weeks ago I had the privilege of hearing an address by Dr Luce, entitled “Interpreting the Signs of the Time.” The speaker, dreaming of a Utopia, asked himself what are the signs leading to a millennium on earth. I thought these signs should at least first lead to “The Unity of Civilization and the Universality of Religion.” Civilization without unity is not civilization—but superficiality; religion without universality is not religion but superstition or dogmatism.
One of the most remarkable movements toward the unity of civilization was the World Conference on Education held in San Francisco.[Page 142]
The sessions were devoted to a discussion of education as a means of eliminating the ignorance and injustice causing hatred and misunderstanding among nations. The call which went out to one thousand contacts in 73 different countries contained the following objectives; to promote friendship, justice and good-will among the nations of the earth; to bring about a world-wide tolerance of the rights and privileges of all nations, regardless of race or creed; to develop an appreciation of the value of inherited gifts of nationality through the centuries of development and progress; to secure accurate and adequate information in text books used in the schools of the different nations; to produce a national comradeship; to inculcate in the minds and hearts of the rising generations the spiritual values necessary to carry forward the principles emphasized at the Washington Conference; and finally, to emphasize the essential unity of mankind, making clear the suicidal nature of war, and the necessity of peace.
The opening meetings were attended by from ten to eighteen thousand people interested in this movement. An eye-witness said: “To stand before the plenary conference and look into the faces of the world, a representation wide-spread, not a few leading countries but the nations of the world who sat together and earnestly deliberated, not for selfish interests but for a great humanistic motive, sent a thrill through one. Constantly one felt that it was here,—the greatest fundamental truths, the potent forces which can make humanity better, more tolerant, more faithful, more virtuous, more devout—will be set in motion.”
Many will be found to ridicule the idea that any real progress in unity has ever been made, or that the world can ever be envisaged except as an irksome enclosure of rival armed forces thirsting for the fray. But there is a quiet but well founded belief that the forces tending to unity in the world are different in quality, incomparably greater in scope than those which make for disruption. Discord is explosive and temporary; harmony rises slowly but dominates the final chord.
The great World War has certainly brought home the lesson of economic interdependence among nations, and although President Wilson’s ideal was not fully realized in the League of Nations, subsequent events have decidedly brought back to the thinking minds such works as Norman Angell’s “Great Illusion,” Fayle’s “The Great Settlement” and Keyne’s courageous attacks against the reparation provisions of the Treaty of Versailles, and recently even Kant’s Perpetual Peace had new editions brought out.
In a more recent work published by the Cambridge University Press, entitled, “The Wider Aspects of Education,” which contains papers by Dr. G. P. Gooch, he as a historian called the doctrine of the unfettered sovereignty of the individual state as “the curse of the modern world.” He said in part, “For a thousand years roughly from St. Augustine to Machiavelli, from the fifth century to the fifteenth, the conception of the unity of civilization dominated Europe. They called Europe the Res Publica Christiana—the Christian Commonwealth—and they believed in this great conception of the unity of civilized mankind. It was only about 400 years ago, when the great political thinker Machiavelli taught the conception of the sovereignty of the State, making every State supreme, responsible only to itself, without any obligations to other States, without any obligations to the community of mankind, and without paying any more than lip homage either to a
divine ruler of mankind[Page 143]
or to the divine voice within. What Machiavelli began was continued by men like Hobbes in England and Hegel in Germany, and it has become something like an established principle of statesmen and of publicists in every country in the world. For the last four centuries therefore there has been a struggle going on for the soul of man between the doctrine of world-citizenship and the newer doctrine of purely secular and national politics.”
He regards the Great War as the inevitable result and the final disproof of the truth and value of narrow-headed and narrow-minded nationalism and he believes that the best thought and the best mind of the day in all countries without exception is turning to the conception of world-citizenship, brought up-to-date, transferred from a theological to an ethical foundation, and enlarged until it embraces, at any rate, all the civilized countries of the world. This process has been assisted not only by the bankruptcy of the doctrine of sovereignty which was revealed by the Great War, but also by our experience of the results of the struggle.
He believes it will take a very long time for this conception to work itself into the consciousness and the sub-consciousness of statesmen, of the man in the street, and of the schoolmaster and of the author of school history; but it has got to come, and it will come. He is perfectly certain that those of us who are connected with teaching and the teaching profession will be gravely neglecting our duties if we do not do all that lies in our power first to convince ourselves of this fundamental fact of the unity of civilization and the mutual obligation of all the members of the civilized family of man, and in the second place, to pass on this great revealing and inspiring conception to those with whom we come in contact, and to those whose training is given into our hands.
Recently, I was profoundly stirred by a passage which appears in a book meant to train military leaders. It says, “Under the old idea, patriotism consisted in doing one’s utmost to bring power, honor and glory to one’s own nation, even, if expedient and necessary at the expense of other nations. The true conception of patriotism is of a higher order—to bring power, honor and glory to the state through honest effort, through good government, through unselfishness and not conquest, through friendship toward the other nations of the earth and especially the weaker, through making the name and flag of the state honored and respected among all nations—and all this not alone for its own sake but for the benefit of humanity and the race. Such a conception does not belittle patriotism, it ennobles it. Neither a man nor a nation can exist worthily for his own or its own sake alone. Both have a part and a duty toward others in lifting civilization to a higher plane and in contributing permanent values to the life of the civilized world. This is the true conception of patriotism—and nationalism.”
Two years ago, the writer had the opportunity to address the leading educators of the country at an annual conference and the conclusion was a revised version of a Confucian passage so-called “The New Great Learning.” Confucius said:
“The ancients who wished to illustrate illustrious virtue throughout the world, first ordered well their own states. Wishing to order well their states, they first regulated their families; wishing to regulate their families they first cultivated their persons; wishing to cultivate their persons, they first rectified their hearts; wishing to rectify their hearts, they first sought to be [Page 144]
sincere in their thoughts; wishing to be sincere in their thoughts, they first extended to the utmost of their knowledge, such extension of knowledge lay in the investigation of things.”
In the light of modern knowledge, I advocated the employment of Science in the investigation of things and in the completion of knowledge; the use of religion, ethics and philosophy of life to make sincere one’s thoughts, to rectify one’s heart and to cultivate one’s person; the adoption of social sciences for the regulation of one’s family and the government of a state; and to adopt the conception of Unity of Civilization and the Universality of Religion in order to illustrate illustrious Virtue throughout the world.
While the idea of the sovereignty of the state has limited the scope of civilization by petty nationalism, most great religions claim to be universal. However, the religions have not made good their claim.
Mr. Rockefeller, Jr., before a Bible Class of two hundred men in New York, said that modern intellect has outstripped religion in the headlong progress of modern times. He quoted from a recent article by Winston Churchill, present Chancellor of the Exchequer of the British Empire, as follows: “The ideas of 1924 are marching on and are being perfected in the armies of the world under the surface of peace. Mankind has got into its hands the tools by which it can unfailingly accomplish its own extermination.”
“Why is this so?” Mr. Rockefeller asked, and he answered his own question.
“Because the development of man’s spiritual character has not kept pace with his intellect. Civilization, the accumulation of mind and matter, has temporarily outstripped religion. Religion must quicken its pace, otherwise man will not wake in time to save himself from the nightmare of war.”
As illustrations of religion applied to human affairs, Mr. Rockefeller cited hospitals, schemes for housing, child labor laws, factory laws. “In back of these manifestations, whether consciously or not,” he said, “is the Christian spirit. The operation of man’s sympathy is the flower of our spiritual idealism. If men are to continue to live together in our modern closely knit society,” Mr. Rockefeller declared, “they must be guided by principles springing from love of God, hence love of our brother. Although civilization may temporarily have outstripped its religion, it has not outgrown it.”
Let each one ask himself or herself, “Has intellect or civilization, modern necessities of life and nervous passions outstripped my own abiding religious faith?” To be more concrete, “If your faith is the Fatherhood of God of Love, can you love mankind as your brother?” Why cannot this text continually ring in our ears: “Forgive them, for they know not what they do.” Has it not been said of a great soul that when his pet dog upset his candle in his library and burnt his manuscript upon which he had devoted many years of study to complete, his only displeasure was the exclamation, “Diamond, Diamond! Little do you know the mischief you have done!” If we cannot get this forgiving and sympathetic spirit to permeate our being then religion becomes only a Sunday suit.
Since the war, German thinkers have been busily occupied in developing new philosophies, and in spite of starvation and social chaos, with a certain part of the German people, the physical discomforts of life seem to have created a spiritual need more urgent than the want of food. [Page 145]
Philosophical works were purchased by the members of the middle class by the hundreds of thousands. For instance, the sale of Chamberlain’s “Foundations of 19th Century Civilization” has reached 150,000 copies. Vaihinger’s “Philosophy of the As If” 50,000, Spengler’s “Decline of Western Civilization” 70,000 and Keyserling’s “A Philosopher’s Log” 50,000.
Count Keyserling is a member of a noble German family of the Russian Baltic provinces dispossessed by the Revolution. The social and moral chaos of his generation drove him to despair, so he undertook a trip around the world as a student of creeds and philosophies. “He tried to feel and think like a Buddhist in Ceylon, a Brahman in India, a Confucianist in China, a Japanese in Japan and an American in the United States.” The record of his spiritual metamorphoses was first published in 1918 as “A Philosopher’s Log.” His conclusions might be summarized as follows: “All facts—and all creeds—are but different expressions of one spiritual meaning; they are the only means by which we can gain cognizance of the real world of spiritual facts; deeper understanding of their meaning will lead to greater power and perfection; and there is no human progress but this improvement of our understanding.”
This philosophical acknowledgment of the universal origin of spiritual life is quite recent, but even as early as 1905, Dr. Charles Cuthbert Hall, the President of the Union Theological Seminary, observed the growing repugnance on the part of ministers and laymen, to old forms of denominational subscription. In circles of culture there is coming a truer sense of proportion touching the legitimate functions of the church, he declared. Undeveloped conceptions of unity and movements of life and love are in the air, moving freely as on the wings of eagles and unconsciously ignoring formal lines of division beneath. Meantime, the advancing philosophy ot religion, the enriching discoveries of history and archaeology, the pressure of social problems, the new cosmopolitanism, and above all the constructive results of Biblical criticism are bringing together many of the best minds and of the most consecrated souls upon a platform of Christian belief and effort incompatible with aggressive sectarianism, and independent of denominational subdivision. The tenor of this sentiment is not revolutionary but evolutionary; not destructive but constructive. This crystallizing of unorganized sentiment into a reinterpretation of the church on non-sectarian lines must be through the centralizing power of the Eternal Truth lifted up and drawing all men unto itself, with the vitalizing power of the Eternal Spirit giving liberty unto every man.
After prophesying the gradual breaking down of the artificial barriers of sectarianism and denominationalism, thereby giving religious life a freer development in a wider field, Dr. Hall described his hopes entertained towards the people of the East. “When one stands in the heart of the venerable East; feels the atmosphere charged with religious impulse; reads on the faces of the people marks of the unsatisfied soul; considers the monumental expressions of the religious idea in grand and enduring architectural forms, then the suggestion, that all this means nothing—that it bears no witness to the Divine in man seeking and finding a partial and inadequate self-fulfillment—that it is but to be stamped out and exterminated before Christianity can rise upon its ruins—becomes an unthinkable suggestion. I look with reverence upon the hopes and yearnings of non-Christian faiths, believing them to contain[Page 146]
flickering and broken lights of God,” and “And nothing is more certain than that the common essence of Christianity lends itself to expression in the terms of the East. Our Lord Himself was an Oriental, and no imagination can picture Him, without violence to the sense of truth, except in the garb and manner of the East. Christianity would have overspread the East ere now had it not been forced upon the East in unwelcome identification with the manners and customs and temperaments and dogmas and military governments of an alien and inexplicable West.”
“Finally, the Christianization of the world suggests a more complete and full-orbed interpretation of Christianity for the world, when the East shall supplement and fulfill the West by contributing truth seen from her point of view; mediated through her experience.”
I have quoted lengthily in order to show how even twenty years ago religious thinkers were aiming at unity in civilization and universality in religious life. More recently, the religious views are growing even more liberal, to wit, the teachings of Dr. Fosdick of New York and the sermons of Dean Inge of London.
The prophecy of Dr. Hall, has in a measure been realized in the teachings of many well known movements, more or less religious, which have been organized in recent years, but I shall confine myself here to the teachings of the Bahá’í Movement as taught by Bahá’u’lláh and ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, which mean “The Glory of God” and “The Servant of God.” “The Bahá’í revelation is not an organization. The Bahá’í Cause can never be confined to an organization. The Bahá’í revelation is the spirit of this age. It is the essence of all the highest ideals of this century. The Bahá’í Cause is an inclusive movement; the teachings of all religions and societies are found here. Christians, Jews, Buddhists, Muhammadans, Zoroastrians, Theosophists, Freemasons, Spiritualists, et al., find their highest aims in this Cause. Socialists and philosophers find their theories fully developed in this revelation.”
The Bahá’í revelation, which had its rise in Persia in the year 1844, today has become known throughout the world. “It is not so much a new religion as Religion renewed and unified.”
This unique movement for social and spiritual reconstruction was first centered in a radiant youth called the Báb, whose mission it was to proclaim the coming of a great world messenger. Many European historians have described the wonderful charm of this pure-hearted hero of progressive religion, who was martyred in 1850 after six years of brilliant teaching.
Bahá’u’lláh, a Persian noble, then appeared as the one heralded by the Báb. He announced the dawn of a new age, an age when brotherhood and peace should cover the earth even as the waters cover the sea. The principles he advocated, however, were too universal for the limited minds of his contemporaries. He and a few of his followers were driven by the reactionary powers of Persia into exile and prison, and at last, in 1868, were immured in the desolate barracks of Akka in Syria.
But the persecutions of men cannot extinguish the light of God’s holy spirit when it shines from the heart of his prophets. From the “Most Great Prison” of Akka, Bahá’u’lláh spread his gospel of unity and love throughout Western Asia. In 1892, at the end of forty years of exile and imprisonment, he passed away, leaving his eldest son, ‘Abdu’l-Bahá as the appointed expounder of his word[Page 147]
and the promulgator of his Cause, the “Center of the Covenant.”
Under the guidance of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá the Bahá’í message has been carried to all lands and all religions. It has bound Christians and Muhammadans, Buddhists and Parsis, Jews and Hindus, into the most spiritual brotherhood the world has ever known.
The Bahá’ís believe that this is the beginning of that Golden Age upon earth, the age of universal peace and love when, as Christ foretold, men “shall come from the east and from the west, and from the north and from the south, and shall sit down in the Kingdom of God.”
“The Bahá’í teachings unify the religions of the world into one universal religion. It proves that the essence of the original teaching of all those religions was the same, though they have grown far apart because of additions in the form of dogmas, theology and rituals combined with the ambitions of different leaders.”
I have marshalled forth evidences to prove that the conception of Unity in Civilization and Universality in Religion are already in existence. These comprehensive conceptions are very satisfying, although it may take a long time before they are fully realized in the world.
Much suffering and damage have been caused to the world and humanity in the name of civilization and religion, which are too much a heterogenous conglomeration of inconsistencies. Without order, system, comprehensibility, consistency, and unity, the best civilization and the best religion can but be partial and inadequate truths, containing only flickering and broken light of a divine purpose. Such conceptions cannot satisfy the questing soul, nor can they give that unruffled serenity of outlook upon life as a whole. Only Civilization with Unity and Religion with Universality can have the ring of finality.
