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Fall 1977

World Order

Between Bigotry and Libertinism

Editorial

The Bahá’í Faith: World Religion of the Future?

Jacques Chouleur

The Alphabet of Things in Walter Hatke’s Art

E. Christian Filstrup

The Social Principle

Horace Holley

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World Order

A BAHÁ’Í MAGAZINE • VOLUME 12 NUMBER 1 • PUBLISHED QUARTERLY

WORLD ORDER IS INTENDED TO STIMULATE, INSPIRE AND SERVE THINKING PEOPLE IN THEIR SEARCH TO FIND RELATIONSHIPS BETWEEN CONTEMPORARY LIFE AND CONTEMPORARY RELIGIOUS TEACHINGS AND PHILOSOPHY

Editorial Board:

FIRUZ KAZEMZADEH

BETTY J. FISHER

HOWARD GAREY

ROBERT HAYDEN

GLENFORD E. MITCHELL

WORLD ORDER is published quarterly, October, January, April, and July, at 415 Linden Avenue, Wilmette, Illinois 60091. Subscriber and business correspondence and changes of address should be sent to this address. Manuscripts and other editorial correspondence should be addressed to 2011 Yale Station, New Haven, Connecticut 06520.

The views expressed herein are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the publisher, the National Spiritual Assembly of the Bahá’ís of the United States, or of the Editorial Board. Manuscripts should be typewritten and double spaced throughout, with the footnotes at the end. The contributor should keep a carbon copy. Return postage should be included.

Subscription rates: USA, 1 year, $6.00; 2 years, $11.00; single copies, $1.60. All other countries, 1 year, $7.00; 2 years, $13.00; single copes $1.60.

Copyright © 1978, National Spiritual Assembly of the Bahá’ís of the United States, World Rights Reserved. Printed in the U.S.A.

ISSN 0043-8804

IN THIS ISSUE

2 Between Bigotry and Libertinism

Editorial

4 Interchange: Letters from and to the Editor

9 The Bahá’í Faith: World Religion of the Future?

by Jacques Chouleur

20 The Alphabet of Things in Walter Hatke’s Art

by E. Christian Filstrup

29 The Social Principle

by Horace Holley

45 Encounters of East and West

book review by Howard B. Garey

48 Authors and Artists in This Issue

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Between Bigotry and Libertinism

REFLECTION on religious history reveals a cyclical movement between the extremes of bigotry and libertinism—bigotry, that excess of piety which manifests itself in intolerance and dogmatism, and libertinism, which goes beyond liberalism to loss of faith, confusion of values, and contempt of morals. The way stations between these extremes are piety, conviction, tolerance, and moral and religious relativism. This movement seems to go in one direction only, so that the figure of the pendulum would not apply: there is apparently no gradual motion in the reverse direction from libertinism to bigotry. Rather bigotry arises suddenly, as a reaction to a libertinism no longer tolerable. Or perhaps the rapid backswing so abbreviates the middle phases that their occurrence escapes notice.

In any case, bigotry would seem to be returning to American religious life. Recent news reports show that a kind of revivalism is manifested in rather sinister forms: two business men, on the point of signing a contract, must kneel in prayer at the insistence of one of them, before the agreement can be concluded. If one of them feels that the privacy of his conscience is thus being violated and refuses to engage in prayer under such bizarre conditions, he is not only excluded from a particular business agreement, but he is harassed by anonymous phone calls threatening him with damnation—and if that threat proves fruitless, with boycott. Or professions of religious faith are more and more often the prerequisite to employment in some business establishments. Being reborn is becoming the “in” thing; the “beautiful people” are taking it up as they once were “into” a dilettantish marxism.

Will we again be obliged to tread the uphill course from bigotry (with its religious faith) to liberalism (with its much looser religious concepts)? Apparently the Bahá’í Faith is alone in explicitly combining religious [Page 3] conviction with love and respect for non-coreligionists. This lack of fanaticism looks to outsiders like indifference (the Italian encyclopedia from the Fascist epoch refers to the indifferentismo of the Bahá’í Faith), but it resides in recognition of the authenticity of each religion—at least in its divine origins if not in unpleasant manifestations of such human contributions to it as pride and hypocrisy.

If would be a shame if zealots, dissatisfied with the results of moral suasion, should again, through economic and political pressures, exclude their fellow citizens from rights which they arrogate to themselves alone, and—even worse from a religious point of view—tempt their fellows, for economic and political motives, into hypocrisy, into bearing false witness to a faith they do not have. Not only would this be degrading to the name of religion, it would surely be destructive of souls.

It is doubtful if Jesus, whom these bigots claim to hold up as the model of human conduct, would approve the exploitation of fear and greed as a means of inducing people to recognize Him as their Savior.

Bahá’u’lláh’s attitude toward the teaching of the Faith is clear: the Bahá’í has an obligation to make the Faith known—but once a person has been apprised of its existence and its teachings, it is strictly his own affair how he is to respond to this new knowledge. The obligation to proclaim the Faith is not satisfied at the expense of the injunction to “Consort with all the people of religions with joy and fragrance.” To cross this line is to go from proclamation to proselytism. To engage in proselytism would be to return us to the old world of religious disputation and conflict, to wipe out the slow but steady progress America has made in establishing religion as a matter of individual conscience, rather than as a sanction determining access to civil, economic, and political rights.

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Interchange LETTERS FROM AND TO THE EDITOR

HORACE HOLLEY, whose brief book, The Social Principle, first published in 1915, we reproduce with only a few minor cuts in this issue, was born in Torrington, Connecticut, in 1887. He was educated at the Lawrenceville School in New Jersey and Williams College in Massachusetts and early in life displayed the talents and the discipline that would have made him a success in whatever career he might have chosen to pursue. An encounter with ‘Abdu’l-Bahá in Europe in 1911 changed the course of his life, directing him to the service of the Bahá’í Faith as writer, teacher, editor, administrator, and, finally, as a Hand of the Cause of God.

The acceptance of the Teachings of Bahá’u’lláh compelled young Horace to reexamine his views of man and society. He felt a need to apply the principles of his new-found Faith to the problems that agitated the minds of his contemporaries. As the First World War engulfed the European continent, Horace produced The Social Principle, a youthful work full of hope for a bright future for all humanity. It is also a record of growth. The mature Horace Holley, whom we remember, the wise elder whose advice and encouragement were eagerly sought, had reached a much deeper knowledge and understanding of the world. The Social Principle was only an early stage in the progress of his powerful mind and spirit. We are delighted to have an opportunity to gain a glimpse of that mind and hope that our readers will share our delight.

To the Editor

MANI

I much appreciated the article by Daniel Keith Conner entitled “Mani and Manichaeism: A Study in Religious Failure” in the Winter [1976-77] issue of WORLD ORDER. . . . I would, however, like to question certain statements the author makes about the Bahá’í view of the nature of religion and of God’s Messengers. . . .

. . . it seems to me that certain . . . interpretations are not in agreement with history and with the Divine Text.

For example, a) the qualification that a Messenger of God “must . . . [found] a new and independent religion.” Abraham and Moses are both considered independent “Manifestations of universal Prophethood” (see Some Answered Questions, p. 189). Yet Moses did not found a new religion different from that of Abraham, at least not to my knowledge. b) “His historical influence must have been very great.” In The Kitáb-i-Íqán, Bahá’u’lláh, taking up a theme which occurs in the Qur’án, speaks of the prophets Noah, Húd, Ṣáliḥ, and Moses in the same vein, and I feel it is certainly justified to consider them all as “Messengers from God,” which is the term used by the author. Yet one cannot say that the historical influence of, say, Húd or Ṣáliḥ was very great since the people they addressed were annihilated, through an act of God’s justice, and because of their utter heedlessness of the message revealed to them. c) The same argument can be adduced against the statements “A faith instituted by God must survive. . . and “He [a Messenger of God] must have left behind a body of scripture which was instrumental in the founding or flourishing of a civilization.” It seems to me that the influence of a Messenger of God depends not only on the Message itself and the power of the Holy Spirit that accompanies it, but also on the reaction it draws forth from mortals, since we are always free to refuse to [Page 5] accept Divine Guidance, which is exactly what the people of Ad and Thamúd did. We know, for example, from the Writings of the Báb that all past religions were destined to be universal. We all know what was their fate, and we are aware, of course, that Bahá’u’lláh and the Báb have promised that the Bahá’í Faith will eventually triumph, become universal, and encompass all the peoples of the world. This promise has never been given to any other religion. I do not think it is justified to say that a “faith instituted by God must survive, at least until it has fulfilled its purpose” since every religion of the past was fit to be universal. The faith of Húd and of Ṣáliḥ; certainly did not endure, and their scriptures were not “instrumental in the founding or flourishing of a civilization.” . . .

JOHN PAUL VADER

Switzerland

TAḤRÍF

Concerning Mr. Collin’s article on Islám’s taḥríf in the Fall 1976 issue.

I have just reread the article with even greater enjoyment than at first perusal. . . . Having been prompted to this second reading by a recent examination of the Qur’án . . . it seemed relevant to write this note to express a few thoughts. . . .

Al-Baqarah (The Cow) contains many of the passages from which the “orthodox” taḥríf position is derived. Yet it also includes many significant passages which would make such an interpretation a bit less obvious. William Collins has interpreted some of the passages indicative of a literal or physical tampering with the Books in a manner no doubt consistent with Bahá’u’lláh’s teachings, and, of course, obviously acceptable for Bahá’ís, but that same meaning is hardly obvious to orthodox Muslims. . . . To simply interpret such a passage as “so woe to those who write the Book with their hands” (2:73) as meaning “writing commentaries” (p. 26, WORLD ORDER, Fall 1976) may not in itself prove convincing, notwithstanding the fact that it is supported by Bahá’u’lláh’s testimony. This would be like interpreting Jesus’ often quoted statement, “I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me” (John 14:6), by stating that, “Of course, a Manifestation of God is the only way to God; no man comes to the Father but by Him!” Although such an interpretation may be quite obvious to the Bahá’í, the Christian will usually remain unconvinced. Now if the Bahá’í were to give the matter much more attention, quoting many other Biblical passages that strengthen his position, the Christian would find it much more difficult to treat it lightly. So too with the Muslim and the Quranic passages. The following is a brief attempt to do that.

One may begin by referring to numerous verses which clearly state that the meaning of the Qur’án is not always obvious. For example, “It is He who has revealed to you the Koran. Some of its verses are precise in meaning— they are the foundation of the Book—and others ambiguous. Those whose hearts are infected with disbelief follow the ambiguous part, so as to create dissension by seeking to explain it. But no one knows its meaning except Allah” (3:7—Dawood’s translation used throughout) . Then one should acknowledge that the Qur’án contains several passages which suggest that a physical tampering with the Bible has occurred, and that from these the Muslim concludes the obvious. But then the inquirer should also acknowledge that there are also many statements which are, in differing degrees, inconsistent with that interpretation. Remember: “Will they not ponder on the Koran? If it had not come from Allah, they could have surely found in it many contradictions” (4:82). God declares that there are no contradictions within the text. We should thus prefer the interpretation which consistently explains all [Page 6] the verses. Also recall to mind the ḥadíth that truth is but one point which the foolish have multiplied.

Jews and Christians are called the People of the Book (Ahl al-Kitáb). Of course, this merely proves that they received the Book, and it is no proof that they didn’t alter it. But consider numerous other passages which tell that the Qur’án is a confirmation of previous scripture (e.g., 3:3, 35:31, 5:51, 2:89, etc., etc.). If the Prophet Muḥammad repeatedly pointed out to the Jews and the Christians that the Qur’án confirms their own Scriptures, how can one conclude that He believed those Books to be false? And then there are other passages which make it clear that the problem is one of interpretation: “Those to whom we have given the Book, and who read it as it ought to be read. . .” (2:121). And what of the declaration of faith such as is enjoined upon believers: “The Apostle believes in what has been revealed to him by his Lord, and so do the faithful. They all believe in Allah and His angels, His scriptures and His apostles” (2:285). The word here translated as His scriptures is, in the original Arabic, “Kutubih,” the plural possessive form of Al-Kitáb. Inasmuch as God commands belief in His Books, more than the Qur’án is implied. And would God command belief in Books which are inaccurate?

Many more such passages could be discussed (some such as 5:68, 5:66, 57:25-27, 42:15, 6:84-90, 2:213, 5:44, 46, plus many, many more, but it seems that the point has been adequately made. On the basis of the Qur’án itself, the interpretation forming the basis of the taḥríf is, minimally, questionable, and, maximally, false. Now, of course, and perhaps this should have been said in the beginning, there are many whose “chief concern is mere opposition; their sole desire is to ignore the truth” (Kitáb-i-Íqán, p. 14). How many verses in the Qur’án say the same? Obviously such an argument as was here presented would be useless in the face of such a person. “Say: ‘People of the Book, you shall not be guided until you observe the Torah and the Gospel and that which is revealed to you from your Lord.’ That which is revealed to you from your Lord will surely increase the wickedness and unbelief of many of them. But do not grieve for the unbelievers” (5:71).

RICHARD KOWNACKI

Placentia, California

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ANNALES

UNIVERSITAIRES

FACULTÉ DES LETTRES

ET SCIENCES HUMAINES

LA FOI MONDIALE BAHA’IE :

RELIGION PLANETAIRE DE L’AVENIR ?

Jacques CHOULEUR

AVIGNON

1re   ANNEE NUMERO 2   NOVEMBRE 1975

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The Bahá’í Faith:

World Religion of the Future?

BY JACQUES CHOULEUR

This article has been translated and slightly revised by the author, with the assistance of Debbe Jackson and Howard B. Garey, from “La Foi Mondiale Bahá’íe: Religion Planetaire de l’avenir?” Annales Universitaires d’Avignon, 1, No. 2 (Nov. 1975).

ON A PLANET which became significantly smaller in the course of the past few decades as a result of expressways, jet airplanes, TV networks, and telecommunication satellites the problem of a universal religion, a religion for the whole of mankind, must necessarily arise one day or another. Admittedly, many individuals as well as several schools of thought deny the necessity and even the usefulness of any religion whatsoever, and the tarnished images presented by the major traditional denominations can but reinforce such an opinion. Christianity, for a notable example, increasingly gives the impression that it has reached the end of its capacity to influence history, that it has at last been overtaken by the age limit beyond which every ideological movement spends itself in vain commemoration of its bygone glories, or in equally vain rejuvenation cures and attempts at resuscitation. The ecumenical project —as commendable as it may appear—is probably too late. Moreover, one may legitimately wonder whether an accumulation of weaknesses will ever add up to a new, vitalizing force.

From another point of view the need for a religion, a true spiritual food, seems to be as eternally essential to mankind as its need for air, water, bread, and sunshine. Granted, there is something “religious” in atheistic and humanistic ideologies—the religions of progress, the religions of Man—for they demand of their devotees a firm and unflagging faith, the like of which our western consumer society seems incapable of arousing among its own people. They, too, pledge allegiance to an ethical principle, the quest for a just and brotherly civilization. Nevertheless, it is a truism to say that there cannot exist a true brotherhood if there is no common fatherhood —no brothers without a father first— and it is precisely the absence of such a common father which jeopardizes the very structures of the humanistic “family.” Religions, on the contrary, do propose to all men an actual brotherhood based on the acceptance of a common father, and it matters very little whether they call him Jehovah, Alláh, or by yet another name. The naively modernistic Christian churches which endeavor to minimize the value of this “vertical dimension” and retain only the “horizontal” one—the service of our fellow men—come to grief on the fatal contradiction of a fatherless brotherhood. They renounce their holy attributes as well as their sacred mission, abase religion to the level of politics, and the ecclesiastical community to the rank of a mere charitable institution, a trade union, or a political patty.

It is obvious, moreover, that ecumenism will not succeed in merging the various existing churches into one organization. Each separate organization, however weak and moribund it may be, naturally tends to prolong its existence by clinging desperately to its own identity. It is equally obvious that a loose alliance of denominations whose theological views, cultural traditions, and histories had previously set them on diverging tracks could not take the place or do the work of a true universal religion, a religion with the capacity to create a new planet-wide civilization. Finally, it is obvious that none of the major present-day religions could possibly absorb all [Page 10] the others. Jews, Christians, Muslims, Hindus, and Buddhists remain attached to their respective folds because none of the others would attract them sufficiently to justify a conversion which could also be construed as high treason. It is not through an association or a merger of the existing churches that the creation of a future planetary religion should be sought, but rather in a dynamic adherence to a really new formula. Do not the Gospels themselves tell us that new wine ought not to be kept in old skins?

Does this religion of the future, this religion for all men and women of tomorrow already exist? If the answer is affirmative, and at the same time the major present-day organizations are unequal to the task, what energetic minority would then be qualified to take over this impossible mission? A characteristic of our age is the astonishing proliferation of all kinds of sects. Some, like the Seventh-Day Adventists or Jehovah’s Witnesses, have their roots in nineteenth century Anglo-American fundamentalism. It is obvious that their narrow literalism, their puritan heritage, their nearly medieval outlook on life and the world do not adequately prepare them for a spiritual conquest of the terrestrial globe, in spite of their followers’ sincerity and missionary zeal. Other unorthodox branches of Christianity, such as Swedenborgianism or Christian Science, would apparently be better qualified, for they dwell on a high intellectual plane and offer a rational explanation of our universe. But their ambitions in the proselytizing field are relatively modest. The Mormons are numerous, modern, dynamic, and highly organized. Their financial resources are impressive. Their thirst for expansion seems unquenchable, and they look as if they might be capable of achieving their purpose in many countries. It is to their credit that they teach the eternal unity of the married couple and the family and the eternal progression of the spirits of the righteous, which goes as far as conferring upon them a truly divine status in the hereafter, without absolving them in the least from trying to build Zion here below, and the New Jerusalem of righteousness, justice, and light of which the ancient prophets dreamed. On the debit side, there exist a Biblical fundamentalism, aggravated by the presence of purely Mormon supplementary Scripture of uncertain origin; their compulsory belief in the various and sometimes rather doubtful visions and revelations of the Church leaders; the specter of a well-muscled theocracy; and perhaps also the all-American flavor of the religion of the Latter-Day Saints.

As to the manifold religious trends imported from India or the Far East, from Soka Gakkai to Maharishi Mahesh Yogi’s Transcendental Meditation, from Zen Buddhism to the “Divine Light” sect of Guru Maharaj Ji, the chubby teen-age millionaire, they differ considerably as regards their varying degrees of seriousness. In any case, they are all prisoners of a particular culture, a national or religious folklore which prohibits them from entertaining any hope of universality. In the Western world, who will ever believe that one has to shave one’s head—except for one long hank of hair right on the top—deck oneself out in saffron-colored gowns, and endlessly chant “Hare Krishna, Hare Rama . . .” while playing the drum and shaking little bells, in order to find access to the Kingdom of God?

A “NEW” RELIGION, the Bahá’í Faith, seems to me, in contrast, to figure high on the list of competitors for the rank of the universal religion of the future. The word “religion,” however, is not totally accurate in this case, since the leaders of this movement have preferred to call it a “faith,” which sounds less exclusive and more dynamic. Becoming a Bahá’í, indeed, does not mean that one has to renounce one’s former religion. Quite the contrary, since Bahá’ís base their entire philosophy on the principle of the truth and essential oneness of all religions. This is not mere “tolerance,” but a deliberate acknowledgement of the divine character of the inspiration which manifests itself equally in synagogues, [Page 11] temples, churches, mosques, and pagodas in the four corners of the earth. To Bahá’ís, religion is One, because God is One, and mankind is One. To the Hindu, the Buddhist, the Zoroastrian, the Jew, or the Moslem, a Bahá’í does not say, “Your religion is false; ours is true; you must be converted!” He says, “Your religion is true, at least in its essence and original form, but it is now obsolete. It was valid only for a particular tribe, a particular period in history, but today you must break down all barriers in order to achieve a global consciousness of the underlying unity. Your religion is true, but it is not the only true one. It expresses but a fragment of the truth, and this fragment is a truth only for a given era in the history of civilizations. Look beyond prejudices and borders! Look beyond the present hour! Come build with us the planetary religion, the religion of the whole human race, the religion for our day and the days to come.” The Bahá’í Faith invites us to broaden our religious horizons, not to become an apostate.

As we shall see further on, it was in an Islamic environment that the Bahá’í Faith was born. For practical purposes, this matters but little, for the simple reason that Bahá’ís recognize as genuine prophets religious leaders as diverse as Zoroaster, Abraham, Moses, Jesus, and Muḥammad. Nor do they exclude Krishna and the Buddha from the list, although they do not take their stand as firmly in these two cases, and they do not wave aside the possible existence of ancient long-forgotten prophets. To the Bahá’ís all these prophets are “Manifestations of God,” exceptionally gifted human beings sent down to this world at more or less regular intervals of time in order to teach men certain cardinal truths or to remind them of such truths if they have been forgotten. The foremost of these truths is love. All founders of authentic religions have preached compassion, tenderness, charity, mutual assistance, forgiveness, justice, and fraternity. To the basic and eternal law: “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. . . . Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself,” the prophets may have added some commandments which were valid for a certain portion of mankind at a certain stage in its historical evolution. The prophets’ successors, priests, theologians, and churches have needlessly multiplied the ordinances concerning ecclesiastical organization, social order, rites, morals, and so on . . . , thus succeeding in ever widening the gap between various groups and denominations. For instance, Jews are circumcised and abstain from eating pork, two commandments ignored by Christians; Muslims abstain from alcoholic beverages, a commandment ignored by most Christians as well as Jews; Christians are baptized and take Holy Communion, two rites unknown to Jews as well as to Muslims. Some kneel for prayer; others prostrate themselves. Some turn towards Mecca when they pray, others towards Jerusalem. Some keep the Sabbath on Friday, others on Saturday, and still others on Sunday. To Bahá’ís, all these are but minor and superficial differences. Some of them were once introduced for good reasons, generally reasons of a symbolic nature, in a given environment, while others are only sterile and ridiculous excrescences that have little by little come to afflict the tree of religion in the course of its long and fantastically eventful growth. What has to be preserved is the tree, not its dead branches nor the ugly growths on its bark. Besides, the true teachings of the prophets may have been censored, expurgated, bent, modified, and distorted to a certain extent by the churchmen of later generations. The messages handed down to us from these successive Manifestations of God may have been altered, warped, curtailed, or complicated. Hence the necessity for a new Manifestation, whenever a religion enters what Bahá’ís call its wintertime, when it has outlived its golden age and cannot produce any more fruits. One is reminded of the celebrated verse of the Bhagavad-Gītā: [Page 12]

When Righteousness

Declines, O Bharata! when Wickedness

Is strong, I rise, from age to age, and take

Visible shape, and move a man with men,

Succoring the good, thrusting the evil back,

And setting Virtue on her seat again.

If the Bhagavad-Gītā seems too esoteric for our rationalistic minds, let us quote Balzac:

Cults may have had innumerable forms, yet neither their meaning nor their metaphysical construction has ever varied. Indeed, Man has always had but one religion. . . . To him who throws himself into these religious streams, not all of whose founders are known, it is a fact that Zoroaster, Moses, the Buddha, Confucius, Jesus Christ and Swedenborg all had the same principles and strove after the same end.

The various Manifestations of God are nothing more than human beings, but the Spirit dwells in them and illuminates them. They are God’s messengers, the interpreters of His will among men. To Bahá’ís, the latest two Manifestations, in chronological order, are Siyyid ‘Alí Muḥammad, surnamed the Báb (that is, The Gate), and Mírzá Ḥusayn ‘Alí, who took the title, Bahá’u’lláh, the Glory of God. Both were Persians and were brought up in the Shí’ih sect of Islám. The Báb was a bold and generous religious reformer who revolted against his coreligionists’ sterile ritualism and chauvinistic fanaticism. The Sháh and the clergy took umbrage at the agitation caused by the Bábís, as the Báb’s disciples were called. There were ghastly persecutions, in the course of which thousands of people were massacred after atrocious tortures. The Báb was arrested, sentenced to death, and finally executed in 1850. He died riddled with bullets, shot by a whole regiment of the imperial army, after having miraculously been left unscathed by a first volley. In Bahá’í perspective, the Báb, though an independent Manifestation, was but the herald and precursor of “Him whom God will make manifest” —that is, Bahá’u’lláh (1817-1892). The Báb was to his successor what John the Baptist was to Jesus—someone who prepares the way for a greater personage.

Bahá’u’lláh, the son of an eminent civil servant of the Sháh in Ṭihrán had openly expressed his partiality and deep sympathy for the cause and the person of the Báb. As a result he was arrested in 1852 and cast into a gloomy dungeon without any light or fresh air, along with scores of fellow-sufferers, huddled together under dreadful conditions. He remained there four long months, his feet in fetters, his neck encircled with an iron ring which supported the weight of an enormous chain, expecting to be executed any day. However, the persecution slowly ebbed, and Bahá’u’lláh was finally freed from his living grave and banished. Ernest Renan repeatedly manifested his admiration and compassion for the Bábís and the Bahá’ís, their successors. Count Gobineau, another well-known French writer, expressed similar feelings.

Expelled from Persia, Bahá’u’lláh began a long journey through Baghdád, Istanbul, and Adrianople, which finally took him to ‘Akká, in Palestine, where he arrived in 1868. In Baghdád he had solemnly proclaimed he was the new Manifestation of God, a certitude that had overwhelmed him in the midst of his sufferings in the dungeon of Ṭihrán. The Turkish authorities were full of suspicion, as they had been forewarned against the “troublemaker” by the Persian government. Bahá’u’lláh, along with his family and a few disciples, was, therefore, arrested again and imprisoned in the barracks of the grim city of ‘Akká. In the course of years, however, his captivity became less rigorous. The Persian prophet was permitted to settle in a private [Page 13] mansion and to receive his ever more numerous visitors and supporters in relative freedom. Among his guests, one should mention Professor Edward Granville Browne, a renowned English orientalist and a Fellow of Pembroke College, Cambridge. He did much to make the personality of Bahá’u’lláh and the Bahá’í doctrine known in the Western world. Later, public figures as varied and eminent as Leo Tolstoy, Auguste Forel, Helen Keller, President Masaryk, and President Beneš were to express their sympathy for the venerable victim and their respect for his noble cause. Queen Marie of Rumania went so far as formally to join the Bahá’í Faith.

From his imposed residence in ‘Akká, which was kept under surveillance by the police, not far from the very Mount Carmel which the Holy Scriptures extol as the foreordained battlefield where the dark forces of evil are to be finally defeated by the power of divine light, Bahá’u’lláh witnessed the growth and strengthening of the legion of those who believed in his mission. This peaceful army was organized and led by him alone. He gave it inspiration through his numerous epistles, which he called “Tablets,” and above all through the example of his personal life, a life of dignity, moderation, and kindness. He had many enemies—some of them among his nearest relatives, in accordance with the customs and wont of the East—but their plots repeatedly came to naught when confronted with his tranquil fortitude.

When Bahá’u’lláh died in 1892, his son ‘Abdu’l-Bahá succeeded him as leader of the Bahá’í community. ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, who in his older days looked very much like a Biblical prophet or patriarch because of his aristocratic-looking face and his long white beard, proved himself a thoroughly remarkable leader. He, too, was a perpetual prisoner, for the Turks did not allow him to move his living quarters from the prison-city of ‘Akká. During the First World War, the Turkish soldiery, frustrated as they were by a series of military setbacks, decided to get rid of the heretic by crucifying him, along with all of his family! Fortunately, the rapid advance of the British troops prevented them from carrying out this sinister scheme.

‘Abdu’l-Bahá died in 1921. During the latter years of his life, he put his recovered freedom to good use by traveling to Europe and America to preach the new gospel in person. The seed of his words found fertile ground in the United States, and the American Bahá’ís soon became the vanguard of the expanding movement, first, because of their devotion to the cause, but also thanks to those typically American virtues: a genius for organization and a concern for efficiency.

At the time of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá’s death, his grandson Shoghi Effendi was called upon to assume authority. He had been educated first at the French Jesuits’ school in Haifa, then at the American College in Beirut, and finally at Balliol College at Oxford. In comparison with his predecessors, he was, therefore, more influenced by the West. It was under his competent leadership that the Faith rapidly spread to nearly every country in the world. There soon were Bahá’ís even among the Eskimos, the American Indians, and the Polynesians. Shoghi Effendi passed away in 1957. No one succeeded him, personal leadership being then superseded by collegial authority, that of a “Universal House of Justice,” the democratic emanation of the whole international Bahá’í community.

FORMULATING a correct estimate of the strength of the Bahá’í movement is a difficult task. Bahá’í authorities refuse to divulge their statistics about the number of followers of the Cause. Is it out of humility, shyness, or— more likely—out of simple prudence? The era of persecution is perhaps not entirely over, and Bahá’ís have to make themselves invisible in most Muslim states, for example. The latest martyrdoms of Bahá’ís in Írán took place not so long ago, in 1955! The Bahá’ís prefer instead to draw up a list of the territories that have been “opened to the Faith,” and another of their “Spiritual Assemblies.” Their policy is to be present everywhere. They aim to [Page 14] establish at least one Bahá’í center in each of the tiniest islands of the Pacific, as well as in the remotest and most forbidding territories of the Canadian northland. This seems to them preferable to an attempt at mass recruiting in a few selected countries. There are hundreds of thousands of Bahá’ís, perhaps several million; and they are scattered over the entire planet. The only exception is in Communist countries, since the day when the firstborn of all Bahá’í temples, built in Ishqabád in Russian Transcaspia, was closed and confiscated in 1928.

The Bahá’í community is, therefore, first, a multinational and multiracial community, and it is profoundly antiracist. In his day Bahá’u’lláh had proclaimed the complete equality and unconditional fraternity of all races. However, instead of expressing their antiracist convictions through inflammatory pamphlets, protest marches, solemn petitions, and other such bombastic procedures, Bahá’ís quietly do their best to live in multiracial groups. To learn how to live together, to overcome the racist impulses to which every human being is unfortunately prone, seems to them more courageous and more realistic than noisy denunciations of the racism of others. Indeed, one of the main Bahá’í virtues precisely lies in the abstention from accusation, censorious judgments, or sarcastic remarks concerning one’s fellow man, whether he be a relative, the next-door neighbor, a colleague, a stranger in the street, or a politician on one’s TV screen. Of course, one can always regret or criticize other people’s doings, but this should be done only in moderation and in a civil and courteous way, and only in cases of absolute necessity, being mindful of the parable of the mote in your brother’s eye! To return to the subject of races, let us note that a typical Bahá’í community is composed of persons who belong to various ethnic groups. In the United States, for instance, the community will include not only Caucasians— as white people of European stock are called there—and “WASPS,” but also Blacks, Puerto Ricans, Nisei Japanese, Chicanos, and so on, according to local conditions. Equality also characterizes the sharing of office and responsibilities. Thus the Bahá’í community strives to embody the prototype, to be the living model according to which the movement wishes to build the society of the centuries to come. Far from being frowned upon, interracial marriages are in accord with Bahá’í ideals and receive hearty encouragement. At the same time, however, Bahá’ís insist on the idea that each ethnic group is entitled to its own culture and identity, since the diversity of gifts can but be beneficial to the total structure. Such an attitude is certainly made easier by a religious faith in a common Father.

To have neither rest nor respite in the fight against prejudice, to beat back the temptations of hatred and contempt, such is a Bahá’ís first duty. Bahá’ís take a stand against social inequalities and discriminations which are in favor of the rich and the upper classes just as much as they take a stand against racism. They refrain from taking sides in the controversy opposing capitalism and socialism but declare that a healthy society ought to abolish “extremes of wealth and poverty.” Moreover, they decline to enter the political arena. A Bahá’í is forbidden to join a political party, since the very notion of a party inevitably implies that of factionalism, division, and opposition. Bahá’ís defer to the power of the civil authorities under whatever type of government they live, from democracy to authoritarian regimes, from people’s republics to oligarchy and aristocratic rule. They, nevertheless, try to propagate their ideals of justice, tolerance, and peace. Chauvinism, aggressive nationalism, and bellicosity are diametrically opposed to Bahá’í thought. Where compulsory conscription is the rule, young Bahá’ís are advised to apply for enrollment in noncombatant military units, although this attitude never goes as far as insubordination or refusing to wear a uniform or bear arms, as this would be in contradiction to the principle of obedience to the lawful authorities of one’s country.

On yet another plane, Bahá’ís work for [Page 15] equality among human beings: they proclaim the equality of the rights of men and women. The fact that they have done so as early as the middle of the nineteenth century, and in Muslim countries, is positive proof of their originality, sincerity, and audacity. There was one woman in the first circle of the Báb’s early followers. She was a Persian poetess, and her name was Ṭáhirih (“The Pure One”). She was the first woman bold enough to appear in a men’s meeting with her face uncovered by the traditional veil. Her courageous devotion to the Báb ultimately cost her her life, and she was one of the first martyrs of the persecutions of 1852. She was strangled, and her body was placed in a well. Bahá’í women enjoy the same privileges and authority as men in the Faith’s assemblies. This true equality has nothing in common with the radical and spiteful attitudes of such factions of the “Women’s Lib Movement” as advocate hatred for men together with the masculinization of women. Bahá’ís regard marriage as a noble institution and conjugal love as a most admirable thing. They tolerate divorce, although they deplore it, and demand a year’s delay for reflection from their own members who contemplate such a drastic step. The education of all children is also one of the major concerns of the Bahá’í Faith, and the right of every man and woman to a true education is clearly proclaimed.

Bahá’í theology, insofar as one can call it a theology, seems very simple. There is only one God. He is the Father of all men. His essence is unknowable, and yet He is “closer to man than his own jugular vein,” to quote the Qur’án. He is the God of Abraham and Jacob, of Moses and Jesus, but also the God of Muḥammad. He is Alláh, the Eternal, the Almighty, the Supremely Wise and Merciful Creator. He is both transcendent and immanent, if we insist on using Christian terminology, but Bahá’ís waste little time discussing that kind of metaphysical problem. God is the spiritual sun of the universe. Love for all beings radiates from Him, but He also demands our own ardent love. He acts upon the world through His Manifestations. Christians will no doubt chafe at seeing that the second person of their Trinity does not enjoy any privileged status in the Bahá’í scheme of things, for Bahá’ís accept the appellation of “Son of God” only in the figurative sense, making no mention of a miraculous birth and resurrection. Bahá’ís feel little temptation for wonders and miracles. They have no mythology. They believe in science. To them, science and religion should never be in conflict with one another. To paraphrase the words of the Bahá’í prophet, they are the two wings of man’s flight towards progress, and of course one cannot fly very well with only one wing. No superstitions, no obscurantism, no morbid devotion to the letter of the Scriptures. And since we are on the subject of Scripture, let us add that the Holy Scriptures of all the great religions of mankind are read in Bahá’í temples with equal respect and attention.

There are many Bahá’ís in Írán, but they have to be careful in exercising their religious rights, which are acknowledged by the Constitution but often threatened by the fanatic fringe of the Muslim population, especially in the rural areas. Bahá’ís also live in England, France, Switzerland, and Germany. And they are numerous in India and Africa. There are few in Europe, but their numbers are rapidly growing in Australia, New Zealand, Canada, Latin America, and, above all, in the United States.

Bahá’ís have no clergy. In each locality or region where the Faith is present, they elect a nine-member “Spiritual Assembly” which remains in office for one year. The delegates from the local Assemblies elect the members of the National Spiritual Assembly. In their turn, these elect some eminent members to the supreme institution at the top of the pyramid, the “Universal House of Justice” in Haifa, in the Holy Land. The procedure is, therefore, perfectly democratic, but without the usual failings of democracy: indeed, there are no electoral campaigns, no factions, no cliques, no rivalries of tendencies or persons. Instead, there is prayer, friendly consultation, [Page 16] a vote, and then serene acceptance of the majority decision by all concerned.

Having neither churches nor mosques, Bahá’ís pray at home, using one of three obligatory prayers a day, but their whole life is in fact a prayer. Nevertheless, there exist Bahá’í temples, some of which are very beautiful, but they are magnets for spiritual gatherings rather than ordinary places of worship. One goes there for reflection, meditation, silent prayer, but no sermons are preached, and no instrumental music is played therein. The temples are open to everyone. In 1975 temples were to be found in Wilmette, near Chicago, Illinois; in Panama; in Kampala, Uganda; in Sydney, Australia; and finally in Frankfurt, Germany. The first goal was obviously to build one temple in each continent, but this is only the first step. Some temples have a classical architecture, while others, such as those in Frankfurt and Panama, are resolutely modern. All have a dome, a reminder of the Muslim origins of the Faith, and all are built around a circle divided into nine sections of equal dimension. Each section has its own door, each door being a symbol of one of the great religions of mankind. All believers entering through these nine doors converge on a single point, and the symbolism of this coming together is immediately apparent: they converge on the One Religion, the religion of the Only God of unified mankind. To this series of temples, one should add the various Bahá’í sanctuaries in Haifa. They comprise the famous “Persian Gardens” mentioned in all the tourist guidebooks, and there can be found the Báb’s mausoleum as well as the International Bahá’í Archives Building, which looks like an ancient Greek temple.

Bahá’í life is regulated by a peculiar rhythm, due to the existence of a special calendar proper to this religion. At regular intervals of nineteen days the Bahá’ís of a locality or region have a friendly gathering which is commonly called the “Nineteen-Day Feast.” This meeting is divided into three parts: a time devoted to prayer and the reading of Holy Scriptures (that is, the Báb’s, Bahá’u’lláh’s, and ‘Abdu’l-Bahá’s Writings), a time devoted to the discussion of the community’s spiritual and material activities, and, finally, a time for recreation, songs, music, games, and refreshments. In Christian countries Bahá’ís use weekends to organize outings, excursions, parties, or picnics in a relaxed and joyful mood. Let us remark that there are no dietary taboos, but drugs and alcohol are forbidden.

A person becomes a Bahá’í simply by asking to do so. He remains a Bahá’í as long as he endeavors to be faithful to the basic principles of the Cause; and the movement shows a great tolerance for those members who progress only slowly towards the perfection which is the goal of such principles. One ceases being a Bahá’í simply by handing in one’s resignation. To leave the Bahá’í Faith does not mean that one is henceforth ostracized by his former companions. There is no anathema, and friends remain friends. An honest resignation is considered better than internal subversion. Those who conspire to subvert the Cause’s teachings in the interest of their own ambitions or personal desires are called “Covenant-breakers,” and are, of course, excommunicated.

Bahá’ís have no sacraments. There is no baptism, and no Holy Communion. A Bahá’í wedding is characterized by great simplicity, and no one “marries” the couple: the bride and bridegroom simply declare that they give themselves to each other in the presence of God. Every year, the believers observe a kind of Ramadan, a nineteen-day period of fasting in the Muslim fashion. No food or drink is taken between sunrise and sunset. The end of the fast is marked by a special celebration, with a great banquet and various kinds of entertainment.

IT DOES not lie with me to draw up the moral balance sheet of the Bahá’í Faith. The one I shall offer will rather concern the attractions and possible stumbling blocks which appear in this new religious formula, the attractions [Page 17] and stumbling blocks which will certainly influence the destiny of the Faith in its plans for universal expansion. Let us examine the stumbling blocks first. A theology which is too simple, too lax and vague, may put off the upholders of keenly “theology-minded” denominations such as Roman Catholicism. Some may regret that man’s fate after death is but vaguely outlined in the Bahá’í perspective which is content with asserting that the soul is immortal and that the just are to be rewarded, without going further into detail (bodily resurrection, however, seems to be ruled out). The assertion that all religions are one and that the teachings of God’s envoys are identical may fail to convince those who go to the trouble of closely comparing the words attributed to Jesus, Muḥammad, or the Buddha Gautama. Christ would turn the other cheek, while Muḥammad preached Holy War. Jesus was a bachelor—apparently, at least—while the Prophet of Islám practised polygamy, and the Buddha advised his followers to stay away from women, whom he considered as inferior beings. Jesus taught about resurrection and eternal life, whereas Hinduism speaks of reincarnation, and Buddha regards life as a misfortune to which definitive extinction in Nirvana is to be greatly preferred. Averring that the various Manifestations of God are all coequal may scandalize those who hold—not perhaps without good reason—that one of these great founding fathers was superior to another through the loftiness of his principles or the fervor of his self-sacrifice. If all “Manifestations of God” have come to speak the same truth, why should a person pledge his allegiance to Bahá’u’lláh, since he could do no more than repeat what Jesus, or Muḥammad, or Moses, had said before? Moreover, how could one accept without reservation Bahá’u’lláh’s self-elected prophethood and his self-imposed mission as a messenger of God? His life was indeed full of courage and dignity, and his person radiated generosity and goodness, but are these sufficient tokens? “Where are his miracles?”, some people will certainly ask, although the absence of conspicuous “miracles” seems to me a fact that rather militates in favor of Bahá’u’lláh! Historians may also wonder about Bahá’u’lláh’s claims to the succession of the Báb. In fact, the two men never met, and it is not impossible to regard Bahá’u’lláh’s epic enterprise as an illegitimate attempt at the usurpation of the deceased Báb’s authority over the Bábí movement. To change the subject, the Bahá’í calendar, far from being a factor of unity, may appear to many as a uselessly added complication. Bahá’í writings, particularly those of Bahá’u’lláh himself, undoubtedly bear witness to the author’s essential nobleness of soul. However, their profusely ornate, amazingly refined, and pompous style in the oriental fashion may well set western readers’ nerves on edge. They overflow with fragrant perfumes, rosy-fingered morns, melodious nightingales’ songs, delicious heavenly breezes, and so on, and most Jews and Christians will probably prefer the austere soberness of Biblical verse. Finally, the credibility of the Bahá’í Faith as a major world religion remains doubtful. Will a scattering of believers, a handful of “Pioneers of the Cause” ever secure a majority on this planet, or even develop into a strong enough minority to play a decisive part in the creation of a higher civilization?

Nevertheless, the credit side of the balance sheet is quite remarkable. The oneness of mankind is an uplifting, exciting goal. It is a goal that can rouse the young from their apathy and kindle their enthusiasm. The religious and spiritual oneness of nations is also a dynamic notion, which can only be favorably acclaimed. The idea of a religion without clergy, rites, ordinances, chapels, myths, superstitions and theological hairsplitting is attractive. It calls to mind the views of the early Quakers, who had also made the Inner Light, tolerance, and human brotherhood their leading principles. In spite of its rejection of dogmas and liturgies, the Bahá’í Faith is nevertheless a veritable faith in a true and living God, in the immortal soul, in a life transformed by the consciousness of its profound [Page 18] significance. It gives life a meaning; it belies its absurdity. Let all of mankind be one family, and men “the fruits of one tree, and the leaves of one branch,” according to the poetic—and, one hopes, prophetic—words of Bahá’u’lláh. This is a wish that no humanist, from the inmost recesses of his heart, can possibly object to, even if he is an agnostic. The Bahá’í Faith, therefore, stands a very good chance of one day making its way to the forefront. From a strictly humanistic point of view, let us acknowledge that our little planet would only be the better for it.

Here in my garden

flowers of many colors

blossom together . . .

Waking in the night

I listen to the snowflakes

falling silently

New fallen snow . . .

what kind of bird, I wonder,

made such tiny tracks . . .

—Wanda J. Reid

[Page 19]

[Page 20]

The Alphabet of Things in Walter Hatke’s Art

BY E. CHRISTIAN FILSTRUP

WALTER HATKE, a Bahá’í artist living in New York City, draws and paints the world close at hand. A patch of morning light on his bedroom wall, a pair of kitchen spoons, and a clutch of chairs are typical subjects of his work. To those of us who in our habitual comings and goings have grown insensible to patterns of sunshine, to the elegance of our kitchenware, or to the proud diversity of our chairs, Hatke’s drawings and paintings disclose surprises. They arrest our wandering eyes and move us to contemplate what we see.

“Drinking Rock,” a landscape, illustrates how Hatke makes an important statement with the alphabet of familiar things. The rock in this gouache causes the viewer to exclaim, “That’s a great rock, a rock worthy of a portrait.” Indeed, of a group portrait, for a court of haggard spruces surrounds the boulder which rests primordial on the forest floor. This sylvan court of king rock and his ill-barked timber resides in a deep shade cast by tall masters rising just beyond the edges of the canvas. About the rock, blades of grass, saplings, and leaves of fragile green edge into life, struggle against the massive shade, and fade into the organic process. Tall masters sail in the sun; new spruce, scrub pine, and other small craft stretch upward until they topple and join the soil.

The parts are frail, but the whole is strong and viable. In the midst of the self-destruction and self-regeneration of the whole sits the rock, portrayed with enough color to demonstrate its mass and with enough detail to express its individuality. Lichen-scarred and crowned with a jagged stump, the rock fixes the permanence of the whole. This is not a rock of ages, and even rocks are not sempiternal. Still, it is a rock you can count on to sit, drink, and think upon. Trees give way to more trees, but a rock like this gives way to nothing. The artist has sized up this rock and realized a group portrait of permanence amidst impermanence which persuades us that to remain fit for habitation the world needs good rocks. Homo faber’s grandest schemes may come to a person sitting upon something he or she did not make.

“Drinking Rock” is a landscape Hatke happened upon in Maine. The rock and other entities of the forest are easily identifiable; therefore, the painting is representational. Discrete phenomena catch the eye. The painting, while being faithful to characteristics of the scene, reveals more than the beauty of a spot in the forest. It is a statement about wholeness and partness and about the innerconnectedness of dying and living.

That it is a drinking rock suggests that this part of the forest entertains an essential human activity. As in most of his works, Hatke defines the setting and establishes the furnishings but leaves the picture void of people. The title tells that hither people come, for the rock is important to them. But they are [Page 21]

[Page 22] not important to the rock and trees. Typified by the rock, the landscape exists as a frame for human activity. Its lack of concern about men and women lies at the heart of its integrity and relative permanence. The impersonality of nature is the outward manifestation of its purity.

One of my favorite Hatke drawings, “Two Spoons,” examines the nature of individuality within partnership. It shows an enamelware spoon and ladle standing side by side, bathed in a strong horizontal light. The resulting shadows —evening purples—both bond together and mark the separation of the individual utensils. Though the two stand apart, their shadows intermingle, softly meeting and enjoying each other.

The spoon and ladle resemble a kitchen couple resting after a day’s work. The utilitarian individuality of daylight hours gives way to tangible partnership, and the hard surfaces of kitchen duty flow into sensuous lines. The partnership suggests: “He hath let loose the two seas, that they meet each other: Between them is a barrier which they overpass not.” In this Qur’ánic passage, the barrier is both a meeting ground and a limitation on intercourse. The strength of the couple depends on their disparateness. The spoons meet but do not merge.

Hatke’s intent is to show these cooking utensils for what they are. He does not manipulate them to symbolize the nature of marital union. Yet the two spoons evoke associations of twosomeness. The bond depends on a separateness as hard as enamel and metal. Symbolic import remains subordinate to the esthetic requirements of the composition. Rather than impose his ideology on the reality he paints, Hatke places objects in relationships in which the flow of line quickens our sense of universal patterns. The verticals of the handles suggest the backbones of individuality. The shadows, as they wash over three-dimensional objects, intone affection. Spoons cannot love each other, but to associate the interplay of lines and colors with the two seas of the Bahá’í marriage prayer increases one’s awareness of the universality of an important Bahá’í concept.

MOST of the subjects of Hatke’s drawings and paintings are as familiar as the spoon and ladle. The drinking rock is about as far from home as the artist strays. Generally he finds his subject matter within his apartment/studio in lower Manhattan, the fourth floor of a retired bank (the Hatkes store their toothpaste in a hefty bathroom safe). “Naw-Rúz,” a large oil canvas, shows the Hatkes’ bedroom from the perspective of sitting up in their brass bed and looking at the far wall. At the foot of the bed lies a brilliantly colored Joseph’s-coat quilt cast into a rumple. Against the wall stands Ann Hatke’s dresser populated with those mysterious (to men) containers of feminine adornment. [Page 23] From the right, morning air and light breeze through a window, slanting the curtains and throwing a central rectangle of light on the wall.

By skewing the major planes of the painting—those of the bed, the bureau, and the light on the wall—Hatke records movement just passed by. It is morning, the bed still warm from sleepers who have abandoned repose and are now about their home. Like all of Hatke’s interiors, “Naw-Rúz” offers clues of living but no people. Hatke describes a moment of transition from one state of living to another. Morning light washes the subconscious activity of night from the room. The tilt of the bed and the slant of the window of light on the wall declare that the room is awake and transforming. Interested in the moment, Hatke moves the actors offstage. The couple’s invisibility affords space for the outside viewer to enter and take a good look. The particular personalities are incidental to the time and space setting which is familiar and laden with strong emotions of awakening.

For anyone cognizant of the Persian New Year celebration, the title “Naw-Rúz” connotes a movement from past time to new time which the daily passage from sleep to wake imitates. Naw-Rúz is the traditional Persian New Year. Occurring on the first day of spring (March 21), it is welcomed with extensive and elaborate festivities and customs. Persians don new clothes, clean their houses, leap over fires, and eat special foods al fresco. For Bahá’ís, whether in Írán or elsewhere, Naw-Rúz marks the end of the fast as well. Perhaps the inhabitants of the room are eating their first daylight breakfast in nineteen days. The newness of time also stretches beyond the year to a prophetic cycle of renewal. For an American Bahá’í once accustomed to the Gregorian New Year as a midnight in winter event, Naw-Rúz gives vivid focus to the newness of Bahá’u’lláh’s Revelation. The new day, the new year, and the new revelation converge. It is the first day of a new year in a new era. On a stand behind the radiator beneath the window sits a small shelf of Bahá’í books: The Hidden Words of Bahá’u’lláh, The Dawn-Breakers, Memorials of the Faithful, and Bahá’u’lláh’s Book of Certitude.

The brass bed, granny quilt, and bureau typify the furnishings of Hatke’s interiors. They are samples of fine craftsmanship. Hatke has worked as a professional carpenter and is a serious student of the Shakers’ furniture. While employed as an assistant to Jack Beal, he spent many hours painting the wood grain into the furniture in Beal’s canvases. Like the drinking rock, Hatke’s chairs and tables and cabinets represent durability in a world of disposables. The craftspeople who fashioned them showed an exquisite understanding and knowledge of the past. Their artifacts attest to people’s commitment to supply furnishings which will outlive the first generation and become a legacy linking past with future.

“Naw-Rúz” shows a new day pouring in on a brass bed (a wedding present [Page 24] from the artist’s grandmother) and a hand-sewn quilt made by his great-grandmother. The bed and quilt are mirrors to the morning light. The sunshine upsets the nocturnal equilibrium and reveals the full beauty of the brass rods and knobs and the richness of the quilt’s squares, each one different from and lovelier than the next.

The quilt is the subject of a colored pencil study which Hatke completed preliminary to the oil painting. In this study the quilt is a piece of intense color suspended in the midst of a cursive black pencil sketch. Around the quilt and intermingled with the outlines of the quilt, bed, and bureau hover notes of instruction from the artist to himself. “[Square] 3. Change ochre to oxide-like green.” “[Square] 11 should be darker than 12.” “The composition here is good, both of shadow & of quilt patterns (light-dark). However, individual pattern squares vary in overall lightness or overall darkness (as well as patterns within the pattern).”

Mastery is the raison d’être of a study. Once the artist gains control, the study is complete. Hatke’s study of the quilt declares that he has negotiated the quicksand folds and charted the kaleidoscopic squares. The marginalia floating about the partially finished quilt announce that the quilt is in the bag, made ready for the final capture in oils. The total painting constitutes memory thoroughly rehearsed.

The study also records Hatke’s admiration for handmade things. It replicates the work of the seamstress. To paint the quilt, he first analyzed, that is, unsewed, the quilt. The notes are directions for “resewing” the quilt in the full, oil version. In order to incorporate the finished product into his painting, Hatke masters the method of composition. He can portray the appearance of the quilt properly only by understanding how it was sewn. One of the notes on the study reads, “Patterns & colors noted here only for reconstruction purposes & not the final choices which may & should be selected from different areas throughout the quilt.” By becoming a quilter, the artist is free to play with elements of detail.

ALTHOUGH it would be an exaggeration to say that before he paints them Hatke dismantles and reassembles all the furnishings of his paintings, it is true that the success of his work depends on his ability to disclose the basic structure of every object he tackles. The precision reveals form which escapes the casual eye. Although all the items in a painting are realistically depicted, the composition as a whole is abstract. It can be reduced to planes and simple shapes which govern perspective and placement of particulars. This abstract quality creates a contemplative mood. Discovering detail which is important for its position as well as its content, the viewer’s eye travels across the canvas, reading not accidental impressions but experience delicately, precisely calibrated.

In “Roy’s House” Hatke has stripped away the clutter of daily living and left a set of furniture as isolated vessels. The painting presents part of a kitchen provided with a table and chairs and a Hoosier cabinet. There is kinetic sense of abandonment from the foreground—the table bears neither food nor a table-setting invitation to linger—to the Hoosier which occupies the center of the [Page 25]

[Page 26] painting. The chairs are pulled back and angled away from the table. The cabinet with its doors ajar and drawers slightly open bespeaks emptiness. Someone has searched and found nothing.

A roasting pan and Turkish tile of the bismi’lláh are juxtaposed on the counter of the Hoosier. Both boast pleasing rounds. The black pinnacles of the Arabic script of the tile give circular extension to the flat planes of the Hoosier. The roasting pan is a dark blue, shiny oblong. And it is empty, a witty evocation of a perfectly round meal. The pan’s curve returns the eye to the table, where sharing now seems more likely.

The increasing sweep of the rounds of the bismi’lláh, the pan, and the table top pull the straights of the chair backs, Hoosier, and adjacent door jamb into a merry-go-round of movement. The vertical lines give a sense of rectangularity to the canvas, which is square, while the curved lines keep the eye searching for a center. The abandonedness of the room, the wantingness of the cupboard, and the bareness of the table create a swirl of drift which eventually finds its center in the small Turkish tile. This piece of glistening porcelain, a square, multicolored border framing its circular, black-and-white bismi’lláh, introduces a surprising credo to the interior. Like the roasting pan, the tile betokens bounty —“bismi’lláh al-raḥmán al-raḥím” (“in the name of Alláh, the compassionate, the merciful”). Of the ninety-nine attributes of Alláh, His compassion and mercy are most often on the lips of Muslims. Every chapter save one of the Qur’án begins with the bismi’lláh. Outwardly a knickknack, this tile anchors the interior on a scheme of cosmic bounty. The elegant straight lines of alif’s and lám’s (a’s and l’s) enter into the graceful sweep of the rá’s and mím’s (r’s and m’s), giving worldliness to divine verticality and transcendence to the world.

The bismi’lláh translates God’s awesomeness (jalál) into a form of beauty (jamál). The qualities of God become words and “in the name of Alláh” a convention of speech. The bismi’lláh, which lends definition to an infinite reality, is writ large in the verticals and rounds of the room. By using a square canvas instead of the usual rectangle, the artist confines himself to the inscribed roundness of the world. The spare mood together with evidence of wholesome bounty echo the forceful, problematic affirmation that Alláh, who is utterly independent of the world, cares for it notwithstanding. Were there no absence, humans would not search. Were the presence of God obvious and without mystery, the mosaic hierarchy of the universe would be flattened.

Next to the Hoosier hangs a little picture of the exterior of a house. This is the house of Roy Wilhelm, the “Roy” of the title of the painting. In 1912 ‘Abdu’l-Bahá hosted a Bahá’í gathering at the home of Roy Wilhelm in Teaneck, New Jersey. ‘Abdu’l-Bahá attributed special significance to this meeting:

This is a new Day and this hour is a new Hour in which we have come together. . . .

This assembly has a name and significance which will last forever. Hundreds of thousands of meetings shall be held to commemorate this occasion and the very words I speak to you today shall be repeated in them for ages to come. Therefore be ye rejoiced for ye are sheltered beneath the providence [Page 27] of God. . . .

Rejoice, for the heavenly table is prepared fer you.

The discovery that Roy’s house is not the large interior scene but a picture on the interior’s wall—asking Hatke is the only way to learn this—enhances for the viewer the interplay of macrocosm and microcosm set into motion by the Turkish tile. The kitchen interior acts as a frame for Roy’s house. Hatke brings us inside that we might pause before another, more important home.

The memento serves as a window to a religious faith and to the miraculous career of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá. Whereas the tile describes the goodness of God in a traditional, calligraphic format, the picture of Roy Wilhelm’s house alerts us to the radical potential of history to break with tradition. For forty years ‘Abdu’l-Bahá made His home in a prison-city in a Muslim land. When He left prison and traveled to the West, He demonstrated that He was not a saintly Muslim unjustly imprisoned, but a servant of a new revelation of God’s guidance. In His journeys to Europe and America ‘Abdu’l-Bahá carried the message of Bahá’u’lláh out of its Islamic cradle to a worldwide arena. He was master of moving from interior to exterior—from walled-in ‘Akká to the public halls of the West, from inner spirituality to external acts of love, and from the mysterious power of Bahá’u’lláh’s words to the lessons and explanations of Paris Talks and Some Answered Questions. The picture of Roy Wilhelm’s house both extends the bismi’lláh of the tile and shatters the traditional vehicle. The kitchen is empty; the world is in flux.

In a self—portrait Hatke paints himself seated on a high stool and dressed in loose denims and a heavy work shirt. His hands and clothes blotched with paint, Hatke poses as laborer. His eyes are impatient for us to see what the artist really is—worker, tiller of canvas, wielder of brushes. His frame as solid as a cabinet, the artist looks confident of building good things. But the eyes hint at the risk of artistic imitatio dei. As a “realistic” painter, Hatke gambles against the banality of the world. His interiors must attend to the human condition and still remain interiors. His self-portrait must disclose more than a particular personality. The basic aspiration of Hatke’s work is to limn the world in such a way that we take note and move from insouciance to exploration. The exactitude of scenes recorded by the artist adjures contemplation. In this state of attention, we perceive spoons and rocks and chairs as the alphabet of the names of the universe.

[Page 28]

[Page 29]

The Social Principle

BY HORACE HOLLEY

THE ORDINARY LIFE is a drama played behind closed curtains. Most people are so self-conscious, so completely walled in by their own psychic indifference, that each one accepts the influence of society as though determined by his own character. Seldom does one man enter within the dream-life of another. Seldom does he match motive with motive, faculty with faculty, result with result, thereby gaining a perspective upon society as a whole. Men live and die generation after generation, each one entombed in his own personal experience, as parted from others’ experience as though all were sealed in separate rooms. Thus it is that our common stock of wisdom increases sluggishly and assumes an individualistic form which renders it almost entirely untransferable. . . . The ordinary life, consequently, is not only a drama played behind closed curtains; it is a sheer experiment, an attempt at self-realization isolated from the past almost as completely as from the future —a flickering light held up in the midst of impenetrable darkness. We read the lessons of success and failure as for the first time, and these lessons are written by ourselves. If society has fortuitously contributed the conditions of success, we ascribe the result to our own initiative; if those of failure, the result seems equally a matter of our own will. In the world of action, ability and the lack of it are likewise allied to a low average of consciousness. . . .

Thus the problem of life remains continuously in that particularly egoistic province, morality. That is, the conditions of the problem are invariably defined in moral terms. The problem itself, the real problem of success and failure, is actually worked out by all lives on a basis of social relations where moral values rarely apply. For success and failure, estimated by a man’s inner experience, are matters of liberating or confining the individual’s instinctive preferences. An artist’s or inventor’s impulse to prefer one special activity above all other activities; a professional man’s aptitude for law as opposed to medicine, or medicine as opposed to law; and the individual’s sense of success or failure according as life satisfies or restrains that impulse and that aptitude—these facts constitute far more the essential reality of experience than questions of strict good and evil. A man’s life often brings him face to face with the moral problem, but that problem settled, his life is wrapped up in the political and economic condition, the social condition, of his environment. Thus, at the points of most constant contact between individual and society, our egoistic interpretation of life, our moral values, continually prove inconclusive. “Good” and “evil” cannot interpret the reasons for success and failure, for they do not include the series of social relations by which the sense of success and failure is made predominant in the inmost soul. Pressed home, that sense depends upon opportunity, upon the fortuitous convergence of many social factors serving either as a spring board to natural ability or a millstone about its neck. But the average of social consciousness remains so low that while this lesson is repeated by each generation with tragic emphasis, we still seem aware only of the elements in the individual and have no awareness of those social elements with which individuality makes contact. We cling to our egoistic formula, wherefore society, the contact of men throughout the range of their religious, philosophic, artistic, and economic relations, still remains nothing but the sum total of countless individual experiments, the hazardous, ever-changing meetings and partings of the blind.

As the natural result, society, humanity’s [Page 30] neglected orphan, possesses far less control than the self-control of the average man. Its moral tone is far lower than the mean personal average. Now the nature of fire makes it not only communicate itself to dry sticks, but also to derive more energy from union with the material it transforms. Granted even a spark in the first instance, and supplies of kindling, this reciprocal action has no limit. But it is apparently the nature of society to dampen and subdue, rather than ignite, the energy of each successive generation. . . . Society may be defined as men in chains. For it is true, and invariably true, that in proportion as an individual lacks awareness of others he loses awareness even of himself. The matured man, trained to efficiency in terms of social environment, casts off his own adolescence as a dream. . . .

Thus the first question the student should ask about society is, why it acts as a step-down transformer to personality; how it comes about that so much recurrent energy is not merely misdirected but actually cast aside; whether, in a word, it is inevitable that men should be constrained into adaptation to a mechanical mold, rather than the mold remade to fit the human image. Viewed from within, the normal mind tends to struggle for self-expression as a privilege. Why is it, then, that when viewed from without, the general attitude should be one of indifference, suspicion, even disdain? The distinction between these two points of view, or rather, these two relations, is the basis of sociology. It is the distinction not between men as they are and as they ought to be; it is the distinction between men as they think they are and as they are in reality. Sociology is the study and application of the reality about human relations.

II

THE EFFORT REQUIRED to suppress instinct, to fuse desire with necessity rather than with preference, wastes the individual’s psychic force, leaving him, at the best, indifferent. To the ordinary man, indifference may well seem the predominant attitude of others, excepting always the intimate circle he closes ever more selfishly about him. Reflected thus in the mirror of daily intercourse, indifference becomes as it were instinctive; whence psychology itself apparently warrants the conviction that the only available freedom is that contained within the limits of moral law, and philosophy in turn the conviction, correlative to the above, that the law of society is mutual struggle and the survival of the fittest.

The creative artist, however, that fool or that hero who resists socialization as the monk resists the devil himself, performing prodigies of devoted effort despite indifference and opposition, without reward—the creative artist stands among men the living proof that civilization is not a categorical imperative, irresistible as destiny, but merely a conspiracy of ignorance not yet run to earth. Apart from the aesthetic value of his work, an artist’s life has this supreme importance, that it exemplifies the true personal dynamic, a life-force supplied by the union of instinctive preference with daily task. But when one studies the artist’s character and experience in relation to society rather than to art itself, one meets an amazing resemblance between this type and other men. There is a period, coinciding more or less with adolescence, at which all men meet upon common ground. Their psychic status is identical; all manifest a similar capacity for uniting emotion and thought upon one activity or other and thus drawing upon stores of energy transcending human nature at its ordinary level. If we learn patiently to disregard the object thus capable of uniting adolescent minds; if we learn gradually to estimate the artist in terms of creative instinct rather than aesthetic control, the universal sense of distinction between artists and other men disappears. That is, it disappears when men are considered in adolescence and as states of mind. I say it without reservation, there is no boy or girl, save those only for whom adolescence itself has been spoiled in childhood, incapable of manifesting every psychic attribute typical of the artist. The object with which the particular boy’s mind [Page 31] engages may be trivial or even destructive, but the typical artist-consciousness is there, and may be induced and controlled. And when induced the resulting activity is far more efficient than activity produced by the same mind from other states, while also produced for its own sake and without the necessity for motives of rivalry and reward. From other activity manifested by the same individual, this differs in volume, quality, and intent.

It is later on, after adolescence has spent its first fine careless rapture, after society has begun likewise to exert its influence, that the artist separates himself from others into a distinct type. From incapacity to live by duty opposed to desire, . . . or from sheer will power backed by conviction, . . . the creative artist maintains his vision, as we say, or— as better stated—he maintains the psychic integrity which by gradual compromise lapses beyond the margin of conscious memory in other lives.

The artist’s persistence in the paths of instinctive preference gradually fuses mind and medium into a communion of strange power. The artist cannot be separated from his work. Together they join in one function, inseparable as a brook from the spring that feeds it or as a root from the all-fertilizing earth. Except as he returns to the mountain top of his own vision, the ordinary man cannot conceive of the artist’s attachment to his work. It is not habit merely—for by habit all men grow attached to work or non-work—but sheer necessity, the mingling of passion and conviction in one outpouring urge. By persistence in instinct, the artist develops in himself a force gathering up his whole being as upon irresistible wings. The artist’s passion serves him at once for driving-force, for method, and for reward. . . .

Indeed, immediately one defines the artist in terms of consciousness rather than aesthetic control, many examples of men and women other than “artists” arise who must be placed in the same psychic category as poets and painters. All the typical mind states are manifested by inventors like Edison and executives like Jane Addams. Pushing back the inquiry to the adolescent stage in all, it is the variety of purpose and faculty, a variety in which art itself plays only a small part, that first amazes. We find the nature which instinctively loves construction, the nature able to manage and direct, that which is interested in science, that which craves religious experience, and so on. Well has it been said that every man is a poet spoiled; not that every man might have written lyrics, but that all men might have lived as the poet lives, by passionate conviction developed from instinct and renewed in desire.

III

THE OUTSTANDING FACT which appears from the study of society in evolution is that underneath so much apparent chance and change there beats a rhythm, a to and fro movement, confused yet perceptible, like a great pendulum shaken by a child. In its longitudinal section society resembles the lines of force upon a magnetic field; its power gathered at some points, distributed at others. Some environments represent the convergence of many influences; through others they pass without mutual contact. The old interpretation, that power flows to society from its great men, has happily given way to the truer realization, that power flows to its great men from society. When we find some particular task, such as writing dramas or building cathedrals accomplished in one age not only without apparent effort but even joyously, while at another time far greater effort, backed up by moral conviction, fails to produce comparable results, we no longer beg the question by saying that in the first case great men were present and in the second case they were not; we know that at one epoch the writing of dramas and the building of cathedrals reflects that tremendous influence, the “spirit of the age,” while at another epoch such tasks resist the same force. We may be certain also that the attempt to undertake tasks opposed to the “spirit of the age” denies to men the advantage of the very leverage which would enable them to prove themselves “great.” History [Page 32] suggests that nature produces greatness only at intervals, but the study of natural law on all other planes convinces that nature tends rather to constancy of production, the phenomenon of intervals being due to the contact of nature’s constant with a series of widely differing conditions. This conviction is backed also by the fact that in no age has greatness been utterly lacking, but in the teeth of the most unfavorable conditions has ever manifested itself in at least one form.

The rhythm beating perceptibly through the generations is marked by the succession of sterile and productive periods. Men seem to gain control over their psychic resources at one time only to lose it the next. The true definition of greatness, then, is not the ability to perform a certain task in spite of every obstacle, but the alignment of psychic force and external conditions in such a manner that the task is thereby performed. In other words, greatness is neither psychic force alone nor opportunity alone, but their favorable interrelation. The popular idea that genius, like murder, will invariably out, is based, like all popular fallacies, upon an interpretation after the fact. In confuses cause and effect. The statesman who makes his way from log cabin to White House; the musician who composes a Fifth Symphony in poverty, sickness, and even while deaf—these and their fellows, though performing prodigious efforts, were certainly enabled to perform them by responding to subtle but compelling impulses flowing through their time. By the nature of the case, there can be no objective proof that other forms of greatness, equally useful, were actually suppressed by those same impulses, yet the statement that this is so meets no contradiction in natural or spiritual law.

In our own environment, the most conspicuous types of greatness—that is, productivity raised to the pitch of enthusiasm—are the engineer-inventor and the commercial executive. These types stand out from all others not only by their accomplishment but also by their reward. Their special form of activity meets with general approval—the time’s impulse and the time’s ideal happen to coincide. Their activity is also psychically free; in thus expressing themselves they run counter to no opposition strong enough to establish doubt, and hence weakness, in their own minds. In this case, psychic energy readily makes alignment with social opportunity in such wise that the individual’s freedom is seen to be essential for the common benefit. As types, the engineer-inventor and the commercial executive seem inevitable; they fill the niche of social necessity once occupied by the feudal landlord and the priest. So inevitably have these types attained recognition in our day, it seems impossible that within the memory of living men the inventor, at least, stood outside the social pale, an object of indifference or suspicion, own brother to starving poet and ridiculed reformer, not less “useless” than they.

The point to be remarked here is that the change undergone by the inventor type from a status of isolation to one of acceptance and reward coincides with his transition from uselessness to recognized general benefit. A generation ago it appeared as if the inventor stood as a beggar at the backdoor of society; now society stands as a beggar at the backdoor of invention. In the case of this one type, at least, it is clear also that nature has maintained her constant of production right down the generations, and that the intervals of recognition have been due to conditions outside the individual inventor’s control. . . . The difference between the old world, whose energy derived from manual labor and possessed neither duration nor range, and our own world of energy limited neither by time nor space, represents, in its final meaning, nothing more than that, for the first time in history, certain types have realized economic as well as moral and political freedom. All this universal change and benefit spells the one word, freedom. Common as the idea of electricity is, its utilization could not have been realized by other types. Each step taken by the inventive mind may be formulated so as to be followed understandingly, and, if required, reproduced by [Page 33] ordinary men; but the initiative itself lies in the one order of mind beyond all others’ control. The inventor stands in a unique relation to the universe. His mind converges certain lines of force which otherwise would slip past human consciousness unperceived. Without him society would be as a man in whom one of the five senses, sight or hearing or smell or taste or touch, had been destroyed beyond repair. The inventor’s character, moreover, seems adapted to the very purpose of manifesting those lines of force in material things. Whatever fields of information are required to be developed for the end in view, his mind engages less as duty than as desire. . . .

It may of course be objected that I have assigned to this one type results which in reality should be ascribed to the efforts of several. The scientist, one may insist, provided the knowledge-conditions essential to invention, while the engineer has likewise developed the necessary factor of construction. This is true, a truth I do not merely admit but acclaim.

Before the inventor became prominent, a generation or two of scientists had engaged upon the nature of the new forces and the new materials available. Not until their nature had become known by scientists as laws could their possibilities as functions be realized by inventors; not until the functions had been developed as appliances by engineers could society receive its daily benefit. Thus the inventor’s self-expression is conditioned by the self-expression of at least two other equally definite types, the scientist and the engineer. Each of these types likewise has its particular relation to the universe, the one resolving it into natural law, the other into mechanical function. Now although the scientist can labor without inventors and engineers, these followed the rise of science and cannot be independent of it. On the other hand, once science had proved itself economically useful; once it had been brought into the sphere of practical benefit by invention, the scientist himself stood upon a far higher level. His freedom was vastly extended by endowments, while his opportunity for further achievement was increased by the development of more sensitive instruments. . . .

From the evolution of one form of activity, as briefly remarked here, several facts of general social importance may be derived.

The “opportunity” which it has been shown must coincide with personal impulse in order to realize moral freedom for the individual as well as practical benefit for the race, is no vague indescribable condition; it is definitely the contact of different levels of reality through the cooperation of two or more unlike types. . . . Society manifests a value that could not be realized in a world of self-contained individualism. So much for the “philosophy” of struggle and survival. Shall the inventor resist the scientist? He resists a series of efforts whose outcome gives him his very raison d’être. Shall the scientist pit himself against the inventor? He cuts the ladder away by which he might descend from unappreciated idealism to recognition and hence reward. For it is clear that underneath such cooperation a particular kind of personal relationship is set up. The various individuals of these adjacent types need never meet face to face; there is no question here of command and obedience; nevertheless an actual control passes from level to level. The higher level, in a manner never before realized, exercises control over the lower; on the other hand each lower level in turn manifests what is merely latent on the level above. All modern invention was latent in science a century ago; its manifestation waited upon the rise of different forms of activity. But since the activity established by each type on its own level is in the long run indispensable to society, the unpleasant sense of distinction implied by the terms “higher” and “lower” disappears. In science, invention, and engineering we have no example of superior and inferior, as in the case of feudal lord and underling, but a man-by-man, mind-by-mind cooperation upon the same great task of controlling nature for the common benefit, for a resulting advantage accessible to one not [Page 34] more than to another.

IV

AND YET, after all, the world of electric light, of X ray and aeroplane, is also the world of poverty and war. Only superficially does this era differ from the past; the same motives, if not the same manners, actuate life, and the progress we achieve with our right hand we destroy, or at least sully, with our left. Modern civilization understands prosperity only upon its lowest level. All the resources of imagination, intuition, and spiritual experience stored up in the lives of other types we block with the same suspicion and indifference once accorded the scientist and the inventor. If material prosperity could be self-sufficient, even on its own level; if the proud structure of commerce could establish its own foundation, then the outlawry still accorded the artist, the philosopher, and the mystic might be tolerated. But even on its own plane material prosperity is not self-sufficient. Those types which can formulate natural law and render this law in mechanical appliances, are helpless in the face of the vital problem of social control. The answer which “idealistic” thinkers should have ready for the world’s indictment of their unpracticalness, or, as better stated, insufficiency, is only too obvious: it is war. The poet who cannot pay his lodging is not more unpractical, insufficient, than the manufacturer who cannot avoid strikes or the politician who cannot avoid war. Unpracticalness is a two-edged sword; it cuts both ways. Wherever, then, in society the power to control group-relations may reside, it invests in none of those men most prominent and most influential today.

But the realization that where one man’s mind leaves off another’s mind begins extends infinitely beyond their psychic boundary. Telephones and skyscrapers were not impossible a century ago; they were merely latent. Electricity was not invented by scientists, it was merely revealed. In the same way, social control is not impossible in this age but merely latent. By observing the tendencies of other orders of mind we perceive its manifestation as the manifestation of science by invention might have been observed in the aspirations of certain men a century ago. Where one man’s mind leaves off another’s mind begins; and the reality established on each level has ultimately the same convincing authority. Social control is an energy not yet released, a principle whose process has not yet been developed. If this fact is not apparent to those who direct affairs today, it does not transcend, as a consequence, the understanding of all.

For society develops at once from the bottom and the top. Reality establishes itself on one level through the practical intelligence, upon another level through intelligence philosophic and religious. The forces constantly affecting the social order may be likened to a waterspout in formation; the rising of sea to meet cloud, the lowering of cloud to join wave. Or it may be likened to the attempt to wire a battery in the dark— the groping of two poles to make one circuit. Energy remains latent until the two poles make contact; and when contact is made, it may not so much be said that its origin lies here rather than there as that its direction follows the circuit one way. But the outstanding fact about modern civilization is that while both influences have tremendously increased, while the reality (hence the necessity) of each is perfectly apparent upon its own plane, even to the same observer on changing his point of view, the two motives and the two forces have not joined. Like the upward surge of the sea our material prosperity stretches toward an ethic and a politic removing the causes of war and poverty; like the downward drive of the cloud our religious instinct and our philosophic vision seek to manifest themselves in an ordered and a joyous world. Each level holds for the other a great gift; for the one redemption from self-destruction, for the other freedom of self-expression. Modern civilization is at once a cripple tottering toward the healing spring and a Prophet bending pitifully over his stricken people.

[Page 35] It has already been noted that adolescence, the stage when instinct links closest with desire, manifests, where large groups are considered, a definite preference and capacity in several distinct fields. By study it appears also that the same general tendencies and desires reproduce themselves at this stage in the development of every generation. It may indeed be positively stated, without fear of scientific contradiction, that nature’s variety after all is not infinite, but rather a divergence from certain fixed and recurrent types. The chances of environment have so far precluded all the types from manifesting their particular forms of activity to an equal degree; the proof of the law lies not in socialized men and women but in the instinctive world of youth. Thus there were scientists before there was science; inventors before there was invention; thinkers before philosophy; statesmen before law. Among ourselves likewise there are certain individuals whose special powers remain latent, waiting upon the social conditions essential to manifestation. In order to establish a basis for further discussion it is necessary to enumerate the types which seem to recur from generation to generation. Appearing and reappearing throughout history, as conditions favorable for some develop and then give way to conditions favorable for others, they may be noted thus:

1 Man of action

2 The executive

3 The artist

4 The philosopher

5 The mystic

6 The prophet or Messiah

By observation of natural law in other fields, we know that there is not number without relationship. We know that there is not distribution without design. We know that there is not recurrence without purpose. Accordingly, I have not enumerated the six types at haphazard but deliberately placed them in that arrangement and relationship apparently purposed by nature and revealed by the actions and reactions of social evolution. Before developing the principles suggested by their arrangement, I wish to fix more clearly the scope included within each type.

By “man of action” I mean all those who were once hunters and fighters but caught now for daily labor, for immediate tasks performed under supervision. No distinction between physical and intellectual labor is implied. The term includes those whose initiative is naturally, not artificially, limited to the choice of the kind of labor merely, and does not extend to the particular instance. Thus the journalist whose output is directed and controlled, or the artist whose talent is amenable to others’ wishes, falls under this heading; while a craftsman who insisted upon working out his own ideas in his own way would come under the heading of artist. My definitions throughout this argument are derived from psychic conditions in the individual, and not from the individual’s social relation.

The man of action, now called workman, has varied as a type more than any other throughout history. With his limited initiative and social control, his action or labor depends upon constantly altering material conditions as well as conditions economic and political. At his best, at such times as society remains fixed during several generations, the workman approaches the artist from the point of view of skill and interest, while he also responds to favorable political conditions by developing citizenship to the point of responsibility and union. Our problem of unskilled labor and unemployment is unusual. Few have been the epochs when the man of action, in large numbers, failed to meet some current need and thereby pay his way. When apparently farthest from our ideas of “skill,” as under serfdom, the workman was at least persistent, driven from day to day by the primary physical necessity. It should be remarked in passing that of all types the man of action suffers most degeneration when permitted or compelled to become parasitic. But this does not imply that he will labor only when impelled by the fear of want; it implies rather that only occasionally has society [Page 36] exhibited intelligence enough to replace the beast-motive, hunger, by the man-motive, interest. Whenever, as in the case of locomotive engineers, the man of action finds work requiring at once skill and responsibility, he responds with a zest revealing how the old sense of adventure still slumbers unsatisfied within him, and how when the day’s work supplies a little sheer excitement, in the case of physical labor, and contact with the larger designs of art, science or government, in the case of labor intellectual, he expands to a new status of privilege and social value. The idea that hunger is the only motive for labor is one based upon conditions and not human nature. Like most of our current assumptions, it mistakes a local effect for a universal cause. It must be realized finally and once for all that the man of action’s nature is restricted to the ability to perform labor supplied him, and with a degree of skill and interest proportional to his opportunity. He depends upon society as a whole to give him proper training in youth, and during his active life such a share either of ownership or interest as shall develop his powers to their fullest extent. The rise of the man of action from the slave status to serfdom and thence to political equality proves his power to respond to opportunity. His decline from an assured to a casual economic status proves also that his complete opportunity has not yet been established.

By executive I do not so much mean those whose personal influence serves to control men, as military captain or labor foreman, but those who are naturally capable of devising systems tending of themselves to make order and efficiency. It is a distinct capacity, as specialized as art, and as often lacking in those who hold positions of responsibility. In every situation where men meet in groups for a common purpose, whether political or economic, there are latent various forms of control which when developed and applied turn the jungle of confusion into highways and gardens. Throughout nature, number tends either toward or from design. Law, for example, is to men in one relation as versification is to words; and when rightly developed establishes a harmony equally inevitable. Indeed, it must be realized that rhythm prevails on this as on all planes. Groups of men respond to justice, as history proves, a response which merely reflects upon the social plane the response of the individual’s psychic elements to poetry and music. Throughout life, harmony is the union of diverse things, and the law of harmony is design. Now the function Of the executive type is to discover the best system, or design, for each social condition. The type varies from master-workman to leaders of states. The faculty is identical, and the function similar, wherever found. In periods of rapid transition, as at the present, the executive is confronted by so many new conditions that whatever order reigns is necessarily a compromise between old forms and forms not yet completely revealed. The executive mind is capable of rendering any condition by a system of management, sooner or later. His status varies with the importance of his function to Society. Today his function is more important than ever before, and his status is consequently extremely high. The function itself has varied from the tendency to establish order and efficiency in terms of personal profit, to establish order and efficiency in terms of social advantage. In each case, the underlying motive has not been created by the executive himself, but derived from current assumptions. That is, the executive’s initiative is likewise limited, and his special faculty controlled by other influences.

The central truth about the artist type consists in the fact that his faculty is to render states of mind. It is the artist’s special power that he may not create, but recreate states of mind in terms of an objective medium. At his best, the artist so mingles matter with mind that they become one and the same thing. Whatever his intention has been, moreover, the artist’s work tends to induce the same state of mind in others. To the degree that his medium is generally accessible, the [Page 37] artist accordingly sets up a relationship of personal influence between himself and his fellows, the most pervasive, the most effective influence known. From this fact the social function, as opposed to the personal faculty, grows clear. For while the artist’s influence has always been active, the quality and the effect of that influence undergoes enormous variation. The same generation which reacted from “Pippa Passes” reacted also from Nietzsche’s Beyond Good and Evil. It must be realized, of course, that the artist type is confined to the range of consciousness predicated by the one faculty. From the point of view of art itself the moral influence radiating from a particular work is of no concern. It is true also that works exercising a vicious influence may be far better specimens of art than those whose influence, or at least whose purpose, is better. Nevertheless, even on the aesthetic plane itself, the preeminent examples of art in all mediums, literature, music, painting, and sculpture, invariably radiate an influence supremely good. It may thus be perceived how the proper exercise of the artist’s faculty depends upon conditions outside the individual painter’s or poet’s control.

The philosopher, of course, seems to have passed with the customs—shall I say superstitions? —of a bygone age. Those who most warmly press the so-called democratic assumption of equality feel no desire to detach thought from an immediate practical benefit; and in their estimation the philosopher must therefore be more or less a mythical figure. This characteristic impression philosophers, self-styled, have themselves established among a pragmatic people. But to a degree far less than art may philosophy be checked by common experience. It implies a faculty not present in the majority of men, a faculty not so much of thinking about certain things, or even thinking in a certain way, as of controlling thought itself by a special psychic instrument. Whereas the artist is identified with imagination, the philosopher is identified with perception. Now perception is an eye opened upon the world of thought. It controls thought by realizing it, as the physical eye realizes nature. Nature is not more real to other men than is thought to those possessing the perceptive faculty. The philosopher realizes in thought values hidden from the rest of the world, values which compare with the world’s daily thinking as the telephone or the X ray compare with the vague conception of electricity held by ordinary people a century ago. Thus the philosopher mediates between nature and another world of latent superior values realized by the activity of other types. We condemn the “philosophy” of Milton’s Paradise Lost or Dante’s Divine Comedy; but as a matter of fact this is not philosophy at all. It is mere speculation. True philosophy does not grow out of date, because the true philosopher perceives a reality changeless and not subject to local conditions. Aristotle’s statement, that while the end of unassociated life is merely life, the end of social life is development, may stand as an example of real perception. The Psalms also contain many examples of the same enduring insight. “Against thee, thee only, have I sinned,” is perception applied to individual conduct. The same realization of the object of responsibility will occur to a thinker of equal power whatever his environment in time and place may be. Once formulated, such statements can be realized by minds other than philosophic; but the original discovery depends upon the presence of the perceptive faculty. The history of philosophy, like that of art, shows great variation both in motive and object. Only occasionally has society been able to exercise upon philosophy a control directing its faculty in individuals to function for the common benefit. If the true direction is pointed by the amount of actual life in philosophy itself at various periods, it is evident that the philosopher, like the artist, expands to his greatest possibility only when his influence is pragmatic and direct; in other words, when its province is taken to be social ethics—in the best sense of the word, politics.

The democratic mind in America has also [Page 38] waved aside the mystic, a gesture which eliminates him neither as an important historical type nor as a tendency felt, even if not realized, by certain natures in our own environment. Though in the case of the individual often merged with the poet or the philosopher, the type itself stands apart by its possession of a distinct psychic faculty, contemplation. By that faculty the mystic realizes a new aspect of the universe, the spiritual, an aspect peculiar to man of all the natural species. From that aspect he derives a new meaning and a new purpose for life. The mystic transmutes consciousness into soul, that value which today exists as it were by convention, the memory of the dream that once came true. He is the genius of experience. His power of contemplation enables him to focus attention beyond thought upon motive, beyond motive upon aspiration, beyond aspiration upon an unchanging reality. The mystic stands apart from the philosopher as the philosopher stands apart from the artist. Through successive planes of being from the outward interest and impulse to the inner; from the whirling periphery of being to the fixed center, he continually transfers consciousness, impelled by a sheer necessity like the instinct of art or sex, and finally establishes it in a state controlled by new laws. He cleaves through the husk of religion as ritual and theology and finds at its heart an energy more compelling than hunger and thirst, its process more authoritative than metabolism and katabolism on the physical plane. The true mystic unites the two poles of force which in other men remain forever apart. What the artist accomplishes upon a medium, the mystic accomplishes for life itself. He creates continuity of being.

It has been precisely in those ages when material civilization most lacked that the mystic type became most influential. His presence illuminates the void created by the default of greatness, so-called. But though the mystic’s influence is neither appreciated nor understood by the types most prominent today, and consequently has fallen into disrepute, their antagonism cannot discredit the mystic on grounds either of psychology or social science. It is easy to see why the mystic’s special faculty, contemplation, cannot readily establish control even over individual experience in the modern world. First and always is required the ability to divert attention from sensuous impressions to impressions spiritual, to turn away from the claims of daily life to learn one’s way in a universe at first scarcely more perceptible than the mere distinction between heat and cold, darkness and light, which registers the natural world upon the senses of a newborn child. Every influence in modern life tends to stifle this impulse at its very beginning. Thus, just as though a violinist were never permitted to master his instrument, the value of that instrument, dependent as it is upon mastery, never succeeds in impressing itself sufficiently upon masses or upon individuals. The secret of religion is never quite lost, but persists as a fragile bloom in secret gardens even when its influence is least effective. Today religion is emphasized by its lack quite as emphatically as ever by its fulness, and the mystic type receives the dubious honor of a universal need. Every attempt to establish the same influence by other means—that is, by other types—has plainly failed. No Ethical Society, no combinations of moral or intellectual values, have ever evoked from human nature the actual response spontaneously given the God-intoxicated man. The social function implicit in the faculty of contemplation—the power so to identify personality with eternal spirit that the soul latent in others leaps to self-consciousness —is as definite as the function of art, and like art can be filled only by one particular type.

The prophet or Messiah has come to be considered in two ways, both erroneous and each an opaque lens distorting the prophet’s reality and precluding right appreciation. According to one view he is considered as ethical teacher and hero, founder of a religion and dependent on its influence for his station among men. The other view separates his station [Page 39] from the influence his religion may exercise, and identifies him with God, the Creator of the universe, by incarnation. The error of the first attitude consists in disregarding the fact that the prophet’s relation to deity, insisted upon not only by his believers but his own teaching also, is as unique as his relation to civilization—both relations involving the idea of purpose in human life transcending the ends of physical phenomena; while the second attitude shocks the rational intelligence by identifying the Creator, the universal, with the created and the local.

Both conceptions, however, derive from some body of fact and some aspect of reality, and from both living branches of truth strike down to a common root. It is undeniable that the reciprocal relation of the prophet’s own teaching and the faith of his followers point out a relation between prophet and deity, a relation unlike that sustained by other men, and one so consequential that the crude intelligence can only interpret it by the materialistic doctrine of incarnation. The same relation can be expressed in a different manner without sacrificing the demand of either party. The prophet is comparable with a polished mirror which, perfectly reflecting the sun’s rays, seems as it were the sun itself. That which in other men is blind darkness in him stands forth as light. In other words, the prophets manifest divine attributes—attributes useful to evolution on a plane higher than the physical—without being deity, the Creator, itself. This definition also permits a true historical perspective, explaining the phenomenon that the same type, exercising the same influence, has appeared not to one race but to all races, and even to the same race more than once. But the prophet type does not recur with every generation as other types recur. The period of his recurrence coincides with the decay of one civilization and the birth of a new order.

The types already described have been identified with a particular psychic faculty, imagination in the case of the artist, perception and contemplation in the case of philosopher and mystic. The prophet’s special faculty remains hidden, though its vehicle appears as revelation. By revelation we discern the prophet as by an ethic or a politic we discern the philosopher. And in revelation, that unique and irreplaceable form of self-expression, the prophet’s social function is likewise defined. The development of men’s attitude toward a revelation, at first accepting it not only as authoritative but even imperative, while later on finding it less and less a source of energy, proves that this function is supreme only in terms of one cycle. Its supremacy and dynamic appear most clearly at the beginning of the cycle, fading out gradually into convention as the cycle rounds to its end. From time to time a mystic rediscovers the revelation and by his influence serves to create or release further energy, but unlike the prophet’s influence the mystic’s is local and does not permeate an entire civilization. On the contrary, after a certain stage the appearance of each mystic registers itself by a new sect. Thus revelation slowly but surely divides against itself, and its original force is negatived by the increasing rivalry of schism. It is almost impossible at the close of a cycle to approach revelation with the same awe its beginnings inspired; nevertheless it is illogical to consider that such development in men’s attitude implies ignorance or superstition on the part of the prophet’s immediate followers. Man’s power of imagination, his power of perception and contemplation, do not increase with his control of scientific and practical knowledge. A superficial reading of history would infer rather the contrary; and only the broad view, including the succession of two or more cycles, with the realization how society conditions the individual’s psychic faculties, makes it clear that whatever changes their outer form undergoes, the faculties themselves remain constant to type. Thus we must estimate the prophet’s function in terms of one cycle as a whole. Revelation does not gradually become “untrue,” as Milton’s or Dante’s speculations become “untrue,” it merely loses its power of controlling the entire [Page 40] range of human experience as experience enters new fields of activity. But while never becoming “untrue,” its purpose is limited to establishing the one cycle. The tree of revelation stands ever the same; its fruit in morality —that is, custom—undergoes periodic ripening and decay.

Now the development of industrialism gave certain types unwonted freedom so naturally, and created a productive relationship one with another so inevitably, that the larger principle involved scarcely appears. In linking science with invention, and invention with labor, we combine as it were only three colors from a spectrum of six. Like the savage, we choose the heavier colors, mingling them over and over, while those of higher vibration seem never to fix our notice. But precisely as the spectrum existed throughout its entire range from the beginnings of time, its violets waiting upon the growth of finer sensibilities, so to the social mind and hand new forces lie ready for the season when perception develops to the point of gathering them in.

In dealing with the man of action (the workman) and the artist, an oscillation, a change in motive and expression, has appeared from age to age. Faculty remains constant; type varies according to the degree and the direction of external pressure. The causes for this oscillation, as registered in changes of status, lie in each type’s successive contact with and isolation from other types. In some ages the activity of workman and artist undergoes control; in other ages it is casual and blind. The true status for each type can thus be discerned only through observing the quality of activity it is capable of manifesting at its best, and discovering what influences tend to bring this supreme quality to manifestation. In our own time the status of the inventor is high to the point of being ideal; and it has already appeared that this status, the outward expression of an inner psychic freedom, is due to the fact that invention makes contact with science on the one hand and with engineering on the other. When, in short, the type stands intermediate between two other types, and its activity consists in receiving from the first and giving to the second. In former ages the status of other types offers the most fertile ground for study. The Renaissance raised artists to a similar prominence and freedom, while Greece enthroned her statesmen. In both cases the same fact appears: the artist made contact with a rich religious tradition on one side, on the other with a sympathetic patronage; the Greek statesman functioned between social philosophy and a devoted, self-reliant citizenry. In the Middle Ages the daily conduct of all classes was influenced by mystics who drew their inspiration from the prophet. No one age has established contact between all the types, but by comparing different periods the underlying principle can be observed in full.

These six recurrent types join one to another as the successive colors of the spectrum join and merge. There is no more an organic isolation here than in the interplay of the five senses upon the mind. And as the mind transcends any one sense by combining all, so does society transcend the individual by joining his type with other and different types. Society is not the mere physical union of men upon one land or within one language; it is their continual development through the interplay of different faculties upon the same task. From workman to prophet, reality changes its nature upon each plane, but its integrity as an indivisible whole eternally endures. One man’s mind begins where another’s mind leaves off; the cooperation of all minds, each exercising its own particular psychic faculty, renders the whole value latent in the universe available to each.

The executive is not a parasite upon the body of labor; he has become indispensable to labor from the point of view of its own advantage. Without organization, labor is confined to individual effort, confined as labor was before the rise of storable and transmissible power. Identified in the popular mind with ownership, with capital and privilege, the executive seems merely to have extended [Page 41] the overseer’s function to check immediate results and furnish an apparently necessary pressure for continuous effort; but the social function filled by the executive type bears more organic relation to labor than to capital. In an age when conflicting influences play upon the executive, this may not readily be accepted; but the point to be emphasized here is that the executive does not establish his own motives nor determine his own attitude toward industrial problems. These derive from current philosophy. When the current philosophy is based upon the idea of survival, of struggle, then organization tends toward maintaining privilege for the few; a public opinion nourished upon a different conception of social law would create organization tending toward the advantage of the many. Both kinds of organization exist side by side today, and the final proof of the necessity of each form depends upon an assumption. The modern world must choose between the assumption of Nietzsche and of Aristotle.

But the philosopher capable of discovering a right principle does not often possess the means of propagating it among great numbers of men. This function is the artist’s. Principles of conduct permeate a generation and create public opinion only when rendered by art, especially by such popular forms as the drama and the novel. The true artist is sensitive to two different influences; on the one hand reacting from the reality of daily life, on the other hand reacting from the claims of enduring truth. Every supreme work of art has fused these two influences, being as a result both popular and suggestive. When no vital issue is available to art, the artist’s self-expression tends to mere amusement or to didactic intellectualism. On this plane likewise, we see that the immediate advantage of the one type is best served when the type stands between two other types, giving and receiving—in other words, when its function is social and not individual. The history of literature yields its entire secret only when studied from the broader point of view. The age without philosophy is one without literature, for art cannot achieve self-fertilization. Just as the executive faculty brings order into men’s daily life, the order which is opportunity; so does philosophy bring order into men’s daily thought, the order which is power.

It would seem as if the philosopher, of all types, least required control. On the perceptive plane, character is least susceptible to impulse and most susceptible to the claims of self-respect; and indeed philosophy suffers comparatively little debasement from the individual’s own psychic confusion. Yet it must be noted that whereas its immediate method and purpose remain constant, the province of philosophy undergoes considerable variance from age to age. It is not a matter of personal motive that one age produces aesthetic principles, that another investigates the principles of history, a third those of natural science, a fourth those of religion; and so on; the direction taken by human inquiry in its largest endeavors never can be determined by individual initiative, but is determined by conditions operating in society as a whole. The perceptive mind functions upon the most available material; and the difference between Aristotle, St. Augustine, and Coleridge is not one of character, purpose, or faculty, but one of material. When great powers of perception turn instinctively toward the social problem, we have a civilizing tendency which those powers will tremendously increase; but when we find the same faculty functioning upon aesthetics or cosmological speculation, we may be sure that the social group is being disintegrated by centrifugal tendencies which that faculty will serve to confirm. There is a point which may be termed the point of social crisis, on one side of which art and philosophy invest social energy for greater returns, on the other side of which they waste its very capital.

Now the control which philosophy requires is that indirect but irresistible pressure represented by the meeting of popular demands with religious conviction, the experience of mystics. The material provided the perceptive [Page 42] faculty by this pressure makes for the discovery of permanent sociological principles. Under these conditions, men become truly self-conscious; their effort is no longer spent in resisting the results of a bad system, but in initiating a new order.

The control exercised upon the mystic himself is revelation. To the modern mind it seems as if the individual soul might establish contact with spiritual reality from any point on the locus of experience and from the impulse of individual initiative alone. True it is that “religion” exists even where revelation has no influence; but throughout all the range of history religion has fulfilled its own instinctive desire only as the individual has worked back to the prophet’s life and works. The influence of Greece and Rome upon modern thought is largely responsible for the conviction that consciousness may be rightly controlled from within—that men may develop both philosophy and morality without the prophet; but the case of both these civilizations has been consistently misapplied. Greece, especially, developed through assimilation. Upon her played forces from the remoter East; the origin neither of science nor religion lies within the Greek character itself. Thus it must be predicated that while revelation was not native to Greece as it was native to Hebrew life, revelation filtered an indirect but considerable influence within the Greek consciousness. All great culture is effect, not cause, and Greek literature and thought is fruit from the same tree as Old Testament literature and thought. Cause and effect in this case are not immediately connected; but their connection stands though separated the space of a continent or the time of a century.

Just as philosophic perception reveals enduring truth and not changing speculation, so revelation stands unconditioned in essence by progress in science or changes in custom. The discredit upon which the prophet falls in doubting ages is not the fault of his message but his ministers. The prophet cannot “save the world” in the sense that a fireman saves a child from a burning house or that a rich man cancels a mortgage; the prophet depends upon mystics to realize his message to every environment by experience, upon philosophers to develop its principles by thought, upon artists to universalize its appeal, upon executives to develop economic and political systems making the religious life possible to all, and finally upon men of action to shape the material world in conformity with the spiritual vision. The failure of any type to employ its faculty for the right end—that is, to establish its psychic faculty upon a corresponding social function—necessarily blocks the prophet’s influence, and interrupted at any one point his revelation loses that universal integrity in which its authority over other types is kept fertile. Thus in the early stages of the Christian revelation it was the executive who failed, while now it is the philosopher who functions upon material scientific rather than human, and hence founds society upon principles derived from the potentiality of animals rather than men. Failure to realize revelation at any one point inevitably tends to overthrow it at all other points, for the true function of each type depends for its maintenance upon the interrelation of all. Society is not a form to be achieved, as form is achieved by architecture; it is an equilibrium that must first of all be attained, then maintained, as equilibrium is attained and then maintained by the horseman. Nothing endures steadfast in the material world, but everything endures steadfast in the psychic world. Every artist is a member in a brotherhood dating from the beginning of time. As by reincarnation, the artist returns with every generation and to every environment, exercising the same faculty though upon different material and with varying motive. Every philosopher, every executive, every mystic belongs also to a brotherhood of type and faculty. Shut off by misunderstanding from one another, each type has only occasionally and as it were accidentally fulfilled its function in society. The measure of art at its best, of philosophy, of religion, of executive capacity; these are not [Page 43] the standards of accident but of unrealized purpose. They are not abnormal attainments; they are the norm of attainment when each type derives its ideal from social unity rather than individual ambition.

VI

. . . The “social principle” I have developed here—the fact that society is composed of recurrent types and that each type has a function which combines individual freedom and happiness with increased social control— is all contained in the Christian concept of love. If society had obeyed that injunction, man to man, each individual would have realized himself in his particular faculty, and the result have been achieved for society; but the “love” concept threw too much responsibility upon men embittered by false social relations. It compelled men to manifest an attitude only possible as the effect of right social relations. It compelled men to make an effect the cause. As right relations are developed, the love concept not only appears more possible, but its true range grows apparent. We need not actively “love” every man and woman we meet; we need only perceive in all men and women some element essential to social stability and hence valuable to ourselves. No man’s power to love will ever be stretched farther than the demands made upon it by his own family. At the same time, his friendliness may vastly increase as he learns to perceive in others not potential enemies but actual cooperators.

In conclusion, let us carry the “social principle” into the modern world and test its claim by reference to current conditions. Two problems confront modern society, poverty and war. To state that these are not new problems but very old ones, as many insist, brings the reply that while poverty and war have always been present in society as conditions, these conditions were never before confronted but evaded. It is by confronting them face to face, seizing them with firm grasp (or if you prefer, being seized by them), that the modern world has raised poverty and war from a mere attendant condition to an immediate problem. Other ages suffered poverty as incidental to more pressing tasks, and gloried in war as the chief economic task itself. From the beginning of the Christian era, the glory of war has lessened. It has degenerated from a privilege to a duty, from an economic advantage to an economic necessity. . . . Thus universal peace has already established itself as revelation, as mystical experience, as abstract principle and more and more as artistic motive. Among philosophers, mystics, and artists, war remains only as defense; and with the disappearance of the danger of attack, the testimony of these three types would be unanimous. In other words, the eclipse has already receded across half the psychic surface of society. It stands for us a problem not of the moral and intellectual being, but a condition inherent in the social order itself. That is, it is a problem to be met by the executive. All the forces of religious conviction, of abstract principle and of artistic inspiration are joining at the point where the executive controls the political and economic order. When public opinion exerts sufficient pressure, the executive capacity will respond with a practicable method of rendering peace not only possible but inevitable. The word “peace” means today exactly what the word “science” meant a century ago. Just as science held latent every modern invention and convenience, so does peace hold latent economic advantages yet unimaginable. Revelation will one day sweeten the marketplace as it has already redeemed the souls of the believers.

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Encounters of East and West

A REVIEW OF MARZIEH GAIL’S Dawn Over Mount Hira and Other Essays (OXFORD: GEORGE RONALD, 1976) x + 236 PAGES, NOTES AND REFERENCES

BY HOWARD B. GAREY

READERS of WORLD ORDER have come to know and love Marzieh Gail as a prolific, always exciting, always thought-provoking contributor. Dawn Over Mount Hira is a collection of articles and one poem, all of which have appeared in Bahá’í publications, 60 percent in WORLD ORDER between 1937 and 1947, the whole collection spanning the years from 1929 to 1971. The order in which the essays are presented in this book is logical rather than chronological. As the main lines of thought, the major preoccupations of the author emerge, so does the character of that author, who reveals her sensitivity to the beauty of nature and of the works of man, her thorough knowledge of literature, especially in English, French, and Persian, her sense of history that takes in the future as well as the past, her profound concern with justice, finally her keen intelligence, capable of dealing with philosophical and religious problems with an ease that nearly conceals the subtlety and complexity of the solutions she proposes and of the processes by which she arrives at them.

The very first essay, which gives its title to the collection, is a rapidly moving biography of Muhammad, designed to create in Westerners understanding and respect for Islám. Bahá’ís have done much to dispel the many Western prejudices and misconceptions about Muhammad’s dispensation. This essay is not the only one in the book to point out the respects in which Islamic teachings represent an advance over previous dispensations, especially with regard to the improved status of women and recognition of the role of science.

But Marzieh Gail goes beyond the biography of the Founder of Islám, and beyond arguments appealing solely to reason: she makes it her business to acquaint us with the culture of the Muslim world, especially of Persia, the birthplace of the Bábí and Bahá’í dispensations. Translations of exempla— moral tales—of Sa‘dí, and of aphorisms by ‘Alí, the cousin and son-in-law of the Prophet, give us a glimpse into the mind of that distant epoch and exotic place (“From Sa‘dí’s Garden of Roses” and “From the Sayings of ‘Alí”), while her descriptions of the landscapes, the costumes, the cities, the interiors, the sounds and smells and brilliant colors, scattered throughout the book, bring that whole world vividly alive.

With what joy we discover that this world of the Thousand and One Nights—part of out Western heritage of fantasy, along with Greco-Roman gods and goddesses, Paul Bunyan and Uncle Remus, Rumpelstiltskin and King Arthur—is real, that we can reach across to it and touch it! For the father of Marzieh Gail has the wonderfully exotic name of Ali-Kuli Khan. He was an amanuensis of ‘Abdu’l-Bahá; he studied Arabic and Turkish and European languages, became a diplomat, came to America, where he met and married the author’s mother (see the first part of “‘Abdu’l-Bahá: Portrayals from East and West,” which consists of Ali-Kuli Khan’s reminiscences of the Master, as recorded and translated by his daughter). More important, in the various essays devoted to ‘Abdu’l-Bahá (for example, the second part of “Portrayals,” Mrs. Gail’s account of John Bosch’s unique relationship with the Master; and also “‘Abdu’l-Bahá in America”), we [Page 46] see the early American believers, with their prosaic names of English, German, or Irish origin, as they are privileged to meet the Center of the Covenant on His voyage to America, or on their pilgrimages to the Holy Land. The robes of the Persian visitors to the United States are in vivid and incongruous contrast with the immense hats of the American ladies of 1912. Yet it is not the difference that matters, but the miracle of their common devotion to the message of Bahá’u’lláh, to the Cause of God, their shared dedication to the establishment of the Most Great Peace on a sorely tried planet. No strangeness of costume, no disparity of language could separate these lovers of God and of his Manifestation for this day, the day that dawned for all of us on Earth with the declaration of the Báb in 1844. A world religion had come into being, a world culture was in the making. These illusory differences are no longer the occasion of suspicion, rejection, or bloodshed among the beloved of God.

History, ideas, descriptions, fascinating stories, wit, and elegance of expression greet us on every page. A poem, “The Carmel Monks,” is a gem whose art is veiled by the clarity of its thought, the aptness of its images: the touching spectacle of the monks on Mount Carmel, praying in what has become long habit for the Coming of the Lord, ardent expectation of which had brought their predecessors to this sacred spot in the 1840s; they are still praying for an event no longer felt as imminent, because it has already happened —and they may well be the last to know. But to return to its art: Mrs. Gail has chosen the form of the fifteenth-century French rondeau cinquain in decasyllables, in three strophes with the rhyme scheme aabba aab aabba. The ten-syllable line has been handled with great skill; the difficulty inherent in the rhythmic differences between English and French has not been merely surmounted; it has been exploited. The tenth syllable is always accented; the fourth, or, less often, the sixth, receives a secondary accent; and so the rhythm, though constrained by rules more properly applied to French than to English, is free, flexible, and expressive. If one applies to “The Carmel Monks” the type of refrain introduced into French verse forms by Christine de Pisan (was she Marzieh Gail’s inspiration, that turn-of-the-fourteenth-century feminist?), one may observe that the first line of the poem, “A waxen Virgin hovers in the gloom,” reinserted after the eighth and the thirteenth lines creates a haunting effect quite in keeping with the tone and meaning of the whole poem.

There is much history in this book, and a troop of fascinating personalities: Mírzá Abu’l-Faḍl, the sage whose Proofs were written under the constant prodding of his respectful but stubborn translator, Ali-Kuli Khan; the story of Ṭáhirih continues to enthrall Bahá’ís, as does that of Mullá Ḥusayn’s heroism; ‘Alí’, the First Imám, is touching and admirable in Mrs. Gail’s sympathetic account; the modest, devoted, and somewhat inarticulate John Bosch offers, to his own surprise, his shoulder to ‘Abdu’l-Bahá that He may, childlike, rest His head thereon; again, ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, sings the song of the martyrs, snapping his fingers, keeping time, nearly dancing, with an energetic foot.

I see I am in danger of telling you the whole book, but this I must say before leaving this review: The modernity of even the earliest essays is astounding. Not only are they never “dated,” but they remain in many ways ahead of their time. I can recall no earlier statement of the analogy between the problems of women and of black Americans than the one to be found in several of the essays here, whether they be about marriage, the unity of mankind, or the condition of women. ‘Abdu’l-Bahá made statements about Blacks and about women that are practically interchangeable, and that Mrs. Gail adduces in support of her views; I think it is she who perhaps first made the explicit connection between the two.

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Authors & Artists

JACQUES CHOULEUR, who teaches American Studies at the Centre Universitaire d’Avignon, in France, specializes in the history of religions in the United States in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. He has recently written a book on the Mormons. Dr. Chouleur has often served as visiting professor in American colleges and universities.

E. CHRISTIAN FILSTRUP, who is Middle East librarian and assistant chief of the Oriental Division of the New York Public Library, has a varied academic background. He holds a B.A. in political science from Haverford College, an M.A. in Middle East studies from Harvard University, and an M.S. in library science from Columbia University. In addition, he has passed Ph.D. examinations in the history of religion at Harvard and is planning a doctoral dissertation on Shaykh Aḥmad al-Aḥsá’í. He makes a first appearance in World Order.

HOWARD B. GAREY is an associate professor of French and Romance philology at Yale University. He has published a book and a number of articles on French linguistics and now has at press an edition of a fifteenth-century French songbook “The Mellon Chasonnier.” Dr. Garey is an associate editor of World Order.

HORACE HOLLEY, who died before World Order was revived in 1966, was one of the founders of our magazine. Bahá’ís throughout the world remember him as a totally dedicated servant of the Cause of Bahá’u’lláh. He was a magnificent teacher, speaker, and administrator, as well as a writer, poet, editor, and thinker.

WANDA J. REID makes a second appearance in World Order, another of her haiku having been published in Spring 1975. She is a catalog supply specialist, whose interests include writing, identifying mushrooms, and semantics.

ART CREDITS: P. 1, photograph by Glenford E. Mitchell; p. 7, photograph by Glenford E. Mitchell; p. 19, photograph by J. M. Conrader; p. 21, photograph of self-portrait painted by Walter Hatke, p. 25, photographs of a painting by Walter Hatke; p. 28, photograph by Glenford E. Mitchell; 44, photograph by Glenford E. Mitchell; p. 47, photograph by Glenford E. Mitchell; cover, photograph by Glenford E. Mitchell.

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