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CONTENTS OF THIS ISSUE

APRIL 1938 VOLUME 4 • NUMBER 1

SPIRITUAL CAUSE, SOCIAL EFFECT • EDITORIAL ...................... 1

THE ORGANIC BACKGROUND OF MIND • FOSTER KENNEDY . 3

ST. JOHN OF THE CROSS • ANNA McCLURE SHOLL .................... 8

THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SPIRIT • ‘ABDU’L-BAHÁ .............. 16

THE WORLD CRISIS, III • MOUNTFORT MILLS ............................ 18

“THE DARKNESS OF THIS GLOOMY NIGHT” • ILLUSTRATION . 22

PHILOSOPHY AND REVELATION, IV • G. A. SHOOK .................... 23

THE POISON OF DARKNESS • CHARLES FRINK .......................... 30

WORLD ORDER • S. M. B. KEENE ........................................................ 34

VISTA OF PEACE, Poem • ROSE NOLLER ........................................ 36

THEY DARED TO LIVE, Book Review • MILLIE B. HERRICK .... 37

Change of address should be reported one month in advance.

WORLD ORDER is published monthly in New York, N. Y., by the Publishing Committee of the National Spiritual Assembly of the Bahá’ís of the United States and Canada. EDITORS: Stanwood Cobb, Marjory Morten and Horace Holley. BUSINESS MANAGER: C. R. Wood. PUBLICATION OFFICE: 135 East 50th Street, New York, N. Y. EDITORIAL OFFICE: 119 Waverly Place, New York, N. Y.

SUBSCRIPTIONS: $2.00 per year, $1.75 to Public Libraries. Rate to addresses outside the United States, $2.25, foreign Library rate, $2.00. Single copies, 20 cents. Checks and money orders should be made payable to World Order Magazine, 135 East 50th Street, New York, N. Y. Entered as second class matter, May 1, 1935, at the post office at New York, N. Y., under the Act of March 3, 1879. Contents copyrighted 1938 by BAHÁ’Í PUBLISHING COMMITTEE.

April 1938, Volume 4, Number 1.

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WORLD ORDER

VIEWING THE WORLD AS AN ORGANISM

April 1938   Title registered at U. S. Patent Office   Volume 4 No. 1

SPIRITUAL CAUSE, SOCIAL EFFECT

THE life of human society is a succession of twofold experiences, one visible and recorded as history, the other invisible and recorded as the movement of the collective conscience. These experiences represent the working of cause and effect in terms of historical episodes extending throughout the period of generations or fulfilled in the span of a few years.

History as the successiveness of episode has no meaning. Significance emerges only when the outer condition is related to the inner possibility; when cause and effect are clearly discerned.

This age offers many striking illustrations of the true nature of history. The development of machines, for instance, created a completely new possibility of abolishing want in mankind. This inherent possibility was not realized through the social forms which arose in adjustment to machine production. Very shortly a social philosophy of revolutionary character established itself to such an extent that the industrial societies have ever since been profoundly shaken. There can be no other explanation of such a striking fact than the working out of an underlying principle of cause and effect. In failing to base industry upon a humanitarian motive, the industrial age raised up the bitterest of foes within its own ranks.

Even more impressive is the record of the peace movement. Having failed to make the machine the servant of human need by the voluntary realization of its possibility, the machine became more and more the servant of destructive war. Class dissension and materialistic motive within each nation produced a fatal blindness in relation to world affairs. Poverty, hitherto a condition of individuals, has become the fixed condition of the national state. Inter-state relations reflect this fact.

The European War came as a dire warning. The ignoring or repudiation of spiritual claims had created a nemesis explicable as the transformation of possibility into inevitability, the loss of free will and the assumption of inescapable necessity.

The degree of suffering then created [Page 2] a new possibility: the control of military war and the regulation of world affairs by voluntary adhesion to the principles of the League. A brief period of years witnessed the repudiation of this new possibility, and with incredible swiftness the spiritual climate of society has again been transformed. What we have hanging over us at this hour is nemesis armed a thousandfold. The area of free will once more narrows; once more the pressure of fatality appears to overwhelm human power. Instead of disarmament we have rearmament at the expense of social welfare; instead of control of world affairs we have world affairs reduced to the level of jungle and slime.

The Author of the universe and man, to the degree that the record of society reflects His will, makes mankind responsible not merely for obedience to natural law but likewise to a higher law revealed for man alone. This truth is emerging more and more clearly with each fateful day. We have free will only to the extent that we realize every successive possibility. The repudiation of possibility transforms the mysterious nature of affairs, producing conditions making it impossible for inhumanitarian motives to survive. Whenever we organize selfishness we witness the destruction of the very society which has tolerated such recession from the standards laid down for that age.

If we seek escape from the prison-house of effect created by the wilful ignoring of spiritual causes, the way out is through the door of repentence and voluntary purification. This jungle is nothing else save the projection of our own wrong motives, the organization of the world’s evil hopes. The destiny of this age is the creation of a world society, the application of those laws and principles which are organic in the unity of mankind. The first step is the realization of this ideal as the fundamental possibility of our time. Measures and ideas short of this goal are ransom paid to that Nemesis which is the mystery of divine Love.

H. H.

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THE ORGANIC BACKGROUND OF MIND

FOSTER KENNEDY

DID it ever occur to any of you why we dance, why we like to dance? Dancing surely seems a curious occupation for a rational animal. If you ask various sorts of men why the human being dances, moves his body rhythmically to music, you will get a great variety of replies. The anthropologist will probably tell you that we dance in order to express Worship, adoration. The psychologist trained in the suburbs of Vienna will probably tell you that we dance in order to be sexually symbolistic or, as a friend of mine put it pertly, to have sex on the half-shell! But such people are confusing the fact that we like to dance with their own intellectual preconceptions of the aim of dancing. They are interpreting the purposes of the dance without explaining why such a quaint occupation should exist at all. Such explanations are explanations of how the human animal uses his faculty of dancing, and his desire to dance, for certain purposes —adoration or sex. But they do not explain the fact that he dances.

I believe that the reason why the human animal dances lies in an odd anatomical and physiological circumstance. The eighth cranial nerve is called the auditory nerve, the nerve of hearing. It is, curiously enough, divided into two parts, the two parts being entirely separate in function and usually quite separate anatomically, though bound up in close contiguity. One part carries impulses from the ear up to the brain: to the auditory center. The other part has nothing whatever to do with hearing; instead, it carries impulses from our semicircular canals, which tell us by movement of fluid within them where the head is in space. And by this information provided by the movement of the fluid in these tiny canals, though it never reaches consciousness, we are “placed” in the universe. If we have trouble with these canals we are exceedingly dizzy, we cannot walk, furniture spins around like teetotums, and we are very seasick. (Nothing, you see, whatever to do with hearing.) But there is an old relationship here, between the two parts of the hearing and balancing nerves. One is not necessary for the fulfilment of function of the other yet they are together. Like husband and wife, they are bound together for better or worse. They have to make the best of it. The [Page 4] simultaneous stimulation of these allied but different functions results in our having a pleasurable emotion in rhythmically moving our bodies in accordance as we hear. The result is dancing.

This physical expression of rhythm is manifest also in our beating time to music, and among Eastern peoples this innate trend is used in schools as an aid to learning. Indeed, the more primitive a people, the more is the beat stressed in their music; our own “syncopated blues” are surely the rhythmic pulings of a negroid nostalgic child!

Dancing then is a body satisfaction, implicit in structure; not a matter of the mind, disembodied. It is written into the body. It comes, if you like to be sufficiently antiquated in your thought, from the time when we were fish and had for the first time a sense organ. Yes, you were a fish. And if you don’t believe it, when you go home open your mouths wide and look in the mirror and you will see your gills. They are still there. When we were fish, there grew out on our stomach a double line of differentiated epithelium cells which told us whether we were swimming upside down or not. These received impulses from the medium in which we swam and were our primitive organ of spatial orientation. By them we guided ourselves. By their ascending descendants we now guide ourselves. And we have combined this spatial balancing with hearing which also helped to guide us and give warning in days when the world was full of physical danger. The combination of the two have given us an ability for amusement, an aptitude which we can bend to adoration, to sex, to any kind of purpose. We can bend, you see, our faculties in directions to which they were probably not intended to be bent. High faculties are laid down in us by heredity, they develop by the friction of experience, and we use them in a manner often improper! We think, for instance, that we are exceedingly rational beings. Rather, our higher intelligence is often prostituted in service in that, when possible, we use our higher intelligence to explain away our lower happenings. However, it was only the other day that we began to give a clear motive force to our emotional trends and antique desires, in the determination of conscious thought and action. But in the first fine careless rapture of that discovery, our modern novelists, psychologists and painters have urged on us the premature destruction of the values of Truth and Beauty and have tried “to project their tastes upon the empty canvas of a valueless Universe.” They still try to dethrone the majesty of man’s Reason, to replace it, not augment it, by a catch-as-catch-can Subconscious. This is a revolt of the helots indeed —a mere kitchen rebellion—the puny gesturing of a generation that got tired out, and of its successor that was born fatigued.

The world has not yet made up its mind whether Plato or Aristotle was right—whether man is really Spirit or Machine. We may call him a transformer of power and straddle the question. It is quite certain, however, that without a good brain you cannot have a good mind and good breeding [Page 5] begets good brain. And in fact, to appraise our projecting power, you ought to know that in a sense we are three dimensional, and you should have a lively suspicion that we can be, four.

It may well be that the scientists’ view of the Universe as being, as it were, mindless, non-creative, traditional, and lacking aim or object comes from the scientist’s mistaking the discovery of a regulating Natural Law for a revelation of the Universe itself. To attempt to apprehend the stars in terms of a mathematical formula or a Law of Gravitation is probably like mistaking his electrocardiogram or his blood count for the personality of a poet.

The notion of either “space-empty” or “space-ethereal” has today been abandoned and Nature is now viewed as Energy patterned into worlds, patterned variously also for every stick, stone or bit of life upon them. Man thus becomes one with his environment, which pervades him wholly, and into which he extends himself hugely; born according to his manner, he holds his unique pattern as a momentary opportunity for experience, a stream of creative continuity, with aim. It is of this unique dynamic pattern of force—so temporarily imprisoned—that we would speak tonight. Plotinus says that sensations are obscure thoughts, and intelligible or spiritual thoughts are clear sensations. Man has the power out of the percipience of his senses to fabricate mental images. These images he can then project into circumambient Nature, and so by them interfere with routine happenings both there and within himself. He can modify natural tradition, and by creating new self-enjoying principles out of his past experience, he can recreate novelties for the future. There seems to be no end in him to the piling of power upon power, of faculty upon faculty, through the ages. Great need in the organism grows organic function; repeated “striving-use” of function, centuries long—grows power, and power, long used, is an unconscious emanation.

We differ in degree, we do not differ in kind, from amphioxus—amphioxus being the lowest creature with a primitive vertebral column,— and translucent. We too have a backbone and are also often sufficiently transparent! So we are not so far removed from amphioxus. Age after age our nerve systems grew, layer by layer, developing chieftains in the layer last grown. And the last chieftain always controls those that have ruled before. We seem now to be governed by a chieftain in the supragranular layer of the brain cortex, that has controlled and subdued, but not killed, other earlier faculties. When that chieftain dies by disease, the antiquated function which has not been given its day by reason of the life of the lately acquired head, is revived, so that at this moment, for example, a man with a paralysis of the right arm and the right leg, utterly incapable of voluntarily moving his right arm, if he yawns, will lift his right arm. This is an automatic fin movement associated with the movement of reflex opening the mouth. You and I when we yawn are apt to lift our arms. We stretch. We are [Page 6] not particularly aware of why we stretch, except that we like to stretch. This is an automatic movement fulfilling ages ago, a vital function no longer necessary for the kind of life we lead now. The nerve pattern still exists. And in disease that pattern may become dominant, the old pattern; the pattern relegated into limbo but not dead, may become the dominant of our lives.

Such, in a sense, is the long distance development of our nervous system. But there is also a similar phylogenetic development of behavior and personality. Each individual, as he grows from the embryo to the adult, is a little cycle of the race. We have long known that from the egg to death we pass through stages in our body at least similar to those through which humanity has passed before. Freud has now made it clear that in our emotions, in our urgings, in the preponderance of this instinct over that at different periods of our lives, we have a like evolution and,—if we live long enough,—devolution,—of personality; that the child is a polytheistic savage and that its sexual instincts emerge by gradual progression. . . . Freud himself doubts the therapeutic value of this contribution to our knowledge of ourselves, but at least it does make clear how our instincts have developed within the microcosm of each man’s body. However, while bodily we have still vestigial remnants of our past-like gill-slits and, emotionally, others like sexual reversions, we certainly cannot describe the total body in terms of the one nor the total personality in terms of the other.

However, when we lose what we have last acquired, we uncover what we had acquired before. The proverb says of the Russian, if you scratch him, you will find a Tartar. It is no more true of the Russian than it is of the rest of us. If you scratch the surface, you will find below, the more ancient the more primitive man.

Where do these patterns of which I have spoken come from? They come from the reception of outside and inside impressions into the brain where they are worked up by the exquisite integration of cells and fibres into ideas and recreating notions. We can, of course, only acquire knowledge of our environment by our senses. And, remember, had we a different set of senses, the world, as we know it, would be changed utterly to some other baseless fabric of some other dream. There is a vast universe we cannot touch, that we can only imagine, and indeed we cannot even imagine it. We can only surmise that it exists. It is impossible for us really to envisage the universe from even a dog’s-eye point of view.

The human brain is a paltry object to look at but it is the master organ of life. On it are probably a thousand million individual entities, the brain cells. Each one perhaps as individual as any one of us, doing its work as efficiently as any one of us, gathering its energies and sending them out in orderly fashion, reproducing itself in its own image, as capable of explosion as any of us capable of disorderly conduct as you or me! A thousand million at least, and only those I count on the surface. The Brain is so enormously complicated that it would take [Page 7] many lifetimes to begin to understand it,—and nobody does. The most intricate concatenation of wiring ever dreamed of. And disease of these cells and fibres makes for disease of mind.

It has been the fashion for the last twenty-five years to discuss mental illness as though the mind were like Muhammad’s coffin, swung, unsupported, in the empyrean between heaven and earth, without pathology of structure. I am convinced this is an error. The psychology that we have been familiar with in the last twenty-five years, and indeed the psychology of the twenty-five years, or five thousand years before that (of which William James said it was not a science, it was not even a hope of a science)——all that psychology is in the nature of a description. We talk of the modern brand as an analysis. It is so far from really plumbing the depths of mental origins that it is but figure-skating on the surface of the problem. The real problem is why does a certain person have to substitute something else for his difficulty in order to relieve his difficulty. And why does another person not have to go through that complicated precedure in order to be happy? The true problem is the nature of the play of organic forces in the individual causing the stable or unstable equilibrium of his feelings and his intellect. The difference between one individual and another is here in modern psychology only described and not explained. It’s not enough to go into a picture gallery and say “I understand this picture, it is by Rubens,” and “that there is by Velasquez.” Mere recognition.

For he need have no iota of knowledge as to how Velasquez mixed either his paints or his ideas. We must not mistake the projections and the productions of the mind for the deeper causes of those projections and productions. And the cause of the projections in the last analysis lies there in the type and quality of both brain and body. That is the center of our impulses and the controller of the weather in our souls, worked upon by the rest of our body. Our internal glands,—our sympathetic nervous system, the link between the outlying body itself and the central brain— play their complex parts, and the result is function of mind. Mind is to the brain as the function of Sight is to the eye. If we should think of Sight with no regard to the eye, to the workings of the retina, to the optic nerves, no regard for the brain tracts leading impulses back to the cortex, there to be gathered, sorted, accepted, rejected, we should know nothing of sight. Lacking such consideration we would be regarding not Sight but aesthetics, visual aesthetics, and we should be dwelling in this, too, as among the Mysteries.

From this it follows that the function of mind can only work inside the frame of our inheritance. We forget to apply to the human being, truths which are perfect platitudes applied to polo ponies. Christ did not. Christ knew better and said, “Do men gather grapes of thorns, or figs of thistles?” He loved the weak and the forgotten man but, in this scornful question, He is an Aristocrat of the intellect speaking the known facts of biological knowledge.

From an address delivered at the New York Bahá’í Center, December 19, 1937.

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ST. JOHN OF THE CROSS

ANNA McCLURE SHOLL

THE saint in common with the genius eludes definition. His simplicity baffles the psychologist; his divergence from type challenges the card-cataloguer. To his contemporaries and often to posterity he is a phenomenon for which they have no gauges. The question arises again and again—is the saint an eccentric, pulling the curve out of shape; or does he actually transcend the human plane, by projecting his consciousness into the region of super-human understanding?

Whatever the answer, this much is certain; the saint has not arrived at his goal by the interplay of blind forces. He has rendered an illuminated obedience to inner sanctions. He has made a consistent and continuous effort towards a hidden ideal, constantly subjected to pragmatic tests which might well arouse the curiosity of scientists. Nothing here is haphazard. His industry in the spiritual life resembles the patience of the accurate draughtsman, or of the grand opera singer mastering a difficult score. The common conception that the Kingdom of Heaven, the strange Second Birth, or even sound ethical achievement are states easily attained —and therefore to be left to emotional women and dreamers—is a complete fallacy.

The exact opposite is true. So much of the rigors of clear thinking, so much of persistent self-discipline, so much rigidity of design enters into this difficult matter of sainthood that few care to attempt it. Human nature inclines to the lower levels of ethical conformity in the interests of society or the state, or to that general respectability which thins out, at last, to the minimum of impact and the maximum of easy traveling. To walk with the neighbor or the world-citizen without jostling or challenge seems a reasonable and surely a quieting ambition. It is small beer, perhaps, but, at least, the wayfarer keeps his head and the road.

In this advantage lies the chief clue —it may be—to the general disinclination to enter the rarefied climate of the saint, and within it to undergo changes which are socially disturbing. Like the genius the saint is a disrupting and affronting phenomenon, as all the prophets slain from the beginning of the world have borne witness. The crowd shrieks; “Ad leones! Ad leones!” not because these martyrs [Page 9] are of exalted holiness; but chiefly for the reason that they are centers of social contumacy; dangerous to the State because they are non-conformists, a menace to the rigidities and blind obedience of the accepted religious order of the day which demands only the pattern of externals. They are in short afironts to the Everlasting Conservative; the Mob, hating and persecuting always what is unfamiliar to it.

The extreme and devastating individualism of the saint is inevitable because he has glimpsed laws and conditions, which, as Christ declared, often completely reverse the accepted moral code, slithering with the indifference of the serpent over smooth pavements. The disorder the saint spreads begins first in himself. In the depths of his consciousness he is faced with the problems of readjustment to a New Order that for a well-defined period keep him off-balance and off-center.

The fractures in family relationships which Christ emphasized as bound to be one of the effects of His gospel may not have referred primarily to literal bonds of blood, or of legalities, but to those continuities and ancestral legacies in a man’s own soul which may well witness to old bondages—the father and mother of racial passions, or the progeny of his own old human desires. A man’s foes shall be those of his own household —his own House of Life in other words. He is set at variance with these first within his own consciousness, because he is leaving Time behind and the relationships of time. He is entering a region whose laws may well set aside the platitudes of the human reason when it enthrones itself as the dictator of destiny. All things mental, indeed, become platitudinous when assuming finalities. What is finished has lost its meaning.

The saint in parting with old, comfortable, well-arranged conformities has entered what seems at first a jungle of spiritual contradiction. Strange voices haunt him. Unfamiliar standards and laws present themselves for his deciphering. In the slang of the day only headaches seem to be the reward of this search. One thing he can count on as he passes through his Dark Night. What he is so painfully learning will result in new conceptions of will, passion, justice, purity and benevolence; and he will be obliged to accept them through the hard ways of action. He is asked to step out of a parish into a cosmos without protective coloring.

THE saint is not necessarily a mystic. The genuine mystic is a very rare type. Of the Twelve Disciples of Christ including Matthias, chosen by lot to take the place of Judas, only one was a mystic. The Writer of the Fourth Gospel beheld the Logos.

Since the subject of this study is St. John of the Cross, a mystic of the Catholic Church, it may be well to interrogate a stranger type of a High and Hidden Order than even the genius or the saint, though both these approach the region in which the mystic lives. He has many distinguishing marks, but three are outstanding like the three highest peaks of the Himalayas—he abides in the Whole, in the One, freed from the [Page 10] tyranny of duality; he has attained this abiding place through love; he is intensely practical, and of immense dexterity when called upon to deal with human affairs. In this connection Joan of Arc and Catherine of Siena come readily to mind.

To the mystic the mystery of duality is transcended. He is haunted by the Oneness; by the paradox that no mystery of evil can exclude God from any part of His creation. “He is All! He is All!” is the chorus for this stupendous drama of the Soul and Her Creator. But for the reason that the Infinitely Inclusive dominates his consciousness the All is to him, also the Infinitely Little. “I saw God as a Point,” declared the Thirteenth Century anchorite, Julian of Norwich; and Ruysbroeck writes; “In the Way that is Wayless we shall wander and stray.” It is the union of paradoxes —the reconciliation of power and weakness, the infinitesimal and the Brobdingnagian, the mingling of joy and suffering in one common ecstasy. Only in the divine world of paradox does the mystic find his answer.

It is only reasonable that the stages of approach to the higher levels of consciousness are accompanied by the ever fainter feeling of division and of enmity. It is not necesary to penetrate the regions of mysticism to prove this. Given any good-will at all— though a minimum at present is functioning politically—the social order has illustrated this again and again. The enemy to the savage may be created by a barrier of two miles. Division and danger begin on the other bank of the river. To the average —not the exceptional—peasant, the enemy is in the next parish, the next canton, the next department. If, however the opportunity to travel comes to him he returns with allayed fears. The aristocrat, the man of the world, and the accustomed traveler, on the other hand, have, ready-made, a very easy if unanalysed charity. Few persons with a rage for travel retain violent prejudices. The greatest traveler of all, the mystic, has none.

IN a book published some years ago under the title of Cosmic Consciousness, which dealt with the lives of those men and women who in the opinion of the author had attained it, the Spanish saint, Juan de la Cruz, was included. The Church, herself, had preceded all appraisers in her official recognition of this Spanish monk as the supreme Doctor of Mystical Theology.

St. John of the Cross (1542-1591) was a member of the Carmelite Order which claims immemorial antiquity though mention of it in the official archives of the Church did not take place until the Twelfth Century. Its members believe that it was founded by Elijah and Elisha on the sacred slopes of Mt. Carmel—the garden mountain, the Jebel Mar Elias of the Arabs—continued through the Sons of the Prophets; and traced faintly but surely in desert sands, in rocks and caves of the earth, leading at last to the lonely Baptist; going on, perhaps, to the hermits of the Egyptian deserts, to lonely lauras and well-nigh inaccessible caverns; continuing wherever the demand for contemplation had drawn together the silent [Page 11] and God-haunted. It emerges at last with a severe rule to conserve the mystical harvest garnered so painfully down the ages by fasting, prayer, meditation and solitude. It is found in the Twelfth and later centuries adhering to the liturgy of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre at Jerusalem, its rite of Gallo-Roman origin.

Historically it is the most reminiscent of Oriental influence of all the Orders of the Church. The dreaming East is preserved in the Carmel, the Eastern love of solitude, of intense asceticism, the Eastern longing to escape “the angry stains of life.”

In Spain when the old rigors of the very strict rule had given way to laxness and indifference this Order received new life from the holy, witty, and indomitable St. Theresa of Avila whose pupil in the spiritual life St. John of the Cross became. But he was to adventure into regions which even St. Theresa did not explore. To change the figure he became the master of differential calculus in the grades of mystic understanding. He not only experienced every stage of the Three Ways of Purification, Illumination and Union but he was able to map them out for others. His penitents were chiefly peasants, a notable proof that this Way was in reach of all who had the will and courage to attempt it, and a sign that it was addressed to faculties transcending the intellectual.

His atmosphere is too rarefied even for those whose spiritual courage attempts mountains. For this reason and because he was for a time a prisoner of the inquisition under suspicion of heresy he remained, even after his canonisation, long neglected, his posthumous Dark Night only breaking at the beginning of the Nineteenth Century, when his writings in classic Spanish were first translated into English by an Anglican clergyman.

HE was born in a troubled century, and witnessed as violent changes in European history as the world is now seeing. He was a boy of fourteen when Philip II ascended the throne of Spain and three years before his death occurred the defeat of the Spanish Armada. The revolt of the Netherlands took place in his maturity. News of the Battle of Lepanto and the victory of Don John of Austria must have reached him, but it is difficult to connect him with the stormy scenery of the time—as dramatic as El Greco’s painting of the City of Toledo.

A greater battle involved his spirit —an interior one. The guerdon was light so intense that it became literally the Bright-Dark.

His birthplace was Hontiveris in Old Castile. He was the child of Gonzalo de Yepes, a poor silk weaver and of Catherine Alvarez, his wife. Gonzalo died when Juan was very young and through the labors of his mother the boy received an education. Subsequently he studied for the priesthood and received the habit of a Carmelite in 1563. Then a great event occurred. He met St. Theresa at Medina. No one who met Theresa of Avila was ever quite the same afterwards. Even her enemies could exclaim, half in terror, half in admiration; “By the Sword of St. Michael what a woman!” At the time of John [Page 12] Yepes’s meeting with her she was at the peak of her meteoric career, burning up the dross of her order like a flame in a waste land. It was time.

In 1518 Luther had nailed his thesis to the church door at Wittenberg. Whatever the Reformation meant then or since the causes were understandable. The greatest misfortune connected with it was that the entire drama did not take place within the official Church. After the fracture it was too late for salvage. The flood gates of disunion and disruption had been opened too wide. The Counter-Reformation accomplished, indeed, the work of purification two centuries too late and the Council of Trent did a thorough job, but at the cost of much of the marvelous fluidity and spontaneity which distinguished the Catholicity of the Thirteenth Century. To meet her enemies the official Church had become a fortress.

Had the all-time low of ecclesiastical corruption at the beginning of the Sixteenth Century—“the sins of the Borgias,” the buying and selling in the Temple, the Renaissance sacrifice of morality to humanism even in Peter’s city—had the warnings of holy men within the Church been heeded, the task before such impassioned reformers as Theresa of Spain would not have been so difficult. Her Order had shared in the general decay, and even in the hour of the recognized peril of the Church at large her adherence to the primitive strict rule of the Carmelites was, in general, resented. Her followers were called Teresians—the discalced or bare-footed Carmelites. To this branch of the Order her ardent disciple, Saint John of the Cross belonged.

His intensive spiritual experiences found expression at last in a series of poetical expositions of the journey to God. To inquisitors and inspectors of single-track minds, chiefly occupied with externals, it was little wonder that these writings had a strange sound. The Carmelite monk on a charge of heresy was imprisoned in Toledo. His accusers could not know that John Yepes had, in reality, penetrated to the very core of the mystical life of the Church by reaching the immanent fastnesses of his own spirit.

There he continued to dwell, while writing, meditating, serving on his release, the humblest of the poor and over-burdened. He knew that to the humble there is no barrier to that road on which he traveled. In “The Ascent of Mt. Carmel, The Dark Night of the Soul, The Canticle of Divine Love” he traces the stages of this ineffable pilgrimage.

His language, his imagery is oriental, in the spirit of the Song of Solomon, and of the greatest of the Old Testament prophets. A profound student of the Scriptures the question arises whether the influence of Saracenic poets might not have had an echo in this wealth of imaginative simile, in this flight to natural beauty to express the unutterable. The works of St. John of the Cross bear few traces of occidental ideals. They recall the fragrant gardens of some dreaming country of the East, green oases baptised by clear waters in forgotten lands.

In the Canticle of Divine Love he [Page 13] writes;

“O woods and thickets. Planted by the Hand of the Beloved;

O meadows of verdure, enamelled with flowers,

Say if He has passed by you!”

His explanatory note reads: “By these flowers She (the soul) understands the angels and holy souls by which the place is adorned and beautified like a graceful and costly enamel upon a vase of gold.”

And he calls to the Beloved;

“My beloved, the mountains

The solitary wooded valleys,

The strange islands, the sonorous rivers,

The whisper of the amorous breeze;

The tranquil night. At the time of the rising of the dawn;

The silent music, the sounding solitude;

The supper that re-creates and enkindles love.”

God is the Beloved. The soul pursues Him and is pursued by Him; woos Him and is wooed by Him; struggles in the net of sense like a bird in the snare of the fowler. The charge of pantheism sometimes brought against John Yepes, or of a tendency to obliterate the division between Creator and created has no foundation. If it had he could not be a canonised saint of the Church whose theology draws a sharp line between the creature and the Creator. This passage from the Ascent of Mt. Carmel shows both the origin of the error and its refutation. If not read with great care it might be misleading.

“The soul, by resigning itself to the divine light, that is, by removing from itself every spot and stain of the creature, which is to keep the will perfectly united to the will of God—for to love Him is to labor to detach ourselves from, and to divest ourselves of, everything which is not God, for God’s sake—becomes immediately enlightened by, and transformed in God; because He communicates His own supernatural being in such a way that the soul seems to be God, Himself and to possess the things of God. Such a union is then wrought when God bestows on the soul that supreme grace which makes the things of God and the soul one by transformation which renders the one a partaker of the other. The soul seems to be God, rather than itself, and indeed is God by participation, though in reality preserving its own natural substance as distinct from God as it did before, although transformed in Him, as a window preserves its own substance distinct from that of the rays of the sun shining through it and making it light.”

The pure soul lets the Light of God through, but that is a very different matter from the clouded identities of pantheism.

The Dark Night of the Soul begins the search. It corresponds to the first of the three recognized stages of the mystic’s progress in the Way. It is the Way of Purification. This does not imply exclusively the freeing of the nature from the slavery of sin in the accepted sense; it is rather the emerging of the soul from the veils of illusion; from the tyrannies of sense-perception, from the autocracy of Time and Time’s divided world. Illumination [Page 14] cannot come until the paradox is glimpsed that non-attachment to any created thing is only possible when the spirit has submitted to the All. “I have nothing. I have all,” might be the lonely human cry of the being that undergoes the discipline of the Night as St. John sensed it.

The incursion of divine drama into a relative world naturally produces great suffering. A new Type is being fashioned, and society will hate and resent it, since it throws out of scale humanity’s carefully built civilizations.

John of the Cross guided his simple peasants towards the interior life reinforced by the sacramental graces of the Church, but he was not, apparently, interested in “good works” as understood by the industrial age; which erects model tenements, feeds the poor in a hundred soup-kitchens, studies children until they are almost investigated out of existence; but which seems totally unable to make any individual either happy or contented in this process. The Secret, of course, lies elsewhere and materialism can never find it. The mystics are usually indifferentists to either poverty or wealth, good conditions or bad conditions. They may for a score of years conduct a great hospital, even to keeping its books as did St. Catherine of Genoa, but underlying these efforts is the happy land of the Divine Indifference on which they press tired feet for refreshment.

THE Union of the soul with the Divine Will is the supreme object of life as St. John of the Cross knew. The good life is only one of the aids to this Union, and must flow from interior love and contemplation; from what the Catholic Church terms “the prayer of Union” which is not prayer at all in the ordinary sense of petition but a gathering of all the forces for a swift winging towards Home. “Thou hast made us for Thyself,” wrote St. Augustine, “And our souls are restless until they find rest in Thee.”

St. John writes; “That soul has greater communion with God, which is most advanced in love, that is, whose will is most conformable to the will of God. And that soul which has reached perfect conformity and resemblance is perfectly united with, and supernaturally transformed in God.” Ascent of Mt. Carmel.

And again in the same book; “The less such a soul understands the further does it enter the night of the spirit, through which it has to pass in order to be united to God, in a way that surpasses all understanding.”

In The Mystical Doctrine of St. John of the Cross (Sheed and Ward) a volume of selections from his writings, a footnote accompanies the above quotation; an extract from The Adornment of the Spiritual Marriage by the Thirteenth Century mystic Ruysbroeck:

“Thirdly he must have lost himself in a Waylessness and in a darkness, in which all contemplative men wander in fruition, and wherein they never again can find themselves in a creaturely way. In the Abyss of this darkness, in which the loving spirit has died to itself, there begin the manifestation of God and Eternal Life.”

[Page 15] Of the two forms of purgation in the Night, set forth by the Carmelite, one refers to the purification of the senses, the second and more agonising to the severance of the spirit from all attachment. St. John of the Cross indicates that few, indeed, attain this stage. “Few there be that find it,” as Christ declared. In what John calls “the passive night of the senses,” the lower stage of purification, he indicates that no comfort is found either in the things of God or in created things. The following passage is so significant, so universal in its application to the striving souls throughout the world that it can be quoted in full. “The second test and condition of this purgation are that the memory dwells ordinarily upon God with a painful anxiety and carefulness, the soul thinks it is not serving God, but going backwards, because it is no longer conscious of any sweetness in the things of God. In that case it is clear that the weariness of spirit and aridity are not the results of weakness and lukewarmness; for the peculiarity of lukewarmness is the want of earnestness in, and of interior solicitude for, the things of God.

“The cause of this dryness is that God is transferring to the spirit the goods and energies of the senses, which being now unable to assimilate them become dry, parched up and empty; for the sensual nature of man is helpless in those things which belong to the spirit simply. Thus the spirit having tasted, the flesh shrinks and fails.”

But the end if the soul can endure is illumination; it is peace.

He writes in the Spiritual Canticle:

“O, killing North Wind cease!

Come, South Wind that awakenest love!

Blow through my garden,

And let its odors flow,

And the Beloved shall feed among the flowers.”

---

WHEN the light of Manifestation of the King of Oneness fills the throne of the heart and soul, His radiances will become visible in man’s whole body. Whereupon the dark mystery of the following well-known tradition will be unveiled: “A servant is drawn unto Me through prayers until I answer him; and when I have answered his prayers, I become the ear wherewith he heareth,” etc. For thus the Master of the house hath appeared in His house, and the entire house is illumined with His light; and the action and effect of the light is from the Light-giver. Wherefore, all move through Him and arise by His will.—BAHÁ’U’LLÁH.

[Page 16]

THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SPIRIT

‘ABDU’L-BAHÁ

KNOW that the power and the comprehension of the human spirit are of two kinds: that is to say, they perceive and act in two different modes. One way is through instruments and organs: thus with this eye it sees, with this ear it hears, with this tongue it talks. Such is the action of the spirit, and the perception of the reality of man, by means of organs. That is to say, that the spirit is the seer, through the eyes; the spirit is the hearer, through the ear; the spirit is the speaker, through the tongue.

The other manifestation of the powers and actions of the spirit is without instruments and organs. For example, in the state of sleep without eyes it sees, without an ear it hears, without a tongue it speaks, without feet it runs. Briefly, these actions are beyond the means of instruments and organs. How often it happens that it sees a dream in the world of sleep, and its signification becomes apparent two years afterwards in corresponding events. In the same way, how many times it happens that a question which one cannot solve in the world of wakefulness, is solved in the world of dreams. In wakefulness the eye sees only for a short distance, but in dreams he who is in the East sees the West: awake he sees the present, in sleep he sees the future. In wakefulness, by means of rapid transit, at the most he can travel only twenty farsakhs an hour; in sleep, in the twinkling of an eye, he traverses the East and West. For the spirit travels in two different ways: without means, which is spiritual traveling; and with means, which is material traveling: as birds which fly, and those which are carried.

In the time of sleep this body is as though dead; it does not see not hear, it does not feel, it has no consciousness, no perception: that is to say, the powers of man have become inactive, but the spirit lives and subsists. Nay, its penetration is increased, its flight is higher, and its intelligence is greater. To consider that after the death of the body the spirit perishes, is like imagining that a bird in a cage will be destroyed if the cage is broken, though the bird has nothing to fear from the destruction of the cage. Our body is like the cage, and the spirit is like the bird. We see that without the cage this bird flies in the world of sleep; therefore if the cage becomes broken, the bird will continue and [Page 17] exist: its feelings will be even more powerful, its perceptions greater, and its happiness increased. In truth, from hell it reaches a paradise of delights, because for the thankful birds there is no paradise greater than freedom from the cage. That is why with utmost joy and happiness the martyrs hasten to the plain of sacrifice.

In wakefulness the eye of man sees at the utmost as far as one hour of distance, because through the instrumentality of the body the power of the spirit is thus determined; but with the inner sight and the mental eye it sees America, and it can perceive that which is there, and discover the conditions of things and organize affairs. If, then, the spirit were the same as the body, it would be necessary that the power of the inner sight should also be in the same proportion. Therefore it is evident that this spirit is different from the body, and that the bird is different from the cage, and that the power and penetration of the spirit is stronger without the intermediary of the body. Now, if the instrument is abandoned, the possessor of the instrument continues to act. For example, if the pen is abandoned or broken, the writer remains living and present; if a house is ruined, the owner is alive and existing. This is one of the logical evidences for the immortality of the soul.

There is another: this body becomes weak, or heavy, or sick, or it finds health; it becomes tired or rested; sometimes the hand or leg is amputated, or its physical power is crippled; it becomes blind or deaf or dumb; its limbs may become paralyzed; briefly, the body may have all the imperfections. Nevertheless, the spirit in its original state, in its own spiritual perception, will be eternal and perpetual; it neither finds any imperfection nor will it become crippled. But when the body is wholly subjected to disease and misfortune, it is deprived of the bounty of the spirit; like a mirror which, when it becomes broken, or dirty, or dusty, cannot reflect the rays of the sun, nor any longer show its bounties.

We have already explained that the spirit of man is not in the body, because it is freed and sanctified from entrance and exit, which are bodily conditions. The connection of the spirit with the body is like that of the sun with the mirror. Briefly, the human spirit is in one condition; it neither becomes ill from the diseases of the body, nor cured by its health; it does not become sick, nor weak, nor miserable, nor poor, nor light, nor small. That is to say, it will not be injured because of the infirmities of the body, and no effect will be visible even if the body becomes weak or if the hands and feet and tongue be cut off, or if it loses the power of hearing or sight. Therefore it is evident and certain that the spirit is different from the body, and that its duration is independent of that of the body; on the contrary, the spirit with the utmost greatness rules in the world of the body, and its power and influence, like the bounty of the sun in the mirror, are apparent and visible. But when the mirror becomes dusty or breaks, it will cease to reflect the rays of the sun.

Concluded

[Page 18]

THE WORLD CRISIS

MOUNTFORT MILLS

III. A New World Order

TODAY is the one hundred and twentieth anniversary of the birth of Bahá’u’lláh, from whose writings is taken the view of the world crisis that has been presented in these talks. He was born on the 12th day of November, 1817. It seems both a fitting and an interesting commemoration of the day to read the description which He Himself wrote of His own attitude toward the revelation that bears His name.

In a Tablet addressed to His Majesty, the Shah of Persia, He writes: “O Shah! I was an ordinary man asleep upon my couch when the breezes of the Most Glorious passed over me giving understanding of that which has been. This thing is not from me, but from the One Mighty and All-knowing. He it was who commanded me to sound the proclamation between earth and heaven, and for this there has befallen that whereat the eyes of those who know overflow with tears. I have not studied science, nor have I entered college. Inquire of the city wherein I lived, that you may be assured that I am not of those who speak falsely. This is a leaf which the breezes of the Will of your God, the Mighty, the Extolled, have stirred. Can it be still when the rushing winds blow? No, by my Lord of the Names and Attributes, for it is moved according to His will. In the presence of the Eternal, nonentity has no existence. His imperial command it was which caused me to speak for His celebration among the nations. In truth, I was as dead when I became reanimated by the Lord.”

In the two preceding talks upon the cause and cure of the world crisis from the viewpoint of the Bahá’í teachings, it appeared that the underlying source of the threatening conditions in the world today is man’s failure to recognize his unity with all of his fellowmen, of whatever race or nationality, and his inability to see the interdependence that exists among them. The remedy for these difficulties was found implicit in their cause. It involves recognition of this oneness of mankind and, forthwith, the adoption of policies in harmony with that fundamental concept. It was pointed out, too, that the basic force in life, that animates all of life’s [Page 19] evolving forms, is governed by this law of unity and adds its incalculable support to efforts in keeping with that law. But, accepting all of this, its very strength and, as it seems to many, its rational appeal might well be the cause of its undoing should zealous enthusiasts, once adopting it, hold irreconcilable views as to what policies make for unity.

This danger of disruption the teachings meet with definite indications in broad outline of the specific channels through which man’s work should be directed to bring it into agreement with this principle. These indications cover practically the entire field of man’s relations, but, of course, only those that bear upon the world situation can be referred to here. And it should be borne in mind that these constructive outlines were presented nearly three quarters of a century ago with the sole aim, as Bahá’u’lláh has expressed it, “to endue all men with righteousness and understanding, so that peace and tranquility may be established amongst them.” Their purpose is spiritual, far removed from political considerations of any kind. “Soon will the present day order be rolled up and a new one spread out in its stead,” wrote Bahá’u’lláh.

Foreshadowing in outline the new world order, the writings further state: “True civilization will unfurl its banner in the midmost heart of the world whenever a certain number of its distinguished and high minded sovereigns . . . shall, for the good and happiness of all mankind, arise with firm resolve and clear vision to establish the Cause of Universal Peace. They must make the Cause of Peace the object of general consultation and seek by every means in their power to establish a union of the nations of the world. They must conclude a binding treaty and establish a covenant, the provisions of which shall be sound, inviolable and definite. They must proclaim it to all the world and obtain for it the sanction of all the human race. This supreme and noble undertaking—the real source of the peace and well-being of the world— should be regarded as sacred by all that dwell on earth. All the forces of humanity must be mobilized to ensure the stability and permanence of this Most Great Covenant. In this all embracing pact the limits and frontiers of each and every nation should be clearly fixed, the principles underlying the relations of governments toward one another definitely laid down and all international and agreements and obligations ascertained. In like manner, the size of the armaments of every government should be strictly limited, for if the preparations for War and the military forces of any nation should be allowed to increase, they will arouse the suspicion of others. The fundamental principle underlying this solemn pact should be so fixed that if any government later violate any one of its provisions, all the governments on earth should arise to reduce it to utter submission, nay the race as a whole should resolve with every power at its disposal to destroy that government. Should this greatest of all remedies be applied to the sick body of the world it [Page 20] will assuredly recover from its ills and will remain eternally safe and secure.”

The aptness of this outline of a world order to world needs will, of course, be questioned by some. Quite clearly it suggests a type of federation of the nations, with some form of central authority to control their mutual relations, that will not be welcome to the economic nationalist and isolationist. But here we are not concerned with political theory. We are seeking to probe to the spiritual values of this problem of world relations, in the belief that those values alone conform with the laws and forces of creative evolution that control man’s ultimate destiny.

APPLYING that standard to this proposed outline of a new world order, we discover the interesting fact that, just to the degree that man’s consciousness emerged from its bondage to the animal in the course of evolution and became aware of his needs and possibilities as a human being, has he applied this fundamental law of unity to his life. Under the pressure of this law, which to him bore the form of necessity, his emerging consciousness took shape in the family, then the tribe, the village, the city, the state and lastly in the nation. The birth of his widening vision was heavy with travail. Each forward step was resisted to the utmost by all the animal force he possessed, with bloody consequences. But the law prevailed and he stands today with but one more step to take before that law attains to completion in its development here on earth—the establishment of the unity of nations.

This step, as with each of his others, man is resisting with all of his might. Unhappily, the might which his expanding intelligence puts in his hand today is so vastly more destructive than has been at his disposal at any other point in his development that he is in real danger this time of completely extinguishing himself if he continues in his stubborn refusal to understand. Is there any reason to suppose that this law, this force, that has, over every obstacle, driven him forward and upward, despite himself, to the relatively high level to which he has attained, is suddenly to cease working? To ask the question is to have the answer.

The beneficence of this law which he has so persistently defied and fought against has always become clear to him when he finally surrendered to its power. At each step he has learned, as be abandoned his narrow self-centered suspicion and hostility, that the wider sympathy and cooperative understanding that followed was infinitely to his welfare and happiness. Who in our country, for example, would wish to revert to Colonial days, with all the bitter rivalries and conflicts of those separate and independently sovereign groups? Who would deny the immeasurable advance materially and culturally that has resulted from the federation of the Colonies into the United States, their coming together in mutual forbearance and understanding to develop the rich resources of our land in peaceful and cooperative effort? Yet [Page 21] this step was so deeply resented and so powerfully resisted that the United States very nearly came forth stillborn at the first Constitutional Convention.

TODAY the whole world is confronted with precisely the problem of the Colonies at that Convention. Anarchy, independent sovereignty, was the law existing in the Colonies, lawlessness as between each and its neighbor. Anarchy, independent sovereignty, is the state of the nations now. In outlook and method they stand cheek by jowl with the browless cave-man who possessed only the faintest stirring in his dim consciousness that he was other than the animals with whom he fought for existence. Is this worthy of man at this distance that he has traveled from his primitive ancestor?

As the magnitude of this last step in fulfillment of the law of unity, the setting up of new standard in dealings among nations, towers above all others that have been taken, so, too, does the scale of resistance to it. Admittedly, the danger is great. But the principle involved is the same that has been given victorious effect by man over and over again, with none but beneficent results: and he has at his command to meet this difficulty, instruments beyond comparison in power and effectiveness with those which over and over again he has found sufficient. In addition, today, according to these teachings, he has the same assurance, heartening beyond price, that the force which moves the universe itself is behind him with all its might if he but have the faith and courage to step forth boldly with the law.

The path that he should follow has been pointed out. If he choose to set his feet upon it, Bahá’u’lláh speeds him on his way with these words: “These strifes and this bloodshed and discord must cease and all men be as one kindred and one family. Yet so it shall be. These fruitless strifes, these ruinous wars shall pass away and the Most Great Peace shall come.”

---

THE time has arrived for the world of humanity to hoist the standard of the oneness of the human world, so that solidarity and unity may bind together all the nations of the world, so that dogmatic formulas and superstitions may end, so that the essential reality underlying all the religions founded by the Prophets may be revealed.

That reality is one. It is the love of God, the progress of the world, the oneness of humanity. That reality is the bond which can unite all the human race. That reality is the attainment of the Most Great Peace, the discarding of warfare. That reality is progressiveness, the undertaking of the colossal tasks in life, the oneness of public opinion.—‘ABDU’L-BAHÁ.

[Page 22]

The darkness of this gloomy night shall pass away. Again the Sun of Reality will dawn from the horizon of the hearts. Have patience, wait but do not sit idle. Work while you are waiting, smile while you are worried with monotony. Be firm while everything around you is being shaken. Be joyous while the ugly face of despair grins at you. Speak aloud while the malevolent forces of the nether world try to crush your mind. Be valiant and courageous while men all around you are cringing with fear and cowardice. Do not yield to the overwhelming power of tyranny and despotism. Serve the cause of Democracy and Freedom. Continue your journey to the end. The bright day is coming. The nucleus of the new race is forming. The harbinger of the new ideals of International Justice is appearing. The trees of hope will become verdant. The copper of scorn and derision will be transmuted into the gold of honor and praise. The arid desert of ignorance will be transformed into the luxuriant garden of knowledge. The threatening clouds shall be dispelled and the stars of faith and charity will again twinkle in the clear heaven of human consciousness.

‘Abdu’l-Bahá

[Page 23]

PHILOSOPHY AND REVELATION

G. A. SHOOK

IV. Limitations of Philosophy

THE tendency of mystical philosophy to turn from the historic facts of prophetic religion (revelation) to mysticism in its quest for the immutable is explained when we consider the influence of the classic tradition. According to the classic tradition the highest good can come through the mind without the aid of experience in the world of practical affairs. It is not wholly inconsistent therefore for mystical philosophy to ignore the plain facts of prophetic religion and to base its hope upon mysticism, whose method and logic are very like its own. Had it turned with equal determination and vigor to investigate the underlying reality of the great historic religions, it would have discovered by now the object of its quest. While it is often difficult to discover the reality of true religion in the survival of savage practices and the counterfeit of man-made institutions, the task is simple compared to that of differentiating mystical experiences that appear to be genuine revelations, from those that are the product of training, suppression and desire.

As we have indicated, philosophy has always claimed that its outlook was more comprehensive, more universal than that of religion or science. Ultimate reality is its exclusive field; as a result it has become the rival of both religion and science. It cannot allow ethical consideration to interfere in its search for truth because its conclusions are superior to morals and ethics. Says Russell, “Thus the ethical interests which have often inspired philosophers must remain in the background: some kind of ethical interest may inspire the whole study, but none must obtrude in the detail or be expected in the special results which are sought.”

This is the attitude of a specialized science and experience shows the necessity for such an attitude. In a scientific investigation which is wholly independent of ethical values naturally one cannot be biased by a consideration of such values. But philosophy is not a specialized science and it is difficult to see how it can adopt the attitude and methods of science and, at the same time, claim that its knowledge is superior to that of science. Of [Page 24] course philosophy might be inspired by the intellectual freedom and courage of science but in this case it could not overlook so easily the practical consequences of prophetic religion. We should remember also that in a specialized science like physics or mathematics, the elimination of irrelevant material is very simple while in a field like economics or sociology, it is not only difficult but sometimes impossible.

In his investigation of religious experiences, James exhibits a sincere desire to be scientific and at the same time take cognizance of that higher self or external power with which we sustain harmonious relations and which is responsible for the good that results from such experiences. In explaining the origin or cause of this higher self, which he maintained is “. . . conterminous and continuous with a more of the same quality . . .,” he rejects the explanation that would naturally be advanced by religionists as it might prevent him from arriving at an unbiased conclusion. He says, “It would never do for us to place ourselves offhand at the position of a particular theology, the Christian theology, for example, and proceed immediately to define the ‘more’ as Jehovah, and the ‘union’ as his imputation to us of the righteousness of Christ. That would be unfair to other religions, and, from our present standpoint at least, would be an overbelief.”

While he had some justification for his aversion to theology, it is not obvious today that his theory of the subconscious self is superior in any way to the conclusions of theology. His theory may account for those mystical experiences in which the God of religions is not an object of contemplation, but it does not account for the spiritual and social influence of prophetic religion. It seems highly improbable, in the face of historic facts, that by turning inward to this higher self we could obtain results comparable to those obtained by prophetic religions. This higher self resembles the God of religion only to the extent that it seems external to the conscious self.

Apparently James reconciles his theory with theology but in reality he destroys completely the religious concept of God. “At the same time the theologian’s contention that the religious man is moved by an external power is vindicated, for it is one of the peculiarities of invasions from the subconscious region to take on objective appearances, and to suggest to the Subject an external control. In the religious life the control is felt as ‘higher’; but since on our hypothesis it is primarily the higher faculties of our own hidden mind which are controlling, the sense of union with the power beyond us is a sense of something, not merely apparently, but literally true.”

THIS external power is manifestly not the God of revelation. The position of the philosopher seems invulnerable. He will not let anything interfere with his search for truth; moral ethics, religion and even science must not stand in his way. But he is only human and he has made serious blunders. If he sweeps away everything except his ability to [Page 25] analyze and synthesize he may miss the truth, for history shows that his mental faculty is not infallible. He assumes, for example, that he and not the scientist understands the reality of science, consequently he has had more to say about the methods of science than the scientists themselves, and yet the real work of science is not done by philosophers. Commenting on this attitude of philosophy toward the sciences Dewey says, “It has forced philosophy into claiming a kind of knowledge which is more ultimate than theirs. In consequence it has, at least in its more systematic forms, felt obliged to revise the conclusions of science to prove that they do not mean what they say; or that, in any case they apply to a world of appearances instead of to the superior reality to which philosophy directs itself.” Philosophy has its place but not the last word. To quote Dewey again, “Philosophy has always claimed universality for itself. It will make its claim good when it connects this universality with the formation of directive hypotheses instead of with a sweeping pretension to knowledge of universal Being.”

Finally the limitations of philosophy are summed up admirably by Dewey: “Philosophy has often entertained the ideal of a complete integration of knowledge. But knowledge (more definitely scientific knowledge) by its nature is analytic and discriminating. It attains large syntheses, sweeping generalizations. But these open up new problems for consideration, new fields for inquiry; they are transitions to more detailed and varied knowledge. Diversification of discoveries and the opening up of new points of view and new methods are inherent in the progress of knowledge. This fact defeats the idea of any complete synthesis of knowledge upon an intellectual basis. The sheer increase of specialized knowledge will never work the miracle of producing an intellectual whole.”

MAY we not go one step farther? If the complete integration of knowledge upon an intellectual basis is impossible, is it not possible that this aim of philosophy may be realized ultimately by religion? Is it not conceivable that philosophy has served its purpose? We may be grateful for the little light it has shed and indulgent with its blunders.

The tendency today is toward specialized knowledge and some coordination is indispensable but it is not necessary to set aside a special class (philosophers) to direct this synthesis. In the New World Order of Bahá’u’lláh no provision is made for a ministry or clergy and it is obvious to most thoughtful people that a privileged class, set apart to direct our spiritual development, is not essential to a mature world. The same applies to a privileged class whose function it is to integrate all knowledge for us. This does not mean that if humanity be left to itself it will in some miraculous way integrate special results, far from it. At their zenith power the great religions of the past have accomplished this kind of synthesis; not completely perhaps, but they have succeeded where philosophies [Page 26] have failed.

The World Order of Bahá’u’lláh provides the two essentials for this new independence.

In the first place, it supplies that spiritual awakening without which no social or economic planning would be effective and in the second place it lays the foundation for a new social justice without which there would be no enlightenment, spiritual or intellectual, for the masses.

When there is no fear of war, intolerance, or injustice, when the prejudices between nations, races and classes have been eliminated, when the efforts of science have been turned to the elimination of drudgery, devastation by diseases, and preventable calamities, and to the production of leisure, knowledge and social security, and finally when all mankind is bound together by one common faith, then the world will need no philosophy to direct it to universal truth.

So much for the limitations of philosophy. Philosophy has taken science as its model but science as it exists today is not concerned with value. Its field is not the integration of all knowledge; after all, that is the work of philosophy if indeed any kind of integration is possible. Moreover philosophy cannot follow the spirit of science, the unfettered investigation of truth, and neglect the contributions of religion.

Perhaps to the majority of thoughtful people, who sense the significance of moral and spiritual values, the pronouncements of philosophy may seem merely ineffectual and harmless. But humanity is discouraged with the results of decadent religious institutions; it is in a mood to accept anything which seems real and dynamic. Under existing conditions, the replacement of Divine guidance, as in prophetic religion, by mystical experiences or the substitution of national heroes for prophets and saints takes on the dimensions of a major problem. While philosophy even with the aid of exact science may not be able to make any positive contribution to our moral and social development comparable to that of religion, it can do irreparable damage. “The vis inertiae of habit is tremendous, and when it is reinforced by a philosophy which also is embodied in institutions, it is so great as to be a factor in sustaining the present confusion and conflict of authorities and allegiances.” It is one thing to deny the God of religions and quite another to deify the state.

LET us return to mysticism. We have observed that the experience of the religious mystic is not unique. Rapture and ecstasy are not invariably associated with a religious background. Moreover the mystics themselves agree that some test is necessary to determine the validity of an immediate experience. Since it is the mind that determines and applies this test, the experience cannot be absolutely authoritative over the individual.

But there are still other considerations that limit the methods of the mystic. He is unable to transmit to others that which he experiences. When we go to him he tells us that we also must tread the mystical path. [Page 27] However, in practice, this is only possible for a few gifted individuals. When one goes to the prophet or to the Divine Word, he does not come away empty-handed. The early history of Christianity or Islám shows very clearly that the prophet has something to give to every class of society. Granting that the mystic has much to tell us about individual development, the possibilities of any kind of religious unity through mysticism are too inconsiderable to be practical. How can mysticism with its personal authority eradicate national, political or religious prejudice when it has no focal center to whom all classes may turn? If the nations and races of a distracted and deluded world could be united by any such man-made discovery, it would have been united long ago.

We may now inquire, can science come to the aid of mysticism? Can science make the revelations of the mystic any more authoritative or valid? Somewhere in the mystical state, perhaps just beyond the point where there is no object of contemplation, there seems to be a release of new energy. Can some specialized science control this phenomena so that mysticism can produce something that transcends the work of the mind? It seems unlikely because science as a whole agrees that the mystical experience is not knowledge. The experience, while an aid to creation, does not create. The farther we go from contemplation, that is the point where there is no object for reflection, the more we depend upon mere feeling; and feeling alone cannot lead us to universal truth.

Ostensibly reason should lead us to universal truth but as we have seen, in reality it does not. The human mind has its limitations and thinkers are never entirely free from feeling. Finally we must remember that even science yields universal truths only in the fields that can be verified. The speculations of mathematical physics are far from universal. Science has been of inestimable value to religious thinking in that it freed us from superstition, but when science takes a hand at fundamental religious concepts, it is in a field of speculation, a field in which its results cannot be verified. The so-called proofs for the existence of God are certainly not universally accepted. The same applies to such attributes as omnipotence and immanence.

It seems highly improbable therefore that philosophy and science will produce anything that can replace religion.

HOWEVER, there is still another path for the fore-sighted adventuresome soul who has a little spiritual perception and intellectual courage. A comprehensive view of history shows that the higher values come to humanity not by philosophical speculations nor scientific research nor even through some inner urge, but rather through great personalities. Art, music, and poetry have been given to the world by creative geniuses. Harmony and counter-point do not produce great music, nor does theology create revelation.

Now if we are free from bias we must admit that we have no grounds for believing that divine knowledge [Page 28] has ceased. On the contrary, unparalleled confusion in the world today might signalize the birth of a new revelation, a revelation suited to the maturity of this age. And such a revelation would undoubtedly come nearer this ideal of harmonizing all knowledge than has any religion in the past. To be sure, the methods and aims of such a religion would not necessarily be in agreement with the limited knowledge of contemporary thinkers. Indeed, we should be skeptical of any proposed revival of divine grace which conforms with our finite understanding. One is not superstitious nor limited in his comprehension when he admits there is an unfathomable mystery about all revelation.

That which man can conceive by his own powers is, in the very nature of the case, not equivalent to Divine Revelation.

To the philosophic mind it might seem strange that the strongest proof of a prophet’s message should be the prophet Himself, and yet every prophet upholds this universal truth. To quote from Bahá’u’lláh: “The first and foremost testimony establishing His truth is His own Self. Next to this testimony is His Revelation. For whoso faileth to recognize either the one or the other He hath established the words He hath revealed as proof of His reality and truth. This is, verily, an evidence of His tender mercy unto men. He hath endowed every soul with the capacity to recognize the signs of God. How could He, otherwise, have fulfilled His testimony unto men, . . .”

To accept the prophet’s testimony about himself would not leave much for philosophic discussion, to be sure, but we must remember that the approach to spiritual knowledge is not the approach to a scientific problem. The great creative geniuses like Bach bring to humanity something that transcends the judgment of contemporary critics. He and his music are sufficient proof of his mission to the musical world. Those who are content to estimate his contribution in terms of their own experience, never recognizing in him anything beyond their own ability, simply pass into oblivion. Historians relate the pronouncements of the critics merely to show their immaturity and egotism. The master musician is a channel for something that is greater than himself. That which he brings is a gift to humanity and the real lovers of music regard the master in no other light. When we turn to the prophet the same conditions exist, but to a superlative degree, for the prophet’s knowledge is universal.

Our duty and responsibility compels us to investigate. If one claims to be the bearer of a divine message the validity of his claims can be established readily enough. The real difficulty is not in establishing a proof of his message or his claim, but lies in freeing our minds and hearts from prejudice. History proves this. Philosophy rejects revelation not because it is unable to establish the truth of the prophet’s message but because it refuses to examine the evidence.

“Having created the world and all that liveth and moveth therein, He, [Page 29] through the direct operation of His unconstrained and sovereign Will, chose to confer upon man the unique distinction and capacity to know Him and to love Him—a capacity that must needs be regarded as the generating impulse and the primary purpose underlying the whole of creation. . . . Upon the inmost reality of each and every created thing He hath shed the light of one of His names, and made it a recipient of the glory of one of His attributes. Upon the reality of man, however, He hath focused the radiance of all of His names and attributes, and made it a mirror of His own Self. Alone of all created things man hath been singled out for so great a favor, so enduring a bounty.

“These energies with which the Day Star of Divine bounty and Source of heavenly guidance hath endowed the reality of man lie, however, latent within him, even as the flame is hidden within the candle and the rays of light are potentially present in the lamp. The radiance of these energies may be obscured by worldly desires even as the light of the sun can be concealed beneath the dust and dross which cover the mirror. Neither the candle nor the lamp can be lighted through their own unaided efforts, nor can it ever be possible for the mirror to free itself from its dross. It is clear and evident that until a fire is kindled the lamp will never be ignited, and unless the dross is blotted out from the face of the mirror it can never represent the image of the sun nor reflect its light and glory.

“And since there can be no tie of direct intercourse to bind the one true God with His creation, and no resemblance whatever can exist between the transient and the Eternal, the contingent and the Absolute, He hath ordained that in every age and dispensation a pure and stainless Soul be made manifest in the kingdoms of earth and heaven. Unto this subtle, this mysterious and ethereal Being He hath assigned a twofold nature; the physical, pertaining to the world of matter, and the spiritual, which is born of the substance of God Himself.”

CONCLUDED

---

THE incomparable Creator hath created all men from one same substance, and hath exalted their reality above the rest of His creatures. Success or failure, gain or loss, must, therefore, depend upon man’s own exertions. The more he striveth, the greater will be his progress. . . . He who is your Lord, the All-Merciful, cherisheth in His heart the desire of beholding the entire human race as one soul and one body. . . . There can be no doubt whatever that the peoples of the world, of whatever race or religion, derive their inspiration from one heavenly Source, and are the subjects of one God.

—BAHÁ’U’LLÁH.

[Page 30]

THE POISON OF DARKNESS

CHARLES FRINK

ANY one who has witnessed the insane antics of an alcoholic or a drug addict who has been, or is afraid of being, cut off from the poison which has become the means of his miserable existence, can be very thankful that he himself is not so afflicted.

If alcohol and narcotic drugs were destructive to the physical body only, and if their deadly effects were more thoroughly understood, this knowledge alone should be sufficiently frightening to check the flow of alcohol and greatly reduce the number of potential drunkards and narcotic drug addicts of the future.

Practically all civilized nations have laws intended to regulate the handling of alcoholic beverages and to restrict the traffic of opium and its derivatives, but owing to the lack of international cooperation, smuggling (of drugs especially) still continues and because of this, quantities of opiates far in excess of scientific and medical needs are being acquired and sold illegally. In the past, most of the narcotic drugs have been imported into the United States, but now we have an additional menace in the form of a weed which, because of its hardiness, thrives in almost every state in the union, hence the difficulty of its control or extermination.

Hashish or Indian hemp has been known to the Egyptians, Persians and Greeks for many centuries. The leaves from this noxious plant, rolled into cigarettes, are now circulating in the United States under the romantic name of marijuana. Marijuana is supposed to have made its way into the United States by the way of Mexico. This maddening intoxicant has been quite easily obtained from wily peddlers who shamelessly cater to gullible, imaginative youth of high school age. The appeal of these venders to prospective young addicts is generally made in soft-toned word pictures suggesting the wondrous physical strength and mental ecstasy to be experienced by the users of marijuana, —but there they stop. Should they tell the youngsters that while embraced within the coils of this viperous drug they are the helpless, conscienceless victims of any insane impulse that may happen to possess them, it would probably put an end to the nefarious business.

Of course it is unreasonable to imagine [Page 31] these peddlers jeopardizing their own selfish interests in this manner.

The responsibility for the education of our youth as to the pernicious effects of alcohol and narcotic drugs on body and soul lies with the parents and teachers, but unfortunately many parents are quite indifferent to, or ignorant of, these dangers while heretofore most teachers, aside from a few academic platitudes, have been more or less vague as to the actuality of this satanic force which rapidly destroys body and soul. Legislation is of course a necessary preliminary, but to date it has proven to be more or less of a flimsy legal fence surrounding or attempting to surround a territory which, as yet, remains undefined.

The United States Commissioner of Narcotics reports: “The menace of marijuana addiction is comparatively new to America. In 1931, the marijuana file of the U. S. Narcotic bureau was less than two inches thick, while today the reports crowd many large cabinets.”

The majority of thoughtful adults are more or less aware of the insidiously destructive effects of alcohol and are therefore better able to protect their offspring through instructive suggestions and, of course, the example of abstinence. Up until recently, relatively few laymen knew of the growing existence (to say nothing of the perniciousness) of what is technically known as cannabis sativa, or Indian hemp, within the borders of the United States. This ancient destroyer of human reason has many names.

EGOISM has no place in our true spiritual evolution. The doctrine of egoism is that “all virtue consists in the pursuit of self-interest.” One under the hypnotic influence of marijuana is in an acute state of suggestibility. In this condition the ego becomes greatly magnified and to the victim, nothing appears impossible. The same egotistical characteristics are also painfully evident in certain forms of insanity.

Of course, there are millions of people in the world who have never used alcohol or narcotic drugs; nevertheless among these millions there will be found a confusing variety of many degrees of rationality. Much depends upon the relative extent or grade of our inherent capacity for the expression of our God-given rational faculty. For this we are not responsible. Our responsibility, so it appears, is in what we, as individuals, do or neglect to do toward a more facile expression of our innate reasoning powers.

Insanity, whatever the cause, is an interference with or misdirection of the motive power of “the one invisible primal cause.” It is very evident that the sole objective of every rational mind should be to make every effort to harmonize or synchronize the functional activities of his own “Soul, Mind and Spirit.” Such an objective is seldom, if ever, attained by unregenerate man without persistent, constructive effort to know and to be. Such effort is positive; developing more and more sanity while approaching the Throne of God. On the contrary, submission to “the dictates [Page 32] of self and desire,” egoism and vice are the negative qualities which point to unreasonableness, insanity and spiritual death. The negative way is invariably that of the alcoholic or the drug addict. ‘Abdu’l-Bahá explains,— “Poison is harmful to man. It is the nature of man to find enjoyment in that which is gratifying to the senses; if he pursue this path he subverts his individuality to such a degree that the poison of darkness which was the means of death becomes the means of his existence and his nature becomes so degraded and his individuality so deflected that his one purpose in life will be to obtain the death-dealing drug.”

For consideration, let us consider an average, immature youth who foolishly believes there is some unlabored path to the realization of his sensual or sensuous dreams. Generally because of early environmental influences and the lack of proper instruction and training, he has developed a powerful dislike for all restraint and self-discipline. Naturally he wants to do great things in life, but with the least possible personal effort and sacrifice. Strong desire for unrestrained liberty of action toward the realization of his desires prompts him, in a moment of temptation, to listen to the alluring tales of joyous triumph over life’s hateful duties and annoying difficulties through the use of alcohol or narcotic drugs. So, in his ignorance, he chooses the path of destruction.

Had our young man been properly instructed he would know that the brain, which is normally the seat of the “rational faculty” would, to the degree of its poisoning, become sufficiently excited or paralyzed to exaggerate or inhibit the mode of his God-given rational faculty. When this poison is taken the objective, reasoning mind becomes wildly excited and grotesquely distorted. The subjective, unreasoning powers then take control and, much like an engine without a governor, they run wild in a maze of fantastic illusions which to the poisoned brain appear very real. No one can then predict what might happen; a song, suicide or a murder. Any one who has tried to convince a crazy man of his insanity will know what is meant. Many heinous crimes have been perpetrated by known addicts; crimes so revolting as to horrify the criminals themselves in their more lucid moments.

WHAT is more terrifying to the shattered mind of the alcoholic or the drug addict than the blinding light of reality? Is it any wonder that they scurry back into the mystic shadows of flitting illusions, avoiding the steady brilliance of their own essential individuality which is of God?

It is under such conditions that “the poison of darkness” has so deflected the rays of his divine individuality “that his one purpose in life will be to obtain the death-dealing drug.” This “one purpose” is now a perverted ideal, the pursuance of which only too often involves the unfortunate addict in a seething vortex of criminal activities.

As has been said above, legislation is a necessary preliminary, but the ultimate victory over such evils will undoubtedly be accomplished through [Page 33] education. The kind of education in this instance, however, is that which will prove the moral as well as the physical devastation effected by the use of alcohol and narcotic drugs, an education that will develop the “spirit of faith” and become the means of salvation from the dark pits of unreasonable beliefs and fruitless imaginings. Important and fundamentally necessary as education is, it is well to note, however, that the best of instruction and training is merely a means or mental process by which we may become more susceptible to and conscious of spiritual values. Education develops the talents by means of which the divine characteristics of the inherent, prepotent individuality are more clearly revealed. Personality “is the result of acquired arts.” Some notorious swindlers are said to have acquired charming personalities, but, as ‘Abdu’l-Bahá says, personality “has no element of permanence” “and can be turned in either direction, toward light or darkness.” Again He says, “The personality of man is developed through education, while his individuality which is divine and heavenly, should be his guide.” Bahá’u’lláh in “Hidden Words” says: “Verily, man is not called man until he is imbued with the attributes of the merciful. He is not man because of wealth and adornment, learning and refinement.”

‘Abdu’l-Bahá says: “The power of the rational mind is the power of the soul over the senses.” It is therefore quite evident that any thing which destroys or interferes with the instrumentality of our essential rational faculty defeats the very purpose of our mortal existence.

The confirmed drunkard or drug addict becomes a derelict upon the stormy seas of mortal thought. He has lost the power of reasonable calculation so necessary to determine right from the wrong direction. To him, anything that gratifies his perverted desires is right; that which interferes is hatefully wrong. The images he sees and the sensations he feels in his narcotic dreams become real, and the real things of life become terrifying nightmares. He has aligned himself, body and soul, with the forces of darkness and decomposition. The more he indulges, the more blinded he becomes in the brilliant light of reason. Other souls in a similar state are his associates. The shadowy pits of spiritual gloom become his infernal habitat and “the poison of darkness” the means of his existence.

---

IF the edifice of religion shakes and totters, commotion and chaos will ensue and the order of things will be utterly upset, for in the world of mankind there are two safeguards that protect man from wrongdoing. One is the law which punishes the criminal; but the law prevents only the manifest crime and not the concealed sin; whereas the ideal safeguard, namely the religion of God, prevents both the manifest and the concealed crime, trains men, educates morals, compels the adoption of virtues and is the all-inclusive power which guarantees the felicity of the world of mankind.

—‘ABDU’L-BAHÁ.

[Page 34]

WORLD ORDER

S. M. B. KEENE

A COMPLACENT dictionary tells us that order is “a normal arrangement.” To arrive at a clearer understanding we look up “to arrange.” It is “to put in order.” So far it seems simple. But, disconcertingly, “to arrange” requires definite action to bring about that putting into order. It cryptically includes: To adjust; to adapt to new circumstances; to settle disputes; to give instruction.

That disarming definition “a normal arrangement” was misleading. We now discover requirements which, when applied to the many disorders which confront us, seem insuperable. They may demand too much of us. We must look into it.

First. To adjust. As civilized human beings we have been doing that since we were born. As infants we adjusted to the best that was offered to insure our own pleasure and safety. As older children we developed that pattern. We had discovered that adjustment required concessions. We grimly schemed—with the forthrightness of the young—for the maximum of gain for what we were relinquishing. All that, to achieve a small private adjustment.

Second. To adapt to new circumstances. We must know definitely what circumstances before we commit ourselves. Our lives may already be harmoniously to our own liking. To adapt carries the unpleasant implication that we must change. Even in our private capacity the demands of the unknown appall us.

Third. To settle disputes. The very words presuppose resistance. To settle requires concessions. Even between two friends a true settlement demands diplomacy, understanding and faith.

Fourth. To give instruction. That is easy. But to take it? May we choose our instructors? A good instructor on a relatively unimportant subject is infinitely more inspiring than a poor instructor on an important subject. To find competent instructors who will also teach us what we need to know is bewildering even for individual development.

These are the primary requirements by which to attain order: To adjust; to adapt to new circumstances; to settle disputes; to give instruction. The succession is arresting. Each must be met and assimilated before it is possible to proceed.

To adjust is comparatively easy. [Page 35] The individual is given a wide range from which to choose. He of necessity makes concessions, but it is possible to juggle the adjustment and retain what is of most importance.

To adapt to new circumstances. That goes farther afield. Outside opinions and interests intrude. Other individuals who have also adjusted— as nearly as possible to their own liking —present an array of new circumstances vitally important to themselves. Each has his own. Each is still concerned with attaining order, but it is possible, among these conflicting interests, to become unadaptingly irritated at what appear to be the unreasonable demands of the others. Some never get beyond this point.

To settle disputes. Having reached this stage of development further requirements become surprisingly simple. Having progressed from personal adjustments to willingly assimilating new circumstances which contribute only to the proper balance of the whole, is to have acquired a judiciousness which of necessity decides for the greatest good. No other course is possible.

To give instruction. To have learned to adjust and to adapt to new circumstances, and because of these experiences to have learned to make or accept settlements in terms of human needs is to have acquired the modesty and power of a useful instructor. Here, at last, is order. But can this system be applied to world needs?

THE greatest mass-disorder today is among what is called “the workers,” not to be confused with “labor.” Under the domination of both labor and capital the workers have become a world-class on the defensive. A class conditioned by both these dictators. A class conditioned by distrust and fear. A class conditioned by generations of insecurity.

Here, at least, is a world-amalgamation brought on by a common need. The name “worker” has taken on a prideful meaning to those who hear it. They are feeling the force of human solidarity. Mass-strength is pushing up from the bottom. It is a fine beginning.

But ultimate success comes only through order. Every class must help those workers, grown suspicious and bitter from generations of suppression. Without help and encouragement they cannot adjust, nor adapt to new circumstances, nor settle disputes, nor give—and take—instruction.

Mass-disorder is not confined to the workers. It is being demonstrated from the top as well as from the bottom. Over-security breeds arrogance and misuse of power, and inevitably that power is threatened by those who are dominated; and inevitably those who are threatened fight back with all the weapons of power. Unless this dominating class learns to adjust, to adapt to new circumstances, to settle disputes, to give —and take—instruction what of world order?

Is it possible that order may follow disorder in a planned sequence beyond our understanding? Is it possible that generations of insecurity have developed a class strong enough [Page 36] to demand recognition? Is it possible that generations of power have weakened a class which had usurped more than can belong to any class and maintain a proper balance?

Will the class struggling up from the bottom and the class which must relinquish some of its power meet on a common ground?

Will they, together, learn to adjust; to adapt to new circumstances; to settle disputes; to give—and take —instruction?

One must have faith.

---

VISTA OF PEACE

ROSE NOLLER

Peace is a pattern planted like a seed

In every man, with tendrils climbing into light,

And roots that reach into the subsoil of his night;

Pattern defined, though chaos thrust its rooted weed.

Peace is all patterned, though it has no creed;

It was man’s cry through ages’ plunging plight,

His white desire in fear or pride; in thickest fight

It reoccurred unheard in song, mysteriously keyed. . . .

Evolution is the upward stepping time of life,

But deep and far, beyond this outer shadow pageantry,

Beyond the backward and the forward moving stress and strife,

Is Peace,—the eternal, changeless ancestry:

From this beginning shall time bury arms and knife,

From this grows man’s triumphant destiny!

How far the aeons stretch with war and blood!

How grim the sightless eyes, the shattered limbs,

The haunted, trouble-weighted interims.

How lost all starry rays in hopeless mud. . . .

Yet strength creeps up like lively springtime bud,

And rugged revelations crown despair,

While vistas, glimpsing clear the goal foursquare,

Arise with hope and struggle from time’s flood. . . .

Man, by his own Will, shall lay the plan,

He shall make laws, with understanding build,—

Frustration yet shall have her warlike span,—

But this same time shall see all prophecy fulfilled:

So, it was destined before the world began,—

All Hail! The bright-starred Brotherhood of Man!

[Page 37]

“THEY DARED TO LIVE”

Book Review

MILLIE B. HERRICK

“THEY Dared to Live” is a book well worth the reading. It is a small volume containing thirty-five inspiring sketches of the lives of men and women of today. They are taken from all over the world and from various fields of endeavor. Many of them are still living.

They have lived dangerously, have blazed new trails, have conquered obstacles, and have won triumphant faith. The author, Robert Bartlett, says that they are the torch bearers of the world who have probed to the root of reality.

And what is reality? Bahá’u’lláh defines it as Truth, as Light, as Love, and Faith. It is a world of philanthropic deeds, of self-sacrifice, of sanctity and holiness—a world of the love of God.

Let us see, therefore, how some of these persons found this reality and made this world a finer place thereby for others to live in.

Edward A. Wilson was one who lived dangerously. He played a good part in the great scheme of life. At the age of nine, while his classmates were playing their games, he was out in the fields and woods studying cloud formations, flower buds, and bird songs. His outdoor ramblings he kept up during his college days at Cambridge.

While in London attending medical school, he became interested in the Cains Mission in the slums and took charge of the children’s service on Sunday mornings.

His religion was a mingling of God, Nature, and Humanity. These words from his mother’s diary describe him as “a body frail and delicate, a noble soul and spiritual.” He once wrote: “Truth is like a lighted lamp in that it cannot be hidden away in the darkness because it carries its own light.”

When Captain Scott was setting out for a scientific expedition to the Antarctic in 1901, he asked this young naturalist and doctor to join his party. He became the most beloved man on the ship, “the ingenious person that could get around all difficulties.”

Wilson made a valuable collection of sketches on Antarctic geography and animal life, though his fingers were frost-bitten and his eyes snow-blinded.

[Page 38] When the party arrived back in England in 1904, Dr. Wilson made addresses, wrote books and illustrated them. He became an authority on Antarctic zoology.

Then came Scott’s second expedition to the Antarctic in 1910. He could not resist going. In December a small party reached the Pole, but on their return in March a blizzard overtook them just eleven miles from One-Ton Depot where provisions were stored.

As he lay in a tent covered with snow, freezing to death, Dr. Wilson wrote to his wife: “Don't be unhappy —all is for the best. We are playing a good part in a great scheme arranged by God Himself, and all is well. . . . All the things I had hoped to do with you after this expedition are as nothing now, but there are greater things for us to do in the world to come.”

Edward Wilson had a profound grasp of religion. . .

When a young woman, Martha Berry “married an idea.” She is called an Amazing Builder of Life. The daughter of a wealthy Georgia family, she began her school in a log cabin on her own plantation.

One Friday night she heard a knock at her door. She opened it and beheld a small dirty boy with a muddy pig tied to a rope:

“Please, Ma’am, I’m Willie Jackson and this is my pig. We’uns is come to school, I done carried the pig heah for my tuition. He’s powerful lean now, but he’ll pick up tor’able quick.”

Both the pig and Willie were welcomed in the log cabin school for mountain boys. Now it has grown into a remarkable series of schools with a campus of thirty thousand acres. Any boy or girl in the southern states who is poor and has a good character may secure here a good education. Work and beauty are its two fundamentals.

Good fairies have waved their magic wands over this enthusiastic leader and her family of southern youth. . . .

“I am tired of all this talk. . . . Hundreds of people sit about tables talking about peace, but the world takes no notice. . . . I will get twenty men and women to work for peace and perhaps somebody will pay attention.”

Thus spoke Pierre Ceresole, a stalwart young Swiss. In 1920 he organized the Service Civil Volontaire International with a small group of friends who were willing to work with their hands and would go to any country in need and work there without pay under discipline like that of a military camp.

Months later, Pierre in blue overalls appeared in Liechtenstein in the village of Schaan. The river had burst over the dam and swept away bridges, barns, and homes. Fertile fields were buried in mud and stone.

Volunteers came at his call from twenty-two different nations. Among the women were teachers, nurses, dress makers; among the men doctors, musicians, and students. They built a railway and uncovered the soil.

“Who are you, any way?” asked puzzled natives.

“The International Volunteers. [Page 39] Pierre Ceresole called us, and we came.”

“Do you fight?”

“No, we never destroy. We build."

In six months the natives planted their crops in the reclaimed soil. The volunteers dispersed.

Such is the work of Pierre Ceresole, Captain of the Pick-and-Shovel Brigade. . . .

One day while James Weldon Johnson was teaching in a southern city, he turned into a bicycle shop. Some half-dozen white men were standing about. One insolent fellow among them said to him, “What wouldn’t you give to be a white man?”

Controlling himself, Johnson slowly retorted: “Let me see. I don't know just how much I would give. I’d have to think it over. But at any rate, I am sure, I wouldn’t give anything to be the kind of white man you are. No, I am sure I wouldn’t; I’d lose too much by the change.”

Johnson is a successful negro poet and song writer in American Letters. He has received a number of honorary degrees for his achievements in literature. He has been also, United States Consul in Venezuela and Nicaragua.

Because of his color his life has been in danger many times in the United States where race discriminations are practised. When he was traveling in France, however, he felt free from dangerous taboos, free “to be merely a man.”

He says, “White America cannot save itself if it prevents us from being saved. The pledge to myself which I have endeavored to keep through the greater part of my life is: ‘I will not allow one prejudiced person or one million, or one hundred million to blight my life nor bear me down to spiritual defeat. My inner life is mine, and I shall defend its integrity against all the powers of hell’.” . . .

Hu Shih has awakened China to new ways. China once thought that women should bind their feet to increase their beauty. Now she regards the custom as a tragedy.

When he was eight years old he was reading Chinese and learning the classics. Later he won a scholarship that sent him to America where he received from Columbia University the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. In 1917 he returned to his home land.

Today he is called the “Father of the Chinese Renaissance.” His books are read by thoughtful people throughout China. Although still in his forties he has been a hero for fifteen years.

He has become the voice of a new day. For example, fifteen years ago he issued his demand for the freedom of women: “The old family system must be altered until there is respect for each individual. The old law must go which said, ‘While at home a woman must obey her father, when married she must obey her husband, when her husband dies she must obey her son’; Women must be given the opportunity to make a living so they can be independent.”

Hu Shih is the heroic Awakener of millions. . . .

“Poor old fellow, how queer he is!” people said of Jean Henri Fabre, when they saw him engaged in his work from morning till night. But in [Page 40] this way he was able to discover uncommon facts of the insect world. His hours were passed in the burning sun on hands and knees studying the wasps in their burrows or watching beetles in the fields or ants in the grass.

Jean Fabre knew more about insects than any one in France. He was poor with scarcely enough money to buy food for his family as he carried on his studies of nature. He was happy only in learning.

Most of his writing was done between the ages of sixty and ninety. He attained fame while seeking nothing but truth—truth concealed in the insect world.

When he was ninety a friend came to tell him that they were erecting a statue of him in a near by spot.

“Well, well,” he said, “I shall see myself but shall I recognize myself? I’ve had so little time for looking at myself!” “What inscription do you prefer on the statue?” And he who had spent his long life among the humblest of created things, replied: “One word: Labor!” . . .

Relatives and friends called Toyohiko Kagawa a lunatic, as he turned away from his home in order to try out a new religion in the slums of Kobe. And slum folks called him a lunatic, too, as he served among them. Thieves, murderers, prostitutes and morons were his neighbors. He tried to show them how they could improve their lot.

His body is frail: Sharing his bed with a street urchin be contracted trachoma and soon lost the sight of one eye; he has suffered for years from tuberculosis.

“Doctors gave me up years ago,” he has said. “It is faith in God that has kept me going. I am amazed at the strength that comes to me when I pray and trust God.”

His novel, “Before the Dawn” made him a literary hero. Besides this, he is the author of more than sixty books whose royalties have established settlements among the slum people in Kobe, Asaka and Tokyo.

“I want to conquer illness, ignorance, evil, ugliness, and apostasy. . . . I want to be fully awake to reality. . . . Thus let me lay hold of life . . . and glorify this seemingly sordid civilization and push it upward.”

Toyohiko Kagawa calls himself a Gambler for God. . . .

Explorer, educator, pick-and-shovel worker, poet, philosopher, naturalist, and social reformer—these found the verities of life as they probed to her roots in thought and in action.

May we, too, dare like them to live!

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