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[Page 159]

WORLD ORDER

AUGUST 1938

PRICE 20c

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CONTENTS OF THIS ISSUE

AUGUST 1938 VOLUME 4 NUMBER 5

LIFE AS WILL • EDITORIAL ......................................... 161

PROGRESS IN INTERNATIONAL UNDERSTANDING • HELEN S. EATON ......... 163

LOST HORIZON, Poem • HILDA ROSE STICE ............................ 166

RELIGION AND THE NEW AGE • A. G. B. .............................. 167

DISCIPLINE AMONG CHILDREN • H. R. BHATIA ......................... 173

THE NEGRO IN AMERICA, concluded • JAMES A. SCOTT ................. 177

STEPPING STONES TO A NEW WORLD ORDER, III • EDNA ROHRS EASTMAN ... 186

IN SEA AND STARS, Poem • STANTON A. COBLENTZ ..................... 190

RELIGIOUS FOUNDATIONS FOR CHARACTER • STANWOOD COBB .............. 191

ARE WE LOSING THE LIGHT? • HELEN INDERLEID ....................... 198

VIEWING THE WORLD AS AN ORGANISM

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 and Horace Holley. CONTRIBUTING EDITORS: Alice Simmons Cox, Genevieve L. Coy, G. A. Shook, Dales S. Cole, Bertha Hyde Kirkpatrick, Marzieh Carpenter, Hasan M. Balyusi, Shirí Fozdar, Inez Greeven. 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 BAHA’I PUBLISHING COMMITTEE. Title Registered at U.S. Patent Office.

August 1938, Volume 4, Number 5

[Page 161]

WORLD ORDER

August 1938 Volume 4 No. 5

LIFE AS WILL

THE element of will in human character lies on the borderline of unplumbed mystery. We take emotion to pieces and calmly inspect how they fit together and what makes them work. We become weary of the burden of knowledge, when knowledge about knowledge reflects back and forth as from an endless line of facing mirrors. But the theme of will contains an inexhaustible appeal. Those who seem to possess a powerful will have throughout history secured the greatest of earthly prizes without the reinforcement of faculties which a rational analysis would declare to be essential.

The element of will appears under four aspects. First, as a positive force directed outward from personality upon the external environment. Second, as a positive force directed inward upon the personality itself. Third, an outwardly-directed wish; and fourth, the wish that turns within. Will appears in these two modes and these two contrasted polarities of action.

The world of the West, generally speaking, has developed that form of will which is most active and most external in its action. The world of the East, on the contrary, has evolved the form of will which is not less active but subjectively expressed. Thus, while the West has settled continents, subdued the forces of nature and dominated society through political and economic instruments, the East has not less thoroughly explored the realms of consciousness and acquired mastery over the resources of human personality.

It is through will that man invokes the forces of destiny and gains experience during his earthly life. A wish appears to be a passive and wistful or hopeless aspect of will. A wish may be felt in endless repetition without producing consequence; it is the will encaged, incapable of flight, invoking no response from the seen or unseen worlds.

But the distinction between western and eastern personalities is no clear contrast between the values of materialism and spirituality. The subjective realm is not necessarily spiritual, though lack of insight makes it appear to be so. Those who arrive at [Page 162] apparently superhuman degrees of control over the mental and physical organism can be, and usually are, as materialistic as any dominating figure in the fields of political or economic action. The active, consciously-directed will, whether it works outward or inward, is no more than human nature in a condition of seeming freedom to act. Whether we concentrate upon the organization of a great factory or upon attaining more control of the elements of self, the goal is conquest and not necessarily spiritual development. In the one case, freedom to act seizes upon the means to outer conquest; in the other case the conquest is psychological or “within.” The East has pursued a different path because the man of the East found himself in a natural and social environment offering none of the opportunities of the unsettled West.

There is today a certain seeming shifting of values between the two types. If the easterner despises the westerner’s childish effort to become adept in ten lessons, the westerner can feel no less pity for the enthusiasm with which the East has turned to the ideals of empire and social power so long motivating the West.

THE mystery of will is not plumbed by contrasting one typical form of human expression with another. It is necessary to judge all aspects of will by reference to a higher Reality. The spiritualizing of will is the essential task of religion during life upon earth. Religion as feeling, religion as knowledge, is no more than the outer court of the holy edifice, where children bring their toys to play in the sun, or soldiers hurry to utter a prayer for safety in tomorrow’s battle.

We touch the fringe of the mystery when we reflect upon how the sanctity of spiritual experiences has been renewed over and over from age to age by humble and unassuming followers of the Prophet. They had possessed little or none of that active dominance which makes for human leadership and earthly power. The roll of the saints in every Faith, before saintship becomes identified either with heroic service to the Church—the western will in operation—or with psychological attainment—the influence of the East—contains few whose power of will had been notable before faith was born. Such believers yield their own will to a higher will. Henceforth, for no personal conquest of either Western or Eastern type, they manifest a degree of will which no unbeliever can ever match.

The formal movement of psychology has not penetrated into the essence of this voluntary yielding of will to the Will. It cannot be explained by the four obvious aspects of human will previously mentioned. One may not say that man has reached upward, since the Will has also reached down. East and West alike must needs humble itself before this true mystery, which has been re-enacted in all ages transformed by the power of Revelation. The chosen Messenger of God walks upon earth, lives a Life and reveals a Holy Book. Somehow, a blind and perverted human nature learns how to become worthy of this transcendent bounty.

H.H.

[Page 163]

PROGRESS IN INTERNATIONAL UNDERSTANDING

HELEN S. EATON

IN a world where ideas compete for attention, any social ideal that is to prevail must be worked for by a definite plan, carefully organized and competently followed. The social value of a simple, politically neutral language, which can serve as the international medium of communication, has been considered in previous articles in this magazine. The purpose of the present article is to give a brief account of the organization of work directed toward securing authoritative agreement upon a form of international language which will be generally acceptable.

The International Auxiliary Language Association, usually referred to as IALA, after more than ten years of research, began, in January, 1936, to put into operation its Plan for Obtaining Agreement on an Auxiliary World-Language. The Plan had been drafted the previous years in collaboration with consultants of IALA in twelve different countries, so it may be regarded in its essential conception as an international concurrence upon a procedure to gain, step by step, ultimate agreements of various types in support of one constructed language for all kinds of international use.

The first type of agreement aimed for in IALA’s Plan is that among linguists and the advocates of different constructed language systems. Although hundreds of experiments in language making have been made as answers to the language problem, there are six that, according to IALA’s study of the historic auxiliary language movement, together merit serious consideration as the basis of the international language of the future. Each of the six has an organized body of adherents and, with one exception, an official organ, and each has stood the test of practical serviceability in one or more forms of international communication. They are: Esperanto, the creation of Dr. L. L. Zamenhof; Ido, developed by a group who believed Esperanto could be improved; [Page 164] Latino sine flexione, the work of Professor G. Peano and his associates in the Academia pro Interlingua; Occidental, developed by Edgar de Wahl of Esthonia; Esperanto II, a revision of Esperanto proposed by René de Saussure of Switzerland; and Novial, the system produced by Professor Otto Jespersen of Copenhagen. Of these six, Novial is the only one evolved by a specialist in linguistics. Professor Jespersen is internationally recognized as an authority in this field.

Technical conferences in which experts in these several systems can come together for friendly discussion with disinterested linguists are now being called by IALA’s Committee for Agreement. This small international committee is made up of the following persons:

Chairman, Albert Debrunner, Professor of Indo-European Linguistics and Classical Philology at the University of Berne;

William E. Collinson, Professor of German and Honorary Lecturer in Comparative Philology at the University of Liverpool;

Joseph Vendryes, Dean of the Faculty of Letters of the University of Paris;

Nicolaas van Wijk, Professor of Baltic and Slavonic Languages at the University of Leiden;

Secretary, Willem de Cock Buning, of The Hague, formerly Trade Commissioner of The Netherlands East Indies;

Ex officio, Mrs. Dave H. Morris, Honorary Secretary of the International Auxiliary Language Association.

In 1936 five technical conferences were held, four at Brussels, and one in Copenhagen. In 1937 five more such conferences took place, two in Brussels, two in Paris, and one in London. Out of a process of analysis, comparison, and compromise, in the light of linguistic knowledge, there is gradually being built up a body of criteria by which the characteristics of a scientifically sound international language can be determined.

Examples of criteria already agreed upon are:

Adaptability for modern mechanisms. As far as practicable, the language shall have a maximum degree of adaptability for printing, typewriting, shorthand, telegraphy, reproduction by record (phonograph, dictaphone) and transmission by telephone and radio.

Provenance of roots. The vocabulary shall be based mainly upon West European languages, with preferential treatment for roots found in both Romanic languages and English, as well as English and German. Latin prototypes shall be given preference over their Neo-Latin descendants.

Structure. The structure shall be logical, regular and not dependent upon the characteristics of particular ethnic languages.

Some twenty-eight criteria have already been accepted in the conferences.

A small Technical Staff is continuously at work at the University of Liverpool upon detail linguistic research pertaining to the problems under consideration. A part of this research is financed by a grant from the [Page 165] Rockefeller Foundation.

IALA has the benefit of drawing upon scholarship representative of many different special fields of the science of linguistics. Members of the faculties of universities in many countries are serving as Consultants. They receive questionnaires and communications from the Committee for Agreement and send back to them their opinions on basic matters.

As a result of this exchange of knowledge and criticism, decisions will be made as to which features (principles and vocabulary) of the six aforesaid candidate languages can best be selected and adapted for the definitive language.

The next step will be the detailed work of developing these basic features into a standard form for the international language. This will be the work of a special group of linguists and interlinguists, in an International Language Institute, for which IALA’s Plan calls.

Another type of agreement may be termed promotive. Here IALA is turning to international organizations as the established channels for cooperation on an international scale. Every cross section of human interest is represented by these groups of men and women, who have first-hand knowledge of the language problem in their conferences. Their interest in IALA’s Plan is being secured by a series of conferences in which unofficial representatives of these bodies are informed of IALA’s procedures which are under way. One such conference was held in New York City in 1935, and was doubtless attended by some of the readers of this article. Another, held in Paris, in October, 1937, resulted in unofficial representatives of twenty-five well known organizations expressing interest in IALA’s aims and arranging to have their respective organizations regularly informed concerning the progress of the Plan. Among them were members or officers of such groups as World’s Alliance of Y. M. C. A.’s, International Union of League of Nations Associations, International Commission on Education by Moving-Picture and Radio, Society of Friends, International Red Cross, and Rotary International.

A third type of agreement is that sought from educators concerning the educational value of a constructed language. IALA’s researches in educational psychology, originally directed by Dr. Edward L. Thorndike of Columbia University, have thrown new light upon the process of language learning. IALA holds that with a wider field for experimentation the findings of its experiments in schools to date will be substantiated, namely, that the study of a Latin-derived, regularly constructed language is, for the English-speaking pupil, an excellent introduction to the study of foreign languages, and stimulates an interest in the cultures and tongues of other lands, as well as serving as a simple tool for direct international communication.

A fourth type of agreement is that obtained from Governments. IALA has recently submitted its documentation to nearly every country in the world, with the request that a functionary be appointed to keep his Government informed of IALA’s progress. [Page 166] Sixteen Governments have already named such functionaries. For the United States, John W. Studebaker, Commissioner of Education, Department of the Interior, has been appointed.

While technical and promotive work is being followed through, a fifth type of agreement will be sought, namely, agreement upon the nature of the International Language Commission, projected in the Plan, to sanction the language finally formulated by the projected International Language Institute, and to recommend the practical steps for its introduction into use. IALA is hopeful that this stage may be attained within as short a time as the next few years.

LOST HORIZON

HILDA ROSE STICE

After the hopeless night of desperate flying

Past cloud-wrapped mountain range and perilous peak,

With death the certain goal they seemed to seek—

The sole uncertainty the mode of dying—

What joy to reach the lamasery lying

Open to sun and stars, remote, unique,

Waiting the ultimate triumph of the meek,

Secure from enmity and jealous prying.

We too may find, after the hard sojourning,

Some Shangri-La that shines through distant haze,

Rich answer to the deep and quenchless yearning

For peace and truth that haunts us all our days;

From such content there will be no returning

To the disquiet of our wonted ways.

[Page 167]

RELIGION AND THE NEW AGE

A. G. B.

ONLY through religion—so it has been revealed—can mankind enter into the New Age. For that which will mark off this coming era from all the eras of the past is that in it the Unity of God will be acknowledged throughout the globe, and all mankind conscious of their brotherhood will unite in submission to one Universal Father and in obedience to one universal Revelation.

“This is the Day,” wrote Bahá’u’lláh, “in which God’s most excellent favors have been poured out upon men, the Day in which His most mighty grace hath been infused into all created things. It is incumbent upon all the peoples of the world to reconcile their differences and with perfect unity and peace abide beneath the shadow of the Tree of His care and loving kindness. . . . Soon will the present day order be rolled up and a new one spread out in its stead.” So great, He declared in another place, would be the changes that must come to pass in this New Day, that nations would be shaken to their base, statesmanship and learning be confounded and only those would be enlightened who turned to God, “received at the hand of favor the wine of inspiration and drank it in His Name saying ‘praise be to Thee, desired of the peoples of the world; praise be to Thee, beloved of the hearts of the yearning.’”

In many such pronouncements as these Bahá’u’lláh long ago proclaimed the advent of the Day of God. His Message was brought by ‘Abdu’l-Bahá in person to the West more than a quarter of a century ago; and nearly one hundred years have passed since the Báb in Persia first gave authoritative expression to the same truth.

“Immensely exalted is this Day,” He cried, “above the days of the Apostles of old. Immeasurable is the difference. You are the witnesses of the Dawn of the promised Day of God. You are the partakers of the mystic chalice of his Revelation. . . . Purge your hearts of worldly desires and let angelic virtues be your adorning. . . . The days when idle worship was deemed sufficient are ended. The time is come when nought but the purest motive, supported by deeds of [Page 168] stainless purity, can ascent to the throne of the Most High and be acceptable unto him.”

Even today, such a statement will sound to many remote and strange. What has this Age to do with religion? It is as all must see an age of secularism: that, indeed, has been its proudest boast. Certainly the recognized representatives of religion did not in the nineteenth century welcome the first approach of this New Age. It was not they whose intuitions warned them of its coming and who sang of its unborn glories in prophetic chants. They did not champion either the intellectual advance nor the social reforms in which during the nineteenth century the approach of a new era was first seen. On the contrary they seemed suspicious and bewildered. They were unsympathetic and even hostile. Their attitude proved for themselves highly unfortunate; for they failed to stop or halt the forward movement, they alienated vigorous and progressive minds and more and more lost their old control over the feelings and the thoughts of the public. Their prestige and influence continually weakening, they were quite unable to give to the developing mentality of the time a spiritual quality, a religious outlook. The new knowledge and material power which man gained was not accepted as a progressive revelation of the Creator’s glory and bounty. It was allowed to pander to human pride, and intellectual insolence. Human wisdom in its most materialistic aspect was to be all sufficient to bring in a period of reasonableness and enduring prosperity. Man’s mind became so puffed up with self-conceit that there was no room in it for worship or the love of God—often no room in it for a belief in God.

BUT human wisdom, divorced from spirituality, cannot explain what this New Age is—nor whence nor why it comes—nor whither it leads. Human wisdom does not know what to do with this New Age, cannot take advantage of its constructive opportunities nor bring into the field of action its progressive ideas and noble ideals. What it has at last achieved is to build the terrific undirected energies of mankind into a World-Frankenstein and let the Monster loose upon the earth, ravaging and to ravage.

Ecclesiastical wisdom did not succeed. Mundane wisdom has failed. Religion remains yet to be tried.

There is today only one light shining undimmed in the gathering darkness. There is in the wide earth only one solitary voice lifted to give a message of comfort and hope, of courage, of promise, of triumph. There is only one rational reading of the signs of the times. There is only one intelligible account of what these portents mean and how they can be used.

“O People! The doors of the Kingdom are opened—the sun of truth is shining upon the world—the fountains of life are flowing—the daysprings of mercy have appeared—the greatest and most glorious light is now manifest to illuminate the hearts of men: awake and hear the voice of God calling in the highest—‘Come unto me, O ye children of men; come [Page 169] unto me, O ye who are thirsty, and drink from this sweet water which is descending in torrents upon all parts of the globe!’”

For nearly one hundred years this exalted Message has rung forth announcing in the name of a self-revealing God that now again an epoch of crisis has arrived, a universal opportunity greater even than any of the past has been vouchsafed to men, that the time of the maturity of the human race is near at hand, that great new tasks are set and great new achievements await the exertion of man’s growing strength. If the difficulties that confront humanity at the moment are new and unprecedented so in like measure is the guidance and the help now offered by God. God never has deserted His people on their upward way in the past and assuredly He has not done so now. The march of Mankind is one single and continuous movement. Progress is a reality, ordained by the Creator and controlled by Him. Since the world began every Great Faith has borne witness to this truth. Though revelations be many, Religion is one: its Source, its Meaning is the same. Were Zoroaster here today, or Abraham or Buddha or Christ, He would proclaim this same Message of the unequalled greatness of this Day, of the near approach of the maturity and the final redemption of the human race. Not by chance has this New Age come upon us; not by the originating greatness of the peoples of this time. So far is man from having through his own exceeding deserts created this wonderful Age that he cannot accept its bounties when God hands them to him. It comes from a Mind and from a Will that outdate and transcend the mind and will of humanity. The ancient power that brought man into being and has borne him along the path of development to this point, designed this era of maturity and in His own good time brought it to pass. The Father revealed by Christ and by all the prophets who have been since the world began has opened the glories of this Day, and the government of it is upon His shoulder, not on the shoulder of man.

MANY Scriptures of far distant times foretold the advent of such a time as this—a time of maturity, of peril, of fulfilment. If one purpose of those predictions was to bear witness to the divine control of human history and to teach men from the earliest days of its progress to look forward and hope and trust and have no fear, another purpose is evident now. Those prophecies for all their lucidity and vividness can never have enabled mankind to picture or comprehend in any adequate degree its future development: a boy may be told he will one day be a grown man but he cannot anticipate in his imagination or most eager dreams the adult powers of his heart and mind. The generations of long ago (however faithfully they believed what Zoroaster or Confucius told them of the ordained course of mankind’s progress) could in no wise have conceived any semblance of this modern world. But we, the heirs of the ages, living in mankind’s adolescence, when that Event which was once a remote prediction has come in very fact to [Page 170] pass, we, looking back down the vista of past Revelations, can see that what humanity now experiences for the first time was known long, long milleniums ago to the Eternal Mind of God. He in His providence revealed it to the Teachers whom He sent into the world from time to time, to guide His children and point them on the right way to their destined goal. We, because we live in this late day, are equipped to see more clearly the reference and meaning of those prophecies than our forefathers were. “I have told you before it come to pass that when it is come to pass, ye might believe.”

To believe in ancient times these predictions demanded faith. It does so no longer, for they now have come true. Instead of making a demand on faith they fortify faith. They bear out and help man to accept the great truth which Bahá’u’lláh proclaims of the continuity of human history and the ordered development of mankind from childhood to adolescence and to maturity.

The discoveries and the inventions, the new ideas and new ideals which distinguish this epoch, are not casual nor fortuitous; they do not indicate that mankind’s onward movement has got out of hand. They form part of a great design, which in its general character was divulged to men long ago. They have all their proper place in the furtherance of a normal progress. They have all their special function and are to be developed according to a set plan; it is not for man to decide how he will use them or to what purpose he will put them. They are as stones to be fitted into a great building, and the construction to which they are to contribute if known in heaven is not yet known to men on earth. The New Age has not yet taken shape. It is only beginning to come into existence. Man can have as yet no conception of what is involved in the innovations of the time nor of the results towards which these tend.

His actions prove now beyond a peradventure that he has not recognized in his heart the reality of this New Age nor understood the obligation which is on him of advancing with the times.

“The time is come when nought but the purest motive supported by deeds of stainless purity can ascent to the throne of the Most High and be acceptable unto Him.” He seeks to ignore the patent fact that we live in an age of new light, and he tries to plunge on still in the old ways of darkness and obscurantism. He seeks to perpetuate the old oppressions, and cruelties, the old injustice and narrowness and degradation; he bends all the resources of the new knowledge to the service of the old ambitions, the old vices. The excuse he gives is the very fact that these iniquities are old; that they were practiced in former generations and therefore must be repeated in this; and in the dullness of his spiritual vision he imagines he can aggrandise himself in the present by following the pitiful delusions of a past he has outgrown.

If now perplexity and despair have settled upon him, he has imposed them on himself. He turned his back on the future; he shut his eyes to the present, and fixed his gaze upon [Page 171] the past to seek misguidance there.

The true light is shining all about him, on every side. He has but to trace it to its source, and to realize it radiates not from himself but from heaven.

There is a reasonableness in the appearance of this New Age. Its symptoms and phenomena are according to a system and a plan. That plan however does not follow an earthly pattern. As Christ suggested long ago when He taught men to pray “Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven,” this plan is laid up in heaven. Man to understand the design and purport of this world crisis must turn away from earth and seek for light from God on high.

“On this Day” exclaims Bahá’u’lláh, “the kingdom is God’s! The Tongue of Power is calling: ‘On this Day all sovereignty is, in very deed, with God!’ The Phoenix of the realm above crieth out from the immortal Branch: ‘the glory of all greatness belongeth to God, the Incomparable, the All-compelling!’ The Mystic Dove proclaimeth from its blissful bower in the everlasting Paradise: ‘The source of all bounty is derived in this Day from God, the One, the Forgiving!’ The Bird of the Throne warbleth its melody in its retreats of holiness: ‘supreme ascendency is to be attributed in this Day to none except God, Him Who hath no peer nor equal, Who is the Most Powerful, the All-subduing!’ The inmost essence of all things voiceth in all things the testimony: ‘All forgiveness floweth in this Day from God, Him to Whom none can compare, the Sovereign Protector of all men and the Concealer of their sins!’”

To say that man is to recognize this Day as God’s and is to enter into the New Age through religion does not mean that he will enter it simply by devotional exercises, by a personal idealism or through the good offices of some venerated tradition. Religion, enduing men with power from on high, has come into the world again according to the immemorial principle of all the world-religions of the past. Its word has not been spoken anonymously nor without authentication, but through a destined and open Revelation given by a Great Soul appointed as spokesman by the Most High. As the sublime Prophets of the past have proclaimed themselves the Bearers of a new Message and a new Covenant, so in this age Bahá’u’lláh has proclaimed Himself as entrusted by God with a supreme mission of deliverance and guidance to all mankind. A new day has broken, there is only one sun in its sky. In unequivocal terms He repeats the strict command uttered by every Prophet of times past: He bids men abandon their doubts and prejudices, put on the garment of humility and turn wholly to His teachings, since God now in this Age is speaking through none save Him.

During his life on earth Bahá’u’lláh was subjected to every kind of forfeiture and persecution for this declaration of His Prophethood. But He did not hide nor shield Himself from His enemies nor qualify in any degree either His firm assertion of the greatness of His Cause or His extreme demand for man’s whole-hearted service [Page 172] of it.

He foresaw and indicated that a general acceptance of the New Revelation would be long delayed, and that the world having ignored the one true light might become for a time lost in its own darkness. So it has come to pass. The lesser lights one by one have dimmed and gone out. Irreligion has invaded and overrun the souls of men, and anarchy has followed in its train.

No remedy, no guidance has been found. None exists, save only that which has been appointed by God and hitherto neglected by men—the remedy of faith, the guidance of religion. “It is incumbent in this Day upon every man to place his whole trust in the manifold bounties of God and arise to disseminate with the utmost wisdom the verities of His Cause. Then, and then only, will the whole earth be enveloped with the morning light of His Revelation.”

Such in one sentence is the first and essential need of the present hour—one and the same need for all members of the human race through the globe.

This New Age which man so vainly has sought to secularize is in fact the dawn of a new Spiritual Dispensation enriched with larger blessings than any Dispensation of the past. But man cannot develop its opportunities, cannot even appreciate nor lay hold on them, until by his own effort he attain that frame of mind, that attitude of soul toward God and man, which can come only through the influence of religion.

Once that attitude is fixed, the divine blessings of this Day of God, so the Pen of Revelation has proclaimed, will unfold and open before his feet.

---

Magnified be Thy name, O Lord my God! Thou art He Whom all things worship and Who worshipeth no one, Who is the Lord of all things and is the vassal of none, Who knoweth all things and is known of none. Thou didst wish to make Thyself known unto men; therefore, Thou didst, through a word of Thy mouth, bring creation into being and fashion the universe. There is none other God except Thee, the Fashioner, the Creator, the Almighty, the Most Powerful.

I implore Thee, by this very word that hath shone forth above the horizon of Thy will, to enable me to drink deep of the living waters through which Thou hast vivified the hearts of Thy chosen ones and quickened the souls of them that love Thee, that I may, at all times and under all conditions, turn my face wholly towards Thee.—BAHÁ’U’LLÁH.

[Page 173]

DISCIPLINE AMONG CHILDREN

H. R. BHATIA

EVERYBODY seems to agree that discipline has an important and necessary place in the child’s life but there is nothing like agreement as to the purpose of discipline, its nature or the method by which it is to be attained. Discipline means, of course, the capacity for self-control, but parents understand by it things so directly conflicting that I would much rather begin with an inquiry into the very needs of discipline.

Every child loves freedom, he wishes to have his own way and to behave as it occurs to him. He is a creature of impulse and has no thoughts, ideas or purpose. But he has to live in a social order and before he can be admitted to adult society he has to learn manners and etiquette, to follow certain rules and customs and to act up to certain traditions and ideals. He has to learn to respect the needs, opinions and efforts of his fellowmen so that his own freedom does not interfere with the freedom of others. The child knows nothing of social needs or of the needs of his personal welfare. But parents conscious of such needs and anxious to secure his welfare cannot let him do whatever he feels like doing. They wish him to exercise control over himself, his actions, his speech and his feelings. The conflict between what the child wants to do and what the parents’ experience and conditions of life require that he should do or avoid doing is at bottom the problem of freedom and discipline.

Again it is necessary for each child to learn to do skilfully and cheerfully many things that he cannot do untaught. He has to learn to dress himself properly, to lace his shoes, button his coat, to learn reading, writing and many other things which demand an effort and which are not quite agreeable to him. It is only through discipline that he can learn them.

Lastly our culture demands that children should acquire a civic sense, a social spirit, habits of cooperation and fellowship. But children as a rule are very selfish and care most for the satisfaction of their own desires. And it is only through discipline that we can educate them to understand, appreciate and realize the needs of civic society.

[Page 174] But discipline is not only a means of education but also its end. It stands for such qualities as self-control, emotional balance, intellectual sanity, respect for the rights and feelings of fellowmen, a sense of responsibility and respect for law and authority. And it is the duty of homes and schools alike to work for and through discipline.

Our traditional ideas of discipline are those of threat, rigid obedience, disapproval and punishment. From the dim dawn of civilization comes the proverb, “Spare the rod and spoil the child” and to this day many a wise parent makes the rod the symbol of discipline. The demand for discipline is the demand for rigid obedience. It is for the child to obey and for the parent or the teacher to order. No punishment is considered too severe for any act of disobedience or of flouting the authority of the parent or the teacher. At home the mother is continually shouting “Don’t do this” and “Don’t do that” and in the school the teacher surrounds him with rules and prohibitions. If children sit still as parcels in a railway go-down, in compulsory goodness, both the teacher and the parent are highly pleased. Children must keep quiet, they must work and move about in silence and as they are told, they must always be good which means obedient and passive. And if they rebel, they must be broken with the rod even as the horse is.

But discipline based on severe and frequent corporal punishment defeats its purpose. In the first place it degrades the child to the level of a brute and kills those finer feelings which are found in every human being. A child which is treated like a brute is sure to behave like a brute and this treatment instead of improving his character demoralizes him. Secondly it breaks the spirit of a child, it destroys so much of healthy freedom that is his birth-right and makes him more and more cowardly, more and more afraid of the blows. Thirdly, corporal punishment blunts his sense of shame. Some children may tremble before a blow but others grow indifferent to it. They receive the blow, utter no cry and walk off as if nothing has happened. They are no longer ashamed either of the offence or of the punishment. They have become “hardened” as we say. Many a parent and teacher will bear evidence that they have punished and punished and it has not made a bit of difference. And even if such punishment were to succeed in making the child obey, his obedience will last as long as the fear of punishment is present which means as long as the teacher or the parent is looking on. In their absence he will be his old self again, doing what pleases him and coining excuses to escape adult displeasure.

Nor is rigid obedience a very commendable type of discipline. It makes the child think that to be good is to give up, to surrender his right to choose and act for himself and the highest virtue is to do as he is told by others, to be a mere sheep, a dumb driven cattle pulled and pushed about by others. In India the virtue of obedience to elders has been so extravagantly commended as to demoralize us into helpless mob of servile “yes” men, favorites of our superiors but incapable [Page 175] of any initiative.

Equally harmful is the attitude of the modern parent who shrinks from his duty as a disciplinarian. In his effort to break away from the harsh severity of the old discipline, he has gone to the other extreme of spoiling his children. He is afraid of losing the love and affection of his sons and daughters. For him children are too young to understand, too helpless to look after themselves and too dear to be harshly treated. He tries to satisfy their every whim and fancy, and in his over-eagerness to please he makes them selfish and domineering.

BUT what after all is the best method of teaching children discipline? In view of the recent advances of psychology and child study parents look forward to prescriptions in the disciplinary training of their children. Let me tell them that there is no such prescription, no rule of thumb. Discipline is a matter of human relationship and human relations are so complex that they cannot be regulated by any simple rule or formula. All that is possible is to make some general suggestions for teaching children discipline.

Discipline is self-control, it is self-determination through self-direction and since the young child has little knowledge of his capacity or of his needs, it is only gradually that he can acquire a sense of responsibility and judge and act for himself without interfering with the rights and feelings of his fellowmen. Self-control is slowly acquired in the course of experience and education and all those influences, domestic and social, which help its achievement constitute good discipline and all those which interfere with it are questionable. Much however depends upon the individual child’s natural capacity and temperament, his environment, social heritage and training.

Since discipline is only gradually acquired, it must be a different thing at different ages. Young children need outside direction from parents, to them parents will be the interpreters of law and authority and no father or mother should fail to get obedience from them. As children grow, parents should understand them and through guidance and reasoning should educate them into young men who can be relied upon to do most of the things themselves, who have a sense of responsibility and who do their best to act up to social forms and ideas. In this training the following things need our attention:—

(1) Each child is different from the other. For Mary just a hint is enough to secure the best results, to John I have to give a definite order and insist that he obeys and to Harry I have to explain and argue things. Study each child individually and treat him according to his age, disposition and temperament.

(2) Build up in children healthy interests. Whatever you want them to do should have a purpose which they understand and in which they are interested. Guide their interests in wholesome pursuits and once their interest is sharpened you can get the most difficult thing done by them by appealing to their interest.

(3) Let children learn things by doing them. If the mother always [Page 176] laces the shoes for her five-year old child, always buttons his coat, always does this and that for him she may do a somewhat better job than he does, but she is robbing him of the opportunities for self-direction. Children must have ample opportunities for experience. Let them have toys, books, play, conversation, a wide and varied sphere of activity. Let them use their growing powers, let them choose and act in as many ways as possible. Let them direct, determine and control their behavior and acquire confidence in their capacity.

(4) Work for good habits. Encourage good habits by praising or rewarding good behavior and discourage bad ones by condemning or punishing undesirable actions. It is a law of human nature that we tend to repeat that which is pleasant and abstain from that which is unpleasant and parents can build in their children desirable habits through an effective distribution of rewards and punishments. Good habits are the basis of self-control and discipline.

(5) Discipline should be positive and not negative. The child wants to do things, encourage him to do things in his own way. Do not surround him with a series of don’ts, give him positive guidance as to what he should do. If he rebels, let him do so within limits. If he makes mistakes, let him do so and learn by them. If his mistakes happen to be more serious, treat him with patience and good humor. Remember that children do make mistakes and parents do correct them. And whenever situations arise which demand disciplinary steps, act promptly, intelligently and firmly. Vague threats and warnings do more harm than good.

But when all is said and done, it is the personal example of the parent which matters most. Children learn by imitation, father and mother are their first models and it is very important that the first model should not fail. If parents treat each other and their children with kindness, respect and frankness, if parents exercise control, consideration and courtesy towards each other and their children, they will find the same qualities reflected in their children and problems of discipline will be reduced to zero. Discipline will become a case of a spirit speaking to another spirit, a life educating another life.

Reprinted from Indian Journal of Education, Cawnpore, December, 1937.

[Page 177]

THE NEGRO IN AMERICA

JAMES A. SCOTT

(Concluded)

THE damaging feature of this attitude from the Negro’s point of view is not that it romanticizes the lowly virtues of his past nor yet that it calls attention to the more defective aspects of his present. Both of these tendencies are socially healthy per se. The disturbing consideration is the resultant exclusion of a group from participation in the national life in any capacity other than that to which it is assigned on the basis of racial rather than individual differences. One of the deepest sources of disappointment in Paul Laurence Dunbar’s short but promising career was the fact that he was editorially encouraged to cultivate his powers by the writing of dialect poems and bluntly discouraged from using other media. “The public doesn’t want that sort of thing.” Bert Williams, too, chafed wistfully beneath the dictum which permitted him to become a great comedian but refused to give him a trial in a serious part though his talents undoubtedly justified his frustrated ambition for such an opportunity. In both cases the exigencies of earning a livelihood compelled conformity to popular demand in the same way that in an humbler sphere many a porter or bell-boy identically motivated assumes the character expected in his job and after hours becomes an entirely different person, laughing at the capers by which he won his tips. Thus do imbedded concepts of the Negro’s “place”—concepts so extensive that part of the home-training of thousands of children is teaching them to value him highly in that place and to regard him as incongruous or dangerous out of it —inhibit the expression of his real personality and the exercise of his fullest powers.

By law and custom, then, the Negro is singled out for differential treatment which expressly hinders him from the realization of his highest potentialities and from the unqualified enjoyment of the advantages of a civilized state on the same terms [Page 178] as other Americans. His response to this restraint is at times an attempt at personal escape either by removal of himself from the effects of discriminatory practices or by so plotting his life that he avoids as far as he is able exposures to their grossest and most irksome quirks. More fundamentally, he concentrates a large measure of his attention and scholarship upon the search for some solution which will loosen the shackles from the race as a whole. In the course of this pursuit he tries to objectify his problem by looking at it through the perspective of the problems of unintegrated minorities elsewhere. When he does so he finds that in each instance a keynote to the mind-sets and policies of the group in power is its present and former economic relation towards the group restricted. From such a survey, however, he also comes to understand that racial intolerance is not a disembodied entity traceable to a single cause but an apperceptive approach which has been variously developed in different individuals through their constant subjection to the myriad of confluent prejudice-inducing forces in our social order. To what, circumstanced as he is, may the Negro turn in hope?

III

One cheering factor in the situation is the solidarity of his cause with that of advancing civilization. The most auspicious omen in current social deliberation is the fast-spreading realization that justice is “sound business”— that with our multiplied facilities for production the desideratum towards which it is imperative to work cautiously but swiftly before the present social derangement reaches a catastrophic stage is an economic equilibrium based upon planned and continuous equation of adequate output and wholesome consumption such that increasing opportunities for material comfort and cultural growth are placed within the reach of all. Thanks to the influences of high school and college classes, projects in adult education, magazine articles, political platforms, youth movements, defenses of governmental policies, popular lectures, and household philosophizing on experiences during the depression, the ideal of a distribution of the good things of life more commensurate with our wealth-producing powers is being popularly envisaged as a not-unrealizeable aim. The crystallizing conviction is that since the hewing of wood and drawing of water can now be largely taken over by machinery, the result should be the abolition of poverty and the liberation of additional human energies for exercise in fields of social betterment and service. This intellectual adaptation to a scientifically re-created environment is rapidly supplanting the atavistic viewpoint of cut-throat competition and exploitation whose illusory corollary is that the prosperity of a privileged class is dependent upon the disadvantagement of those about it.

The complete transformation of the industrial process together with the re-orientation in economic thought which it necessitates thus integrates the Negro’s struggle with a world problem the imminent solution of which is vital to continued progress. It furthermore makes timely and [Page 179] logical an appeal to the very ingredient of human nature which has been primarily responsible for his submergence thus far, viz., the self-interest of those in power. Therein lies hope. For in so far as his relative position in the social order is concerned the Negro owes little to the spirit of altruism. Adherence to the principles of abstract justice has generally been a moral luxury indulged in by an idealistic few. Seldom has it figured crucially in concrete human relations. It is no disparagement of White America to say that it has always acted towards the Negro out of consideration for its own good. The plantation-owner who supplied his hands with a few decencies was in the main motivated by the belief that in so doing he was making them better laborers and thus adding to his profits. If, therefore, the teaching of social science can be carried to the point that the truth that the fullest opportunity for each means the fullest opportunity for all is established as an axiom of national thought, it will eliminate a powerful factor which has been consistently at work against the Negro since his arrival on this continent and will substitute an equally powerful one in his favor. Such an underground approach, moreover, strikes a destructive blow at the philosophy on which the present treatment of the Negro rests and does not at the same time generate the heat which a frontal attack provokes.

It thereby fertilizes the soil for unreluctant acceptance of the scientifically authenticated verdict of modern psychology and anthropology that human differences in abilities and traits are individual and situational—that there are no innately superior or inferior races. This, let it be repeated, is an essential function. For man is at bottom a rationalizing rather than a reasoning animal, and whenever demonstration of the equality of a deviate group appears to threaten the security of his own, he refuses to be convinced or becomes more pronounced in his antagonism. As a matter of every-day observation, the most stirring evocative of prejudiced response has been the Negro on a plane of equality—not the Negro in his “place.” If, on the other hand, the social view is such that the concept of the Negro as a co-human of equal potentialities harmonizes with what America conceives to be its own wellbeing, it will less antipathetically review the evidence before it. That evidence points overwhelmingly to the conclusion that members of the so-called Negro race differ vastly among themselves in every possible psychological trait, and that individuals of the group are capable of success in every type of vocational achievement. It further indicates that under certain environmental pressures the race has made folk contributions which merit a permanent place in world-culture, but that its members sustain the same relation to those contributions as do peoples of other backgrounds to their folk-lore. In short, it tends to show that Negroes are simply human beings with the same drives and powers as their fellow-Americans. The folk-creations artistically express the experiences of a given stage of their development in a form natural to that stage.

[Page 180] SINCE the establishment of this more comprehensive concept must be through the same avenues of formal and informal education responsible for promulgation of the previously mentioned stereotypes, it is pertinent to inquire what is the present disposition of these channels to broaden the scope of the public’s knowledge of Negro life and deepen its appreciation of those fractions with which it is already superficially acquainted. The direction—if not the rate—of change is heartening. The radio—while continuing to feature programs of the Amos and Andy “genre” or groups of spirituals—is doing so in a more sympathetically revelatory manner than has hitherto been the case. It is also assisting in the popularization of the Negro as an athlete competing on equal terms with all. The legitimate stage is likewise tending towards profounder insight in plays like Green Pastures and Porgy and is slowly beginning to lift the taboo from the treatments of more serious racial themes. The cinema lags in the wake of its elder brother with characters such as Step’n Fetchit in the forefront but with more truly representative roles successfully if rarely undertaken. Magazine fiction shows least advance. Absurdities of the Octavius Roy Cohen variety consume most of the space therein allotted to depiction of the group.

Other agencies manifest varying degrees of readiness to picture the Negro in the light of the latest conclusions of anthropology and psychology rather than traditionally. The church, true to its history, holds as a rule to the conservative policy of rendering to Caesar his due and seeks to strengthen status quo relationships through the lubricative device of trying to eliminate extrinsic harshnesses in their embodiments. Ignoring deeper issues it follows rather than leads the dominant group which supports and controls it—and, as was the case in the split of the Southern and Northern churches on the question of slavery—makes the myopic teleology of its parishioners its own. Favorable headway has been made in the journalistic press. From the negative side, hundreds of editors throughout the country have adopted the policy of toning down or suppressing stories of crimes committed by Negroes, which, if played up as formerly, would operate to create highly inflammable community attitudes. Notwithstanding this fact, however, a recent study reveals that in one large city of an Eastern state the average amount of newspaper space devoted to accounts of crime was ten per cent; but that of all news about Negroes fifty to seventy-five per cent portrayed their lawlessness and that what white readers remembered vividly about them was their criminal proclivities. It should also be remarked that from the racial standpoint the editorial and sport sections of newspapers are their most liberalizing departments. As might be expected, the universities are the most encouragingly prophetic centers for dissemination of unbiased data on the race. In them truth is being faced more unflinchingly than anywhere else in America. It is significant but not surprising to note in this connection that students and professors are most open-minded; administrators, [Page 181] trustees, and parents considerably less so.

In practically every contemporary nation the public schools are being consciously utilized as a tool whereby organized society strives to engender in its future citizens a social philosophy favorable to the survival of its particular configuration. They are a strategic base at which American democracy can fundamentally attack its own peculiar problem of race. If one evaluates their program in terms of such an aim he finds in them a wide and slowly-closing gap between accepted theory and actual practice. It is generally conceded by reputable educational sociologists that training for citizenship should today include the inculcation in boys and girls of comprehensive, intelligent understandings of all nations and races of man and that the development of narrow, prejudiced minds means the development of minds incapable of functioning constructively in the complexus of present world conditions. It is further agreed all children should be taught that American civilization is a variegated whole—greater than the sum of its parts—which is composite of the contributions of many peoples, that there are no inherently superior or inferior races but that every race has its quota of idiots and persons of genius, and that enormous social waste results from categorical denial to individuals of any group of opportunity for unobstructed growth in the directions of their finest abilities. In regard to the Negro, it is also granted, children should be taught that he has made a substantial material and spiritual contribution to the national culture—a contribution which cannot be properly interpreted except from the background of a broad and accurate acquaintance with his past and present history—and that he is capable of making a still greater one.

FROM this theoretical position, however, current educational practice diverges widely—though now to a less degree than formerly. Because of the legal or customary assignment of the two races of children to segregated schools they are at an early age cut off from direct knowledge of each other. They are taught by two sets of teachers between whom contacts even of professional nature are extremely limited and part of whose social heritages is the traditional American attitudes towards race. The social science text books which both groups study almost invariably describe the Negro as a natural inferior instead of attempting to transmit the findings of scientific research into the realm of publicly accepted fact. While considerable stress is laid by them on familiarization of children with life in foreign countries, with but few exceptions little attention is given life within the Negro group which to the majority of white pupils is equally foreign but insight into which in socially authoritative opinion is equally requisite to intelligent citizenship. The net psychological result is a perpetuation of inferiority feelings on one side of the racial line and delusions of grandeur on the other or the development in both groups of disparate estimates of themselves and of each other which [Page 182] must inevitably result in friction. The schools thus tend to operate with the formative social agencies before enumerated to confirm a state of affairs which Professor E. B. Reuter, of the University of Iowa, writing in the Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, Volume 140, page 43, speaks of as follows: “The doctrine of racial inequality is pretty well discredited in the world of scholarship, but in the popular thought of America, it is firmly fixed.”

The problem, then, is part of the more inclusive disharmony between the sort of social set-up demanded by modernized environmental conditions and the basal philosophy by which men seek to adapt themselves to those conditions. On the one hand, labor needs formerly exigent in American industrial development have been out-evolved and the economic caste system to which they gave root has lost its raison d’etre. On the other hand, ingrained sociological and psychological accompaniments of thought, feeling, and usage by which that system was fortified persist dynamically in the attitudes of individuals and institutions.

“The Time is out of joint.”

Because social readjustment has not gone pari passu with technological advancement the thinking which prevails is rationalistic to the guiding principle of a by-gone era. The fruits of research in the social sciences have not been communized to nearly the degree of those of the physical sciences. With the purpose of bringing about more realistic viewpoints and sounder practices in the field of race relations, a number of voluntary organizations, some of them national in activity, have undertaken to work upon the task of effecting desirable changes in specific elements of the situation. A few of these organizations we shall mention.

IN many localities of the North and South during the past few years interracial discussion groups composed of representative white and colored people have been formed. Their chief contribution is that they foster more sympathetic understandings by bringing together for frank exchange of feeling and opinion key members of both races in a way they would not ordinarily meet and that they furnish liberal whites in strategic positions material and stimulus for informal missionary work among their friends. Highly influential in the South as a whole is the Commission on Interracial Relations, with headquarters in Atlanta, Georgia, and with a strong following among thoughtful leaders of that section. It defines itself as a conservative “movement” which aims to consolidate advances already made, to keep one step in advance of the general population, and to try to see that changes take place in right directions. Equipped with an alert research and publicity department, it makes use of informative techniques and personal influence in its efforts to generate interracial goodwill by appeals through the churches, the courts, the schools, and the press. Its Women’s Department concentrates its attack on eradication of lynching and on dissipation of the myth that such a barbarity is essential [Page 183] to the protection of Southern womanhood. The Association for the Study of Negro Life and History, with national offices in Washington, D. C., also seeks through a staff of well-trained specialists to simplify and humanize for popular assimilation the results of scholarly investigations on the Negro. Perhaps its most immediate single goal is securing the temporary introduction of supplementary material on Negro life and history into public schools—both white and colored—until such time as the race is accorded fairer treatment in the regular texts.

Another agency at work on a national scale is the Urban League, which has co-ordinative offices in New York and more than forty branches in larger cities of the country. Its interest is primarily integration of the Negro into American economic life, a great deal of its effort being focussed upon finding and opening positions for Negroes and assisting them to prepare for entrance into hitherto little-tried vocations. It is also concerned with the health, housing, and general development of the group, particularly as they pertain to adjustment of rural Negroes to urban communities. The Commission on Race Relations of the Federal Council of Churches stimulates formation of race relations committees in local church federations, encourages Negro achievement in art, science, and education, and through fact-presenting publications records glaring examples of discrimination and praises acts of courageous fairness. Its purpose is to attempt to prevent new evils from arising and cautiously to attack old ones. The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, with a membership of approximately one hundred thousand, uses the direct method of decisive attack in an unceasing struggle to eliminate every hindrance to the Negro’s unconditional attainment of the full stature of citizenship. Through educational, legal, and political channels, it appeals to reason, respect for the law and constitution, and the instinct for self-preservation of politicians dependent on the Negro vote. Some other organizations which embody in their programs express measures for the abrogation of racial prejudice are the Young Women’s Christian Association, the Society of Friends, and the American Civil Liberties Union.

Looking within the group, a study of the spontaneous responses of educated Negroes, individually and collectively, to stimuli pertaining to the question of race reveals their passionate aspiration towards unqualified inclusion in American life on the same plane as its other constituents. Many a white speaker, seeking to ingratiate himself with a colored audience, has encountered to his embarrassment the chilling disapprobation with which a glowing reference to “my old colored mammy” is received because of the suspicion it creates that his relation to her symbolizes for him the ideal relation of the white race to the black. He also learns by experience how much more quickly he comes into rapport with his audience by use of the conjunctive “we” rather than the separative “you people.” The sagacious politician likewise knows that [Page 184] the most genuine and enthusiastic applause is in reaction to statements or promises which imply the obliteration of racial discrimination of every form. Moreover, when Negroes among themselves discuss a white man in the light of his friendliness, the expression, “He is right on the race question” signifies that his philosophy and policies are designed to lead directly or indirectly towards their ultimate realization of the status of full-fledged citizens. This yearning is again exhibited in the race-wide jubilation of press and pulpit with which a “first Negro” to achieve in any field is acclaimed —a jubilation attributable to the feeling that one more barrier has been broken down and one more inspiring precedent established. And when one Negro speaks of another as an “Uncle Tom”—meaning that he displays a traditional attitude of acceptive subserviency—he is using the most damning epithet of his racial vocabulary.

THE same motivation actuates the leaders of the race in their efforts at mass elevation through educational and professional services. Among them is an acute awareness of the fact that emancipation cannot be effected by proclamation and that the newly free, like the newly rich, possess many of the mongrel characters of a class in transition. In the task of transmuting bondsmen into free men they have appropriated taunts from the mouth of prejudice itself as spurs for goading their followers into self-conscious self-improvement. It is not accidental that the Negro’s most specific advances have been along the lines of removing defects for which he has been most mercilessly anathematized. The social duality resultant from enforced segregation, too, has been made to serve as an opportunity-ground for developing thousands of Negroes of initiative and enterprise on levels corresponding to their abilities.

The intelligent Negro leader of today is furthermore preaching and practising preparation for the future on the hopeful assumption that the inevitable course of social evolution will bring about an industrial democracy broadened to include all Americans. For practical as well as inspirational reasons, he is directing attention to the biographies of individuals who succeeded in spite of color with stress upon the techniques whereby they did so. He is pointing out to Negroes in Northern and border states definite uses of the ballot which will redound to the uplift of their people as a whole. Above all he is intent upon eradicating the inferiority feeling—systematically bred into them during generations of slavery— by familiarizing them with the real truths of Negro history and achievement and thus instilling in them a sense of contribution to the common culture and an appreciation for the spirituals as a beautiful human reaction to a soul-trying social experience. His aim is unapologetically completion of the freedom of his race—internally and externally—and where he seems to sacrifice his principle before preponderant odds, his tactic denotes an expedient temporary subordination of ultimate purpose rather than a capitulation.

[Page 185] THIS article has been an endeavor to make a fact-facing presentation of the lineaments of the American Negro problem. The aim in the first place has been to give a comprehensive outlook of its surface manifestations by depicting in brief the types of discriminatory treatment to which the individual Negro is daily exposed because of his ethnic classification. In the second place, an endeavor has been made to show his reactions to this treatment in the forms of efforts at personal or group escape. Here it has been noted that in his search for a way out, he has found the roots of his problem to a large extent in the economic imperatives of a passing social order whose influence on current attitudes is still pervasive. And, most pertinent of all, we have in the third place tried to list the factors operative in modern life which militate in favor of his eventual unshacklement. These are (1) the passing of the particular labor need he was brought to this country to fulfill, (2) the spreading acceptance of the social philosophy that the final best interests of the majority demand the elevation of the depressed minority, (3) the consequent increased receptivity by channels of popular education to evidence destructive of prevalent phobias and hallucinations concerning him, (4) the constructive activities of a number of voluntary agencies at work on the elimination of racial injustices, and (5) the concentration of the energies of the Negro vanguard upon the attainment of complete integration in American life.

In the social maze which today confounds us some attempt at reduction to first principles of our perplexing human problems is a necessary initial step toward laying the foundation for a more understanding citizenship. The last hope of effective democracy is the electorate’s facing and reckoning with scientifically ascertained social laws with the same dispassion it faces physical fact. Sociology, economics, and psychology must be made “applied” sciences. The horse-and-buggy thinking which vitiates our attitudes towards questions of racial adjustment must give way to a clarified perspective based upon the conclusions of modern scholarship which have been put in such simplified and abbreviated form as to be broadly comprehensible in the limited time we have to devote to them and useable in daily living. So only may we move forward with social surety. The issue, then, goes deeper than the correction of a minor maladjustment on the surface of our national life. It involves in its multiplex implications the spiritual and intellectual integrity of the American people and the perpetuation of the democratic process as a practicable form of government. The times demand the scrapping of ancient and traditional prejudices and the acceptance of objective truth as the ransom price of civilization itself.

And at no point in our society can a more fruitful beginning in the application of corporate social intelligence be made than on the problem that has been treated here.

[Page 186]

STEPPING STONES TO A NEW WORLD ORDER

EDNA ROHRS EASTMAN

III—Universal Education

GREAT strides have been made toward educating the peoples of the world in the last few decades. Learning is no longer the exclusive property of the rich or priestly classes. In America it is compulsory for children to attend school and we find that the rate of illiteracy is steadily dropping, even in the south where the colored people and the mountaineers have been more backward.

How much remains to be done in this field is however evident when we consider the amount of prejudice and ignorance there is left—knowing that prejudice is the result of ignorance and that no prejudiced man or woman can be considered truly educated. True education makes us understanding and tolerant of our fellowmen —makes us not condemn but search out the reason for that which offends us. How often it happens that a thing ceases to be offensive once we have learned the reason for it.

One great stride toward universal education has already been made in the established free schools in the more enlightened countries of the world and the opening of the higher institutions of learning to women as well as to men. Another great stride is the development of a universal language which will enable scholars to travel and study everywhere with the greatest ease.

Perhaps when this universal language has been adopted and is taught everywhere and used by all, we will see another great forward step made —the adoption of a more or less uniform curriculum in all the schools of all the countries. Think what a marvelous thing that would be—when all of our boys and girls of whatever nationality or race, would be taught practically the same things in the same way no matter where they attended school. What a wonderful means to world understanding this will be.

Try to imagine a world in which [Page 187] everyone is educated to at least a fair degree and in pretty much the same way. Can you not see what a paradise of unity that will make of this world?

Everyone will be rightly educated to fill his station in life—educated not only in so-called “book learning” but in the knowledge of God and the understanding of his fellowmen. Educated not to hate but to love all. Everyone will have his or her own trade or profession and there will be no idle rich and no idle poor for all will work. Work, not for the bare necessities of life but because, having their living assured to them, they are anxious to produce that which will add to the comfort and well-being of all mankind. A world commonwealth in which all people are provided for and all, living in peace and contentment, are working for the betterment of all and hence for their own happiness and spiritual welfare.

EQUALITY OF MEN AND WOMEN

Until very recently there has been a more or less universal belief that women were not the equal of men in any way. Even religious teachings upheld this view. It is only in modern times that women have begun to assert themselves at last and to win their rightful place beside their men.

In some languages in the East, especially among the Arabs, the word for woman and the word for donkey are the same—women were considered merely as so much livestock. It is interesting to note the changes which are taking place in that far corner of the earth in regard to women. Much has been accomplished, especially in Turkey, in the last decade toward establishing schools and otherwise improving the status of women there. Much is yet to be done, but since humanity is always in the process of evolution, we do not despair of our sisters in the far East.

One wonders at the blindness of a system which kept its women in ignorance and servility since it is a well-known and acknowledged fact that women are the first teachers; that it is the mother who most influences the child. One cannot quite see how the importance of having her a well-balanced individual could have been overlooked. For no matter how learned the father or the child’s professors later in life may be, they cannot eradicate the first and earliest lessons which the child learned at its mother’s knee.

We are increasingly aware of the importance of early training among our children—and since every girl is a potential mother and hence of the greatest importance in moulding the future generation—her education is of even greater importance than that of men. Let us hope that in the very near future this will be practically realized and acted upon.

Men and women were both created by God and He intended that they should be equal. Each of them have some qualities in common and some that are peculiar to each. For this there is a reason. Man alone is not complete and perfect. Woman alone is not complete and perfect. There must be harmonious union and how can this ever be established until their equality is established.

It has been pointed out that since [Page 188] women have been given the vote and admitted to full citizenship they have accomplished no great reforms. It is said that women are given equal opportunity in the business and educational world of the United States, yet they have failed to surpass men. But let us not forget that woman’s chance at these things has only recently come to her—that man on the other hand has been evolving toward supremacy in these fields for centuries. Since he did not attain to his present station in a day why expect women to do so, unless of course, men are ready to acknowledge woman to be far their superior rather than their equal or inferior.

Man and woman may be likened to the two wings of the bird of humanity and unless these wings are equally strengthened and developed humanity’s flight cannot be perfect. We must achieve the perfect balance.

In all nature there is no distinction between the sexes save among mankind. Men claim to be superior to the plant and animal kingdoms, yet in these kingdoms there is complete equality of the sexes. May the day soon arrive in which this is seen in its full glory in the kingdom of man.

UNIVERSAL PEACE

Many things could be put forth as the greatest need of man today— some people would say one thing, some another. But the fact seems clear to the writer that the greatest need for the world today is for a peace which shall encompass all men, a peace which shall leave them free to cultivate the higher qualities and aims, a peace which shall envelop all in its sheltering arms and teach brotherhood to all men.

We hear much today of internationalism —by the very nature of things we cannot much longer escape it no matter how we struggle. Yet each and every country is growing more intensely nationalistic with each turn of the political wheel. That there can only be one outcome to this movement is quite evident—another and fiercer war which will involve the whole world. A war which will indeed end all war since it will be so destructive that few will survive it. Nearly all seem heedless of the signs of the times which point to a literal fulfillment of that prophecy in Jeremiah which foretells the destruction of two-thirds of the people of the earth in the latter days. That we are indeed living in those latter no thinking person will deny.

Why is a United States of the World such an impossible dream? Have we not welded together a great nation on this continent called the United States of America? Are we not united on all great questions of policy? Do we not stand together at all times, realizing as we do through much bloodshed and tribulation, that “united we stand, divided we fall?” Yet each and every state is a separate commonwealth. Why should it be more difficult to unite all the countries of the world in one great commonwealth for the common good of all? In this country we have a fusion of all the races of the earth living amicably together. If they can all live side by side in one country harmoniously, then the nations of the world can do the same thing in a world fellowship. [Page 189] No one in this country puts his nationality ahead of his American citizenship. No one in the future will put his national citizenship before his world citizenship.

It is believed, with some good sound reason for it, that most if not all of the modern wars are instigated by the ammunition makers. Think of it—millions of lives squandered and untold amounts of property destroyed in order that a few men may amass vast fortunes. How much longer will we stand for this? How much longer will we allow greed to rule the world?

Do we not boast of our civilization? Why then must we fight like brute animals in order to settle a seeming difference? Are we not capable of talking things over in a reasonable fashion and arbitrating our differences? If not, where then is our vaunted intelligence, our evolution toward perfect manhood?

If men would only stop to realize what universal peace would mean to all, there would be no more fighting. Think what it would mean to your own pocketbooks—if we are still to be governed by the individual good instead of the universal—for the time being. More than fifty per cent of all our taxes are for war preparedness. Do we realize what that means to all of us? If there was no more need for vast armies and navies, huge expenditures for armed equipment, millions, nay billions of dollars, would be saved for the taxpayer. And remember that it is the average citizen who feels these heavy tolls most.

Much of our travail today is due to the fact that we are in the birth pangs of an entirely new era. Great cosmic changes do not take place overnight; new worlds do not come into existence merely through a great fanfare of trumpets and a glorious cloud floating around in the phenomenal heavens. God’s law is unchangeable and that law is gradual unfoldment toward perfection. He created us potentially perfect and His plan is that we shall attain this perfection— who shall gainsay God’s plan?

But why must we fight against evolution? Is it necessary for us to cling so desperately to outworn creeds and customs? It is so plain that the old system is dead. So very clear that labor and capital must reach a fresh understanding—that all must share both in the work and in the rewards of labor. That the body politic like the human body cannot exist in peace and comfort if any member of that body be sick.

Man everywhere is groping blindly for the way out. For the answer to all that puzzles him in world conditions. And there is only one way out, only one answer. A great and complete change in the hearts of men. The birth of a new race which recognizes that only by living in perfect peace and amity with all the world, only by sharing prosperity with all his brothers, only by uniting the whole world, can we achieve that kingdom of God. which has been promised to us on earth. That this attainment is not an impossible chimerical figment of the imagination the very pangs of dissolution and destruction bear witness. The old must and will give way to the new order of things—it may fight to the last ditch, but in the end God’s [Page 190] plan for man will be established on earth and that great millenial period come to bless all humanity with peace and prosperity.

(Concluded)

---

IN SEA AND STARS

STANTON A. COBLENTZ

In sea and stars and mountains,

Forests and brooks and springs,

I hear a music breathing,

A rhythmic beat of wings.

In lakes and rocks and meadows,

And waters tossed by storm,

I view the clouded mirror

Of some indwelling Form;

Of law and might and meaning

Beyond our power to scan,

Which from the fields and heavens

Call to the heart of man.

But why in nature only

This pulse of things divine,—

Smothered where chimneys tower

And wall-girt thousands pine?

Oh, not in nature only

If but the deeper mood

Flings wide its own horizons

From peaks of solitude;

If but the spirit harkens

That high harmonious tone

Which sea and stars and mountains

Chant to the Lord Unknown!

[Page 191]

RELIGIOUS FOUNDATIONS FOR CHARACTER

STANWOOD COBB

THE rules of ethics or code of morals which individuals are supposed to live up to differ from age to age, according to the development and exigencies of human society. They are the expression of the racial or group consciousness.

The best tiger, as William James used to point out, is the one that kills the most rabbits. The best Indian in the days of savagery was the one who could gather the most scalps of his enemies. A recent article in Liberty Magazine points out the obligation upon the young braves among the head-hunters of Borneo of bringing home the heads of their enemies to dry upon the rafters before they were deemed worthy of a mate.

To kill a man with premeditated purpose is now murder, punishable by legalized death. Yet among certain peoples even today who practise the law of the vendetta—Arabs and mountain whites of the Appalachians —not to so kill, under certain circumstances, would be a gross violation of tribal morals and would condemn the individual to obloquy and disgrace.

The heroes of the Old Testament whom we consider paragons of past virtue and spirituality had many wives. But today in this country a man who has more than one wife is punishable by imprisonment.

Honesty in savage tribes is a virtue seldom failing. Nothing is ever stolen from one’s fellow tribesmen. But to successfully take part in expeditions of military and wholesale robbery from neighboring tribes is the badge of the highest virtue.

Thus the moral code is established by the human environment, in response to exigencies of climate, geography and kultur, and upheld by powerful social and legal sanctions.

IN striking contrast to the relativity of humanly evolved morals, are the codes of ethics revealed by founders of the world’s great religious systems. These codes claim absoluteness. And the adherents of such religions acknowledge individually and collectively this absoluteness, and try [Page 192] to achieve in the practice of daily living the norms or ideals thus presented to them from the plane of divine truth.

“Prophecy claims moral and religious absoluteness,” says Dean Willard L. Sperry in his book of Yale Lectures, “We Prophesy in Part.” “All men and all societies are judged by a divine standard. There is nothing relative or comparative about it. What is conceived as God’s perfection is the norm. The two major themes of prophecy are these: Man’s sins as they stand discovered by the righteousness of God, and the nature of the ideal society in which righteousness will be realized.”

THE prophets reveal eternal principles of conduct, principles which are cosmic in their extent, laws to which all existence must render allegiance. They are not laws in a legalistic sense, but laws in the natural sense—laws of behavior upon which the very structure of order and harmony of the universe depend.

These laws, these eternal truths never vary. They are absolute. Their applications, however, may and do vary from age to age. Even the successive Manifestations themselves change these applications, abrogating specific rules of conduct established by their predecessors and establishing new rules to fit a new age.

Thus the law or principle of love was applied at first only within the family, then the clan, then the tribe and nation.

The Hebrews, under the stern leadership of Moses and his successors, proceeded not only to fight but to exterminate surrounding tribes. Christ deepened and broadened the application of love to life, establishing new standards for the expression of spiritual love on the part of mankind. Yet up to today this spiritual love inculcated by Christ has never even in the idealism of Christendom overstepped the boundaries of nationalism. Today the law of love, as declared by Bahá’u’lláh, is to apply in a world-wide scope, eliminating war and establishing universal peace and brotherhood.

THE prophets not only set forth to man cosmic laws of behavior. They also reveal man to himself— his lofty station, his spiritual reality. They teach man how to live a moral and spiritual life that will strengthen and develop the transcendental side of his nature and restrain and sublimate his animal side.

“God sent his prophets into the world to teach and enlighten man, to explain to him the mystery of the power of the Holy Spirit, to enable him to reflect the light. . . .

“Let us listen to a symphony which will confer life on man. Then we shall receive a new spirit, then we shall become illuminated, a song which will develop the spirit and produce harmony and exhilaration, unfolding the inner potentialities of life. Whenever the sun of reality dawns, the lower sphere expresses the virtues of the higher world. . . .

“Consider his Holiness Bahá’u’lláh and His teachings. They are the spirit of this cycle, the light of this age.”

Revealed truth flowing into the channels of social custom greatly modifies it, establishing new norms [Page 193] and ideals toward which society gradually evolves. Thus every Revelation has founded a new civilization built upon its moral teachings. The Manifestations are not only revealers of moral truth, but also perfect Exemplars of the truth they teach. Thus they stand out through human history as divine models for human behavior.

FROM the welter and conflict and relativity of shifting tribal and racial morals, a certain confusion as to conduct is inevitable. This confusion is pronounced and exaggerated when tribal or racial kulturs mingle as in conquest, commercial intercourse, intermarriage. Such chaos in ethical codes is one of the chief reasons for the moral and social obloquy of half breeds; they have no definite standards and sanctions of conduct.

Thus the Occidental cultural invasions of Asia have tended to break down the age-long ethics traditionally operative. China has been especially disturbed since its revolution of 1911 by this inflow of Occidentalism, until Confucianism as a pattern of ethics is practically gone.

Too sudden and too crude an intermingling of ethical codes bring unexpectedly disadvantageous results. It is said that Christianity, when too naively introduced into African villages, destroys the honesty and integrity built up by tribal customs and taboos without sufficiently establishing the new ethics of Christianity, so that the net result is a lowering of morality. Thus we see the paradox of a religion lofty in its ethical code actually operating by confusion of kulturs to lower the moral code of a people it converts. This is of course not due to the nature of the Christian religion itself but to the unwisdom and crudity of its application.

In past history one can trace epochs decidedly marked by such confusion of morals due to a mingling of miscellaneous cults and the weakening of ancestral and traditional codes. Thus the morality of the Greeks rapidly degenerated under contact with the kulturs and religions of Asia Minor. In turn the Roman character degenerated as the cults of Greece, of Asia Minor, of Mesopotamia and of Egypt invaded it, breaking up entirely the old Nature-State religion of Rome with its severe codes of integrity and simplicity of life.

It is in an age of irreligion that moral principles become the most weakened and confused. Then expediency tends to take the place of righteousness and definite standards of conduct disappear.

Such is the age we are living in today. The authority of religion is waning the whole world over and the moral sanctions of religion are rapidly disappearing. Within the great world of Christendom only a few communicants still guide their conduct by any principles of religion. Exceptions to this lapse in the efficaciousness of religious motivation in Christendom are to be found among certain groups—notably the Quakers, the Christian Scientists, and the Oxford Group. Of these sects it may be said that the majority of their adherents still consciously make religion a guidepost to life. Outside of these sects, religion in Christendom is more a matter of ritual than it is of ethics. [Page 194] Yet outside of Christendom the condition is even worse.

Public thinkers, as well as the clergy, are alarmed by this moral chaos in which the selfish and gross instincts of human nature easily rise to the top. But all their inveighing and moralizing and preaching will do little good; just as in the age of the Roman emperors, the moralizing of the philosophers and poets availed nothing to stem the moral decline.

What is needed in such a period of moral decline is a spiritual rebirth of humanity. Christianity brought rebirth to Rome. Today we need such a spiritual rebirth on a planetary scale. It is this rebirth which Bahá’u’lláh brings the world.

IN a vitally religious age society vigorously enforces the moral sanctions. In an irreligious age the question of right and wrong becomes crusted over with self-interest and passion, and a moral confusion and chaos ensue. Also society loses its power of enforcement, because once standards of revealed truth are overthrown there remains no unity of ideology or of compulsion; as among the Sophists of Greece, each man becomes a law unto himself and man’s intelligence is too often used to rationalize unrighteous conduct. A deeply religious age, on the contrary, furnishes powerful sanctions and also powerful motives for righteous conduct.

THE laws that religion lays down are not arbitrary. They are essential and necessary principles for the attainment of social unity, harmony, peace and prosperity—insuring a perfect organization of society.

These laws of conduct, as regards the individual, correspond with his own inner nature and its development toward the emergence of spiritual man.

An important motivation for right action is the realization that righteousness is self-advantageous—that it is a process of self-development into constantly higher and higher states of being. Violation of this law of righteousness and spiritual growth is realized to be folly as well as sin. For to retrogress or to fail to progress is in reality the greatest tragedy of existence.

A firm conviction of future existence is the greatest motivation for righteousness that a person can have. For from such a conviction comes the realization that progress is the law of life; that it does not end here, that its scope is infinite. And that failures to progress here will produce fatal consequences in the life to come.

The greatest reward of doing good is to grow better. The greatest and most tragic punishment for doing wrong is that one is thereby growing worse. So simple is this moral law that it can be expressed in almost mathematical terms. Yet how many people are living their lives by it? Probably not even one-half of one per cent are conscious of this law and guiding their lives by it.

God does not enter in, to judge and punish. We judge and sentence ourselves, and administer the punishment! We cannot escape the consequences of our actions! In this respect the Universe is sternly automatic.

[Page 195] This majestic law of spiritual cause and effect, the Theosophists have made the keynote of their ethical system. It is a most potent motivation for individual growth and development that exists.

The occultist sees this earth as a stage of existence where the imperfections of human nature are to be changed toward perfection. Life here is a school in character-training.

It is not meant that earthly existence should be too happy. This is not the plane of perfection. Earth is a crucible for the refining and moulding of character, ‘Abdu’l-Bahá said to an American pilgrim twenty years ago.

THE troubles of life are in reality lessons in character-training. If they are taken advantage of, they are more valuable to us than gold or diamonds. Events reveal us to ourselves and teach us how to overcome those flaws which they disclose in us. Thus the events of life force us to grow in character. The advantage we take of these events measures the degree of our attainment.

The wise man searches every event, every happening in his life, every misfortune for some deep lesson of self-improvement.

Tests are not sent for punishment, but for the purpose of revealing the soul to itself. Tests reveal strength as well as weakness, and provide opportunities to remedy ailments. By such tests the soul becomes aware of its strength, or a former weakness is overcome. This view was expressed by ‘Abdu’l-Bahá to the pilgrim.

If we do not grow in character throughout life we are missing the sole purpose of existence on this earthly plane.

The purpose of life is growth through struggle. We cannnot avoid struggle. But we can meet struggle as an opportunity for growth. We can suffer obstacles and frustrations to be merely a misfortune to us, or we can utilize them as aids to development.

We must see to it that our trials and sufferings become a means for growth. We can forge out of our misfortunes a golden coin to pay our way onward and upward. We can make stepping-stones of our dead selves and rise to higher things.

As we become purified in character obstacles are more and more easily met through the aid of Divine Grace and Guidance.

COLLECTIVE humanity, like the individual, learns from disaster. The cruel sufferings of the world today —the universal moral disorder, the economic and political uncertainties, the physical deprivations and the prevailing psychological and spiritual chaos—are in reality a sort of planetary test revealing human society to itself in all its weakness and baseness of character. Events are proving more than words the weakness and inadequacy of its present institutions.

Thus humanity is collectively being forced to rise to new altitudes of social and spiritual character. Out of all this chaos and suffering will arise a purged and purer humanity. Man’s calamity is God’s opportunity.

BECAUSE of the world’s extraordinary physical and psychic interrelation [Page 196] today and the inevitable breaking up of local moralities and customs due to the coalescing of national and racial kulturs there is demanded, if we are to have any improvement in the situation, a new unity of moral concept and practice which will be world-wide.

“As mind directs in human affairs, it is evident that order cannot be obtained unless there is first produced a oneness of intellectual and moral perception.”

How is this oneness of intellectual and moral perception to be established?

H. G. Wells has the happy plan of creating a vast international university which shall bring together the leaders of thought in every department of knowledge, with the aim of forging our world unity of concept and practice. To this project he is earnestly devoting the last years of his life in his lectures and writings. As critics point out, however, there is no possibility of thus unifying world concepts through the meeting of various academic scientists and philosophers. The tendency of the intellect is analytical and dispersive, not synthetic and unifying. “Tot homines, tot sententiae.”—As many men, so many opinions.—The more scholars gather together for this Wellsian project, the greater the confusion that would ensue; the fewer scholars the less confusion. And of course if one world thinker could be selected, preferably Wells, absolute unity of concept could be attained. Yes, unity of concept could be attained by one thinker, but who is going to put the concept across? Thus we have the insurmountable paradox that the more leaders there are undertaking this Wellsian project the more chaos will result, whereas the fewer the leaders of thought that might engage in such a project the greater would be the futility of it.

No, human ratiocination and philosophic effort can never create this unity of moral perception and of moral practice which the world sadly needs today.

There is only one thing that can create and establish unity of moral concept and practice, and that is religion. The reason why religion can be effective in this domain is because, as we have already shown, it claims divine sanctions and thus achieves one hundred percent loyalty among its followers. Thus as a religion spreads, no matter how small and insignificant it may be at its inception, it exerts a spearhead thrust upon the disunity and chaos of world affairs. And as it grows it draws more and more of current thought and practice into its majestic orbit. Until finally chaos yields to order, and righteousness and harmony again prevail.

“The religion of God reforms the moral side of the life of mankind. It is the spreading of the virtues of the world of humanity. It is the founder of divine perfections in the hearts of men. It is nearness to God. It is conducive to the illumination of human consciousness.”

THE Manifestation reveals a body of truth and sets an example in his own life. More important still, he releases a dynamic power, the power of the Holy Spirit, which [Page 197] touches people’s hearts and helps them to struggle toward perfection.

It is very difficult to live these divine teachings. It is not the word only, but the living it that counts. The Manifestation charges the world with a Power, just as electricity may charge a battery. When the terrestrial battery runs down, another Manifestation appears to revivify it.

“Mere knowledge is not sufficient for complete human attainment. The teachings of the holy books need a heavenly power and a divine potency to carry them out. A house is not built by mere acquaintance with the plans. . . . The teachings of the holy books need a divine potency to complete their accomplishments in human hearts. Bahá’u’lláh not only proclaimed unity and love—He established it. . . . It is evident that the confirmation of the Holy Spirit and the impelling influence of a heavenly power are needed to accomplish the divine purpose in human hearts and conditions.”

Individual improvement is necessary before general social and world improvement can be achieved. A government cannot rise much higher than the average intellectuality and righteousness of its people.

A change in human hearts is necessary in order to establish the Kingdom of God upon earth.

A grave responsibility rests upon all the followers of Light. They preach a New World Order. But unless their own lives and characters measure up to the ethics of this New World Order, how can they expect such a civilization ever to be established?

First they must purify, and ennoble their own hearts and then persuade the hearts of others by the purity of their character as well as by the zeal of their religious devotion.

“Rather, what is well pleasing is that the cities of men’s hearts, which are under the dominion of the hosts of selfishness and lust, should be subdued by the sword of the word of wisdom and exhortation. Everyone then who desires victory must first subdue the city of his own heart with the sword of spiritual truth and of the word, and must protect it from remembering aught beside God. Afterward, let him turn his efforts toward the citadel of the hearts of others.”

A double moral responsibility rests upon human beings in the day of a Manifestation. Not only do they owe it to themselves to achieve perfection. But if they become adherents of the New Religion, they owe it to their Prophet to live the truths he preaches, so as to be able by their deeds and lives to persuade others to their newfound truth.

Great souls, ‘Abdu’l-Bahá declared, shall and must arise to reconstruct the affairs of the world in the new spirit of understanding. The world war has taught humanity the need for personal, social, national and international adjustments, if the world is to become safe for humanity. We must change our standards of living. Our activities must be regulated not according to policy, but according to principle. This is the aim of the new humanity in a world where ambitions are still the expression of greed and lust for power to be wielded only for self.

The first chapter in a book entitled “Four Goals of Character: A Sequence in Spiritual Psychology,” to be published in October, 1938.

[Page 198]

ARE WE LOSING THE LIGHT?

HELEN INDERLIED

MANY people in the world today—young and older—feel that life has become flat and purposeless. There seems to be no “glory” in it any more. Almost everything has been debunked, even our national heroes. Following this line of thought, Dr. E. Stanley Jones says, “Our desperately sick world can no longer be aroused by the old Shibboleths” and Matthew Arnold in a poem compares the loss of faith today to the ebbing tide of the ocean. Is then the glory in living going?

It was still in force with Julia Ward Howe when she wrote that stirring song, “The Battle Hymn of the Republic” —It begins “Mine eyes have seen the glory of the Coming of the Lord” and she continued with the choice stanzas, “In the beauty of the lilies Christ was born across the sea, With a Glory in his bosom that transfigures you and me.” This same Glory, or Light, about Jesus was discerned by an old man, Simeon, when Christ had been brought as a new born babe to the temple of Jerusalem. Simeon was allowed to take the infant in his arms. Deeply moved, he blessed God and said, “Lord lettest now Thy servant depart in peace, according to Thy word. For mine eyes have seen Thy salvation which Thou hast prepared before the face of all people, a Light to lighten the Gentiles and the Glory of my people Israel.”

Later Peter, James and John saw a tremendous concentration of Light around Jesus where he was transfigured before them. Matthew records, “His face did shine as the sun and his raiment became shining exceeding white as snow; so as no fuller on earth can whiten them.”

Glory was not lacking in the experience of Abraham for we find “The God of Glory appeared unto our Father Abraham and said, ‘Get thee out of thy Country and from thy kindred’”, a drastic order, but obeyed! The hour had struck in the destiny of those early Semitic people to give up the worship of idols and substitute the One True God, Jehovah.

It was with a never-to-be-forgotten setting of Light in a burning bush that Moses was called to lead his people from foreign bondage. “There [Page 199] appeared unto Moses in the wilderness of Sinai an angel of the Lord in a flame of fire in a bush and the bush burned and was not consumed, and the voice of the Lord said, ‘Put off Thy shoes from off Thy feet, for the place where thou standest is holy ground.’”

Aaron and the children of Israel saw a great Light on the face of Moses when he came down from Mt. Sinai with the law—“And he was there—(summoned by the Lord) forty days and forty nights; he did neither eat bread not drink water.” The story continues, “And it came to pass when Moses came down from Mt. Sinai with the two tables of testimony, that Moses wist not that the skin of his face shone while he talked with them. And when Aaron and all the children of Israel saw Moses, behold the skin of his face shone; and they were afraid to come nigh him. And ‘til Moses had done speaking with them, he put a veil on his face.”

Also Saul of Tarsus was stunned and blinded by the Light of Jesus that overtook him as he was persecuting the early converts, “breathing out threatening and slaughter.” So intense was power of this Light that Saul bore testimony in these words, “I could not see for the Glory of that Light, being led by my companions back to Damascus.” For three days he could not eat nor speak nor drink. The following is his own account, “And it came to pass as I made my journey and was come unto Damascus about Noon—suddenly there shone from heaven a great Light round about me and they that were with me saw the Light and were afraid, but they heard not the voice of Him that spoke to Me.”

This experience transformed Saul. Even his name was changed from Saul to Paul. He never persecuted Christians again, but became one of their most inspired leaders—exemplifying in his life and death the truth of Julia Ward Howe’s lines.

Paul doubtless never forgot the Light seen on the face of Stephen, that beautiful Christian Martyr, who died just before Paul’s own great experience and transformation. Paul, then Saul, even stood by “consenting and holding Stephen’s garments,” as the angry mob stoned him to death. It is recorded that Stephen, “being full of the Holy Ghost” looked up steadfastly into heaven just before he died and said, “Behold I see the heavens opened and the Glory of God!” Evidently Glory was with Stephen living or dying. Can we doubt that, on occasion God, appearing as Light, contacts men for some great purpose? In fact at the time of Creation, even before man appeared, according to the traditional account, Deity-in-action produced Light, as these words in Genesis bear witness. “And the spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters and there was Light.”

Does modern science agree or disagree with this early Biblical idea of the Cause and Effect of Light?

Mr. Dane Rudhyar, scientist and artist, answers this question brilliantly in an article “Meditations at The Gate of Light.” He says: “Science is being rapidly polarized to a new kind of subjectivism. The new subjectivism—or shall we call it Mysticism —is founded upon three great [Page 200] mystery ideas; space, time and light. It is not without significance that a modern English philosopher, Alexander, entitled a book “Space, Time and Deity.” Mr. Rudhyar continues that this is well, for “light is our only adequate symbol for Deity in operation. God is that which radiates light, all conceivable modes and qualities of light. And that is why science is at present entering the fields of a new mysticism; because it has boldly entered the realms of light. The scientists’ universe ever since the dawn of the twentieth century, the discovery of radio activity and the quantum theory is a universe of light. It is measured by the velocity of light. Its atoms as well as its remotest galaxies are known to us solely by radiations of light they emanate. All we know of the world is radiated and reflected light. Ours is no longer a world of objects. It is a world composed of radiated and reflected light. We know nothing but light; endless variations, blendings, conflicts, modifications of light.” Is not this Cosmic Consciousness? Are we not reaching a direct or indirect awareness of the glory of God—which is precisely Light.

This remarkable statement by Mr. Rudhyar from a scientific point of view tallies amazingly with a statement by ‘Abdu’l-Bahá. He says, “This is a new cycle of human power. All the horizons of the world are luminous.” Also, “This is a new light, a new motion. This is the pearl of Cosmic Consciousness.” The man of science and the man of religion are at last in tune, expressing the same thoughts in almost identical words. This is as it should be, for ‘Abdu’l-Bahá says, “Truth is indivisible.” There could not be two sets of truth, one for the scientist and one for the prophet. This the day of Unity, according to Bahá’u’lláh, when science and religion at last meet. It is significant that they meet in Light.

Here are some beautiful words of Bahá’u’lláh showing how the Light from God becomes the motivating power of an earnest seeker—“A servant always draws near unto me with prayers, until I respond unto him; then I become his ear with which he hears. For in this case his heart is illuminated and radiative throughout His Light. The action and effect of Light is from the giver of Light; this is why all move through Him and arise by His desire.”

Most people today have lost the pure Light that came through Jesus, the Christ, so dynamic in the early days of Christianity. Mr. Rudhyar says, “We have only heard the name of Christ, worshipping blindly at the shrine of a word. We have proclaimed loudly the incarnation of this ‘Word’ yet have groped in the ugly darkness of wars and passions, dazed by the noise of our proclamations of sanctity.” It is not the body of Jesus either as a babe, or on the cross, or in the sepulchre, that should most concern us—dear as these symbols are —but the Light of God that focalized through Jesus! He Himself told us so in two related sayings: “I am the Light of the World” and “Of myself I am nothing.”

But although Mankind seems to lose at times, as now, this vitally essential Light of God, yet the Light has never left humanity to go down [Page 201] in utter darkness, for this Light is also Love! With tremendous power, it pulsates and repulsates through the universe at intervals of time when most needed—to recharge all creation.

The greatest periods of Light or Glory in the world are at the time of these great pulsations from the Creator. For instance, there was more glory in the East at the time of Buddha’s Enlightenment and Revelation, and for a few centuries thereafter, than now in the Buddhist world. Also all agree there was far more spiritual Light in early Christian Centuries than at any time later down to the present time.

But although we cannot “recapture” this early “rapture” by going backward—yet God has not forgotten His creatures in their greatest crisis. For the same Light that called Abraham to establish the idea of “the One True God,” the same Light that called Moses to emancipate his people and give them laws, the same Light that called Buddha to give enlightenment to Asia, the same Light that called Jesus to show us a Father of Love, the same Light that called Muhammad to imbue semi-savage tribes of Arabia and Africa with a renaissance of learning, that same Light has in modern times—in the last century—called Bahá’u’lláh to unify all peoples of the world in love, “without diversity of religion, without differences of race, without these fruitless strifes, these ruinous wars.”

The Light today through Bahá’u’lláh is intense in love. It is reaching down to everyone and calling all receptive souls. Note His stirring words: “Behold how the Manifest Grace of God which is being showered from the clouds of Divine Glory hath in this day encompassed the world. For whereas in days past every lover besought and searched after his Beloved, it is the Beloved, Himself, who is now calling His lovers and is inviting them to attain His presence.” People attuned to this call have been responding from the beginning. That is why twenty thousand martyrs died in Persia for the New Light and thousands all over the world today are living for the New Glory. It is the same Light of God rising anew— quickening and uniting the followers of every Light of the past. On this theme, ‘Abdu’l-Bahá wrote, “Look ye at the time of Christ; had the people realized that the Holy Spirit of God was speaking to them through His divine mouth, they would not have waited three centuries before accepting Him. Let us not be like those in the past who were deaf to His call and blind to His beauty; but let us try and open our eyes that we may see Him and open our ears that we may hear Him that He may come and abide in our temples!”

Glory is not lost today! The world is filled with Glory and the horizons are luminous with the Light of God.

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