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WORLD ORDER

DECEMBER 1938

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CONTENTS OF THIS ISSUE

DECEMBER 1938 VOLUME 4 NUMBER 9

THE ROOT OF STRUGGLE • EDITORIAL ....................... 325

JUST HOW “DIFFERENT” IS THE NEGRO? • REID E. JACKSON ... 327

THE ADAPTABLE INDIAN • WILLARD W. BEATTY ............... 331

IRANIAN INFLUENCE IN INDIA • SHIRIN FOZDAR ............. 333

THE WELL OF HAPPINESS, II • A. G. B. ................... 336

THE LIFE OF SELFLESSNESS • STANWOOD COBB ............... 342

ISLAM, III • ALI-KULI KHAN ............................. 347

HOW I FOUND MY FAITH • LIDIA ZAMENHOF .................. 352

THE WORLD EXPECTANT, Book Review • DALE S. COLE ........ 356

WALLS, Poem • ARCHIBALD OVERTON HARRIS ................. 362

AND LET LIVE • MARZIEH NABIL CARPENTER ................. 363

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, Dale S. Cole, Bertha Hyde Kirkpatrick, Marzieh Carpenter, Hasan M. Balyusi, Shirin 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.

December 1938, Volume 4, Number 9

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WORLD ORDER

December 1938 Volume 4 No. 9

THE ROOT OF STRUGGLE

IF we contemplate the degree to which the principle of struggle has affected human history, and the extent to which that principle controls the world today, it seems impossible to avoid the conclusion that struggle is so deeply rooted in the very being of man that there is no hope it can ever be extirpated.

The individual struggles to rise or maintain himself in his society, and his society struggles even more fiercely to progress or maintain itself in the world of nations. Our institutions are conditioned by the prevalence of struggle among individuals; and the organized dissension of institutions confirms and augments every type of personal competition. The fact of struggle permeates the whole body of civilization today.

Against that fact what wishful theory can possibly prevail? What large and sonorous formula uttered by the hopeful or naive few can exert anything beyond a temporary local, restricted subjective influence?

The fact of struggle has indeed become the basis of determined social philosophies which seek to establish the validity of human hope upon victory, denying the possibility or even desirability of cessation from strife. Thus the chain of causation has become historically complete, from the jungle of primitive man to the jungle of modern civilization.

But the essence of this argument consists in subduing man to the political and economic principles of society in one phase of its development. Its outcome is to make human nature nothing more than the reflex of society. Philosophic reality is established by the nature of the state, and man emerges as its mere instrument. Or the same conclusion is reached by asserting that man’s reality consists of the principle of struggle, and the national state hence becomes responsible for organizing this principle for the attainment of the utmost success. The circle closes tightly and completely in whichever direction it is traversed.

Were man a static and predictable organism either argument, or either method of reaching the conclusion, would appear valid, for the fact of struggle is not to be denied.

[Page 326] The more vital truth at issue is that human nature is never static, and its possibilities have never been fulfilled by any form of civilization ever attained upon earth. Consequently the theory that human life must be organized upon the basis of political or economic strife is a betrayal of man. For whenever a civilization has carried such assumptions to an apparently triumphant conclusion; whenever political and economic power has been won by victory in strife, human nature has stirred with irrepressible restlessness, and the children of the conquerors repudiate the spoils or the children of the victims establish envied capacities in higher cultural and subjective fields.

The dynamic quality of human nature, its unhappy dissatisfaction with all that it acquires at the cost of what it might and should have been, is the eternal and unanswerable challenge to the spirit of materialism, however it may be concealed behind the panoply of empire or the fumes of ecclesiastical pomp.

Yet, even if history prove that struggle never attains fulfilment, how are we to deal with the undoubted fact that struggle appears to be so deeply rooted in each individual soul?

The truth only emerges when we grant the fact, but point out that the whole course of human progress clearly indicates that the energy of personal struggle has been misunderstood and misapplied. The real purpose of that endowment is to equip the individual human being with capacity, not to overcome his fellow, but to transcend himself.

Here, indeed, is the vital issue raised by religion from age to age: that man comprehend his own being, realize his inherent dynamic quality, and be inspired to direct the precious and holy energy of struggle into the channel of self-conquest and self-development. The fallacy of struggle as competition only arises when the individual repudiates the essence of his own being, abandons the task of true progress, and projects that energy into the negative field of strife, driven by the hounds of unhappiness released whenever a man is untrue to his divinely created self.

Therefore, the root of struggle in the world today is nothing else than a prevalent self-betrayal on the part of those who have turned away from God. Their betrayal creates these wars and revolutions, establishing their own penalty for losing the path. But no valid philosophy can be constructed from the multiplication of error. The rise and spread of God’s religion, the eternal truth of Jesus, Muhammad and Bahá’u’lláh, will illumine the darkness of the inner life, raise mankind from the pit it has dug, and out of the energy so tragically misapplied create the means of that worldwide cooperation which binds together all who live in the spirit of truth.

H. H.

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JUST HOW “DIFFERENT” IS THE NEGRO?

REID E. JACKSON

WHILE most people—for perfectly obvious reasons—are wont to concur in the thesis that physical differences exist between races, the mere mention of the possibility of inherent mental differences is almost certain to elicit sharply-divided opinion. Such a discussion, furthermore, brings back into the picture the age-old controversy between nature and nurture.

Before one can proceed far, however, with any analysis of racial differences, certain basic assumptions must be clearly defined. There is, for example, the question as to what constitutes a “race.” All too often, “nation” has been confused with “race.” Then, too, many are prone to think of mental differences as being expressed through a nebulous attribute commonly termed “intelligence.” However, no entirely satisfactory definition of intelligence, to the knowledge of the writer, has yet been formulated. Add to this the lack of objective means to measure this elusive quality and it is easy to discern the quandary in which an investigator into racial differences finds himself.

In America, naturally, the favorite topic for research in regard to racial differences is that of Negro-white intelligence. These investigations in the main, have fallen into three categories. At first, taking their cue from results obtained on the Army Alpha tests, investigations, which substantiated the view of Nordic superiority over the Negro in intelligence, were reported immediately after the World War. The aim of these research studies, ostensibly, was comparison of Negro-white intelligence to the point of rationalization of the white superiority concept. Thus, all differences found were attributed to race. The second group, in our classification, includes analyses, critiques and investigations, primarily in refutation of earlier studies. These questioned: (1) whether intelligence for the two races had been adequately measured; (2) if the differences obtained were [Page 328] racial; and (3) the suitability of the techniques employed. The writers responsible for this literature focused attention upon the hypothesis that the differences might be due to superior environmental conditions. The more recent investigations, which constitute the third group, have been carried on under carefully controlled conditions and have attempted to utilize thoroughly objective techniques. In these, the aim was to investigate—not the differences, but the cause of differences. But these investigators, too, give their allegiance variously to the rival camps of environment and heredity. It is significant, however, that the majority of data accumulated by both factions indicates that the amount of the difference in intelligence between the Negro and the white is reduced as the environment of the Negro is improved.

Environment a Factor

Several questions always arise in the mind of the writer when examining reports of investigations which compare Negro and white intelligence. Chief among these are the queries: “Have the environmental opportunities been approximately equal for the two races?” and “By what standards are the results evaluated?” Daniel has posed essentially the same questions when he asks: (1) “Have the environmental opportunities been approximately the same for all the individuals compared?”; (2) “Does the testing set-up permit valid racial comparison?”; and (3) “Are the data presented as the basis for comparison significant when subjected to statistical treatment for reliability and validity?” What Daniel is really doing is stating criteria which must be met in any scientific appraisal of the differences between any two races. How far, then, have previous investigations as to Negro-white differences in intelligence taken the criteria suggested above into account?

That gross inequalities obtain in the educational facilities for Negro and white children, particularly in the South, is a commonplace. The Negro separate school, however, has a deeper significance than that of educational disadvantage. In reality, it betokens social and economic status. So, it is readily seen why many educational authorities, especially in the Southern states, strive to maintain these inferior institutions. Our point, here, is not to prove the perfectly obvious point that the Negro separate school is an anachronism, but to indicate that the separate school is as good an index as any to the total environmental opportunities prevailing for Negro and white individuals.

The writer has made a number of investigations apropos the Negro separate school. All these have added to the welter of evidence as to the great disparity between the educational —and consequently, environmental —opportunities for Negro and white children. It is apparent, then, that the answer to any inquiry as to the equality of environmental opportunities would be in the negative. Thus the findings of the majority of research into Negro-white intelligence [Page 329] would be invalidated, since the testing program, by the very virtue of the economic and social status of the Negro is not administered in equivalent situations for both the Negro and white child. Accordingly, this is one factor which must be controlled in any investigation of such differences. So far as the techniques employed in the majority of the investigations are concerned, we again find an incomparable situation. The truth of the matter is that the norms by which both the Negro and white are equated are standards derived from and for white children. Daniel has pointed out, also, the need for greater accuracy and validity in the statistical treatment of data.

Range of Intelligence

The theory of the “overlapping of races,” i.e. the upper 60 per cent of the inferior race coincides with the lower 60 per cent of the superior race, has received much lip-service. But, it is interesting to note that Witty and Jenkins announced recently that they had discovered a Negro girl with an I.Q. of 200, in the course of a study they were making of gifted Negro children in Chicago, Illinois. This incident has very definite implications. There are, so far as the writer knows, very few cases of individuals with I.Q.’s of 200 or over. So, this discovery is at variance with the “overlapping theory”—if we accept the hypothesis that the Negro race is inferior in intelligence to the white race. It does suggest, however, that the range of intelligence among Negroes runs just as high as that in other racial groups. It is of significance, also that this Negro girl attended school in a community which afforded an environment considerably above the average in all respects. More of this sort of information, though, would have to be available before one could come to any definite conclusions.

Attention should be called to a recent study by Klineberg. The purpose of this investigation was to ascertain the relative effects of selective migration and environment upon Negro intelligence. To state it in another wise, Klineberg proposed to test the hypothesis that northern Negroes rated higher than southern Negroes (and more nearly approximated the scores of northern whites) because of the selective migration of Negroes from the South to the North. To do this, Klineberg compared the school children in Birmingham, Alabama; Nashville, Tennessee; and Charleston, South Carolina, who had migrated—some to the North, others to neighboring sections in the South or border regions—with those who had remained in their native habitat. As a result, he was unable to find any evidence of the superiority of the migrants. Instead, Klineberg concluded that “they seem to constitute about an average group.” This contradicts the contention of Huntington that “. . . practically every migration is more or less selective. All people are not equally likely to migrate; the pioneer type migrates farther than others.” Of course, those who are favorable to Huntington’s assertion would say: “the time span in Klineberg’s investigation was not great enough to attach significance to [Page 330] his results.” But, there is the equally as justified rejoinder that Klineberg’s findings indicate a trend which warrants further investigation under more elaborate conditions.

The other portion of Klineberg’s study involved the redacting of separate investigations, consummated under his direction by candidates for the master’s degree at Columbia University, as to the effect of continued residence in New York, i.e. environment. After administering many types of objective tests, involving the display of native intelligence, Klineberg found evidence to corroborate his primary assumption. Whereupon Klineberg opines: “. . . the results . . . show quite definitely that the superiority of the northern over the southern Negroes, and the tendency of northern Negroes, to approximate the scores of the whites are due to factors in the environment, and not to selective migration.” Klineberg goes a step further and suggests that if the environmental conditions were improved sufficiently, the scores for Negroes and whites would be the same. There are several weaknesses in Klineberg’s procedure, which he himself admits, but it is as objective as present conditions seem to permit —and much more objective than the general run of investigations in the same field! Therefore, the value of Klineberg’s study in indicating the probable effect of environment upon intelligence cannot be easily discounted.

Difference Is Negligible

There are several other considerations which travel hand in hand with and becloud the issue when any attempt is made to compare races. Just how will we know when we have an individual of pure racial stock? If so, where will we find such persons? And these queries bring us face-to-face once more with our problem of defining race. Then, too, just what will constitute a difference for races? These and a legion of other difficulties continually beset the path of the investigator into racial differences.

The writer does not believe that enough studies have been consummated, under appropriate and satisfactory conditions, to justify the phrasing of conclusive answer as to the extent of Negro-white differences in intelligence. But evidence of a scientific nature, as revealed in the foregoing review of pertinent research, is tending to show that the difference in native mental ability is negligible when all factors are kept constant. As a matter of fact, the word “difference,” to the mind of the writer, is an unhappy term. It denotes a stigma of inferiority for the group or individual lower on the scale. Perhaps, such a term as “characteristics” would better explain the distinction between races and individuals. For, if the present trend persists, about all that could be said of any racial group is that, due to external conditions, the inherent ability is more likely to express itself in this way or that way. In other words, if mental “differences” exist between races they might not be of quantitative nature—expressed in a group mean—but of certain character. Time and scientific experimentation alone will tell!

Reprinted from The Crisis, April 1938, through the courtesy of the Editor.

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THE ADAPTABLE INDIAN

WILLARD W. BEATTY

“You can’t change an Indian.” “Indians don't like new ideas.”

These are statements made all over the Indian country, by people who feel they speak from experience. But what kind of experience is it? Does it cover all aspects of Indian life, or does it refer, for instance, to certain features of white civilization such as painting the house, wearing short hair or keeping accounts? These customs the white man considers useful while many Indians, in view of their own circumstances, have never agreed. But history is full of instances in which the Indian, finding something which he did consider useful, has adopted it, without any teaching at all.

Take his most valuable possession, Indian corn. It was raised in the beginning, say the students, in just one part of America. They are not yet sure which part it was but they know that the continent, all around it, was filled with Indians of different languages, different physique and different customs. Yet all of them learned about corn. When the whites came, they found it growing as far north as possible and in all varieties of soil and climate. The people who were not growing corn either could not, or did not need it.

In the same way, the tribes had passed the news about pottery, various kinds of basketry, weapons, clothing, government, ceremonies. It has become a commonplace to say that Indians in any one part of the country, no matter how different their language, will have very much the same customs. They have learned from each other.

We cannot measure the time required for these various learnings to spread, but one piece of adaptation went on under the very eyes of the whites. That was the use of the horse. Half the white population of America pictures an Indian as someone who leans from a galloping horse to shoot buffalo, yet the modern horse was unknown in America before 1539. It is true some version of a horse once lived on the continent but he was extinct thousands of years ago. Early Indians carried burdens on their own backs or had them dragged by [Page 332] dogs and they fought or hunted buffalo on foot. Then the armies of De Soto and Coronado and their successors marched through the south of our present United States. The soldiers lost their horses, traded them or, as hostility developed, had them stolen. Soon there were herds of wild horses in the Southwest and the Indians saw something that they needed.

By 1682, not 150 years after Coronado, the Kiowa and Missouri Indians were mounted; by 1700 the Pawnee and by 1714 the Commanche. From tribe to tribe the knowledge of the horse passed north, without a white man to carry the news. The Indians fought each other to obtain horses and so the Sioux, the Blackfeet, the Assiniboine became “horse Indians” and in 1784 when explorers met the Sarsi, the northernmost of the Plains tribes, they found them mounted. So used were they to horses and so perfectly adapted, that the pioneers thought the Plains Indians had been riding always.

With their horses, the Indians needed bridles, saddles, stirrups and, sometimes, plows. Most of them had not even seen these conveniences but word of how they looked was passed from tribe to tribe and the Indians invented their own. Museums have an amazing variety of wooden saddles and stirrups, plows made of a tree root, bridles of hair rope—all contrived by Indians without any teacher. The new animal induced some tribes to change their whole way of life. The Navajo and Apache spread through the Southwest; the Sioux and others spread over the Plains. The Cheyenne even remembered when they left their villages and took to buffalo hunting. . . .

Now a more peaceful example. The Navajo came to the Southwest between 1000 and 1500 A.D., probably nearer the latter date. They were then a wandering tribe of hunters, dressed in skins and cedar bark. No one gave sheep to the fierce nomads but by 1785 they had them. By 1795 they were “weaving wool with much taste.” By 1812 their blankets were “the most valuable in New Spain” and, by 1875 the surprised Americans found them doing a big commercial business in textiles. No one had set out to teach the Navajo, but they saw something they wanted and learned it. So with their silverwork. Learned from Spanish silversmiths, some time in the early eighteen hundreds, it is now one of the outstanding arts of the Southwest.

Indians, then, have given plenty of proof that they are willing to learn when they see something they want. They need time to be convinced of the fact, for even the useful horse took two hundred years to spread through the Plains. But consider how slow is the spread of central heating through England! It takes time to alter a whole system of living, even for a cause. The problem for Indians and for whites concerned in Indian education, is to find what elements of white teaching will be really useful to an Indian group, not a burden. When its fitness is demonstrated, the Indians themselves will move to learn it.

Reprinted from “Indian Education.”

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IRANIAN INFLUENCE IN INDIA

SHIRIN FOZDAR

IT is hardly necessary to emphasize the close relationship between the Iranian and Indian culture. It is rather difficult to discriminate where cultural patterns emanating from their predecessor the Indo-Iranian culture and common to both Iranian and Indian cultures end, and where either the distinctly Iranian or distinctly Indian begin. Philology and history seem to be both agreed and have proved conclusively that the people of Iran and those Aryans of India are descended from the same stock. There is so much similarity between the old Iranian language and Sanskrit that Oriental scholars find it necessary to know Sanskrit in order to understand the Avesta. A deeper study of the history of these people would reveal that not only in language but also in religious customs and observances they were very much akin.

In fact the name Hindu originated from one of the branches of these Aryans settling on the Eastern side of the Indus. Here they found a salubrious and fertile land, developed a complex culture which was the product of leisure and meditation. The Iranian branch of the Aryans, having to face the rigors of a dry and bracing environment, developed the Iranian civilization.

After the invasion of Iran by the Arabs, a batch of Iranian Zoroastrians fled to India in order to escape the religious persecutions. Owing to the similarity of their religious customs and manners they were easily assimilated. Later they proved a great boon to this adopted motherland, as these Zoroastrians were noted for their piety, charity and enterprise. They have contributed largely to the progress of India.

Later when Babar made his first invasion in 1505 he introduced a Central Asian culture which was very much Iranian owing to the fact that the Moghuls were closely in connection with that country. Also we should not forget that the cultural patterns of Islam too did not come to India direct from Arabia. Some commercial link did exist between Southern India and Arabia, even before the advent of the Prophet, but the greater part of Islamic culture came [Page 334] to India through Iranian channels.

Even as late as a hundred years ago, Persian was the official language of the greater part of India and many illustrious Muslims as well as Hindus are to be found among the Arabic and Persian scholars. In spite of the check that this mingling of cultures received owing to the introduction of the Western element by the British, the close relation between Iranian and Indian cultures is evidenced in the development of the Urdu language which has as much root in the Sanskrit as in the Persian language, and has borrowed from Arabic only those words which had become current in Persian itself.

In recent years Iran has once more been influencing social and religious thought in India. This time through the teachings of Bahá’u’lláh, the Founder of the Bahá’í Faith.

This religion was founded in Iran in the middle of the nineteenth century. Iran at that time was full of corrupt practices and ferocious bigotries. She had fallen so low that to all foreign travelers it was a matter of regret that this country, which in former times had been so glorious and highly civilized, had now become so decayed and ruined and its population had lost its dignity.

The Herculean task of reforming a nation so inoculated with malpractices fell upon the shoulders of Bahá’u’lláh, who although born in the family of statesmen was by nature a spiritual reformer. Bahá’u’lláh’s task was all the more difficult because He did not only desire to reform his native land, but also to found a world civilization, for He claimed to be the fulfillment of all the former prophecies regarding the advent of a Divine Messenger, who would establish the kingdom of God on earth.

The object in view was meritorious, but Bahá’u’lláh’s reward was imprisonment and exile for the rest of His life. For forty years tortures of the worst kind were inflicted upon Him, but He remained undeterred till the end. His great consolation lay in the fact that His message was spreading rapidly not only in the East but also in the West.

Is it any wonder then that Count Leo Tolstoy should write of Bahá’u’lláh in the following words? “We spend our lives trying to unlock the mystery of the Universe, but there was a Turkish prisoner, Bahá’u’lláh, in Akka, Palestine, who had the Key!”

Leo Tolstoy is the guru of Mahatma Gandhi, the greatest Indian politician and reformer. Under his guidance the Congress Government in India has introduced such reforms as would consolidate the work of progress.

The enumeration of a few of the teachings of this new religion would show clearly the bearing they have on Indian reforms.

Bahá’u’lláh has abolished all kinds of religious, racial and national prejudices. He advocated a universal auxiliary language, universal education, universal Brotherhood, universal Peace, equality of sexes. He gave the solution to the economic problems of today. Recourse to violence was forbidden to such an extent that even though nearly 30,000 of his Iranian followers were martyred they did not retaliate. Intoxicants of all kinds are [Page 335] strictly forbidden.

Within the last quarter of a century these teachings have spread slowly and imperceptibly within the stronghold of Hindu orthodoxy, shaking their ancient belief in traditional prejudices of castes and creeds. States vie with each other in throwing open schools, temples, wells and hotels to their more unfortunate brethren, the Harijans, who were social outcastes for centuries.

Women who were considered part and parcel of man’s possession are being emancipated. Day by day new bills are introduced in the legislature giving greater freedom and independence to women.

India is a land of many languages, but now in order to facilitate complete understanding between the different provinces Hindi language is made compulsory and will be the medium of education in future.

According to the recent Wardha scheme of Mr. Gandhi, not only education would be universal, but each child would be taught a profession, art or trade, so that every member of the community would be able to earn his or her own livelihood.

Alcohol has strongly contributed to the impoverishment of the teeming millions in India, specially the laborers. The Congress Government has been introducing total prohibition in some of the districts with very great success. It is hoped that very shortly India would go completely dry.

Non-violence has been strictly adhered to. In all their struggles against the domination of a foreign power, the followers of Gandhi have strictly refrained from violating this principle. In thousands they courted incarceration meekly, and those who suffered imprisonment are now in power, and sway the land with their dictation.

Religious prejudices have proved the bane of India. Hindus owing to their religious division of caste and creed were so weakened that they easily lost to the Muslim invaders. Later the religious differences between the Hindus and Muslims had created such a wide gulf that any foreign power could easily seek domination in this ancient land. Even today communal riots are a common occurrence, and unity between these two great religions of India seems out of question.

Iran’s greatest contribution, the Bahá’í Faith, alone can save India from this internal bloodshed. Through its teachings these two communities can be cemented together, and with it the birth of a regenerated India.

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THE WELL OF HAPPINESS

A. G. B.

II.

OF a surety God is Joy! This is the creed, the experience, the message of religion. Not only high poets through their intuition, but the seers, the saints, the prophets, one and all, have recognized this all-explanatory, this all-animating truth. The hopes and dreams of suffering, longing mankind have been as a mirror reflecting a great reality. There is—there is a Being whose name is Bliss—changeless, throned above vicissitude and all shadow, without beginning or ending, the Eternal One, the Master of all Life, radiant, beautiful, beloved!

Had they not known this Being, the Founders of the Religions could never have thought or spoken or endeavored as they did: they would have had no message of comfort to give to sorrowing mankind and they could not have promised that all tears would be wiped away and only happiness would remain. Christ Himself possessed inalienably this joy; and the immortal prospect which He held before those who died in the faith was that of sharing in eternity the joy of God. One of His express gifts to His disciples on earth was joy. “These things I have spoken unto you that my joy may be within you and your joy complete.” He said that the joy of the true believer was so great that for joy he would sell all he had to gain the object of his love! And He assured His disciples that nothing would ever take this joy away from them. The disciples are described as being filled with joy and the Holy Spirit. Paul described the Kingdom of God as “joy in the Holy Ghost,” and bade those to whom he wrote to “Rejoice in the Lord,” and “evermore to give thanks.” The New Testament not only in the Gospels but from the Acts to the Apocalypse is alive with the spirit of a pervading and inviolable joy.

Not in the New Testament only but in the higher reaches of the Old Testament the same song of happiness is heard: “Rejoice in the Lord, O ye righteous: for praise is comely for the righteous.” “I will greatly rejoice in the Lord, my soul shall be joyful in my God.”

Had not the early Christians been animated with an invincible confidence and an amazing power of attraction [Page 337] they could never have overcome indifference and persecution and won the hearts of the world to submission to Christ.

One striking proof of this spirit meets one in the early works of Christian art. This art was largely a sepulchral art, found in the catacombs or associated with death and often with martyrdom; and it was produced in time of tribulation and struggle. Yet images of sorrow and suffering are systematically excluded from it, nor is there in it any expression of bitterness or complaint. Pictures such as that of Daniel unharmed among the lions or the three children unscathed amid the flames, are the sole indication of the dreadful persecutions raging at the time. There are few representations of martyrdom, and none (as it seems) till a late date. Instead, one finds emblems of beauty and happiness— pictures of the miracles of mercy, sweet emblems of immortality, and even joyous images borrowed from the mythology of the pagans.

CENTURIES passed away before this brave and tender note ceased to be dominant in Christian art and another and very different mood took its place.

In distant India long before the time of Christ the Gita had borne witness to their Eternal Joy and had opened to men the way to realize it.

“For persons free from desire or hatred, for the persons who have controlled their mind and who have realized the Self everywhere is found the bliss of Brahman.”

And again, “To persons who have known the Self, the bliss of Brahman lies everywhere.”

Buddha uttered statements similar to those of Christ on His possession and His gift of happiness. He said of Himself that He “lived in the pure land of eternal bliss even while he was still in the body and he preached the law of religion to you and the whole world that you and your brethren may attain the same peace and the same happiness.”

He set forth five meditations through the use of which the devotee might reach the land of bliss, the first of love, the second of pity “the third of joy in which you think of the prosperity of others and rejoice with their rejoicings.”

Buddha taught insistently that misery and fear were caused by error, and that knowledge of truth conferred a complete and undying joy, even here on earth.

“There is misery in the world of birth and death: there is much misery and pain. But greater than all the misery is the bliss of truth. . . . Blessed is he who has become an embodiment of truth and loving kindness. He conquers though he may be wounded; he is glorious and happy, although he may suffer. . . .”

“This is the sign that a man follows the right path: Uprightness is his delight and he sees danger in the least of the things which he should avoid. He trains himself in the commands of morality, he encompasseth himself with holiness in word and deed. . . . mindful and self-possessed, he is altogether happy.” And again: “A brother who with firm determination walks in the noble path is sure to [Page 338] come forth in the light, sure to reach up to the higher wisdom, sure to attain to the highest bliss of enlightenment.”

But all the Founders of Religion have taught that the way to truth and the joy of truth is narrow and difficult. The Divine Being who is the Soul of Bliss is hard to find, hard to attain to. Objects of earthly ambition are not gained without perseverance and labor: how much more effort will then be needed to achieve this blissful union which is the most precious and the final goal of all human endeavor! This divine joy is closely hidden, jealously concealed from the casual observation of man—but it is not hidden by distance. On the contrary it lies close at hand and if it cannot be seen, this is because it is so very near. Not only is it, as the poet said of God, “nearer to us than breathing, closer than hands and feet” (that would be wonderful enough); but it is nearer to us than we are to ourselves. There is in human nature always a possibility that a man’s superstition or self-illusion will hang a veil between himself and his heart so that he will be in blank ignorance of that which lies at the center of his own being.

“Their superstitions have become veils between them and their own hearts and kept them from the path of God, the Exalted, the Great.”

THE psychological make-up of a man may be likened to a figure consisting of three or four concentric circles, the outer representing his body and the senses, the next representing the mental realm, the next the moral realm, and the innermost circle standing for the realm of the spiritual which is the essential part of man, the heart of his heart, and soul of his soul. It is possible for a man to live and move and spend his whole existence in the outer fringes of his being, to shut away from his experience the finer activities of thought and feeling and to have his nobler and most vital faculties misused. He may occupy his time in this or that pursuit yet never effect an entry into the sphere of conscience of faith or of spirit.

Such men, said Christ, are dead. Though they walk about and work and wield earthly influence, though they govern a province or preside at a Sanhedrin, they are only rational animals, men in an embryonic stage, unfit to be dignified by the title “man” in the fullness of its meaning. Such men cannot be happy. Their minds are operating in a sphere where a stable and satisfying happiness is not to be had. They are unconscious of that finer and inner realm of being in which happiness is to be sought and found. Not to such men but to His disciples did Jesus leave His peace and His joy.

This communion with God through which a man finds Bliss is a communion of love, a meeting of like with like.

“I have breathed within thee a breath of my own spirit, that thou mayest be my lover.”

When the veils of illusion which hide a man’s own heart from himself are drawn aside, when after purgation he comes to himself and attains self-knowledge and sees himself as [Page 339] he truly is then at the same moment and by the same act of knowledge he beholds there in his own heart His Father who has patiently awaited His son’s return.

Only through this act of self-completion, through this conclusion of the journey which begins in the kingdom of the senses and leads inward through the kingdom of the moral to end in that of the spiritual, does real happiness become possible. Now for the first time a man’s whole being can be integrated, and a harmony of all his faculties be established. Through his union with the Divine Spirit he has found the secret of the unifying of his own being. He who is the Breath of Joy becomes the animating principle of his existence. He knows the Peace of God.

THIS union with God is the only happiness which the Prophets one and all affirm as worthy of the name. It does not belong to the accidents of life and is in no degree the product of imagination or illusion. It is independent of all contingencies. It rests on direct perception, on immediate union between the creature and his Creator. It is shared with God in its essence and is therefore imperishable and secure. The world did not give it and the world cannot take it away. Afflictions may add to its strength and intensity, as winds will blow a glowing fire to a flame; but they cannot violate it. It does not deny the other and lesser pleasures which God in His generosity has bestowed upon His creatures. It does not subsist on their mortification. It is compatible with them all. It does not demand asceticism. The ministry of Jesus began with a marriage feast and his enemies accused Him of being a gluttonous man and a wine bibber. The Great Ones of the Bahá’í Revelation lived, so far as conditions permitted, normal human lives. As sons and brothers, as husbands and fathers, and friends and men of business and affairs, they set examples which men may look to as they follow the ordinary course of social life. Bahá’u’lláh expressly discouraged ascetic habits: “take what God has given you,” He said. He permitted men by definite injunction to enjoy the comforts and comelinesses and even the luxuries of life so long as these did not wean their hearts from servitude to God and the informing spirit of sacrifice. The ordinary pleasures of life, material and intellectual, are to be taken as they come, neither being sought nor avoided but left to fall into their appropriate places.

There is only one peace of mind, one joy, one happiness which in itself deserves to be an object of contemplation and desire. The Great Prophets are not content merely to bear witness to the reality of this, or to describe its nature. They do more; they bear it into the world as a gift; they bring it within men’s reach, urge and encourage them to seek for it till they find it. The imperative which they lay on men: “Rejoice and be exceeding glad, for great is your reward in heaven . . .” is not a mere counsel of perfection, not (God forbid) an unkind command to seek a goal which men cannot attain (—will God mock His creatures?) It is a promise of success. “Seek and ye shall find: [Page 340] knock and it shall be opened to you;” which is as if He said, “You have only to strive and you will attain.”

“The heavens of Thy mercy and the oceans of Thy bounty are so vast Thou hast never disappointed those who will to come to Thee.”

The poet does much when he testifies that God is Joy and when he with inspired vision paints scenes of elysian beatitude that await the aspiring soul of man. The High-Prophet does yet more. He opens not a vision, but the truth itself. He brings the truth down into the world among men. He imparts to those ready to receive it the power to know the truth and become one with it.

Tragically every Prophet in religious history has found only a very few persons ready to accept Him and faithfully to follow out his directions. Neither in His life-time nor in the life-time of the religion which He founds, though this be centuries long, are there many disciples who will really put His commandments to the test, will persevere in whole hearted and exact obedience and continue in spite of discouragements in the way He has marked out till they reach the goal. Spiritual lassitude, moral compromise, the substitution of the formal for the essential, have been the rule in the history of all religions. In consequence the general effect of the teaching of the Prophets has only been a fraction of what it might have been. The possibilities of religion, as affirmed by those to whom the religions owe their origin, have never been developed. The proportion of informed and determined followers to the total population was never considerable enough to produce large historic results. There never have been many who sought their happiness in the spiritual sphere and found that road to inward bliss which their Prophet had trodden and had left open wide for them to walk in. The efforts of men and nations, even too often of churches, have been bent in other directions and their energies have been spent on less immaterial objects. In consequence human history all the world over has been darkened with troubles and vicissitudes that need never have been, and has never been blessed with the hope, the vision, the sense of proportion, or with anything better than the least suggestion of the well being and happiness which the Prophet had brought within human reach.

Not only the facts of history but the recorded forecasts of the Prophets in their life time bear witness to this. Moses and Jesus both foresaw the failures and the sufferings of their followers. No Scripture seems to show such premonitions of future disasters and calamities or contains so many and such grave warnings of faithlessness and of tribulation to come as the Gospel. But even in our own Age Bahá’u’lláh Himself warned men of dire retribution at hand.

“O Ye Peoples of the World! Know verily that an unforeseen calamity is following you and that grievous retribution awaiteth you. Think not the deeds ye have committed have been blotted from my sight.” But if the great world never yet has grasped or perceived its blessings and if the Prophets have foreseen and foretold these ineptitudes [Page 341] and failures, the Prophets with one consent from the first to the last, from the mythic times of Adam to the present era have assured mankind in no uncertain tones that this frustration and misery would not last forever. The day would come when the religions and social conviction of mankind would be changed, when the reality of spiritual happiness would be appreciated if not by the whole human race at least by great and prevailing multitudes and when it would become the possession not of a very, very few but of very many.

FROM the beginning, the date of this Event has been fixed by the providence of the Creator. From the beginning, the certainty of its future advent has been foretold to man in every Revelation. A symbolic reference to it is recorded in the first chapter of the Bible, when the seventh or final day of creation is shown as different from all the earlier days, is distinctively the Day of completeness and of divine rest, the Day of God. Only one Prophet—among all the Prophets—has not foretold this future Day of Fulfillment and Happiness: Bahá’u’lláh. His pronouncement is more triumphant and happy far than that of any who preceded Him—for His Glad Tidings is that the Promised Day of Happiness has come! God has come in the plenitude of His power and the Lord of Bliss has established His Kingdom on earth. At last God’s love for His creatures has prevailed over man’s resistance. God’s Name has conquered the earth. Man is to lift his eyes from mundane levels and to look up towards heavenly places. His consciousness is to expand. The fires of love are to be kindled in his heart and spiritual impulses are to stir and move his soul. He is to become aware of the spiritual realms that have lain unexplored in the recesses of his own heart and mind. He is to turn his eyes within, upon himself, and to find God Himself standing there powerful, mighty, supreme—the Lord of Joy.

Today is the end of man’s long journey. The prodigal after his wanderings and his humiliations has come to himself. He knows at last what he is; and whence he came. He has returned to the Father who has left His own Home and come to meet the beloved on the way. It is the Day of Reunion; the Day of God’s fulfillment, the Day of Joy. And that Blissful Being with whom man is now joined again, is found not to have absented himself from man, not to have hidden Himself, in the heights nor in the depths, but to have been at hand radiant and glorious in the recesses of man’s own spiritual being.

(Concluded)

[Page 342]

THE LIFE OF SELFLESSNESS

STANWOOD COBB

As life moves on it requires more and more of us. A man who has faithfully and successfully striven in the path of self-development and self-training, who fulfills his responsibilities to family and state, and who practices altruism in the daily relationships of life—has he reached the ultimate goal of human character? No, he has not for there are still loftier goals to which humanity must attain.

The path of character-building, of spiritual progress, must ultimately lead through valleys of self-sacrifice and renunciation of personal ambition, to lofty heights of selfless consecration.

The valley of sacrifice seems indeed, as the Psalmist puts it, “the valley of the shadow of death.” In reality it is a stage of development freed from the limitations of personality and under the guidance and protection of the Universal.

This is a definite and final stage of character-building which relatively few individuals reach in this life. It is the final and essential maturity of the human soul, and as such is demanded by Destiny of every one.

If human personality were flawless, one would not need to abdicate it in order to attain to the supreme station of human perfection.

But man’s personality is not perfect. On the contrary, it is a most imperfect and kaleidoscopic miscellany —a composite of man’s inner gifts and desires as responding to and modified by environment and experience.

Personality has little consistency and no unity or coherence within itself. Worse than that, personality as expressed by millions of separate human entities is antipathetic to that organic unity which the Universe requires.

It is evident, then, from a merely material and scientific point of view that personality, at first a necessary pattern of life, becomes later an obstruction to spiritual progress and to lofty achievement.

In the beautifully fitting allegory of the “Chambered Nautilus,” Oliver Wendell Holmes counsels us to leave our low-vaulted past, discarding old forms and crystallizations in order to [Page 343] attain to the larger self.

The personality is this shell which we must discard. At first an essential function of growth, it becomes finally an obstacle to growth.

It is necessary at some point, then, to drop the impedimenta of self-consciousness and egotism and free ourselves for the stiff upward climb which the greater heights require. This is what is meant by sacrifice. It is the giving up not of something that is worth while, but of something less valuable for something more valuable. Seen in this light, self-sacrifice is but the way to the supreme attainments of character and of life.

Great achievement is predicated upon the sacrifice of little things and requires complete devotion of one’s abilities to the task at hand. This quality of consecration is common to all great achievers. They lose themselves in the great goals for which they strive. Every creator must sacrifice self in the white heat of his vision. Genius is the quality of infinite absorption in the creative work.

HOWEVER patent be these conclusions as to the necessity for attainment to the plane of selflessness, few people will of their own accord go through the intellectual operations necessary to conceive this great law of character. And fewer still would undertake the arduous task of actually putting this law of sacrifice into practice.

Therefore it is necessary that the great Educators of humanity awaken men to the lofty requirements of the law of selflessness. A central part of the message of Christ lies within this all-important, great, and even to this day little understood theme. This is the station described by Christ as the second birth, or attainment to the plane of eternal life. It is the very flower and fruitage of religion, the highest and ultimate peak of character.

Salvation, as intended in these terms, is not a sudden process. Moral and religious convictions may start it, but they do not accomplish it at one stroke. It is a matter of development. A slow and steady process of gradual transference of desire and allegiance from material things for the satisfaction of self, to universal and spiritual objectives. It is the sublimation of natural or carnal man, with all his native faults, into spiritual man characterized by divine attributes.

This is the attainment of the loftiest station of which man is capable— the fulfillment of the saying: “Man is made in the image of God.” It means a subordination of the ego to the whole, the overcoming of self, and complete habitual submission to the Will of God.

Winning through to eternal life means functioning predominantly on the plane of the spirit. It is a state of being, not a condition in time. It is a life independent of all save God— the daily expression of the consciousness that all things live and move by His desire. Thus eternal life can be attained even in this world. And if not attained here, there is no magic in Death capable of guaranteeing it hereafter.

This evanescence—this abnegation of self-will and self-desire—is the [Page 344] necessary path to higher spiritual planes of existence. In a Universe which offers immortality to the individual how could it be possible for countless billions of souls to go forward and upward, infinitely increasing in intelligence and power, if these gifts were to be used in the direction of self-will and egoism? From such a situation would result an impossible warring chaos of Titans.

No! In order to reach the celestial plane one must renounce self-will and sacrifice the ego on the altar of the Universal. The sublime harmony of the celestial spheres, mirrored forth even on the lowest material plane in that harmony which Nature knows, results from the unobstructed expression of one potent and divinely intelligent Will.

Not even on shipboard can order be maintained without the subordination of every will to the will of the captain. How then can one expect the Universe to be managed with harmony unless all wills are effectively subordinated to the Great Executive?

This necessary surrender of self, this attainment to evanescence, is not a virtue deserving of any special praise. It is merely the expression of wisdom and intelligence on the part of man—the perception that not elsewise can he attain to immortality.

It is not demanded of man by Deity that he thus abnegate his will. Man may hug his self-will as long as he so wishes and desires—hug it to himself eternally if he pleases. But by this foolish process he will miss nine-tenths—no, ninety-nine one-hundredths of existence. For in that World which lies on the other side of death the self-willed individual cannot function. He is born into that other World blind and dumb, crippled of limb, helpless. In fact his existence there is as tragically limited in comparison with the transcendent life of those who have attained to immortality as is the existence of a stone in this world in comparison with the existence of a human being.

Attainment to the plane of sacrifice and evanescence, then, is not a duty thrust upon us by Deity. It is merely the scientific and necessary step toward the attainment of man’s highest potentiality. This attainment is of no gain or advantage to Deity, but only to us.

God can dispense with our perfectioning, but we cannot. God does not need our love, but we need His. And His love can never reach us while we are filled with love of self.

God does not need that we should discard the self. But we need to if we are to advance. This is only the part of the higher wisdom—the fulfillment of our lofty destiny as Sons of God. This is the highest station to which man can attain upon this planet. On the part of the individual, it may be called salvation; as expressed collectively by humanity, it is the achievement of the Kingdom of God upon earth.

IT has not been expected that all humans can attain this plane of immortality, this perfect submission of self-will to the Will of God. The attainment to holiness and sanctity has been up to the present the rare achievement of the few who stand [Page 345] out as glittering golden peaks of character-perfection.

But Bahá’u’lláh astoundingly calls upon all the world to strive for and attain the station of celestial purity and power. No one is to be exempt from this requirement. Character is not complete if it falls short of this.

The successive Dispensations demand of humanity higher and higher attainments. The Mosaic dispensation attained to a stern and drastic sense of responsibility and duty. The Christian dispensation, in response to the message of Christ, has manifested and expressed many beautiful forms of altruism. The New World Order of Bahá’u’lláh expects all humanity to strive for and attain to evanescence, selflessness and sanctity.

This is the final and consummate attainment for this planet, the attainment of a culture which is the expression of spirituality. Humanity will never again be called upon to undertake so gigantic a task as the present one which confronts it, of sublimating its instincts into one great emotion of world-brotherhood and unity —the expression on the outer plane of that inner spirituality which constitutes man a true Son of God.

This life of self-abnegation, of evanescence, is really not a giving up and loss of something worth while. We are simply exchanging lower for immensely higher values. It is a miraculous process of transubstantiation. The symbols used by Christ are those of the seed dying unto self in order to become the ripened ear of wheat. This is a perfect figure, adequately describing the process which takes place in the human being in changing from carnal man into spiritual man.

The seed when placed in the ground has to die unto itself to become a plant. It apparently goes through all the processes of death, giving even its body to feed that marvelous growth which pushes up through the soil to blossom in a new and sunlit world. This lovely and fruitful plant, blossoming in the face of heaven, is the same entity which once was a tiny hard seed but has now reached its station of fulfillment. This, Christ would have us understand, is the nature of the transformation intended by Destiny for all human beings, but attained in actuality by very few. I do not know how long the seed can continue to exist as seed if it forever rejects the opportunity of growth and proper functioning.

I do not know that Destiny guarantees immortality to every individual. Certainly immortality is something that has to be attained, it is not a gift of nature to us. He who would save his life shall lose it, and he who would lose his life for My sake shall save it unto life Eternal—this is the immortal Message of world Saviors.

“The seed that is to grow must lose itself as seed;

And they that creep may graduate, through chrysalis, to wings:

Wilt thou then, O mortal, cling to husks which falsely seem to you the Self?”

“The meaning of Eternal Life is the gift of the Holy Spirit, as the flower receives the gift of the season, the air, and the breezes of spring. . . .

“Entrance into the Kingdom is through detachment, through holiness [Page 346] and chastity, through truthfulness, purity, steadfastness, faithfulness, and sacrifice of self. . . .

“The Life of the Kingdom is the Life of the Spirit, the Eternal Life. . .

“Morality is the governing of oneself. Immortality consists in the governing of the human soul by Divine Spirit.”

IT can readily be seen, if one contemplates the subject with scientific and inspired intelligence, that the celestial plane of Evanescence is not a plane of weakness but a plane of power. The individual in attaining to that plane becomes a channel for the Universal. He puts off the limitations of personality and becomes endowed with the quality of Universality.

“Let us yearn for the Kingdom of God, so that our works may bear eternal fruit. Then from day to day you will become more enlightened; day by day your efforts will increase; day by day your work will become universal, and day by day your horizons will broaden until in the end they will embrace the universe. Glory be upon the people of glory.”

When our will is submitted to the Will of God and we become sensitive to guidance, the problems of life for the most part disappear from before our path and we are saved many of the pitfalls into which blind feet are apt to stray. The life of sanctified man knows a harmony and happiness which are transcendent. Inner doors open to him—giving access to new avenues of action and achievement, new possibilities for growth.

In fact, joy is a natural quality and expression of the truly spiritual life. Joy is so innately connected with spiritualized existence that it may be said that all truly spiritual people are joyous; and conversely, that people who are not joyous are missing something of spiritual perfection.

In conclusion, let it be realized that the spiritual climb is not in reality a harsh and painful journey. It is an ascent, like mountain-climbing, full of upper sunshine and of joy.

Nor is it necessary that we wait to finish one step of progress before we begin the next. Development of self, the training in responsibility, the acquisition of altruistic motivation, and the glorious attainment of evanescence —these four processes should be carried on throughout our lives. We shall never finish with them here, but we may make a good beginning.

The Saviors come to earth in order that human beings may be imbued with greater power for this celestial struggle, this striving for perfection. And all who turn to Them will be aided into a miraculous growth of spiritual potency.

A chapter from “Character: A Sequence in Spiritual Psychology,” Avalon Press, Washington, D. C.

[Page 347]

ISLAM

ALI-KULI KHAN

III.

FROM AGE 45 TO 50

AFTER three months, the Abyssinian refugees returned. But Muhammad had only forty converts and had alienated the sympathy of his entire tribe and all Mecca. The mention of “What think ye of Al-Lat and Al-Ozza, and the Manat The Third beside?” (three Meccan idols) which He recited in a Sura, made the Koreish think that Muhammad had at last decided to compromise, and they gathered about Him to worship the idols together. But tradition states that this was a temptation of Satan, and He avoided it when Gabriel appeared and assured Him that the verse containing the idols was not brought by him. So He shunned those “exalted females” (goddesses) whose intercession was thought necessary by Koreish, and in the Sura XXXIX He exclaimed: “God suffices for me,” etc.

The returning refugees who had been confused by the above incident were met by a party near the gate of Mecca and informed that the Prophet had withdrawn his concession and the Meccans had resumed their pitiless oppression. Having received good treatment in their exile, they decided to return thither in the event that the persecutions in Mecca waxed violent. Thus the “second emigration” began by a party of 101, of which 83 were men. Thirty-three of them, including Othman and his wife Rokeiya, later returned to Mecca, but the rest remained in Abyssinia until the Prophet’s expedition to Kheibar in the seventh year of the Hejira.

The Koreish endeavored to make Abu Talib abandon Muhammad; they asserted that they could no longer tolerate Muhammad’s abuse of their gods and their traditions, and that Abu Talib should either reject him or take part with him, or they would take drastic steps against both. But Abu Talib refused this request.

Meanwhile, Muhammad thought that Abu Talib, his sole protector, might abandon Him, and decided, in any case, to stand by His mission, even though “they brought the sun upon his right hand and the moon on [Page 348] his left.” Abu Talib ended by deciding to stand by Him to the last.

In spite of mention of persecutions in the traditions, Muhammad suffered no personal indignity, and apart from invective and abuse, He suffered no personal injury.

In the sixth year of His mission, Muhammad strengthened His cause by converting two powerful men; his uncle, the brave Hamza, and Omar, son of El Khat’tab. Omar was notorious in his enmity to Islam, although his sister Fatima and her husband Sa’id were converts. Omar’s conversion was accidentally effected by his sister. This was in answer to a prayer she had heard Muhammad offer the previous day: “O God! Strengthen Islam, by Abu Jabl or by Omar.” When Omar testified to the Prophet that the latter was the Messenger of God, Muhammad, filled with delight, exclaimed: “Allahu Akbar! Great is the Lord!”

At this time Omar was but six and twenty, but his conversion made such an impression upon Islam that thenceforth began its public and fearless profession at Mecca. Omar survived Muhammad and succeeded Abu Bekr as second Caliph, and he stamped Islam with his “dauntless spirit,” although he was no less responsible for the schism which divided Islam.

FROM now on, the believers did not conceal their worship within their own homes. The Koreish were greatly alarmed, and sought to pursue a new plan to extirpate Islam. They knew that Abu Talib could not restrain his nephew, and that the latter was supported by all Bani Hashim excepting Abu Lahab. Hence, the ban was effected. A league was entered into by the Koreish against the Hashemites that they would not allow marriage with the Muslims, nor sell to nor buy aught from them, and discontinue all dealings with them.

To defend themselves, in 616-617 A. D., the Hashemites withdrew into the Shib, or quarter, of Abu-Talib, which was protected by a mountain defile near the city. Abu Lahab (the Prophet’s uncle) alone, moved by his hatred of Him, went forth to the other party. The situation caused the Muslims great distress. They had no means to buy goods at the high price offered by trading caravans, nor had they the wealth to send trade expeditions to other lands. Their famished children cried in agony and their condition was pitiful.

To protect His people from added distress, Muhammad received a revelation (Sura LI-51) to confine His preaching to His relatives and to the believers; to “turn from . . . a rebellious people, and admonish . . . the believers.”

As the time of the annual pilgrimage drew nigh, He visited the fairs, at which large multitudes assembled from various parts, in order to preach Islam. Abu Lahab “would dog his steps” and revile and prevent Him from preaching. The Prophet would at times be depressed and dispirited and make complaint to His Lord. But His appeal seemed unheeded by the higher powers.

About twenty Suras were revealed during this period. They depict the wisdom of the deity and the resurrection (Sura XXX-45): “He quickeneth [Page 349] the earth after it hath become dead; verily the same will be the quickener of those who have died.” To affirm that God’s creation had a sovereign purpose and design, in Sura XXI-16, it is said that the heavens and the earth and that which is between them were not created by way of sport.

To the Jews, Muhammad would emphasize references in their own books, calling them a revelation from God, and signifying that the Qur’án is “to attest” their divine origin, since they foretold the Prophet’s mission. For it was said in the Hebrew Scriptures that God would raise up unto them a prophet of their brethren, referring to the Ishmaelites as the brethren of the Israelites.

Many of the texts of the Jewish Scriptures have furnished themes in the revelation of the Qur’án, although certain rabbinical legends accepted as authentic by the Jews of the time have also been used, such as the sending by God of a raven to scratch the ground, thus instructing Cain that the corpse should be buried in the earth. Then there is mention of Abraham’s hand being stayed from the sacrifice of his son, who was ransomed by “a noble victim,” or of Jacob who recovered his sight by touching the garment of Joseph.

Similarly, mention is made of the genii and devils forced by Solomon to labor in the building of the temple; of the genii who in “the twinkling of an eye” brought the throne of the Queen of Sheba to Solomon, and of the lapwing who carried the royal summons to her; of the Sabbath-breaking Jews who were changed into apes, etc. The story of Genesis derived from the Biblical record is revealed in the Sura VII where Satan, because of rebellion, is accursed but is given “respite unto the day of resurrection;” and where Adam and Eve partake of the forbidden tree and their rejection from Paradise.

MUHAMMAD and his followers remained under the ban for some two years, shut up in the quarter of Abu-Talib; having freedom and relief only at the time of the annual pilgrimage. Some believers discovered that the parchment in the Ka’aba containing the ban had been damaged by ants. Abu-Talib, profiting by the occasion, went with some of his followers to the Ka’aba and mentioned the matter, requiring that, in that case, they should discontinue its provisions. The Koreish sent for the document and found it to be as he had said. This threw them into confusion and Abu-Talib, after praying for deliverance from their machinations, retired into seclusion. The Prophet’s sympathizers were emboldened and demanded the removal of the ban. This was in 619 A. D. when the Prophet was in the fiftieth year of His life.

In December 619, which was the third before the Hegira and the tenth year of Muhammad’s mission, Khadija died; and his protector, Abu-Talib, died five weeks later. Muhammad’s grief at her death was inconsolable.

Although Abu-Talib was not an actual believer, as a protector, his loss was a severe bereavement to Muhammad. His noble and unselfish character affords a strong proof of the [Page 350] sincerity of Muhammad who, had He been a deceiver, could never have inspired Abu-Talib with such devotion; for he remained Muhammad’s faithful friend for forty years. Abu-Talib’s dying behest had unexpected effect on Abu Lahab, heretofore a terrible enemy of Muhammad; for he was softened by his distress and said to the Prophet: “Do as thou hast been doing while Abu-Talib lived. By Al-Lat! no one shall hurt thee while I live.” But this pledge was soon broken as he was gained back by Koreish, and became even a more determined enemy than before. Hence, the verse in the Sura CXI, “Blasted be the hands of Abu Lahab!” etc.

At this time the hostile attitude of the city found vent in the indignities which Muhammad suffered. For once the populace cast dirt upon His head and to his weeping daughters at home who rose to wipe it off, He said: “Weep not, for the Lord will be thy father’s helper.”

He found Himself in a critical position: He must either abandon His claims of prophethood or perish in the struggle to let Islam destroy idolatry. He felt that succor should come from some other direction. He went from Mecca to At-Ta’if (60 or 70 miles east) to deliver His message to its people. He was accompanied by the faithful Zeid. But the idolaters there would not receive Him; and for fear of their displeasing Koreish, they expelled Him from the city. While hastening to flee, blood flowed from his legs and Zeid, who tried to shield him, was wounded in the head. But ten years later he would stand on the same spot at the head of a conquering army and demolish the great idol of At-Ta’if!

Thence, He went to Nakhla on the way to Mecca. Al-Mut’im, who had been instrumental in the removal of the ban, invited Him to enter Mecca and assured him of his protection. Thus Muhammad and Zeid reentered Mecca. In His dejection Muhammad met a party of pilgrims from Medina in March 620 A. D. They were of the tribe of Al-Khazraj, confederates of the Jews. He preached Islam to them. They accepted his mission and returned to Medina to teach it to their people, promising to come back again to the Prophet at the set time the next year. They proclaimed Islam in Medina until not a family remained amongst whom Muhammad’s name was not mentioned.

Arabian legend says that the Amalekites, from an Abrahamic racial origin, but not of the Israelitish descent, inhabited Northern Arabia. At times these people were driven out by Jews taking their place. Large numbers of Jews were driven into Arabia following the sack of Jerusalem by Nebuchadnezzar, their attack by Pompey in 64 B. C. with that of Titus seventy years later, and the bloody punishment by Hadrian on Judea in 136 A. D. Those Jews who took possession of Medina (the ancient Yathrib) may have been the three tribes, An-Nadir, Koreiza and Kainuka.

IN the beginning of the fourth century, a branch of one of the many Arab tribes who migrated from Yeman northwards and settled on the Syrian border, gained a foothold [Page 351] at Medina. It was divided into two clans, the Aus and the Khazraj. They fell out with the Jews, whom they drove out, and became masters of Medina and the richest surrounding lands. Later, there was a rift between the two clans and early in the sixth century they were in a state of chronic enmity or warfare; the Jews, some siding with one and some with the other, engaged in a great battle of Bo’ath in 616 A. D. The Khazraj were dispersed with great slaughter and their groves and houses were burned and razed to the ground. Abdallah ibn Obei, the leading Khazraj, was elected as their chief. He was friendly to the Jews, who had been treacherously murdered by his own tribe. But having taken no part in the field of Bo’ath, he was respected by both factions. But the noted stranger who would soon be driven from Mecca was destined to eclipse the prominence of Abdallah.

Thus Medina was prepared for Islam in that on one hand the Jews, who expected the coming of a prophet, would be favorable to His message, and on the other, the tribal factions might find in him a helper and peacemaker. Christianity was likewise favorable to a prophet, as the Christian world, and especially the Christian court of the Ghassanid king in Syria, was not far from Medina.

At last the year ended and, at the appointed spot, Muhammad awaited the pilgrims from Medina who were to return and report on the progress of Islam in their city. Indeed He there found a band of twelve faithful disciples. Ten were of the Khazraj and two of the Aus, tribe. They plighted their word to believe in, and stand by, Him. The occasion was in A. D. 621 and the pledge in the annals of Islam is called “The First Pledge of the Akaba,” which was the name of the place where they gathered. A mosque still marks the spot which pilgrims pass. The twelve returned to Medina and Mus’ab, who had lately returned from Abyssinia, was also sent to instruct the converts. Islam began to grow at Medina, where the people prepared for a greater demonstration at the pilgrimage in the following year.

(To be continued)

Reprinted from “Indian Education.”

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Were men to meditate upon the lives of the Prophets of old, so easily would they come to know and understand the ways of these Prophets that they would cease to be veiled by such deeds and words as are contrary to their own worldly desires, and thus consume every intervening veil with the fire burning in the Bush of divine knowledge, and abide secure upon the throne of peace and certitude.—BAHÁ’U’LLÁH.

[Page 352]

HOW I FOUND MY FAITH

LIDIA ZAMENHOF

WHEN in the summer of 1925 I took a train to go from Warsaw to Vienna and from Vienna to Geneva in order to attend the Esperanto Congress held that year in the city of Nations, I did not imagine that each turn of the wheels was bringing me nearer to a contact which was to mean Life for me. When after two sleepless nights I arrived at Geneva, I found the program of the Congress activities so full that I hardly paid any attention to a friendly invitation to attend a Bahá’í meeting—a name which did not mean anything to me. I looked at the Congress schedule. Another meeting, in which I had more interest, was to take place about the same time. I decided quickly: I shall not go to that Bahá’í meeting. But when the day came, the other meeting, in which I was interested, was over much sooner than I expected; no reason why I should refuse the Bahá’í invitation. I went out of politeness.

I arrived late. The meeting was already advanced. Some speeches, some readings. . . . As I came only out of politeness, I did not pay any special attention to what was going on. The words were going into one ear and out of the other. Soon after I left Geneva I forgot about it all.

After my father’s passing in 1917 just a simple, temporary plate was put on his grave. When the War was over, his disciples all over the world started collections to erect on his grave a monument from the world’s Esperanto family. The monument, made of the gray granite of Scotland, had to wait a long time until, all difficulties being over, it could be shipped from Aberdeen to the Polish harbor of Gdynia. Finally the solemn unveiling of the monument was to take place on the ninth anniversary of his passing, in April 1926.

Shortly before that date, I received a telegram signed “Martha Root” and asking us to provide for her the opportunity of speaking on the relation of Zamenhof’s life-work to Bahá’u’lláh’s principles. After a few moments of pondering and musing I connected this somehow with the meeting in Geneva and with one of the persons I met there.

The matter was reported to the [Page 353] Committee, which gave its consent.

Martha Root came to Warsaw and stayed there for three weeks. I visited her almost every day, and of course very soon I started wondering what made this woman, neither wealthy nor strong, wander about the world. Soon she told me what was the Cause to which she was sacrificing her life.

I can’t say I accepted it at once. Too long was I indifferent to matters of faith. I remember asking her whether an atheist (myself!) can be a Bahá’í. And when she told me that the Bahá’ís do believe in the existence of God, I decided within myself: well, I am not going to be a Bahá’í. But Martha could not be discouraged easily. She knew how to be patient, to be faithful—and to pray. It was her pure and spiritual personality which appealed to me at that time more than any written statements. When she went away, she left in Warsaw one not yet a believer, but who had heard of the Cause and had seen a living example of what that Cause can mean to a human being and how it can spiritualize a soul.

After Martha’s departure I was left alone. From time to time her letters, full of love, stimulated me again. Besides this, however, there was no one by my side to remind me of God when I was forgetting Him and to uphold my spirit when it was sinking into indifference. But there was also no one to become a test to me and to let me see a face which the Spirit did not yet brighten with the same light I saw in my spiritual mother. My spiritual interest was as a sea-tide—coming and going, coming and going. Sometimes it would be so low that as far as I can recount, even under the surgeon’s knife I did not turn to God. But when the tide was coming on, each time its waves covered a larger surface of my soul. I began to try to pray to God, in Whom I had not believed for many years.

One desire finally crystallized in me: I wanted to go to Haifa. My spiritual mother wrote to the Guardian asking for permission.

Fortunately, Shoghi Effendi answered that I should wait. Later on I came to realize that had I come too early, I could not have withstood the assailing force of tests that must needs try every soul. One year later the permission was granted, and I went to Haifa.

The steamer did not arrive at the pier. It stopped in a certain distance from which passengers were transported to the shore by means of small motorboats. As I was leaving the steamer to step into the motorboat, a strong wave pushed the motorboat. For a moment I lost my equilibrium. Had not someone sustained me, I would have fallen into the water. I often recalled this episode during my stay in Haifa.

AT that time I had no idea that Haifa was to be a testing ground for me as it is for many. I wondered why, almost as soon as I put my feet on the soil of the Holy Land, a strange depression, for which there was no apparent reason, seized my soul. I wondered why my faith, which I had considered already firmly rooted, was shaken as a reed by wind and, even as the reed, was almost bent to the ground. Where was the Light of [Page 354] which I already had some glimpses? Why this darkness, this sadness, this depression and these doubts, trying to uproot all I had acquired? I was fighting a desperate battle—a battle for spiritual life or spiritual death. I had already understood the value of this life enough to feel, that were I to lose in this battle, it would be ten thousand times more terrible than to lose my physical life. And as there were moments when defeat seemed to me inevitable, I wished I were never born. How often did I recall then the episode of the motorboat, wishing I were drowned in the sea before I drowned in despair!

In that battle, however, I still had a weapon, a weapon to which I clung to the utmost of my forces. This was prayer. It was in fact only in Haifa that I learned how to pray. Every morning I would go to the Holy Shrines and, forgetting my Occidental stiffness, I would beat my head against the Holy Thresholds. But for a long time there was no answer. The heavens seemed to be closed to my supplications.

But one morning, when I arose after a long prayer, my eyes fell on a flower that was lying on the threshold. A red spider, a very little one, not larger than a pin-head, was running around the calyx of the flower. I stretched out my hand and gave it a careless push with my finger. Slight as the push was for me, it was a terrible blow to the little spider. It seemed to grow still weaker and smaller and it fell down from the flower, down from the Threshold, down toward the ground. But suddenly there happened something that made me stare with a strange feeling: the little spider did not fall to the ground. It stopped half way as if the law of gravitation ceased suddenly to exist for him—and then as if in spite of this law it drew itself higher and higher, till the calyx of the flower gave him refuge again and hid him from my sight. Quick as lightning and dazzling as lightning there came to me a sudden realization that this little spider was a sign sent me by God. A sign to tell me that a soul who still knew how to keep a ray of faith, be that my as tiny as a spider’s thread, is not to be lost in despair: even from the depths of a chasm it will be led upward, till it reaches its heavenly abode, till it comes to God.

It was a promise of protection, as a sign that Heaven was not an impenetrable vault over my head, that it was possible to pierce through that vault and get light from there.

But what hard work it was for me to pierce through to God! Having received the sign, I should have been assured—but I was not. Still I was as a child crying in darkness. But God was a merciful Father Who had much patience with me. I did not feel confirmed yet. I did not know where I was and what was that feeling of utter nothingness which was sometimes completely crushing me. I was being told that these were tests— but it did not make things easier for me. The depression came back. When the last day of my stay in Haifa came and I was making a balance of my experiences, I trembled.

Here I was in the Holy Land, sanctified again through the appearance of a new Manifestation of God, this [Page 355] Manifestation promised ages ago and waited for through ages. Here I was in the Land where this Manifestation, Bahá’u’lláh, the Glory of God, was kept prisoner in the prison city of Akká, that city which was, in His own words, “as though the metropolis of the owl;” that city from where this Spiritual King addressed His letters of warning to the kings of earth and summoned all mankind to the Most Great Peace. Here I was in the Land trodden by the feet of the tireless Servant of God and the Center of His Covenant, ‘Abdu’l-Bahá. Here I was in the Land where pilgrims from all over the world come as to the Source of Life, and here, at the foot of Mount Carmel, the resting-place of Bahá’u’lláh’s Predecessor, the Báb, and of His Son and First Servant, ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, I was standing, telling myself that I was unable to draw therefrom the Water of Life.

Again I was sad, very sad on that last morning, ascending Mount Carmel for the last time. I was downcast entering the Shrines and bowing myself for the last time before the Holy Thresholds. My heart, my head, my soul, the air itself seemed to be made of lead.

I prostrated myself for the last prayer. And as I was praying, the feeling of despondency began to grow less heavy. Little by little the despondency disappeared. And when it had disappeared, a joy came. A joy with no outward cause. A joy born in the heart as if the heart was suddenly touched by a smiling sunray. That joy kept growing as a sea-tide, until it flooded my soul as a sea-tide. And still it kept growing until it was so great that if it were one degree greater, it would simply cause my heart to burst! All sadness, all doubts, all the dark hours of battle were gone and the joy was there, a heaven-sent joy, a divine confirmation.

Whoever receives such a confirmation, forgets his doubts.

Whoever experiences once such a joy, cannot be truly unhappy even in the darkest hours of his life.

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The Faith of Bahá’u’lláh should indeed be regarded . . . as the culmination of a cycle, the final stage in a series of successive, of preliminary and progressive revelations. These, beginning with Adam and ending with the Báb, have paved the way and anticipated with an ever-increasing emphasis the advent of that Day of Days in which He who is the Promise of All Ages should be made manifest.—SHOGHI EFFENDI.

[Page 356]

THE WORLD EXPECTANT

DALE S. COLE

IN a peculiarly striking manner the present turmoil and strife which pervade the world seem to mark the closing of one Age and the opening of another. It is preeminently a crisis which all recognize as destined to have far-reaching effect on the whole of mankind, not merely politically and economically, but mentally, emotionally and spiritually as well. It is a time of intense difficulty and strain that cannot be absent when the house of humanity is being set in order.

If one cycle, or epoch, of human evolution is now ending, if a New Order of life and thought is about to be inaugurated, then there surely must come some constructive impulse to shape the building of the New Age. There must be a rebirth of the Spirit, a reinfusion into human life of those high forces needed for this tremendous task.

The Recurrent Need

If, when once a goal has been clearly foreseen, human life were simply a steady and undeviating advance in pursuit of it; if nothing more than a statement of an ideal were needed in order that it should be followed; and if the recognition, in the abstract, of a noble spiritual philosophy carried with it as a necessary consequence, the ability, or even the willingness to apply this philosophy to practical life; the possibility, once to have learned the truth, to have heard the message of the Highest might be all that mankind required. But human life and human nature, are unfortunately, neither so simple nor so amenable to rule.

The Factor of Change

Whatever we may think of human life, we must at least acknowledge that it is in a process of never-ceasing change. Strange problems gather in its path and demand solution, novel difficulties confront it, constantly calling upon its resources and its powers of adaptation. So persistent is this process of change, operating in every corner of human existence, that it only needs a few centuries for the world to become a new place. With [Page 357] the outer modification goes, as a necessary accompaniment, an inner change. The result of all this is that the riddle of life has continually to be read anew. This immediate concern of human life is with the particular, not with the universal. What it needs for practical purposes is not merely science, but an art of living.

The Limitations of Human Nature

Man is a battleground; and if there is one principle in him which makes for ideals, there is another which just as naturally makes for the opposite. In the great mass of mankind it is by no means true that to see the highest is to desire to follow it. The pursuit of an ideal calls for self-abnegation, for which most human beings are not ready, and for a reinterpretation of values which few are inclined, or even able, to make.

The Growth of Knowledge

Mankind, as it evolves, is continually opening up new avenues of knowledge and experience, and has thus to be ever reshaping its general philosophy of life in order to make room for its stores of fresh facts. This need for unification of its experience is one of the deepest cravings of human nature. . . . A spiritual tradition is peculiarly liable to offer resistance. For one thing, it will have been given to the world in another age, and the form in which it is expressed will have been suited to that age. The effect of this will be to render the task of adaptation and reconciliation particularly difficult. Sooner or later every religion has to meet the challenge of the intellect.

All these elements of disturbance arise from the nature of the forces at work in life itself. Bewildered by the apparent conflict between knowledge and faith, man needs to have revealed to him that wider wisdom in which the dualism shall be swallowed up.

The Law of Adjustment

What is needed then is not new ideals so much as a fresh inspiration. Thus we may detect in the history of every religion, as time passes from the date of its inauguration—a certain definite process of change. That change is in the relation between the outer form of the religion and the indwelling Spirit.

Every religion has its time of growth. It has then its period of maturity, of realized splendor, and dignity and power. And last of all comes its period of decay—the preponderance of form over life. Organized religion passes from the side of ideas, of progress, of daring adventure for God, to the side of established things, respectability, orthodoxy, the status quo and so begins to pass out of touch with the great spirit of progress at work in the world. Thus it is as civilizations have decayed, religions have decayed with them.

Religions and Human Evolution

The whole of mankind is spiritually one and is working out in the world a single great spiritual destiny. Those [Page 358] who hold this view, then, do not consider that all other religions are mistaken while only their own is true. They regard all the religions alike as ways by which man may climb nearer to God, and all, therefore, as playing their part in the same general scheme. The scheme for spiritual guidance of humanity is carried out through a succession or cycle of religions, each adapted to a great world-epoch. Such a view removes the ground from those rivalries and antagonisms which have done so much to bring cruelty and intolerance into the relations between man and man.

This view makes no concession to any exclusive claim put forward by a single section of humanity; but as against this, it vindicates the justice and wisdom of the Power which guides and governs life.

Periods of Transition

A new civilization is invariably attended by the birth of a new spiritual tradition. Transition can in one sense always be predicated of the world. Its progress is within a certain philosophy of life and a certain general arrangement of outer conditions. Another dispensation, another synthesis of life awaits it.

Factors in Every Transition

There are three factors in every such transition—the old, the new and that which is passing between them. A time of transition is always a time of a thousand experiments and suggestions. Every branch of thought and life is then astir with change and movement. Life, in a word, will rapidly become unlivable, save as life dictates.

Marks of Transition Today

The first significant fact is the mere swiftness of movement of our times. Never before has it been so difficult to predict what the next month or the next week will bring forth. The habit of the stupendous has settled upon us. New nations and civilizations have come to the front, new classes awakened to self-consciousness, mankind has developed new relationships, knowledge has multiplied, and incredible achievements have been added to man’s conquest over the forces of Nature.

Transition Sickness

Swiftness of movement has added a growing sense of dissatisfaction, a discontent, a feeling of failure and impotence, of being out of tune with the deep eternal purposes of life.

Ideals of Liberty and Knowledge

Nearly every country has witnessed an advance in direction of civic freedom, populations formerly inarticulate have found a voice. Old reverences and allegiances—healthy, simple and ennobling, have disappeared, discipline has been weakened and old sanctions lost effectiveness. The churches have passed out of touch with the thought movement of the age. The warmth of a living faith is no longer with us. “The hungry sheep look up and are not fed.”

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Darkness and Dawn

The birth pangs of a new age, of a coming Renascence of the Spirit . . . are being endured. Behind the outer events of human history there is a definite Divine Plan.

New Vitalism

In almost every direction there is a general reaching outward towards a larger life, a growing appeal under a hundred different shapes to a higher Vital Principle.

Religion

In religion, we see what has been generally noted as a Mystical Revival. The New Mysticism sees the spiritual life as essentially one, all over the world, because God is one. The road towards unity, in the religious world, lies in a deepening of the spiritual consciousness of the individual.

Philosophical Thought

A similar tendency is noted in philosophical thought. There is a constant assertion of a larger Life and its vital connections with the smaller life of man. The philosopher has, therefore, to employ another faculty than the intellect, a faculty both higher in kind and more spacious in its range of operation. The philosophy of Bergson is the expression in a particular field of a spiritual movement far wider than itself.

Today we are witnessing the emergence of quite a new type; the man whose researches into physical Nature have served to reinforce rather than weaken his faith in the larger world beyond the physical, and who sees in the observed order of physical phenomena only the reflection or objectification of a higher world of spiritual law. We are entering upon an age of the spiritual scientist. No longer need we look upon the world-process as a record of simple reactions of matter upon matter, but the living and purposeful story of the unfolding of indwelling Life.

Medicine

The world of medicine is another instance of the modern turning toward Life. The present day has witnessed the emergence of a new conception of healing. There is dawning a concept of a great remedial and health-giving force in Nature. By translating health and unhealth into what are largely spiritual terms, the work of healing must include not merely the mental and spiritual life of man.

Modern Art

The past years have been signalized by the appearance, in rapid succession, of a number of new schools of art. To the philosophic observer the movement has a definite significance. The motive is to grasp a fuller measure of life.

The New Organization

On the one hand we have what appears to be a definitely insulating process, tending to mark off and individualize the separate unit, while on the other hand we have a conspicuously unifying process, tending to gather all such separate units into ever widening groups and to abolish many of [Page 360] the barriers hitherto considered final and necessary. Specialization and synthesis are at work side by side. We are witnessing a definite movement towards organization in our world.

The New Organization: Religions

It is obvious to all that the present time is one of universal spiritual unrest. There has been a striking revival of individuality in each of the greater Faiths. In Asia has come a growing sense of spiritual individuality. Muhammadanism is not inactive. The voice of the Sufi prophet is to be heard in the West, and an important offshoot of Islam, Bahaism, numbers many thousands of converts among occidental peoples. Eastern faiths, encouraged by Western esteem, have developed a new confidence in themselves. The very forces which the West has poured into the East have done much to revitalize all that is typically Eastern. In Christiandom a similar movement is evident. Elements of weakness have been thrown into relief. Christian doctrine is being reshaped into a working philosophy of life. As man’s universe widens, casual differences dwindle into insignificance. Face to face with God and the ultimate things of life, humanity becomes spiritually one. There will be a religious unity, but without the sacrifice of all those elements of tradition and loved association which make the separate faith so dear to the heart of its votaries.

The New Organization: Nations

The author believes the time is coming when we shall see a Europe rearranged throughout on the principle that every race is a living whole. Nations are beginning to respect each other’s differences. The most important interests of civilized humanity are becoming international. There is emerging not only an internationalism of ideas but of Causes as well. It is an axiom of modern times that nations cannot exist alone. A truly organic Internationalism must be one in which both individual freedom and communal interdependence shall be equally affirmed.

Many movements assert as a positive principle the ideals of a wider Brotherhood of man. The Esperantist Movement is one of these. The Theosophical Society is another. The same great truth is an integral part of the Bahá’í Movement.

The New Organization: Classes

There is a sharper definition on the basis of work and function. The division, or “labor problem,” is becoming more and more deeply marked and looked upon by many as being full of menace. The disintegrating movement is in full swing; we have still to await the development of a positive movement of integration.

Specialized classes based on divisions of work do not represent an ultimate constitution of society. Two features are to be observed; the organization of separate lines of work, and the bringing of these together into the service of the State. The Cooperative movement, with its principle of profit-sharing, seems to hold within it the probable solution. A [Page 361] broader and more spiritual definition of Work has to be substituted for the somewhat partial and materialistic conception which prevails today. A Society based upon division of work, and unifying all these divisions into a common offering upon the altar of national idealism, will be the New Social Order.

The Ideal of Brotherhood

Specialization of function, side by side with the unifying of those special functions into a single corporate life, is ever the formula of organic growth.

If there is a great rhythmic ebb and flow beneath the outward course of human events, if at one time a flood of vitalizing energy seems to pour into the world, quickening everything into activity, sweeping away obstructions, and reshaping human society, and in the fullness of time receding, then it is only natural that in a period of fresh inflowing there should be visible a certain response to the new infusion of Spiritual Life.

It is as if Nature is striving towards that far off goal where the whole of humanity will have become a single organism.

The Dawning Civilization

The movement of Organization indicates a civilization which, from the standpoint of collective groupings of humanity, will establish a really organic method of such grouping, and by that is meant the great healthy principle of unity amidst diversity. The same principle will apply to religions. Instead of a competitive spirit the various faiths will be seen as part of one organic whole.

Brotherhood in Reality

The ideal of Brotherhood is not only a very pregnant ideal, full of all manner of implications, but it is an ideal of the most exacting kind. As regards civilizations it would involve the disappearance of all feeling of arrogance or contempt on the part of the more developed toward the less developed. As regards relationship with other religions, it would involve a feeling of reverence for all these, as aspects of the One Truth. Brotherhood towards different races would involve the absence of all desire on the part of the stronger to take advantage of the weaker. In the case of Classes in the community, it would involve a general idea of service on the part of the elder toward the younger. In the individual dealings between man and man, there would be three general attitudes: from younger to elder, reverence and willing obedience; from equal to equal, love and affection; from elder to younger, compassionate love and protection.

A Spiritual Civilization

As the promise of the great movement towards Organization is a dawning civilization of Brotherhood, so the New Vitalism would seem to be an earnest for an essentially spiritual civilization. The extension of modern researches into the powers latent in man, must undoubtedly be productive of far-reaching changes. Nor should we overlook the possible fund of new inspiration which might be unlocked for the arts. Two more anticipated developments may also be singled out. The bringing back into [Page 362] human life of something of that spirit of reverence which our modern world lacks. One of the definite changes which must come about is the silent reassertion of the great principle of Authority. The second development is an ever-increasing kindliness. There are no limits to the revolution which a recognition of the Oneness of Life might work in human affairs. A gentler spirit is dawning, human sensibility is awakening, and forces of man for a far-reaching humanitarian reform are already in process of mobilization. Much of this movement has been, perhaps, a reaction of simple feeling, apart from any specific philosophy of life. But when the larger inspiration of a spiritual philosophy is added to it the movement must needs be enormously strengthened.

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WALLS

ARCHIBALD OVERTON HARRIS

A wall

Lies in between

My neighbor’s flowers and me;

His elm-tree reaching upward knows

No walls.

I sit beneath the elm’s outgiven shade,

Musing of walls,

And of the way of life

Trees learn to live—

To live,

And living seek

Upward and outward growth,

Finding, as redwoods do, a green

Old age.

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AND LET LIVE

MARZIEH NABIL CARPENTER

UNFORTUNATELY for humanity, the present writer lacks the energy to write a book which ought to be written by someone on a most engrossing subject: on the petty tyrannies exercised by human beings over their fellows. We hear a great deal these days about well-known autocrats, dictators, and Napoleons. The book in question would make no reference to these. It would deal rather with the unknown tyrants: the frail little women who have cowed an entire family; the husbands who keep their wives practically in striped uniforms; the company presidents whose employees might just as well be building the Great Pyramid; the social leaders whose Word is Law. For not every autocrat receives the publicity he deserves. Full many a dictator is born to blush unseen.

In our search for dictators, we find that relatives, whether natural or legal, rank first. As a matter of fact, whenever one is looking for disagreeable human traits, one will be able to observe them best in one’s relatives. The noblest example of humanity is usually the casual stranger. Within the family there is endless opportunity for the subjugation of one’s kind. First and foremost, there is the marriage relationship. The marriage partner is frequently referred to in more vulgar American slang as “a ball and chain,” and it is well known that things do not become slang unless they are true. We know at this writing a lady who is only five feet tall and yet has held her husband prisoner for thirty years. Every once in a while, it is true, she releases him on bail or even grants him a parole, but when he is at home she all-but wires his arm-chair for electricity! His duties include everything from remembering to wipe his shoes on the mat to preparing her afternoon tea. He may smoke only in the attic and at specified hours. He must let her know his whereabouts at all times. He must harbor no beliefs—religious, literary, climatic, or what have you—that have not first been censored by her. She sends him on countless errands (but he likes that because he stretches them out and so manages to stay away from home longer). When all else fails, she becomes violently ill, and keeps [Page 364] him at the bedside, administering pills and replenishing the hot water bottle. Incidentally the neighbors think that the dear little lady leads a very hard life with that cruel husband of hers. . . We know—still at this writing (although we shall probably cease to if this writing is ever printed)—a handsome young gentleman who should, so far as his treatment of his wife is concerned, be wearing a leopard skin and swinging a stone club. He will vanish for weeks at a time, and then suddenly burst home in the middle of the night. He will take her to a party with the express purpose of neglecting her in public. He insists on a detailed report of everything she does, but refuses to give her the least information as to his own life; she is kept in ignorance of his whereabouts, his associates, even his income. All this in the Year of Grace 1938. . . .

Friends, too, do very well as dictators; there is the friend who prescribes a diet for you, and the other one who tells you that you ought to wear green. Each friend has his own little code of right living to which you must adhere if you are to get along with him; you may not quote poetry at X’s, and you may not use perfume at Y’s. Some friends even make pronouncements as to what other associates you may have; anyone not on their own list is forbidden. Other friends dictate your amusements; A will take you for a ride on a roller-coaster, but B insists that you hear Faust. There is the hostess who wants all the guests to have a jolly time playing games, whether the guests like games or not; this tyranny of host over guest is probably universal; an Iranian proverb says: “The guest is the donkey of the host.” It probably accounts for the horror with which sensitive people approach any sort of social function. . . . The friend with the home remedy for your ailments is often the most difficult to deal with. . . . For all practical purposes, these unrecognized rulers might just as well be greeted with a “Hail” and an outstretched arm.

The tyranny exercised by parents has often been analyzed. The birth of a child presents a wonderful opportunity for domination. The parent assumes omnipotence; overnight, he has become a god. The child to him, is not a human being in its own right, but a zone of influence; and this attitude may continue until the child is long past middle age. We all know cases of men and women who have been cheated out of living their own lives, by parents who disguised an inexorable will to dominate, as feebleness and need. On the other hand, a two-year-old can often rule a household; the first thing the human soul learns, on reaching this planet, is just how much it can get away with.

Ever since the psychologists put us under the microscope, we have been aware that one of our major desires is to rule over others. Most of us are tyrants. The prophets and saints, diametrically our opposites, are often lauded for their meekness. We are not meek. Our constant, though hidden, desire is to dominate. This domination presupposes injustice; so long as each of us is alternately tyrant and slave, social happiness is impossible.

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