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[Page 145]

WORLD UNITY

A Monthly Magazine for those who seek the world outlook upon present developments of philosophy, science, religion, ethics and the arts

JOHN HERMAN RANDALL, Editor HORACE HOLLEY, Managing Editor HELEN B. MACMILLAN, Business Manager

Contributing Editors W. W. ATWOOD MARY AUSTIN A. MENDELSOHN BARTHOLDY BARON BAUDRAN L. F. DE BEAUFORT GARRETT A. BENEKER PIERRE BOVET HARRY CHARLESWORTH No POON CHEW RUDOLPH I. COFFEE GEORGE DUHAMEL ANNA B. ECKSTEIN HAVELOCK ELLIS AUGUSTE FOREL V. SCHULZE GAVORNITZ HELLMUTH VON GERLOCH HERBERT ADAMS GIBBONS KAHLIL GIBRAN CHARLOTTE PERKINS GILMAN WILL HAYES YAMATO ICHICHASHI RUFUS M. JONES DAVID STARR JORDAN MORDECAI W. JOHNSON SAMUEL LUCAS JOSHI ERNEST JUDET VLADIMIR KARAPETOFF P. W. Kuo RICHARD LEB HARRY LEVI ALAIN LOCKE LOUIS MANN SIR JAMES MARCHANT R. H. MARKHAM ALFRED W. MARTIN F. S. MARVIN KIRTLEY F. MATHER LUCIA AMES MEAD KARIN MICHAELIS HERBERT A. MILLER FRED MERRIFIELD IDA MÜLLER DHAN GOPAL MUKERJI HARRY ALLEN OVERSTREET JOHN HERMANN RANDALL, JR. FORREST RIED TH. RUYSSEN CHARLES RICHET WILLIAM R. SHEPHERD MARY SIEGRIST ABBA HILLEL SILVER AUGUSTUS O. THOMAS GILBERT THOMAS RUSTUM VAMBERY WALTER WALSH HANS WEHBERG M. P. WILLCOCKS FRANK LLOYD WRIGHT

Editorial Office:—4 East 12th Street, New York City

WORLD UNITY MAGAZINE is published by WORLD UNITY PUBLISHING CORPORATION, 4 East 12th Street, New York City. MARY RUMSEY MOVIUS, president; HORACE HOLLEY, vice-president; FLORENCE MORTON, treasurer; JOHN HERMAN RANDALL, ecretary. Published monthly, 35 cents a copy, $3.50 a year in the United States, $4.00 in Canada and $4.50 in all other countries (postage included). THE WORLD UNITY PUBLISHING CORPORATION and its editors do not invite unsolicited manuscripts and art material, but welcome correspondence on articles related to the aims and purposes of the magazine. Printed in U. S. A. Contents copyrighted 1927 by WORLD UNITY PUBLISHING CORPORATION. [Page 146]In these days the East is in need of material progress and the West is in need of a spiritual ideal. It would be well for the West to turn to the East for illumination, and to give in exchange its scientific knowledge. There must be this interchange of gifts. The East and the West must unite to give each other what is lacking. This union will bring about true civilization where the spiritual is expressed and carried out in the material. Receiving thus, the one from the other, the greatest harmony will prevail, all people will be united, a state of great perfection will be attained, there will be a firm cementing, and this world will become a shining mirror for the reflection of the attributes of God.

We all, the Eastern and the Western nations, must strive day and night, with heart and soul, to achieve this high ideal, to cement the unity between all the nations of the earth.

‘ABDU’L-BAHÁ [Page 147]

THE SEARCH FOR GOD IN A SCIENTIFIC WORLD

by KIRTLEY F. MATHER Department of Geology, Harvard University

In the greatest drama of Hebrew literature, Job voiced the eternal cry of humankind when he exclaimed, "Would that I knew where I might find God." The college student of today usually expresses the same thought in the query, "Is there a God?" Perhaps the real question in the minds of modern men and women is more accurately phrased if we ask, "What is the nature of God?" The attempt to discover the character of the administration of the world in which we live is apparently as old as human history and as widespread as human geography.

Primitive peoples, whether in ancient times or in places remote from modern civilization, have quite generally assumed that supernatural beings dwelt in every object which they saw. Each tree or river, mountain or valley, rock or swamp, had its own spirit or soul, which might prove either vindictive or helpful toward man. A boulder which rolls down a steep hillside and crashes through a man’s hut, does so because the being or spirit residing in that boulder is for some reason offended with the person whose property is thus destroyed. The spirit of the river must be bribed or placated, perhaps by a human sacrifice, in order that in flood-time its waters will not sweep away the village. Or more powerful, friendly spirits must be summoned by incantation or burnt offering to subdue or disperse the spirits whose wrath against men has been aroused unwittingly or who are constantly and naturally determined to make human life unpleasant and difficult. [Page 148]God is called animism. Inanimate objects are believed to be really animated by some unseen power; every thing is imagined to possess an "anima", that is, a soul or spirit.

In a scientific age, such concepts of the nature of the universe are rightly looked upon as ridiculously naïve and wholly unsatisfactory. Even so, there are many relics of animism in our modern life. A little child who stubs his toe upon a rocking chair, scolds the chair for being in the way; and grown men have occasionally been known to curse the door against which they have bumped their heads.

But in the progressive discovery of the facts of nature and with more extended consideration of human experiences, rational minds soon saw the inconsistencies in the animistic answer to the question concerning the character of the administration of the universe. If there were many independent spirits, each one absolutely free to do just what it pleased, there could be no harmony in the world. Instead there would be anarchy, and it does not take a very high degree of intelligence to discover that although there is occasional conflict between the various units in our surroundings, there is also a smoothness and regularity of operation which necessarily bespeaks the harmonious nature of the universe. Out of the animistic concept there naturally developed the thought of one supreme administrator, the all-powerful over-lord who ruled the lesser spirits and thus brought order out of chaos. Under his direction, the mob became a well-drilled army.

Primitive Judaism and medieval Christianity gave much the same answer to the question concerning the nature of the administration of the universe. God is a person of majestic power, residing high above the earth, who is in direct and immediate control of all things which happen on this lower level. Having made the world and all its inhabitants, he has withdrawn from it and is now watching from above. When he pulls the strings, the puppets dance; occasionally he stoops down to make an adjustment in the machinery. If something goes wrong, down here upon this earthly plane, the only recourse for suffering, injured humanity is through appeal to the remote power, high above in inaccessible distance. [Page 149]

THE SEARCH FOR GOD IN A SCIENTIFIC WORLD

The appeal may be phrased in magic words, or it may be strengthened by burnt offerings. It may be fortified by ritual or ceremonial, but man can do nothing more; the power to change the mechanism resides wholly in its maker. When God gets ready to act, things will be changed; man is helpless and can only await the will of God.

That answer to the inquiry concerning God is technically known as deism. God is the transcendent creator, but not the immanent administrator. His task is finished or his labors have wearied him, so that he is now resting in some distant place, entirely outside of his creation. Only occasionally does he intervene and alter the operations of the world mechanism.

But modern science has scanned the heavens with its telescopes and has reported that there is no place where the deistic God may dwell. In a scientific age we know that everything happens in an orderly way in obedience to law; there is no outside interference whatsoever. Every effect is produced by an adequate cause, discoverable within the universe; every cause is followed by its effect. Deism is today absolutely unsatisfactory to the man of science.

But so also is it to the intelligent man of religion. If God is deistic, all-powerful, and in direct and immediate control of affairs, how can he, at the same time, be all-wise and all-loving? Why does he permit the suffering and sin, the unhappiness and distress, which is so obviously a part of the life which we know? There are, of course, many ways which have been used by theologians to extricate themselves from this dilemma, but they are too devious to be satisfactory. For the most part they are a tribute more to the cleverness than to the wisdom of their authors.

Dissatisfied or even repelled by deism, many persons proclaim themselves as atheists. Most of modern atheism is merely a reaction to this particular idea concerning the nature of God. Still does the heart of man long, as of old, for an answer to its fundamental need. In this perplexity, it is not surprising that an appeal should be made to science for aid in the search for God: Surely, if science has been so successful in discovering the facts of nature, it ought to have something to say concerning nature's God. It is [Page 150]reasonable to hope that the method of research which has proved successful in revealing the secrets of the material universe ought' to prove of value also in the study of spiritual realities. Granted that the man of science has to go outside of his own field and even trespass beyond the pale of natural science, he is somehow expected to have peculiar aptitude for making the venture out into the unknown, where there is no path for our guidance nor any ground for our feet to follow.

We ought, however, to be fully aware of the limitations not only of the individual scientist, but also of the method which is fundamental in every scientific research. That method is the method of analysis, a method which has abundantly proved its worth, but which has nevertheless very definite limitations.

Stand with the geologist on the brink of the Grand Canyon of the Colorado River at twilight and watch the shadows deepen. The brilliant hues of vermilion, carmine, crimson, orange that splotch the sculptured canyon walls, fade and change. Gradually they become deep blue, purple, almost black, and the Colorado River is just a silver thread, barely visible a mile below our feet. Then twilight becomes darkness and you stand alone in the midst of space the chasm, apparently bottomless, below you, utter black; the stars, apparently at an infinite height above you, startlingly bright. The geologist might analyze that scene and tell you that the rocks in the bottom of that canyon belong to the Archeozoic era, that upon them rest the Algonkian formations, and then, in order of succession, the various strata of Paleozoic age. The chemist might take those rocks and determine the composition of each mineral which gives such brilliant, vivid hues to the landscape. The physicist might use his surveying instruments to measure with precision the depth to the river below, to note the angles of the sculptured temples and massive buttresses on the canyon walls. Thus we might gather a great mass of data, contributed by patient scientists as a result of analysis in the particular field in which each is an expert. Do you suppose that this consummation of data concerning the Grand Canyon of the Colorado would mean to some friend in a distant city to whom [Page 151]

THE SEARCH FOR GOD IN A SCIENTIFIC WORLD

you might send it, one thousandth part of what the Grand Canyon meant to you as you stood there? Could it convey to one who studies it alone, any concept of the value of the scene to you who had witnessed it with an increasing sense of wonder and of awe? However complete may be the chemical and physical analysis of a great work of art, whether it be the sculpture perfected by human hands or by hillside rivulets, such a description is wholly inadequate to explain its beauty, its charm, its influence upon the lives of those who see it as a whole. Mathematics to the contrary notwithstanding, the whole is often greater than the sum of its parts.

Nevertheless, analysis has its values and is a help toward the solution of most problems. Knowledge of the geology, the physiography, the chemistry and the physics of the Grand Canyon adds to our ability to profit by its beauty, to respond to its influence. Similarly, analysis of the physical universe gives a basis from which to start in the search for God.

To the physical chemist, matter consists of molecules formed by the union of two or more atoms. A few years ago it was believed that the atom was the incompressible, indivisible and indestructible unit of the material universe. No one had any rational ideas as to how atoms came into existence or what really determined their activities after they had come to be. Today, the Structure of the atom is partially known and our scientific concepts have radically changed. The atom is composed of electrons and protons, and these are in all likelihood nothing but negative and positive charges or units of electrical energy. The apparent mass, form and weight of objects are due to the number and arrangements of the electrons and protons within the atom and to the high velocities at which these units of energy are moving. In other words, the atom is fundamentally an aggregation of swiftly moving units of energy. From this is derived the modern definition of matter, which though somewhat facetious is nevertheless true: "Matter consists of tiny particles of nothing, moving very swiftly."

The philosophical implications of this analytical view of the [Page 152]universe are obvious. The world of sense perception is a manifestation of energy. There is "something back of the universe". Matter is neither eternal nor ultimate; it is a temporary and local expression of energy. If there is anything which is ultimate, eternal, absolute-and our minds somehow seem to expect that there is that something must be energy. Analysis seems to lead inevitably to the conclusion that energy is the ultimate reality, the eternal verity. Could we know its nature in its entirety, we would have at last the complete answer to the quest of Job.

Here again we turn to the methods of science. How did the scientist discover that there were electrons in the atom? No man ever saw an electron; yet every well-trained scientist is ready to stake his reputation on the fact that electrons are. He knows that electrons are, because he has observed what they do. The results of their activities indicate their nature. Through this room, right now, are passing one sort of energy manifestations which, had we the proper mechanism available, would become audible as jazz music from Pittsburgh or a bit of instruction concerning how to make biscuits, broadcast from Boston. The radio impulses are speeding through the room whether we are aware of them or not. We know that they are here because we can catch them in motion and translate them through a mechanism into something which is perceptible to our senses. Even so the nature of Eternal Energy, the Ultimate Reality, may be discovered by observing what it docs.

Once more, caution is necessary. We have no right to assume that the manifestations of energy which are today perceptible to our senses are all the possible or actual manifestations of energy Our results again will give us only a partial view of the whole But that partial picture is a tremendous help. The zoologist tells me, for example, that my eye is a response to something in the environment. That which we call light rays, coursing through space, has impinged upon sensitive protoplasm, the stuff of which all living bodies are made. As a response to this external stimulus the splendid mechanism of the human eye has been developed through the evolutionary process during geologic time. Similarly [Page 153]

THE SEARCH FOR GOD IN A SCIENTIFIC WORLD

the human ear is a response to the external world. That which we call sound waves, pulsing through the earth's atmosphere, impinges upon sensitive protoplasm, and the delicate mechanism of the ear, far better in some other animals than in man, but still pretty good in man, is the result. But the evolutionist cannot stop there. Man possesses other attributes than those of his body alone. His yearning for truth, his appreciation of beauty, his desire to make his own life worthwhile in the world, his sense of values, in short the various attributes which we say pertain to his soul, are just as real as eye or ear. They, too, must be a response to something in his environment. That which we call the spiritual, permeating the universe, impinges upon sensitive protoplasm in the form of a quadruped mammal who stands erect and uses his front limbs as hands, and the human soul, not nearly so perfect as it some day may be, but still pretty good in the best of men, is the result. The causes must be adequate to produce the effects; the antecedents cannot be less than the consequents. To explain humanity at its best, the evolutionist must ascribe to the universe those qualities which we do well to call divine.

For man, a product of the energy which fills and thrills the universe, is different from other organisms. He is of course an animal; doubtless "the natural history of man is the whole history of man." But there are many grades of existence and man seems to stand alone upon his own level. He is unique, in ways which can be discovered only by observation, experiment, and experience, not by any process of a priori reasoning. Nothing concerning man can be taken for granted as a result of observation of other animals. When the cow pauses on the hilltop at sunset to admire the view, or the dog ceases baying at the moon to construct a system of astronomy, we will welcome the cow and the dog into the category of rational aesthetic creatures, in which category man is rightly placed. Somehow, out of the continuity of the process, real differences have emerged. Even though we may not understand how these differences arose, the facts are there. Knowledge and mystery have a habit of existing side by side, but mystery does not invalidate the fact. [Page 154]Thus in a scientific age the search for God leads to a new answer to the ancient question. The answer is theism. God is a power, immanent in the universe. He is involved in the hazard of his creation. He is striving mightily to produce a perfect display in the world of sense-perception of his own true nature. "The whole creation travaileth," because only so can it achieve that purpose.

At present, from our point of view, the finest qualities of the motive power which drives the universe are displayed most adequately in humanity "at its best". The problem concerning the nature of God is in a very real sense coincident with the problem concerning the nature of man. Modern man looks upon the ancient estimates of God, such for example as are disclosed in the creation stories of the book of Genesis, as naïve and inadequate. The patriarchs of old actually created God in the image of man, even though they announced that man was created in the image of God. The modern student of ancient literature describes such concepts of Jehovah as anthropomorphic, and with that label he succeeds in registering his new-found contempt for them. The term usually conveys a sense of scornful judgment, even of righteous indignation. But that increment of scorn is not really native in the term. The fact is that modern estimates of God are just as anthropomorphic as ancient ones. It is quite impossible for us to get outside of ourselves. That which we see is filtered through our eyes; that which we think is filtered through our brains. Because we recognize personality as inherent in the human species, we attribute personality to the motive powers which have produced mankind.

Even in our most self-congratulatory moments it must be perfectly obvious that the achievements of creative energy known to us are still but an inadequate expression of its complete nature. Man cannot imagine, even in his wildest dreams, what the future holds in store for creation. A crystal in a pre-Cambrian granite, formed before life appeared upon the face of the earth, could have had no comprehension of what an organism would be. A one-celled organism in the slime of the Archeozoic Era could [Page 155]

THE SEARCH FOR GOD IN A SCIENTIFIC WORLD

have had no comprehension of what a self-conscious man would be. If we were limited to the estimate of creative energy which we could have formed a hundred million years ago by observing the earth and its inhabitants as they were at that time, we would probably have turned away in disgust at the thought of a God who could produce no better creature than a dinosaur or an ammonite. Obviously it is quite impossible for us now to forecast what expression of creative energy will be a reality upon this earth, or elsewhere in the universe, a hundred million or a hundred thousand years hence. Not all the resources of the universe are today in use, even as many now used were not in use a geologic period ago. In other words, the theistic God is not only immanent; he is also transcendent.

Science makes another contribution to our knowledge of God. At last we are beginning to understand that he is spirit. The ctymology of that term is interesting and suggestive. It comes from the same classical root which gives rise also to the words, inspiration and respiration. Breath, to the ancients, was the most attenuated form of matter concerning which there was any general knowledge. Breath and spirit were analogous concepts. And to many modern folk, spirit still means an attenuated form of matter, a ghost. To the scientist, spirit is no form of matter whatsoever; it is the antithesis of matter. Matter is that something, no two parts of which can occupy the same place at the same time. A satisfactory definition of matter is necessarily phrased in terms of time and space. There is no satisfactory definition of spirit, known to me; it transcends definition. But surely any definition of spirit must indicate that spirit has no limitations of space or time.

We have many heritages in word and thought from our ancestors who frankly described God as a material being. Our ministers still request us to "lift our faces toward the Great White Throne"; they tell us still that "He holds us in the hollow of His hand." Phrases, originally designed to express the thought of God as a majestic, man-like being, are still in common use. But our difficulties are not all in the field of vocabularies; we feel keenly the limitations of human minds when we try to [Page 156]contemplate the divine. It is extremely difficult to keep God real when we make our concepts of him wholly spiritual. But there are those to whom God as spirit is very real indeed; and to most of us there have come moments, brief and infrequent though they may have been, when the Eternal Spirit was very, very real to us. I believe we have good reason to expect that with further development of the human mind and soul there will be improvement in our vocabulary and much better realization of what spirit is.

In the meantime, we have the encouragement that God is no longer hiding behind the gaps in our knowledge. We need not fear to push back the horizon which separates the known from the unknown, the natural from the supernatural. The more we know about the world in which we live, the better is our understanding of him, the truer is our comprehension of his character.

God is partially revealed by inanimate nature, with its law-abiding planets and its orderly chemical reactions. The crystal with its remarkable internal architecture and its beautiful external form suggests something of the characteristics of the motive power which has brought the minerals into existence. But we find that power on a distinctly higher plane when we consider the lilies of the field or behold the fowls of the air. Thus we learn something of the attributes of the energy that can produce an organism as well as a crystal, that can induce the physiological to emerge from the merely physical. Then when we investigate humanity and inquire into the nature of man we greatly enlarge our estimate of the forces that can produce personality as well as organism, that can induce the psychological to emerge from the merely physiological. The scientist studying nature in strict accordance with the rigid methods which he has developed, cannot fail to have a profound respect for the motive powers of the universe. The farther he advances in his discovery of facts and his understanding of human experiences, the better able is he to guide in the ordering of human conduct toward the goal of a richer and fuller life for man. That is, by discovering the methods of nature we may truly associate ourselves with God in the task of creative evolution. [Page 157]

THE SEARCH FOR GOD IN A SCIENTIFIC WORLD

There is, however, another way of discovering God which, although at present outside the field of natural science, is in all probability a valid approach to him. The mystical experience of the human spirit brought face to face with the reality that transcends knowledge is a most enticing field for investigation, and psychologists are already making progress there. Some of the experiences of the great prophets may be tested in our own experience. In that way we can appraise the qualifications which they possess to serve as experts in the field of spiritual realities. The great religious teachers of the past are not to be judged by magical incidents pertaining to their birth nor by the healing influence of their bones or garments preserved since their death. They are trustworthy only because we have been able to test their teachings in our own experience. When we find one whose words ring true, so far as we can test them, we are justified in having faith in the trustworthiness of his ideas concerning realities in those realms into which we cannot ourselves penetrate.

Knowledge concerning God, therefore, becomes a matter of human experience which includes both contact with the physical world of sense-perception in which he is the motive power, and also direct, though mysterious, contact with him, when spirit meets with Spirit. The human soul reaching out into the darkness becomes aware of spiritual realities and through personal contact with the Eternal discovers something of the heights and depths which cannot be measured. The experiences of other men enlarge and enrich our own experiences and thus we become the heirs of all the ages. The response of the universe to the lives of great and good men is an expression of the creative energy, which has likewise called us into being and that response when fully understood is quite sufficient to satisfy our deepest yearnings. In a scientific age, the search for God bids fair to give mankind the wisdom which is more than knowledge.

Mather's article is the third in a series of six essays he has prepared for World Unity Magazine and Religion. "The New World Revealed by Modern Science" and "Science and Religion: They Friends or Enemies?" were published in October and November. The fourth article in the ees will appear in the January, 1928 issue. [Page 158]

A SPIRITUAL BASIS FOR WORLD UNITY

The Hindu Point of View

by DHAN GOPAL MUKERJI Author of “His Brother’s Face”, etc.

SINCE no house can be built without adequate foundations, no human unity can be reared on the sands of international commerce and the thoughtless mingling of races through immigration. Something more solid than trade and travel is needed. Without a moral and spiritual basis the union of races tends to become a catchword of Babbits and a refuge for sentimentalists. No real advance can be made in the right direction without a wholesome beginning.

Asia and America of our time help to illustrate what I mean. Ever since the discovery of the sea-route to India, European traders and colonists in large numbers have poured into the East. And yet after nearly five hundred years of their intercourse with the East, all that the Westerners can show for it is that they are feared and suspected by the Orientals. From Suez to Yokohama and from Samarkand to Ceylon the anti-European feeling spreads unchecked.

So far as my vision could see and my mind could grasp, no matter where in the East, I have heard nothing but distrust and dislike of the West. This after more than four hundred years of steady intercourse betwen Asia and Europe!

The causes of race-conflict today lie in the fact that “East of Suez” men have met one another not on a spiritual basis, but for soulless commerce and conscienceless conquest. Out of such sinful union nothing but division and difference can issue.

Analogous to that is the case of races whom the vagaries of immigration have brought to America. Latins, Slavs, Anglo- [Page 159]

A SPIRITUAL BASIS FOR WORLD UNITY

Saxons, Jews and other Orientals live together without being welded into a real unity. The recent clamour for hundred per cent Nordicism is a case in point. With the e cion of individual cases, many racial groups seem to rem as far apart as in the days of Columbus.

Nowadays, though we know about one another, though the advances made by our thought have thrown light in the most obscure corners of human life, yet our conscience lies in the grip of fear and our souls a prey to the nightmare of race-war. Science without conscience and money without morals have brought us to a terrible pass. On what basis can we emerge from it? How to end this witches' sabbath of fear and hate?

In order to find an answer to the question of Human Unity, several years ago I visited India and interviewed more than one Indian leader. I wished to learn what the East had to say on the subject. I listened with patience and reverence to many discussions on a synthesis of Europe and Asia. And under every one of them ran this one recurrent thought:-The brotherhood of man can be brought about by erecting it on a spiritual basis.

All the speakers held fast to that first proposition, though they could not give any adequate reason for their doing so. That struck me as unique. So later on, when I reached my holy man in Benares, I asked him to give his opinion. For I reposed absolute faith in his powers of observation. He understood the masses of India thoroughly. And whatever he had to say was not only his personal opinion but also articulated the best element in the millions of my countrymen.

It was on a day in May, seated on the terrace of his retreat on the bank of Gunga, the holy one unburdened his soul. Below us the sacred flood swept and curved like a scimitar. Above us rose the Pupil tree, spreading its pavilion of jade. A kokeel cooed once or twice, then dropped into sleep. Nothing stirred in the terrible heat save the master's voice.

He said: "Behold the Ganges-whether she washes the roots of the medicinal herbs a hundred miles above here, or cuts the roots of the yellow and red stone walls of this city, the power of [Page 160]her being is so great that everything goes to augment the richness of her self. Until a Nation's being becomes intense and immense like the blessed flood at our feet, how can it assimilate those diverse specks of human dust that immigration brings to its door?"

Those words of the teacher set me thinking. I looked at the yellow, violet, red and white clad pilgrims not far away, moving like living frescoes against the tawny walls and terraces.

"So the problem of human unity is not one of doing but of Being?" I ventured to mention, after a pause.

"I remember," he answered, "Buddha saying in the Dhammapada that man is 'mind-bound' and 'mind-made'. I recall also the Avatara of Nazareth's words: 'As a man thinketh so is he.' From that follows, 'Whatever a man is will come out in his deeds. A fool may act like a wise man, yet in the long run the world will judge his deeds by his essential foolishness. A crocodile may act like a cow, yet what it is goes to qualify its actions. What the reptile is becomes the measure of what it does. Look at this city in this morning hour. That cortege of pilgrims in white worship Shiva, the procession of saffron-clad women nearby is going to the shrine of Vishnu, and that to the right, those orange clad Sannyasins, they worship no god at all. Though all of them are so very different, yet they are one. Why? Because in the being of Benares there is no quarrel between modes of worship. Similarly, if the being of a country is inclusive by the sheer power of that, it can draw and unify many groups and races." Here the holy one stopped to look at the Ganges.

"Then all these peace societies, leagues of peoples, associations and fellowships lead to nothing?" I asked in dismay.

"No, no," hastened the master to correct me. "Those societies indicate a spiritual and a moral basis yet to be created by man.

"How are we to produce it, my Lord?" I pleaded with him. Turning his eyes on the amber water of the Ganges he explained:

"In the United States as in the British Empire, the misunderstanding of black, white, brown and yellow races rises like an all-engulfing flood. No matter where we look, the meeting of races [Page 161]and creeds tends to a cataclysmic conflict. Time and again I say to myself: 'They are not meeting as men but as tigers on the basis of the forest. Simply because they are encountering one another in the dark jungle of commercialism and conquest.' If they would only emerge into the broad daylight of humanity.

"In the present coming together of races through rapid travel and an ever-growing commercialism, one discerns more of the features of a tiger-community in the woods than a mingling of human races. The European armed with gunboats and diplomacy comes to Asia to sell whiskey, opium, railroads and factories. The Asiatic, too, bent on no better ideals, is full of cunning, malice and diseased pride. If the former acts like a leopard, the latter surely acts like a sick wolf. Nowhere do we perceive healthy humanity. All of it is due to what they are. A man reflects in his deeds what he really is.

"In the East we say: 'No matter how tall the doing, in time it will become as small as a person's being.' You may indulge in Himalaya-humbling deeds, but in the long run they will assume the stature of the dwarf that you are. If a man is limited and of a parochial character, he will not act internationally. Any action without prejudice to other races and creeds does not come from him whose being is based on fanaticism and suspicion. As a venemous serpent secretes poison so do bigoted beings give forth narrow parochial deeds.

"Consider another example. Suppose a land was as inclusive as an ocean. As the many rivers--blue, yellow, white, and brown, lose their differences in the steady emerald level of the deep, so do all alien races lose their alienness in the inclusive boundless being of a country. Nations like them can be created in the future.

"If you look for inclusive and exemplary individuals you will find them in every community. I can speak only of Hindusthan, for it is the only place I know well.

"Consider Baba Nanak, the Indian saint of the Renaissance. He was loved equally by the Mussalmans and the Hindus while he lived. And when he died, both of them claimed him. The followers of the Prophet wanted to bury Nanak, while the followers of [Page 162]Hinduism sought to cremate him. Each community thought of him as a saint of their own religion. ‘He is ours,’ they clamored.

“In recent years we have heard Mahatma Ghandi called an ideal Muslim saint by Mohammedans, a Christian saint by some Christians, and a holy man by the Hindus. Of course he can be all three and more. All the different creeds have entered and lost their differences in the steady inclusiveness of his being.

“When Gandhi, with his all-inclusiveness, meets any European, an Arab or a Hindu, he is able to unite them in himself. He is a Man: he includes all men. When the being of this human race becomes inclusive, then surely we shall have Brotherhood of men. For the former will be the spiritual basis of the latter, since a house needs must have a foundation.”

The Master stopped speaking and, with a gesture of his hand, invited me to gaze on the throng of pilgrims performing their ablutions. Color upon color plunged like knife-thrusts of beauty into one’s eyes. People were no more clad in the mere violet, yellow, white and saffron shawls and saris. Now it seemed as if the very white light of the sun had been split into flaming garments to clothe their brown bodies.

“You notice how well the crowd is behaving,” remarked the holy one. “It is because they have for the moment become true to the being of this city which is ‘Adoration of the Deity’ All the different sects instead of conflicting with one another are uniting.

“This city has furnished them with a basis that unites all the battling sects . . . . . Ha! I can hear your thought asking the question: ‘How was that basis produced?’

“Centuries before the birth of Christ, holy men met here and established communities of prayer and meditation that not only purified those who prayed but also those who came hither on mere pilgrimage. Through centuries of apostolic succession that practice of prayer has gone on and become the being of this holy place. A pilgrim who arrives here, if he stays long enough, is pulled up to the pure level of ‘Tat-That’.” [Page 163]

A SPIRITUAL BASIS FOR WORLD UNITY

"Let us make each city of the earth like Benares. Wherever men and women meet, may they create a being. Even in the marts of the world such a thing is possible. Why not do it?"

"But it will take a long time, my Lord," I protested. "There is no time to waste just at present on creating when the wheels of doing are crushing us to death."

"Indeed," smiled the teacher ironically. "With all the labor-saving and time-saving devices that the modern man has invented, he has not been able to save time that can be wasted on Truth. Then what good are his devices? Do they not signify the uttermost waste?

"No, my son. It is not lack of time that is troubling this age. That is the excuse of those who do not wish to use their time. Then why run away from facts? Every great creation of man consumes time. Even a child, the creation of its being, takes a few months. Think of the years it will take to make a Being who is as real as an infant."

"I am afraid modern civilization will not consent to undertake the task," I said to the teacher.

"Then modern civilization will have to do without brotherhood of man. Nanyapantha—There is no other path."

"None, my Lord?" I implored him. "No other hope?"

"Not an atom," he said with finality. "Just examine two of the many lives of those who had spirituality enough to preach and practice Brotherhood. That will show you how much time you need.

"Jesus spent eighteen years in solitude. From the age of twelve till the age of thirty he was in obscurity. None can tell where he hid himself in order to develop Christhood or his being which he reflected in his deeds later. Brotherhood exuded from him as fragrance from a lotus. The fragrance does not produce a flower. It is the latter that is the basis of the former.

"Similarly Buddha. He spent at least fourteen years in the silence. The history of those years is the hotbed of fancies and miracles. But the truth of the matter is that none knows where he was. At last, after he had become the Buddha, the being of [Page 164]enlightenment and love, he preached. The sweet deeds of brotherhood fell from the honeycomb of his being. As in the case of individuals, so with groups. They must create in themselves that which they want to give forth to the world without. It can be done so easily. Just take one single generation of men during school-going age and teach it the science of Being. Inside a score of years you will have Brotherhood of men on earth. Now, go forth and practise what I have told thee, my child. After constant practice of a few years, thou wilt be able to preach it. And in thine own lifetime the tree of thy being will bear the deathless fruit of Brotherhood. 'Nahi prarvyaté khalu bighna vayéna neechia,' says Kalidasa: 'The mediocre do not dare begin a noble work the moment they foresee obstacles.' Do not be mediocre. Do not insult humanity by imputing mediocrity to it. Men can undertake any noble task and finish it.

"God has made man in His own image—'nara narayana: He who says man says the Other of God.' Man will create the spiritual basis that we need. . . . . In fact, we are doing it already. On it the races of earth will meet as brothers. Brotherhood is not a dream. It is a fact. It is already upon us."

The fire of conviction glowed in the master's eyes. It was not what he said but what he suggested that flooded my mind and feelings. In him I perceived a being, a basis on whom the East and the West could meet.

Knowing that the holy one had said his last word on the subject, I bent low, took the dust from his feet, and said my farewell to him and to Benares. Since then, whenever pessimism comes near me, I renew my faith in Mankind by thinking of him. He had spoken no idle words when he said: "Brotherhood is upon us. There are many workers in the field who have true international being. Though hate and fear like black clouds cover the horizon, though the rumor of wars between races and classes fills the air, yet under it all we begin to discern that spiritual basis on which we shall rear the unity of men." [Page 165]

THE INTERACTION OF EUROPE AND ASIA

by WILLIAM R. SHEPHERD Department of History, Columbia University

I. East and West: The Twain that Meet

DURING the past five hundred years, and especially since the latter part of the eighteenth century, the entire earth in greater or less degree has been occupied by peoples of European stock, or else brought under the influence of the Western type of civilization which they represent. Today the continent of Europe is but a fraction of the European world. To all intents and purposes the earth has become Western in outlook, spirit and accomplishment.

This vast enlargement of European power over mind and matter has given rise to the concept of human solidarity, to the cosmopolitan idea that includes all races and peoples in the community of mankind. The adventurous instinct and the inventive genius of the West have made it possible. Men of European stock have discovered and applied the agencies of communication which have narrowed distances and brought the inhabitants of the earth into intimate relationship.

All of this has served to create a world consciousness, such as never existed before. At the present time, when every important word and deed are heard or felt around the globe, the concept of national independence becomes in essence a legal fiction. The idea and the reality of world interdependence have taken its place. If this historic trend continues, as it seems likely to do, world unity must be eventually the outcome, and the brotherhood of man in fact and in spirit the goal to be attained.

International law and relations, which once concerned the peoples of Europe alone, have been broadened out by them so as to [Page 166]embrace humanity at large. The folk of the Orient, Turks and Persians, Egyptians and Siamese, Chinese and Japanese, have learned regularly to send and receive ambassadors, to sign treaties of friendship and commerce, to have representatives at international conferences and delegates in international councils and assemblies, and to form alliances with European powers. Even their private correspondence they entrust to the supervision of an international body of European origin-the Universal Postal Union.

Within the past two hundred years in particular the great field of action in which the Western type of civilization has been chiefly operative is the Orient itself-that huge region stretching all the way from northern Africa through the continent of Asia and further eastward still to Japan. Tenanted by a thousand millions and more of the human race, it reached a high stage of culture much earlier than Europe did. More than that, it gave to the West the basic elements of what now is called "Western civilization". Thus virtually in our own time world history, which for untold centuries had pursued a westward course, turned about and moved eastward again toward its starting-point. Lands and peoples in West and East, separated by thousands of miles, have become, relatively speaking, neighbors. How and why has all this happened, have Europe and Asia become so much interested in each other; and what have been and may be the consequences for the weal or woe of the human race?

The interaction and interpenetration of West and East, the mutuality of influence on their respective ways and thoughts, consist broadly of two items of power: chat which is given and that which is received. Of the two phases of the process by which the civilization of the one has been affected by that of the other, the results for the West are far the more significant-not only because they concern our own immediate ancestors and ourselves as transplanted Europeans, but because they have been so long without due recognition. When, therefore, the advantages and disadvantages conferred by the West upon the Orient are considered, it is highly important to examine also into the reflex of [Page 167]

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the process, namely: the advantages and disadvantages that have been visited in consequence upon the West itself.

In addition to supplying the fundamentals of our Western civilization, it was the Orient which, five hundred years and more ago, gave the impulse that led Europeans to go forth and seek the world beyond their own shores, and ultimately to make it subject more or less to their will and achievement. Obedience to this impulse has produced the meeting of East and West; has brought together the two great centers of civilization, European and Asiatic, which had gazed so long in opposite directions. Orient and Occident thus have been joined in close and intimate contact with extraordinary results for both.

The ancient seats of culture in Egypt, Mesopotamia, India and China were so many centers for its communication to Europe. In the truest sense Greece and Rome, the forerunners of the modern West, may be said ultimately to have been creations of the Orient in numerous symbols and evidences of civilization. They were the outcome of what had been imparted by their predecessors in culture all the way from the Nile on the west to the Yellow River on the east.

Following the decadence of Greece and Rome, a new impulse sprang from the Orient during the seventh century and later of our cra. The bearers of it were the Arabs, who brought to Europe much of the rich store of civilization which earlier contact had not exhausted. It was they who restored the connection between East and West which in a measure had lapsed during the first centuries of Christendom. After the Arabs, and because of the Arabs, came the Crusades as a species of reaction of the West against the East, and serving also to revive the connection and render it closer. The relationship thus established between Asia and Europe during ancient and medieval times prepared the way in the modern period for th ration of Europeans and the diffusion of their ideas and institutions the world over.

From remote ages onward to the fifteenth century, then, Oriental influences, both material and intellectual, had spread far and wide into the West. They had helped to lay down the bases [Page 168]of the civilization that later was to be diffused over the earth. Many of its manifestations bore at the outset Chinese, Indian and Persian names, which were handed on to Europe in Graeco-Roman or Arabic form.

From Asia came originally domestic animals and most of the European food-grains, including rice, the home of which was India. In the Orient of ancient and medieval times were originated and developed numerous practical arts that create civilization Many of the resultant products were carried to Europe in relatively small amounts, and some of the processes of their manufacture were made known and applied there before the fifteenth century the opening of the era that was to witness the Europeanization of the world. Among these early gifts from East to West were: the working of metals and minerals, such as gold, silver, iron, copper, tin, coal and precious stones; as also the making of glass, porcelain, enamel and lacquered ware.

Thousands of years before Christendom came into existence silk-worm culture was known in China. Even so late as the time of Vergil, the Romans believed that silk was a substance combed from trees. By the sixth century the cultivation of it had reached Constantinople and by the thirteenth, northern Italy. From the Orient of early days, moreover, were borne to Europe the knowledge and use of the cotton goods of India, western Asia and southern China, of muslin, called after Mosul, one of its markets. and Persian damask, after another, Damascus; of carpets, rugs. embroidered garments and shawls-from Chaul in India; the production and application of colorings, like carmine, crimson lilac, purple, azure and saffron-all Asiatic names, chiefly Arabic, the making of perfumes from sandalwood, musk, frankincense, myrrh and flowers, like attar of roses; drugs, like rhubarb and camphor; and ornamental woods, like ebony. Thus did the West become possessed of many luxuries and objects of utility which make up the fabric of material civilization.

Orientals built the first sca-going ships and devised the mariner's compass. Chinese junks sailed to the west coast of what is now called "America" long before the Europeans discovered its [Page 169]

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eastern shores. Orientals, furthermore, had learned long since how to move great weights and undertake building operations on a huge scale. They originated the earliest architecture in stone masonry, including the arch, the colonnade and the tower or spire. From their hands came the beginnings of refined sculpture: the portrait figures and the colossal statues of Egypt as well as the wonderful seals of Babylon. From China the Arabs brought to Europe a knowledge of gunpowder.

On the score of intellectual gifts of the Orient to Europe in ancient and medieval times, Greek and Roman scholars and philosophers derived the fundamentals of their learning from the East and notably from India. To the Phoenicians are attributable the art of writing and the alphabet and the suggestion of coined money. The Egyptians, Babylonians and Indians furnished mankind with the calendar, along with the initial stages in the study of mathematics-arithmetic, geometry and astronomy. From India the Arabs introduced into Europe the so-called "Arabic numbers", the decimal system and algebra. Orientals, also, and again notably the folk of India, made the great beginnings in grammar, in metaphysics, in chemistry, medicine and music.

Out of the East came the earliest known tales in narrative prose, poems, historical, religious and philosophical works and social treatises. India alone transmitted to Europe a well-nigh inexhaustible collection of stories and fables. Of these many of the originals are found in the "Panchatantra"-a Sanskrit term meaning "five divisions or books". They constitute the sources of many a European fable and fairy-tale and not a few of our commonest and oldest jokes! Certain of the games and sports of the West were initiated in the East.

To China belongs the greatest of all achievements in the realm of the intellect which serve to diffuse knowledge: the making of paper and the invention of printing.

Long before Macedon and Rome ever dreamed of it, the ancient Orient of Egypt, Assyria and Babylonia, of India and China, inaugurated the idea and practice of government on a vast territorial as well as political scale. Theirs was the single great [Page 170]state or an empire constructed of groups of states. Out of the East, and noblest of all treasures bestowed upon the West, rose the earliest belief in a single God. In Asia was laid the foundation of religious life for all mankind. From that continent came the creator of the dominant faith in the European world of today. There were born the systematic religions of humanity at large. Hence it should not be forgotten that, while long ages ago the ancient Orient was originating and developing so much of what constitutes the useful, beautiful and inspiring in life, Europe, the land of our forefathers, was emerging from the primitiveness of barbarism. The West, to be sure, has improved upon and surpassed perhaps what the East brought forth; but the profound indebtedness of our civilization to it has to be acknowledged.

During all these centuries, then, it was known in Europe that many valuable things, material, intellectual and spiritual, had come thither from the Orient, and that many more must lic hidden there. The southern and eastern shores of Asia, the fabled "Indies" of vague tradition, had cast long since the spell of a mystic fascination over the Western mind. A civilization of remote antiquity was there; a dazzling array of wealth far exceeding the power of the most fertile imagination to conceive; a boundless field for adventure; an inexhaustible store of riches for the trader, a place where the wanderer and the discontented might find the satisfaction of their earthly desires. It was primarily their eager interest in the Orient, stimulated by the outcome of the Crusades, which led Europeans in the fifteenth century and later to embark upon a career of expansion into new worlds, east and west.

In view of the potent attraction of Asia, it seems strange that Europeans should have migrated to what is now America, about which before its discovery by the Genoese navigator they had known virtually nothing, rather than to the Orient of which they knew so much. Among reasons for their choice was the fact that the highly civilized and hence the altogether alluring portions of the East-in India and China-were far more distant and difficult of access than the New World was. Not only was the civilized Orient able to hold the Europeans back, but the fate of [Page 171]

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Europe itself long hung in the balance. From the fifth century onward to the close of the seventeenth there were times when it looked as if the West would fall under Asiatic rule. The invasions of the Huns and the Arabs were so many forerunners of this menace from the East. The reaction against it exemplified by the Crusades ended after two hundred years of struggle in utter disaster. This was soon followed by mighty waves of conquest from the Orient which threatened to engulf the whole of Europe. Mongols and Turks subjugated the eastern and southeastern portions of it, pressing westward into the very heart of the continent. Genghis Khan, Bajazet, Timur and Mohammed the Second were long names of terror in the thought of Europeans, dreaded far more than any from Europe has ever been among Asiatics. Not until as late as 1683, when the Ottoman Turks were driven back from the gates of Vienna, could it be said that the West became free from the peril of Oriental domination.

The first state of modern Europe to gain possession of territory in Asia was itself a semi-Asiatic country. All that Russia had to do was move overland to the eastward, stretching in sixty years, 1580-1640, its mighty bulk clear across the northern part of the continent to the Pacific. Though a military conquest, the shock was not severe. Scanty in number and primitive in their scale of advancement, the natives of Siberia stood on about the same level as the Russians themselves.

Exclusive of the relative insignificance of the work of Russia at the time as a factor in the interaction of Europe and Asia, Western interests in the Orient were long confined almost wholly to trading-posts scattered along the shores of the eastern continent and its outlying islands. The Europeans who ventured thither rarely penetrated into the interior of any country or came into contact with the great majority of the inhabitants. Their position was one of suppliants-so many handfuls of isolate foreigners permitted by native princes to carry on trade.

After the middle of the eighteenth century, however, with the beginning of the British conquest of India, the situation gradually changed from one of tolerance by Asiatics to one of [Page 172]compulsion by Europeans. Instead of points along the coast, huge stretches of territory were acquired and placed under Western rule. Then Russia, which had taken on in appearance more of the ways of the West, proceeded to enter into systematic contact with the civilized lands of the Orient, with Persia, India, China and Japan. A rival of Great Britain and France for an exercise of control over the Ottoman Empire adjoining its own dominions, it became even more of a competitor of the former nation, as its widening boundaries in central Asia brought it nearer to India.

Just as rivalry and competition between Russia and Great Britain marked the European international situation with reference to western, central and southern Asia during the nineteenth century, so they provoked at the opening of the twentieth a war between a semi-Asiatic Russia and a wholly Asiatic Japan that had undergone meanwhile a process of external Europeanization, to determine which should dominate the destinies of China. What had been a contest over the acquisition of industrial and commercial concessions of one sort or another became a struggle for new territory.

Just as it was Great Britain that inaugurated the process of a forcible occupation of civilized Asia on an extensive scale, so again it was Great Britain that opened up China at the cannon's mouth in the so-called "Opium War" of 1842. With this act began a mighty shift in the center of world politics from the Atlantic to the Pacific. Thereby were China and Japan made fields for the spread of European ideas and institutions.

Up to the outbreak of the Great War, indeed, Asia seemed on the point of being partitioned among certain nations of Europe and Europeanized Japan. The entire continent appeared likely to fall into the actual possession of or into spheres of influence for the benefit of Great Britain, Russia, France, Germany and Japan with the outlying islands apportioned between the Netherlands and even the United States. Everywhere in the Orient the Western missionary, merchant, diplomat and soldier played their successive roles until in the war with Russia Japan demonstrated that it would have to be reckoned in as a partner, so far as European [Page 173]

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ambitions in China were concerned. A measure of restraint also was imposed when the United States put forth its policy of advocating the maintenance of the territorial integrity of the Celestial Empire and the preservation there of the "open door"- of equal privileges of commerce for all foreign nations.

Since the Great War the European international situation in Asia has undergone a number of radical changes. Russia has collapsed awhile and Germany ceased to play a part. What had been the Ottoman Empire has vanished from the scene. Two remnants survive: a Turkish republic in Asia Minor and an Arab sultanate in Arabia. Under the designation of "mandates", the remainder has been added to the domains of Great Britain and France.

Because of this forcible penetration by the West since the middle of the eighteenth century, profound changes in the life and thought of the East have taken place. These have affected ancient seats of culture tenanted by more than half of the human race. So great a transformation is and must be of incalculable significance to the future of mankind. A thousand millions and more of non-European, non-Christian humanity are found there: 250,000,000 Arabs, Berbers, Egyptians, Turks and others, including the denizens of the Dutch East Indies in Java, Sumatra and clsewhere, practically all of them Mohammedans; 320,000,000 natives of India, more than three-fourths of whom are Hindus, and the remainder, chiefly Mohammedans; 40,000,000 Burmans, Ceylonese, Siamese and Indo-Chinese, mainly Buddhist; perhaps 350,000,000 Chinese and upwards of 80,000,000 Japanese, Koreans and others of various non-Christian cults. These myriads of the East, moreover, show a marked tendency to increase in number. They constitute now about three times the population of Europe; and the distance of space and of race has undergone a steady process of narrowing, as Western control or influence over them has advanced. Neither Macedon nor Rome at the pinnacle of their imperial glory ever ruled a third of the number of Asiatics who are made to obey the laws of Great Britain alone.

What is called by Europeans and their descendants vaguely [Page 174]"The East", "The Orient" or "Asia" is commonly judged by them from the standpoint of the present stage of European civilization, with its material comforts and conveniences, its mechanical devices to secure speed and output, its care for sanitary requirements, its spirit of humanitarianism, and its enlightenment in general. A fairer and more accurate estimate would be attained, were most of the Orient of today to be compared with Europe as it was prior to the nineteenth century; before the East had become appreciably Europeanized and ere Europe itself had felt the effects of the Industrial Revolution and the extraordinary changes that have followed in its train. Such an estimate might indicate that, in so far as it is still unaffected by European influences, civilized Asia is in about the same situation with regard to material comforts and conveniences, mechanical contrivances, sanitary conditions, humanitarian interests and general enlightenment as most of Europe was in the period up to the nineteenth century.

Whatever one may understand by the word, the evidence is plainly written in history that civilization did not originate in Europe. Nor is it coextensive with that continent and the areas outside of it which have come to be occupied by the descendants of Europeans. Certain countries of Asia were civilized at a time when the denizens of Europe were dwelling in caves or roaming through primeval forests. Some of those Oriental lands indeed, like India and China, remain civilized, regardless of Western influence!

So far as what might be termed personal interaction is concerned, in the main and up to the nineteenth century at least, the Europeans who encountered Asiatics along the coasts of their continent in the course of commercial exchange were disposed to look upon them simply as strange and curious peoples, set in a world apart, possessed of a civilization many features of which were extraordinary and admirable; and yet peoples too remote from the West to be considered, either as inviting close comparison or as suggesting differences. The attitude shown was not a matter of superiority or inferiority so much as one of actual apartness. [Page 175]

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Since that time the growing closeness of contact between the West and the East, rendered possible by the consequences of the Industrial Revolution, has revived an ancient notion of superiority and inferiority, while not dissipating at all the idea of strangeness. Self-glorification is seen once more to be a common trait of human-kind the world over. Because of their triumph in the realm of mechanical science, Europeans have been enabled to establish and expand their power in Oriental lands. This feat has aroused among them a quite..tural feeling that Asiatics and Orientals in general are, and must be, inferiors, inasmuch as they have been unable apparently to stem the European advance. Because these folk of the East in turn have had comparatively few or none of the Western comforts and conveniences-including artillery, aero-planes and poison-gas-they are assumed to be backward and accordingly more or less uncivilized!

Asiatics, on their part, while recognizing the superiority of the West along scientific, technical and mechanical lines, and while endeavoring to emulate their achievements in these re-spects, have not admitted their own inferiority in others. The difference they have striven to overcome by a partial adoption of European ideas and institutions; or else they have had such ideas and institutions forced upon them. Yet through it all their old attitude does not seem to have undergone much alteration, namely that in essentials their particular sort of civilization is what they think it always has been-superior to that of the West. This sentiment they base partly on the fact that what they have is vastly older than the European and partly on the notion that because the European is strange and different, it must necessarily be inferior.

It has been said that the "struggle between Europe and Asia is the binding thread of history; the trade between Europe and Asia is the foundation of commerce; the thought of Asia is the basis of all European religions, but that the fusion of their re-spective types of civilization has not occurred and perhaps never will take place." On this point it might be remarked that there is probably no truism truer than the statement that human beings [Page 176]are virtually the same the world over. Why those of European stock behave like them could be posited just as well of their fellows in Asia—or elsewhere for that matter. Great differences, to be sure, exist in race, color, language, custom, manners, religion and environment; but human nature, as such, in all its real essentials, evinces characteristics that are marked by similarity.

The common topics of conversation are much alike everywhere. In East and West men ordinarily talk about business, money, politics and the weather; women, about dress, food, servants and domestic relations. In their basic human interests the peoples of the earth are substantially identical, even if their kinds and grades of civilization be different.

Assuming this existence of a fundamental similarity among human beings wherever found, what, then, appear to be the main points of difference or divergence between the two great centers of civilization, East and West? The two indeed can not be defined by invariable characteristics. To parody a bit the words of the Psalmist, "As far as the East is from the West" furnishes no determinant either of distance or of difference. To repeat in this connection the opening lines of a well-known ballad—"Oh, East is East and West is West, and never these twain shall meet on earth at all events—would be setting truth at defiance; for they have met and will continue to meet, regardless of what may happen in the hereafter. Nor does a quotation of the sort help to explain either difference or similarity. The Japanese are more different from the Chinese and the Chinese from the Indians, the Indians from the Japanese and the Japanese from the Persians and the Persians from the Arabs and the Arabs from the Turks than any two European peoples are different from each other. And yet the Asiatic, whatever his particular country, is profoundly different from the European in all that counts from outward observation.

About the differences between the East and the West, accordingly, it may be easy enough to generalize, but extremely difficult to prove the generalizations. As between Orientals and Europeans one may feel instinctively the differences or divergences, yet be [Page 177]

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quite unable to comprehend them intellectually. At first glance, for example, the assumption might be made that the separateness or apartness is due to difference in color. If so, it was not especially noticeable in statement before the eighteenth century, and really not much before the nineteenth. Had it been instinctive, the feeling would have appeared much earlier.

Is it a question of religion, of Christian versus Mohammedan or heathen? The Roman had the sense of difference quite as strongly as the European of today. Even before the Roman, the Greek looked upon "Medizing", anything savoring of the Medes and Persians, as a gross offense against his dignity and nature.

Is it a matter of laws? On this point the answer is, that whenever equality between European and Asiatic has been established on the basis of laws made by the European himself, the status has served to intensify, rather than to lessen, both the European and the Asiatic abhorrence of it.

One hears it said that the differences between East and West lie chiefly in divergent outlooks upon life: that the European is essentially secular, that he is intent upon securing objects that he can see; whereas the Asiatic is essentially religious, and hence intent upon obedience to supernatural powers that he can imagine. This may be true of the Hindu, and in a measure possibly of the Mohammedan; but it certainly is not true of the Chinese and Japanese, with their variety of religious and ethical beliefs and ideas.

One may declare that the Asiatic has only a scant notion of personal purity. Yet, outwardly at least, he seems to be quite as decorous in his behavior as a European of the same social category would be, and his manners certainly are more polite. One is told, moreover, that the Asiatic lacks the spirit of humanitarianism, the love for his neighbor as for himself, that he is deficient in human sympathy, in altruism. Such an assertion seems a bit mistaken in the light of the fact that the greatest of all lovers of humanity, who bade mankind to love one's neighbor as one's self, was an Asiatic. At all events the European of the period before the nineteenth century was just about as deficient in this [Page 178]respect as his neighbor to the castward. Humanitarianism was a comparatively late development in a Europe that for ages had used torture to extract evidence or to punish for difference in religious belief, that had a hundred capital crimes upon its calendar, and that bought and sold human beings in its slave-marts.

In one thing at least there appears to be a well-defined difference between Orientals and Europeans. Except in the case of the Japanese, educated Asiatics as a rule do not possess the enlightened curiosity that has prompted the folk of the West to go forth and see the world. They seldom travel, and are but little interested in travelers as such, whose recorded impressions they are inclined to disbelieve—sometimes with justice!

With these general introductory considerations about the relationship between East and West, the way is now open for a survey of the precise fields of civilization in the Orient which the West has come so largely to dominate. For this purpose the entire region may be divided into four parts. Of them three are separate countries, and oze is a geographical expression. The three in question are India, Japan and China. The fourth is the Near East—a more or less indeterminate area, including western Asia and northern Africa, and referring to lands and peoples mainly of Mohammedan faith and formerly under the rule of what once was the empire of the Ottoman Turks.

Of the three general divisions of the Orient, as the West views them, the first to appear as an international problem with which Europe had to deal was the Near East—and that about a century ago, in 1822. For a while indeed it constituted the Eastern Question, referring specifically to conditions inherent in the decline and supposedly imminent fall of the Ottoman Empire, albeit the underlying questions were much older than the phrase. Why the term was long confined to this region alone is explained by the fact that, until about the middle of the nineteenth century, it was the sole portion of the Orient with which, since the period of the Crusades, the European nations had been brought into anything like collective contact. The rivalry between Great Britain and Russia, to which attention has already been called, and which [Page 179]

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engendered the "Question of the Middle East", was a creation mainly of the second half of the nineteenth century and later. The same is true of the rise of Japan and the "awakening" of China, along with their incidental relations to Europe and the United States, which brought both of these phenomena into existence and thus created the "Far Eastern Question". Historically, of course, all three of them hark back to the ancient contest between the civilization of Greece and that of western Asia, carried onward through the medieval and modern struggles for the control of the routes of trade and culture between West and East.

India has an area of 1,860,000 square miles, substantially equal to that of three-fourths of the United States, or about the size of the Mississippi Valley. Its population of upwards of 320,000,000 is nearly treble the number of people in this country. The inhabitants of India are reckoned at about 172 to the square mile, as compared with thirty-five in the United States, showing a density almost five times as great. Being the sole land of ancient civilization in the Orient which has fallen and ever since remained under the absolute sway of a European nation, it holds a unique position. Accentuated by hugeness of territory and population, this position could not fail to engender momentous consequences for the relations of East and West.

The total area of the group of islands known collectively as Japan, on the other hand, amounts to a little less than 150,000 square miles, or a trifle larger than that of the States of Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania combined. The population of the insular empire proper, exceeding 60,000,000, is about half that of the United States. It aggregates approximately 400 to the square mile, as contrasted with the thirty-five in this country, having a density nearly twelve times the latter's and increasing at the rate of 1.3 per cent. a year. Though substantially double the size of Great Britain, Japan possesses no such natural resources as its compeer in Europe. Both of them, however, lack a sufficiency of arable land with which to support a growing population, which in the case of Japan is much more rapid in its rate of increase. Their chief point [Page 180]of difference with regard to the facilities for an industrial type of civilization lies in the fact that, whereas Great Britain has or can easily obtain the requisite minerals and metals, Japan has but few and can secure them from outside only under conditions much more difficult of fulfillment.

Because of the external pressure brought to bear by Western nations, Japan was forced to break with what might be termed its Chinese and Indian past. In contrast to China, it took on a course of outward transformation which was effected spontaneously, energetically and in an amazingly brief period of time. The achievements of Japan in the sphere of rapid change indeed surpass anything heretofore known in human annals. Never before had government and people cooperated so efficaciously in accomplishing a transformation in the life of the state and its inhabitants, fundamentally altering it in a manner which other nations would have required centuries to bring about. That the West, accordingly, has influenced Japan is true only in the sense that the impulse was communicated from outside of the island empire. The actual change was self-generated. What Japan has done, is to learn from Europe certain methods of organization, civil and military, which have proved successful as a means for its own expansion and as a defense against possible aggression from Western powers.

Three words sum up the course of Europeanization in this farthest east of Asiatic lands. They are: adept; adopt; adapt! The imitative and applicative sense of the Japanese has long been visible. Japan itself is at once a museum of the older culture of Asia and a laboratory of modern Europe. Its past is largely a copy of China, Korea and India; its present, in externals at least, a copy of the West. From these circumstances, however, one must not infer that the Japanese are lacking in originality or in a faculty for self-improvement. The point is, that as a people they have been imitative, rather than creative.

In contradistinction to Japan, the huge region that the Western world commonly calls China stretches over an area estimated at 1,000,000 square miles larger than that of the United [Page 181]

EAST AND WEST: THE TWAIN THAT MEET

States. It equals in extent all of Europe, plus three states the size of New York. China is fifteen times as big also as Japan and its possessions put together; and the population is four or five times as great. Unlike its island neighbor, it is a vast expanse of isolation and divergence. Instead of being a relatively small and scattered area, well-nigh devoid of natural resources and taxed by a teeming multitude of inhabitants, China is an enormous contiguous country of much potential wealth in, if not under, its soil, and for its size scantily populated. As against Japan's 400, it has only about 100 to the square mile. Differing from that neighbor further, it has a population that is far from being homogeneous. It has many peoples who when they speak can not understand one another, and a great variety also of religious and ethical beliefs.

Along with other folk of eastern and central Asia, the Chinese appear to have a characteristic in common: a certain incapacity to make continuous progress, and hence a need for some impulse from without to stir them into action again. After a given stage of relatively high civilization has been reached, further advance stops short. So far as the Chinese are concerned, the proofs are found in the survival of their archaic language that while read alike is spoken differently; and in the arrested development of so many of their famous inventions—the mariner's compass, gunpowder, printing, and silk and porcelain manufacture. None of these has ever been applied on their own initiative by the Chinese in their own country to anything like the number of useful and practical purposes—and some not so useful, except in an unfortunate sense—found in the West. The Chinese thus possessed in several instances the original genius to invent, but not the talent requisite for later elaboration. It is the Europeans who have improved upon their Chinese models.

By way of further contradistinction to Japan, Western innovations were not adopted more or less voluntarily, but were forced upon China. Not sought after by the Chinese, they were tolerated when no other procedure was available. Toward Western ways and thoughts the spirit of the Japanese was one of eager acquisition; that of the Chinese, apathetic endurance. If the [Page 182]Japanese were keen to learn about the world at large, the Chinese were quite indifferent, if not altogether hostile, to it.

Since the middle of the nineteenth century, however, two views of life have come to grips in the country: that of the conservative Chinese resting upon thousands of years of tradition and opposed to the entry of things foreign; and that of Chinese educated in Western lands or in Europeanized Japan who seek to introduce exotic ways of thinking and acting. As that century wore on and a new one approached, the situation of China resembled that of a huge stranded whale-a helpless mass for wholesale plunder. Here were independent European settlements along the coast and in the interior of the country. No foreigner was subject to Chinese jurisdiction, because by treaty the principle of extraterritoriality prevailed. According to it, all aliens were amenable to consular and other officials of their own nationality alone. The government of China was not even at liberty to decide the amount of the tariff duties that might be levied upon the entry of European goods. Western demands for concessions and privileges moreover were growing apace and effective partitions into spheres of influence not far off.

As a measure, finally, of sheer self-defense China itself undertook a process of political and economic transformation, eventually deposing its imperial dynasty and calling itself a republic. Unfortunately from that time onward, the country has been a prey to revolution within and to menace from the foreigner without. Beset by internal commotion while girt about by Russia and Japan, Great Britain and France, the abode of one of Asia's most ancient civilizations is unsteady indeed.

But of all regions of the Orient known to the West before the age of European expansion overseas began, none certainly can rival in historic interest the Near East. That great stretch of country was once the seat of the famous empires and kingdoms of antiquity. More or less within its indeterminate bounds lay Egypt, Carthage, Chaldaea, Babylonia, Assyria, Judaea, Phoenicia, the realm of the Hittites and no small part of the imperial dominions of Macedon and Rome, as each and all of them succesively [Page 183]

EAST AND WEST: THE TWAIN THAT MEET

rose, flourished and fell. Here likewise the Crusades played their romantic part in the life of the later Middle Ages, when Christian Europe sought to redeem the land of the Founder of their faith and incidentally to attempt a premature course of expansion which was not to be realized until centuries later.

India, China and Japan were centers of Oriental civilization whose remote distance and corresponding inaccessibility created geographical barriers that shut them off from anything that might resemble a close connection with the Western world up to the time when the European had made the ocean an open highway to their shores. Unlike them, during ancient and medieval times the Near East had been directly or indirectly most influential upon the earlier development of life and thought in Europe. Through it, either as the originator-in the cases of Egypt and Babylonia, for example or as the transmitter, on behalf of India and China, came the gifts that the Western world had received up to the sixteenth century.

During most of the modern period, however, in an outward sense the Near East appeared to be lying in a state of suspended animation. It had ceased awhile to play any effective part in the development of civilization. Internally the situation was quite different. With the decline from the latter part of the eighteenth century onward in the power of the sultan at Constantinople, the region became an area of contention and a source of discord, not among the native inhabitants alone, but to Europeans as well. It has been, and still is, a Debatable Ground, fought over by a medley of races and religions, and a prey to Western ambitions.

What eventually brought the Near East out of its seclusion was, not so much the internal collisions and weakness and the temptations thus offered to interference by the European, as it was the consummation of a mighty triumph of Western inventive genius and mechanical skill-the opening in 1869 of the Suez Canal. The main route along the ocean highway between Europe and the more distant Orient, which had been traced out by European navigators of an earlier period and which for hundreds of years had pursued a wide detour around southern Africa, was [Page 184]diverted by the talent of European engineers into a narrow artificial waterway, cut through the isthmus that had joined Africa to Asia. Thereafter the Suez Canal was destined to become the trunk-line, whence the interplay of civilizations of East and West might radiate. Then followed the grandiose project of linking Europe to Asia, as Asia had been severed from Africa. Again it was the genius and skill of Western engineers who built a railway to connect with existing European lines and to stretch from the shores of the Black Sea to the Persian Gulf. The artery of steel, supplied by the Anatolian and Bagdad Railways, was to extend overland as a reinforcement to the artery of water provided by the Suez Canal.

From the standpoint of the interaction between Europe and Asia, nevertheless, the Near East is the least important of the four divisions of the Orient which have been brought into contact with the Occident in modern times. It has neither received nor has it imparted by any means as much as the lands of the Middle and the Far East for the civilization of the West and of mankind at large. India, along with Persia, Japan and China have and deserve the foremost place in the process. It is they that have rendered possible the interchange of ways and thoughts; that have made the East and West the twain that meet! [Page 185]

THE WISDOM OF THE AGES

Edited by ALFRED W. MARTIN Society for Ethical Culture, New York The Sacred Scriptures of Hinduism—Continued

THE selections from the major Veda, the Rig-Veda, reproduced in the preceding number of the Magazine showed us how the Aryas of ancient India personified the forces and phenomena of nature, and then, believing they influenced man for good or ill, paid them homage in hymns that accompanied the sacrifice. We have seen how this oldest portion of the Hindu scriptures reveals the religious and ethical thought of nearly forty centuries ago. Before leaving this Veda, we must add one hymn more, one to which unusual interest attaches because it reveals a Vedic poet brushing aside all mythology, transcending the polytheism and even the monism of his contemporaries and reaching out to the monism of an ultimate causative principle, without personality. And this he designated not by a name, but by "That One". This is the so-called "creation-hymn" of which the most impressive stanzas are the following:

THE CREATION-HYMN

Nor being was there nor non-being; there was no atmosphere and no sky beyond. What covered all, and where, by what protected? Was there a fathomless abyss of the waters?

Neither death was there nor immortality; there was not the sheen of night nor light of day. That One breathed, without breath, by inner power; than it truly nothing whatever else existed besides. [Page 186]Darkness there was, hidden by darkness at the beginning; an unillumined ocean was this all. The living force which was enveloped in a shell, that one by the might of devotional fervor was born.

Desire arose in the beginning in That; it was the first seed of mind. The sages by devotion found the root of being in non-being, seeking it in (their) heart.

Who truly knoweth? Who can here proclaim it? Whence hither born, whence cometh this creation? On this side are the gods from its creating, Who knoweth then from whence it came to being?

This creation-from whence it came to being, Whether it made itself, or whether not- He who is its overseer in highest heaven, He surely knoweth-or perchance he knoweth not.

Note the excessive caution and the startling success with which the poet, after describing, in the first stanza, primordial chaos in terms of what was not, proceeds in the second stanza to state what positively was. "That One was and breathed without breath", i.e., not with physical or material breath-a marvellous attempt to describe a first cause without personality. Note also how the hymn ends with the note of profound skepticism, as though the problem faced were, after all, utterly insoluble.

Of the 1028 hymns constituting the Rig-Veda, nearly all were set to music in the Sama-Veda, or Veda of chants,-indicated by a musical notation. The third Veda is the Yajur or Veda of formulas, a sacrificial liturgy and marking the earliest prose compositions of India. Here the all-important thing is the proper performance of the sacrifice, the deities being of little consequence in the estimation of the priests compared to the mechanism of the ceremonial. The mode of procedure is described by Professor Bloomfield as follows:

"A crowd of priests--seventeen is the largest number--conduct an interminable ceremonial full of symbolic meaning down [Page 187]

THE SACRED SCRIPTURES OF HINDUISM

to its smallest minutiae. The priests seat themselves on the sacrificial ground strewn with blades of sacred darbha-grass, and mark out the altars on which the sacred fires are built. They handle and arrange the utensils and sacrificial substances. And then they proceed to give to the gods of the sacrifice, each his proper oblation and his proper share. Even the least and most trivial act has its stanza or formula, and every utensil is blessed with its own particular blessing.

Typical of the thousands of formulas that constitute the ajur-Veda is the following as translated by Prof. Bloomfield:—

“May life prosper through the sacrifice! May life’s breath prosper through the sacrifice! May the eye prosper through the sacrifice! May the back prosper through the sacrifice!” And finally—O deepest bathos!—“May the sacrifice prosper through the sacrifice!”

Latest of the four Vedas is the Atharva (circ. 1000 B. C.), the Veda of charms or incantations,—730 in all—and representing the religion of the poorer classes who could afford only the simplest rites, even as the other three Vedas represent the religion of the well-to-do, their ritual calling for expensive materials and the services of several priests who expected liberal fees. The charm-verses of the Atharva-Veda were recited for such purposes as the following: To ward off disease, to secure health and long life, to zain agricultural prosperity, to defeat enemies, to release the sinner’s soul from the sense of guilt and from the fear of punishment. Here are four selections from this scripture, typical of the entire collection of stanzas:

CHARM AGAINST JAUNDICE

Up to the sun shall go thy heart-ache and thy jaundice: In the color of the red bull do we envelop thee! We envelop thee in red tints, unto long life. May this person go unscathed, and be free of yellow color! Into the parrots, into the thrush do we put thy jaundice; Into the yellow wagtail do we put thy yellowness.

ATHARVA-VEDA, I: 22 [Page 188]

A WOMAN’S INCANTATION AGAINST HER RIVAL

I have taken unto myself her fortune and her glory, as a wreath off a tree. As a broad-based mountain may she sit a long time with her parents!

This woman shall be subjected to thee as thy bride, O King Yama (Pluto); till then let her be fixed to the house of her mother, or her brother, or her father!

This woman shall be the keeper of thy house, O King Yama; her do we deliver over to thee! May she long sit with her p until her hair drops from her head!

With the incantation of Asita, of Kacypapa, and of Gaya, do I cover up thy fortune, as women cover things within a chest.

A.-V. I: 14

A CHARM TO GAIN PROTECTION AND PROSPERITY

1. For length of life, for mighty joy, uninjured, ever showing strength We wear Vishkandha’s (rheumatics’) antidote, the Amulet of Jangida (garlic).

2. Amulet of a thousand powers, Jangida save us, all around, From pain and from inflammation, from rheumatism, and tormenting pain.

3. This overcomes Vishkanda (the fiend), this chases the greedy fiends away! May this our panacea, may Jangida save us from distress.

4. With Jangida that brings delight, Amulet given by the Gods, We in the conflict overcome Vishkandha and all Rakshasas (nocturnal fiends).

A.-V. II: 4

A CHARM AGAINST AN OPPONENT IN DEBATE

(Uttered by an intending disputant before entering the auditorium and addressed to a kind of clematis called Patha.)

I.

1. Let not the enemy win the debate! Strong and predominant art thou. Refute mine adversary’s speech. Render it dull and flat, O Plant. [Page 189]

THE SACRED SCRIPTURES OF HINDUISM

2. The strong-winged bird (eagle) discovered thee, the boar unearthed thee with his snout. Refute mine adversary's speech. Render it dull and flat, O Plant.

3. O Rudra, Lord of Healing, skillful in thy work! Refute mine adversary's speech. Render it dull and flat O Plant. Comfort us with thy power and might. Make me superior in debate. A.-V. II: 27

When the Aryas, after their migration from the table lands of the Himalayas, had settled on the banks of the Indus, they knew nothing of an organized priesthood. Every man was his own priest. But when about 1000 B. C., the Aryas migrated eastward to the valley of the Ganges and conquered the aborigines, there arose the organization of a priesthood and with it a new type of literature called Brahmanas, dating from 1000 to 600 B. C. Prose treatises they are, giving directions to the priests for the proper performances of the sacrifices and explaining their philosophical implications. As such, the Brahmanas are to be contrasted with the lyrical poems of the Rig-Veda. Indeed the Brahmanas may be likened to the Talmud; for just as the latter is an exposition of the old Testament Pentateuch from the rabbinical standpoint, so the Brahmanas constitute an expounding from the priestly viewpoint of the four Vedas and the ceremonial rites connected with them. And just as the Talmud interrupts its hair-splitting, logic-chopping expositions of the ritual (Hallacha) by inserting rare flowers from the garden of legendary lore (Haggada), so the Brahmanas drew on a rich store of myths and legends which India had treasured from time immemorial and to which Hindu poets of a later day turned for material (e. g. Kalidasa). Concerned as they are for the most part with the details of a sacrificial system unparalleled in the whole history of religions, the Brahmanas need not detain us. Let it be noted, however, in passing that it is here we meet for the first time with the doctrines of Karma, transmigration and the hope of release from rebirth.

In the longest of the Brahmanas we read: [Page 190]Whosoever goes to yonder world, not having escaped final death, him Agri causes to die again and again. SATAPATHA BRAHMANA, II: 3, 8-9

Professor Eggeling of Edinburgh University in the introduction to his translation of Brahmanas says: "For wearisome prolixity of exposition, characterized by dogmatic assertion and a flimsy symbolization rather than by serious reasoning, these works are perhaps not equalled anywhere. They represent the activity of a sacerdotal caste, which, by turning to account the religious instinct of a gifted and naturally devout race, had succeeded in transforming a primitive worship of the powers of nature into a highly artificial system of sacrificial ceremonies, and which was ever intent on deepening and extending its hold on the minds of the people by surrounding its own vocation with the halo of sanctity and divine inspiration.

In the chronological succession of Hindu sacred scriptures, we come next to the Aranyakas which appear at the end of the Brahmanas. These are forest-treatises, intended for recitation by those who went to the forest to live when the time for entrance on the third of the four stages of Hindu life had been reached (disciple, householder, forest-dweller, wandering ascetic). The Aranyakas need not detain us any more than the Brahmanas because they are concerned chiefly with fantastic priestly philosophy, yet we must take cognizance of the fact that just as amid the arid waste of ritualism in the Brahmanas we find the beginnings of two other groups of Hindu scriptures,—namely, the Epics of the Mahabbarata and the Ramayana and the Upanishads,—so here in these forest-treatises the stress laid on taking note of the allegorical or spiritual significance of sacrificial acts makes the Aranyakas also a transitional literature to the philosophical-ethical Upanishads in which ritualism is regarded much as it was by the prophets of Israel. To this portion of the Hindu scriptures, which, in the estimation of Hindus, ranks next to the Rig-Veda, we shall turn in the February, 1928 number of WORLD UNITY MAGAZINE. This department in January will be devoted to the subject of the Lausanne conference on religious unity. [Page 191]THE BIOLOGICAL SANCTIONS OF WORLD UNITY ERNEST MAURICE BEST The United Theological College, Montreal

II. The Unity of Man

In spite of all this evidence of the physical, chemical, biological and psychological unity of life, we still have to face the wide-spread tradition that men are divided by some kind of radical and ultimate difference which makes unity and cooperation impossible. The human race is divided into four or five distinct types, which we distinguish in terms of skin color. A closer analysis indicates fifteen or twenty distinct racial types. These races are organized politically into sixty or seventy nations. Each nation in turn is subdivided into at least three social classes: first, those who work with their hands; second, those who work with their brains; and third, a small but dominating group which works the other two classes. It is this latter, sometimes parasitic, class which reacts most violently against the doctrine of human solidarity. It is this group which labors to keep alive the ancient prejudices and hatreds between race and race, nation and nation, class and class. Of course, none of these classifications is absolute and there is endless overlapping or intergrading, racially, nationally and economically.

We hear much talk of "Nordic superiority" and of the duty of maintaining racial integrity. But this specious apologetic for economic exploitation has little or no scientific sanction. It is time we applied the known facts of inheritance to the delusion of "pure racial strains" and to the social obsession of "blue blood". As a matter of fact the blood of the races has been mixed by migrations and wars times without number, and a "pure Nordic" is a pure mongrel, if not a pure imagination. The boast of aristocratic descent is equally fallacious, for the reason that heredity [Page 192]is not unilateral. For instance, I rejoice in the tradition of descent from Norman blood which entered England with William the Conqueror. But a painstaking examination of my family tree has led me to believe that this Norman blood has been somewhat diluted during the last 900 years. I find that each generation I go back doubles the number of my ancestors. Thus I have inherited from two parents, four grandparents and eight great-grand parents and so on indefinitely by geometrical progression. If I allow three generations to a century, I find that an enormous number of persons have shared in my ancestry. By the time I get back to 1500, when America was just discovered, I find that I might have 4096 participants in my family tree and even my faith in the potency of Norman blood cannot survive such serious attenuation.

Furthermore, the study of heredity has revealed the fact that we do not inherit entirely or directly from our parents. Parents transmit heredity to their children from cells which are composite and which may include determinants from as many as 48 different persons in their ancestry. In the face of such facts we should try to reduce our silly prides and prejudices and begin to walk humbly with our neighbors, as well as with our God.

As a matter of fact, the prophet was stating the baldest scientific fact when he said that God "Hath made of one blood all nations of men for to dwell on all the face of the earth." And it is time for us to adopt the obvious corollary that all men are brothers.

SOCIAL UNITY

In spite of all that has been said up to this point, it may be claimed that history reveals man as constantly at war with his neighbors. From the stone club of prehistoric man to the latest battleship costing thirty million dollars, we are told that man is incorrigibly warlike. Nature is "red in touch and claw", but human nature exceeds in cruelty the fiercest beasts of prey. It is said that man is a "fighting animal" and that he has inherited brutal instincts which make conflict inevitable and war a biological necessity. There is truth in this viewpoint, but it can be exaggerated and we need to get perspective. The bloody "struggle for survival", to [Page 193]which the Darwinian doctrine of Natural Selection gave currency, has been over-stressed. Pain and fear and death are present in nature, but they represent momentary incidents in a life history. They are vastly overbalanced by joy, peace, happiness and life. Henry Drummond in "The Ascent of Man" made it clear once for all that life is rooted and grounded in the principle of cooperation as well as of competition. "The struggle for the life of others" is a far more adequate explanation of survival than the struggle for self. What is still more important, the principle of mutual aid is steadily replacing the necessity for violent conflict. It is an outrageous misrepresentation of nature and of man to describe them as being constantly engaged in murder and violence. Still more unfounded is the assumption that because man inherits from a brutal ancestry he is forever condemned to beastliness. The dogma that human nature cannot be changed belongs to a pre-scientific age when a static conception of life was dominant. The fact of evolution is in itself a refutation of this ancient fallacy. Nothing in the universe has been changed so often or so much as "human nature", and there is nothing so subject to modification as the human infant. Instead of being locked fast in the grip of iron-bound instincts, man is above all things malleable and plastic. He begins life with a multitude of conflicting impulses and tendencies which check and counteract each other. If he inherits an instinct for cruelty, he also inherits an instinct for pity and sympathy. If he inherits an instinct for fighting, he most obviously inherits a strong tendency to let somebody else do it for him. If he inherits a tendency toward self-aggrandisement, he also inherits a parental instinct which leads him to love, protect and sacrifice for the young and helpless, particularly his own offspring. If he inherits other undesirable impulses he also inherits an ardent desire for social approval which can inhibit them. As a consequence of all these possibilities man is the educatable animal, par excellence. He is capable of the most astounding variations in ideas, ideals, attitudes, habits and skills. Heredity fixes limits for each individual but produces a constant drive away from uniformity toward variation and change. [Page 194]As Prof. Dewey and others have shown, the uniformity of human behavior is due primarily to the conservatism of custom and habit. The fixity of human nature comes from the screen of social habits, opinions and attitudes which adults interpose between the child and the world. These social patterns change slowly and are the greatest obstacles to changing "human nature’" There is no ground for the assertion that social unity is biologically impossible.

One of the most impressive indications of the law of Unity in social evolution is the steady integration of political groups into ever-larger units. Men began to live together in the family. The Biblical story of the first family indicates that even this small group could not live together peacefully. Gradually the family group enlarged to the clan or tribe, and a larger code of cooperation was established. Tribes gradually coalesced and social unity was achieved, capable of coordinating the conflicting interests of a small nation. Nations were gathered together by conquests and federation into larger nations and empires and the reign of law was slowly and painfully extended until world stability was reached in the Roman Empire. But like other slave empires Rome lacked internal stability and when it went down the process of social unification had to be repeated, in part at least. At the present time, we have in the United States the integration of over one hundred million people of diverse national, racial and religious backgrounds, cooperating in a common government and accepting common laws. In the British Empire, we have an even larger and more amazing synthesis. During the World War we had a period of cooperation when almost the whole population of the world belonged to either one or the other of the two governing alliances. It is an indisputable fact of Social Science that the social-political unit increases in size with civilization. No doubt we shall continue to have reverses and difficulties and probably more wars but ultimately we shall achieve political stability and social integration in a world society based on freedom and goodwill.

This concludes my task. I have tried to mobilize the biological sanctions which justify our faith in World Unity. I have marshalled [Page 195]

THE UNITY OF MAN

the arguments which seem to indicate the unity and continuity of all matter, all life and all mind. It seems to me, that however various life may be in its manifestations it all rises out of a fundamental unity, which we ignore or deny at our peril. Our world is like a giant airship from whose sides we, the passengers, have recently sprung. Our ship is a part of a mighty fleet whose other units are scarcely visible to us yet. We have sailed from an unknown port for a harbor that lies beyond our ken. We are all in the same boat and this is no time for feuds between the passengers. The Unseen Admiral evidently intends us to cooperate intelligently in the management of our ship. We do not know everything but it is clearly our business to cooperate with Nature in the development of integrated personalities more intelligent, more well disposed and more powerful than any we have yet achieved. To this end, we must bend our efforts to the unification and coordination of new social order, founded on the principles of freedom, love and cooperation. The social obstacles to unity, which we inherit from custom and taboo, are steadily giving way before the impact of science and education, and many of our biological limitations can be removed in time through intelligent social action.

Now is the time for all good men to exert their influence in behalf of Social Justice and International Generosity, Racial Harmony and Industrial Cooperation. The dream of a Golden Age, a Kingdom of God on earth in which all men shall realize their common sonship and their common brotherhood is neither visionary nor impracticable. Unity is written into the Constitution of the Universe. It can be realized, and one of the most potent steps in this direction will be through teaching such facts as we have here reviewed. The Eternal God, Maker and Creator of all things and Father of all men, speaks in many tongues but preaches the same gospel of Unity, Continuity and Progress through the law of sacrifice and cooperation. [Page 196]

APOSTLES OF WORLD UNITY: III—BARONESS BERTHA VON SUTTNER

by JOHN MEZ Department of Economics, University of Arizona

"Every reformist movement has to pass through three phases; First it is laughed at, then opposed, and finally it is accused of advocating the obvious." —BERTHA VON SUTTNER

About a quarter century before the outbreak of the World War there appeared in Central Europe a novel with the title "Die Waffen Nieder!"—"Lay Down Your Arms!"

Immediately after its publication the book, whose author it made famous almost over night, attracted wide attention, and for years exerted a profound influence on the thought of Western Europe. Its success was amazing: it was reprinted again and again, until it reached thirty editions, it was translated into sixteen languages and had a total circulation of one million copies.

The author of this epoch-making book was a woman, Baroness Bertha von Suttner, a member of the Austrian aristocracy who, at the time of its appearance, already enjoyed a certain reputation as a successful novelist. "Lay Down Your Arms!" is a crusade against war and one of the most thought-provoking contributions to the peace literature, for it has challenged, in the minds of thousands of readers, the popular concept of war as an established and inevitable instrument of social progress. Competent critics have compared its importance in the movement to abolish war with the effect of Harriet Beecher Stowe's famous "Uncle Tom's Cabin" in the cause of abolition of slavery.

In 1905 the book won for its author the Nobel Peace Prize of $40,000. And after the outbreak of the war in 1914 so many people, [Page 197]

BARONESS BERTHA VON SUTTNER

including the soldiers in the trenches, ordered the book that it was sold out, and new editions had to be printed both in England and Germany. Is it not strange to know in view of this astounding success, that the manuscript had first been refused by several publishers who feared that it might hurt the feelings of the militarists and war traders of Europe?

Baroness von Suttner was born in Prague in 1843, the daughter of Francis Count Kinsky, an officer of high rank in the Austrian army. Her early education begun by her mother, she continued during prolonged visits in France, England and Italy. She was a handsome and brilliant woman of the world, imbued with a noble spirit and deep love for humanity. At the age of thirty she met her future husband at Vienna. His father, Baron von Suttner, objected to their marriage; this led them to elope to be married in Southeastern Russia where they stayed for nine years, at Tiflis in the Caucasus. While there, they depended for their living almost entirely upon her fairly popular novels and contributions to newspapers. During the Russo-Turkish war of 1878 her husband went to the front as correspondent, and the events of the time left a profound impression on her mind.

In 1880, she returned to Vienna and found the public mind of Europe filled with a terrible tension caused by the expectation of war. This general atmosphere of alarm and apprehension among some of the people, and the eagerness with which others clamored for war, ripened in her mind the plan to write a book for the purpose of creating a more thoughtful attitude toward the grave issues of war and peace. She carefully selected and studied her material, read war books, descriptions of battles and campaigns, accounts of the background of the previous wars, their causes and effects, their relations upon the life and welfare of the people, the economic costs and the manifold social effects on both victors and vanquished alike.

With a hot heart and a burning pen she wrote her book, a great indictment of war. Its main object is to present the claims of the individual and the family as superior to those of the State, plea for the inviolability of human life and for the rights of [Page 198]every man. If there be any constructive benefit from war, it always brings, in the opinion of the author, in its wake such heavy losses, such misery and demoralization that it inevitably retards the general welfare of mankind.

The story of the book, centering around the wartime experience of an officer and his young bride, is simple, although its philosophy is profound. In a masterly fashion the reader is led into the true and full meaning of war and its effect upon the fate of every individual in a belligerent nation. The story unfolds from the declaration of war, the call to the colors, the departure of the youthful husband from home, the first news from the front, the painful aftermath of the fighting, the trainloads filled with wounded soldiers, the first list of losses with the subsequent anguish caused to those left behind, tales of hunger and cold, of fever and dysentery, the shooting of spies and deserters, the burning of villages, of the fighting itself, the drowning of an entire battalion under a collapsing bridge, the erroneous shooting of a regiment by their own artillery. Then the author describes the political background of the war, its changing and forgotten causes or aims, the propaganda of lies and hatred, the ambiguity of diplomats, the absolute senselessness and futility of it all, culminating in an admirable appeal to the conscience of the world to discard the sham-glory military and force, armed peace and to substitute law for force, a masterpiece of realistic fiction of truly artistic rank.

"This is not a book, this is a historic event," the aged poct Peter Rosegger exclaimed upon reading the novel. A grave Finance Minister of Austria recommended its reading to parliament in open session. The authoress was showered with letters and reviews from all parts of the world, some filled with enthusiastic approval, a few of course derisive and indignant. But from that time on, she became identified with the movement for international peace in which she took a leading part for the rest of her life. "It was in these days," she writes in her "Memoires", "that I learned of the existence of an International Peace and Arbitration Association in London. I wrote to its secretary, Mr. Hodgson [Page 199]

BARONESS BERTHA VON SUTTNER

Pratt, and soon found myself belonging to a large group of men and women organized for the promotion of world peace.

Encouraged by the success of her book, Madame von Suttner founded a Monthly bearing the same title, "Die Waffen Nieder". This she edited admirably well for ten years, and thus gave a tremendous impetus to the peace movement on the continent of Europe. In 1899, her friend and coworker Alfred Hermann Fried succeeded her as editor of the magazine which he published for twenty years under the title "Friedens-Warte" (Chronicle of Peace). It still appears at present as the official organ of the peace movement in Germany and Austria.

In 1891 Baroness von Suttner attended the World Peace Congress at Rome as its Vice President and took the rostrum to address the brilliant assembly, as the first woman since Corinna whose voice had been heard within the walls of the capitol. After her return to Vienna she began to organize the Austrian Peace Society of which she was president for many years. Later she undertook also the delicate task of carrying the organized peace movement right into the heart of militarism and reaction in Europe, namely into Berlin.

What this has meant, to come out into the open in imperial Germany and to organize a society whose aims were peace, disarmament, international organization, can only be appreciated by those who have known pre-war Prussia. Naturally she found very little response at first. Politicians, press, and the bulk of public opinion had no use for a pacifist movement. Her task was therefore thankless and unpopular. Most people, even some of those sympathizing with her, found it expedient to discourage her. Others sent in evasive or half-hearted approvals, and her work called for a great amount of tact, organizing skill, courage and patience. It was an up-hill struggle, against the strongly entrenched forces of privilege, militarism and reaction, and was bound to bring keen disappointment in its wake. But she persisted undismayed and here and there the seed of new ideas which she planted sprang up, and she had the satisfaction during her lifetime of seeing the peace movement in Germany grow and gain [Page 200]momentum, until it had become a factor seriously to be reckoned with by the military rulers of Germany.

Henceforth Bertha von Suttner devoted her entire life to the cause of peace. She was a member of the European Council of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, of the Peace Bureau at Berne, and honorary president of many European peace societies. She was instrumental in founding the peace movement in Hungary, she also participated in the formation of the Interparliamentary Union.

The zenith of her success seemed to be at hand at the turn of the century. In 1899 the Czar of Russia addressed his famous manifesto to the governments of the world calling upon them "to put a halt to the ever-increasing armaments and to seek the means of warding off the calamities which threaten the whole world." It has been claimed that her book had been a powerful agency in helping to bring about the manifesto, and her great part in this historic event seems to be established beyond any doubt. Shortly before the first conference met at The Hague, the Czar's representative, Prince Murajev, called in person on the Baroness to discuss the plan for a Permanent Court of International Arbitration, then in the making. Baroness von Suttner attended both Hague Conferences in 1899 and 1907, though not as an official, but as a very influential and much respected delegate. In conjunction with William T. Stead, she published a daily "Bulletin of the Hague" at her own expense with the idea of creating an atmosphere conducive to the success of the conference and to the deliberations of the delegates. Her drawing room at the hotel became the meeting place of the leading members of the conference, the diplomats, politicians and publicists.

At Lucerne in Switzerland, at the opening of the War and Peace Museum, she met the famous inventor and manufacturer of dynamite, the Scandinavian, Alfred Nobel. She won his interest in the cause of peace, and during a subsequent visit at his home in Sweden, she succeeded in inducing him to make the famous endowment of several million francs from which every year the Nobel Peace Prize is given "to that man or woman who shall have [Page 201]

BARONESS BERTHA VON SUTTNER

worked most effectively for the fraternization of mankind, the diminution of armies, and the promotion of peace congresses." Among those who received the prize were, besides herself, Theodore Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, Elihu Root and others. If Baroness von Suttner had made no other contribution to the peace movement than the suggestion made to Mr. Nobel to endow the Peace Prize, her name would deserve to be commemorated.

On two occasions Bertha von Suttner visited the United States, first in 1904, when she attended the Thirteenth International Peace Congress at Boston, and again in 1911 when she came to the States for a transcontinental lecture tour. This journey was a veritable triumph. She visited most of the larger cities, her lectures were impressive and inspiring, she attracted immense audiences and was received and feted by many prominent personalities, among others by President Taft. In Chicago and San Francisco her lectures were presided over by President David Starr Jordan of Stanford University.

With her pen the Baroness was able to promote the cause so close to her heart in a particularly powerful manner. Day after day, for nearly twenty-five years, she wrote either for her own magazine and numerous books or she sent her sane and trenchant contributions to the daily papers and periodicals, pointing out the alarming condition of European politics, warning against the impossible attempt to preserve peace through the folly of armaments and the "balance of power", deploring the menace of ruthless imperialistic conquest and pointing out the only way to Salvation from ruin: international organization and disarmament. A very large selection from her admirable "Chronicles of Contemporary Events", written in the two decades preceding the war, was collected after her death by her friend Fried and published in two volumes of 800 pages each under the caption, "The Struggle for the Prevention of the World War" (Orell Fuessli & Cie., Zurich, Switzerland, 1916). To the student of the pre-war diplomacy of Europe these volumes will for a long time to come form an invaluable source of information.

Rarely has any woman fighting for a great ideal exerted a [Page 202]more profound influence on contemporary thought than Bertha von Suttner. Her very name became identified with the peace movement. To friend and foe alike she was known as "Peace-Bertha". Little wonder that the conservative and military circles subjected her to severe attacks and criticism. Hundreds of cartoons were published in which she was ridiculed, in sometimes humorous, but often also abusive manner. Whoever in Europe was in one way or the other interested in peace was thought to be tied "to the apronstrings of that woman". What good could come, it was asked, of a cause so hopelessly bound up with feminine influence? It is but natural that the virile and sturdy militarists had little regard for the ethical and more human aspects of the peace problem which she stressed so effectively. There were times in her life when she felt discouraged at the steady opposition, the slanderous attacks and insults hurled at her by the advocates of war, although at others she found comfort and encouragement from the contact with great souls which crossed her path, such as William Stead, the Warsaw banker Jean de Bloch, the French publicist Frederic de Passy, the London artist Felix Moscheles, Charles Richet, D'Estournelles de Constant, Gaston Moch, Léon Bourgeois and others who in turn received much inspiration from this rare and noble woman.

Bertha von Suttner's place in the history of the peace movement is assured. With her book she made thousands of her fellowmen think about war, made them see that there is another side to it than the thoughtless concept taught by the schoolbooks. She was, in a sense, the founder of the organized peace movement in Central Europe. She started the first pacifist periodical which has continued until today for nearly four decades. And in a general way she gave a great deal of strength, inspiration and nobility to the great cause to which her life was devoted. These accomplishments are all the more noteworthy in that she belonged to a family of soldiers and had grown up amidst military traditions, that she worked in an environment hopelessly opposed to the concept of peace, and that she succeeded at a time when it was much harder for a woman's voice to make itself heard than it would be today. [Page 203]

BARONESS BERTHA VON SUTTNER

By a strange play of fate Bertha von Suttner died on June 14, 1914, just one week before the fatal shot was fired at Sarajewo that started the World War. She did not live to witness the catastrophe which she had striven so hard to prevent. "She was not successful, she was merely right." At the time of her death the peace forces of Europe counted millions. Who knows but whether the war lords did not think it time to strike before the popular forces opposing war and monarchism had become too strong?

True, there were many who, like her, hoped and wished for peace. But none has struggled with greater devotion, with a keener vision or firmer optimism than this sincere and brave woman whose name will stand out in history, particularly in the history of ideas, as one of the finest characters. She was not only a prophet, but a pioneer and leader in the fight for a better order of human destiny. She will be remembered long after the glory and fame of the military heroes will have gone down in the dark of the ages. Generations yet to come will find inspiration in her idealism, when the peace movement will be seen in a truer perspective, as the beginning of that final organization of a better and happier future. Her battle cry, "Lay Down Your Arms," has entered deep into the heart of men, never to be silenced before its ultimate fulfillment. Then her prophetic thought and vision will be understood. [Page 204]

THE NEW HUMANITY

"Without edifices or rules or trustees or any argument, The institution of the dear love of comrades."

Edited by MARY SIEGRIST Author of "You that Come After", etc.

BETWEEN poetry and science there is everywhere the deepening recognition of kinship. We are coming to realize that a golden thread unites them, that they are truly one in the service and fellowship of the imagination. Both seek the broadening and deepening and unifying of humanity. Both seek wholeness of life for all men. Both alike are "trafficking with the Gods", searching out the deep secrets of being. Both realize the divine similitude that interlocks their essences; that their goals are along convergent lines with a common center; the beauty that is truth, the truth that is beauty. Both deal with symbols and see a world garmented in many-veiled beauty. Science, like poetry, pushes through the labyrinthine walls of matter to the indwelling spirit. The scientist knows that the poet's truth is his own truth the truth of the heart, the intellect and the imagination-made song. Today our foremost men of science do not hesitate to turn to poetry to express or to reinforce their own deepest meanings. Poct and scientist alike see every common bush aflame with God. Both uncover and go reverently in the divine presence.

MAN TO THE ANGEL

From your pride refrain; Dark and lost amid the strife I am myriad years of pain Nearer to the fount of life.

A. E. [Page 205]

ARTISTRY

To bring this loveliness to be, Even for an hour the Builder must Have wrought in the laboratory Of many a star for its sweet dust. Oh, to make possible that heart And that gav breath so lightly sighed: Whig ras in ie art! crucified! A. E.

SACRED SIGNS

We do not know. But they know. The stones know. Even trees Know. And they remember. They remember who named the mountains And rivers, Who constructed the former Cities. Who gave the names To the immemorial countries, Words unknown to us. They are filled with significance. Everything is filled with achievements. Everywhere Heroes passed. "To know"- Is a sweet word. "To remember" - Is a terrible word. To know and To remember. To remember and to know Means to have faith. Airships were flying. Came pouring a liquid fire. Came flashing The spark of life and death. By the might of spirit stony masses Ascended. A wondrous blade was forged. Scriptures guarded wise secrets. And again everything is revealed. Everything new. The fairy tale the legend-have become [Page 206]Life. And we live again. And again we shall change. And again We shall touch the earth. The great "Today" shall be dimmed Tomorrow. But sacred signs Will appear. Then When needed. They will be unperceived. Who knows? But they will create Life. And where are The sacred signs?

NICHOLAS ROERICH

(BY AN ANCIENT CHINESE POET)

I believe in the deep blue sky and the smiling water. I can see through the clouds of the sky and I am not afraid of the waves of the sea. I believe in the living friendship given by flowers and trees. Outwardly they die, but in the heart they live forever. Little paths through the green wood I love, and the sound of leaves falling on the ground, or of a nut falling, or even of a breaking twig. I believe that the days to come already feel the wonder of the days that have passed, and will permit that wonder to endure and increase. I believe in and love my belief in-and my love for-all these things; and most of all I believe in and love the source of my belief and my love.

From the ORIENTAL MAGAZINE

KAHLIL GIBRAN

You may have heard of the Blessed Mountain. It is the highest mountain in our world. Should you reach the summit you would have only one desire, and that to descend and be with those who dwell in the deepest valley. That is why it is called the Blessed Mountain.

From "Sand and Foam" KAHLIL GIBRAN [Page 207]

A SONG OF BROTHERHOOD

I who sing this, am of no land: For though my heart is fondest of one land Yet is this fondness truer because I love all lands. I hate the sin of mine own flesh and blood And love the virtues of mine enemy. I am of England only as England is of truth. I am of France only as France is virtuous. I am of Germany only as Germany is clean. I burned my last sad prejudice but yesterday: Now am I free to speak, being of no land. Twas no pure fount of pride bade me prefer A bloated Saxon, heavy with his wine, To sad-faced Bedouins, fasting and at prayer. Brother of France, brother of Germany, brother of the American States, Brother of Italy, Russia, Iceland and Japan, Comrade of the most unknown isle, If thou art true, then art thou more to me Than one in mine own kingdom who is false. Now am I patriot to the kind deeds of a Brahmin; To all that assists the ultimate ends of harmony In the wild songs of savages; to the good in everything. My flag is sewn by the fast shuttle of feet Wherever and whenever good Samaritans tread the highway. My National Anthem is the silence of Universal Peace. I love the sound of the breaking of bread in India Better, far better than the sobs of waves That kiss iron keels at Cowes. I am more of America than I am of Canada: I am more of the world than I am of America: I am more of the Universe than I am of the World. No creed have I nor know I any law that is evil. I am one of the hosts of Barbary; And even the clouds oppress my expansion of soul. [Page 208]

Wilson MacDonald

If I were given three things to damn I would damn creed three times. If I were given more things to damn I would damn creed three more times. For had a creed been damned in India's dawn The Ganges ne'er had known its human cry. And O, the blue-eyed Irish but for creed Would lead the march of nations. You have asked: "When will come brotherhood? When will come the Christ?" And I reply: "Not until creeds are one With the vain dust of their own temples."

(Songs of the Prairie Land) WILSON MACDONALD [Page 209]

THE RISING TIDE

Notes on current books possessing special significance in the light of the trend toward world unity.

Edited by JOHN HERMAN RANDALL, JR. Department of Philosophy, Columbia University

The Science of Man

From its first beginnings the attempt to gain an adequate knowledge of human nature has been linked with the hope of a better world. It was in the 18th century that the idea of a Science of Man really captured the imagination of the thoughtful. Impressed with the harmony and rationality of the Order of Nature as revealed by the science of Isaac Newton, men revolted from the chaos and ancient vested stupidity, the prejudices and intolerances and injustices, the selfish rivalries and sheer irrational warfare that prevail in human affairs. They dared to hope that some day these things would pass away, and that they would pass away when men had created a similar science of themselves and their society. The great humanitarian apostles of peace and justice of the Age of Reason staked their all upon the scientific understanding of human nature.

Well, we have today plenty of psychologies, plenty of sociologies, plenty of anthropologies, plenty of all the many branches of the social sciences. We have a swarm of professors of them all, and an unending stream of books. We have also plenty of confusion and stupidity, pienty of prejudice and intolerance and injustice and war. Has our faith, then, been a delusion? Can we go on building up a Science of Man with no appreciable effect upon human greed and human stupidity? It is easy to grow cynical today, to feel that the more we see man and his society as they [Page 210]actually are, the more we see through them, the more foolish it appears to hope that knowledge and intelligence can ever play much of a part in human life. This mood of disillusionment has been admirably expressed by C. E. Ayres in a book that suggests that we have all been wrong, that science in general and social science in particular is no savior of mankind, but a False Messiah. It can teach the few to see life as it actually is; it can never help the many to make it different.

If we really possessed a science of man, we might well be disturbed at its present impotence. But though we have plenty of sociologies and psychologies and all the rest, there remains the doubt: Have we any real scientific understanding of human nature? The most thoughtful of present-day investigators, eagerly working through all this mass of literature and theory, all agree, "Mighty little!" We still share the ignorance of the Age of Reason, as we share their high hopes that with such knowledge we could work miracles. Two centuries of passionate investigation have given us little more. Our greatest gain has been a sense of humility, of the danger of building imposing theories on a few highly selected facts, of the need for the widest investigation of fact and the most rigorous criticism of any theory, however plausible or time-honored. Even these rudiments of a successful method have been painfully achieved only in the last generation. They are still the possession of only a few of the social sciences, and in them of only a few of those who claim to speak with authority. At most we can say that certain schools of anthropologists and psychologists have worked out leading principles for further investigation, have formulated attitudes toward man and his group life that offer promise of future understanding. It will be time to lament the failure of the Science of Man when we have one. Till then, we can still dream that knowledge will set us free.

There have been plenty of books written of late to popularize the various theories of contemporary psychology and sociology. Now at last one has appeared that does not exploit a theory, but tries to distinguish between what we really know and what we [Page 211]

THE SCIENCE OF MAN

don't. In Man and Civilization, John Storck does not offer a neat picture of human nature and social life, all explained in terms of a few simple principles. He is too honest. He has mastered the results of an extraordinarily large proportion of all the experimental investigations of the last thirty years. He is conversant with all the theories that have had their day and still count enthusiastic advocates. But he never fails to distinguish between the two. He has tried to bring together what hosts of investigators have actually observed, and to let the resultant picture of man take shape of itself. In consequence, his book is probably the most valuable critical survey of what psychology and anthropology in their present state have to teach us about human nature. It leaves the impression of a multiplicity of scattered discoveries, with great gaps yawning in our knowledge. It overthrows many of the traditional notions that have since time immemorial blinded men's minds. It effectually disposes of many of the current fads, the theories held today because of their plausible novelty and the lack of any real critical sense even among educated men. In these respects, it does just what the science of man can do today for us, and no more. It presents an accurate picture of where we are.

"I have tried," writes Mr. Storck, "to present a non-technical yet sufficiently dignified interpretation of human activity in fundamental agreement with the results of recent study in the fields of psychology, anthropology, and sociology. These disciplines, of course, are still in their infancy, and so it is impossible to tell what light they may eventually throw on human affairs; but they do offer intelligent people of today certain leading principles and a considerable array of specific data (still rather scattered and fragmentary, it is true) that can help them to a better understanding of contemporary life and its problems."

Certain leading principles that help to a better understanding of contemporary problems—in the last analysis that is just what the psychologist and the anthropologist have to offer us. For out of the mass of facts and the welter of clashing theories there do emerge certain fundamental attitudes, certain ways of looking at human nature. They are forced upon us by the facts themselves. [Page 212]There are plenty of theories that bolster up the many human prejudices; there are a few that promise to be fruitful instruments of investigation that will actually add to our knowledge. The chief charm of Mr. Storck's book is the skill with which he makes these fruitful conceptions emerge from the facts themselves. To understand these concepts, to be able to approach human problems in their terms, is to be scientifically minded with regard to human affairs. It is the best guarantee against dogma and prejudice and intolerance and callous lack of sympathy.

The most basic of these notions, what the author calls "the socio-biological view of human nature", is the working principle of all serious psychological and anthropological research. It is the conception of human life as a complex organization of activities built up in response to the opportunities and the limits set by a definite physical and social environment. The individual starts his life as a mere bundle of possibilities, most of which can never be realized. He is born into a group with a definite organized way of living-a culture that sets for him what he will learn to do and how he will do it. This culture, with its customs, its prescribed activities, its beliefs, is there when the infant arrives. It has itself been built up as the group has tried by invention and borrowing to adjust itself and its physi 1 environment to each other. This culture determines the pattern in which the possibilities of the newborn child will be organized. At every turn it guides him and sets limits beyond which he cannot go. Mr. Storck is at his best in pointing out the all-permeating influence of this social environment in forming the individual's characteristic activities. It determines what two parents will unite to form his original germ-plasm; it gives him a language without which he could not think, it furnishes his highest ideals.

Such a conception of human life as essentially a social organization of biological possibilities cuts across many prejudices It affords no basis for dogmatic assumption about the native superiority of certain individuals or groups. While the constitution of the germ-plasm ultimately determines the possibilities of the individual's growth, no one can tell what they are. "Heredity [Page 213]

THE SCIENCE OF MAN

may be regarded as furnishing the limits within which individual development, as elicited by the social and physical environment, takes place. No study yet made, however, has disclosed the exact limit of biological capacity of any individual with regard to any single trait. . . It is clearly unwise, therefore, to regard heredity as an entity or force when it is taken in abstraction from a supporting and eliciting environment." Nor are there revealed any complex unlearned traits in human nature: the whole concept of "instincts" is without foundation. If men are war-like and grasping, it is because they have learned to be so in their society; science knows no "instincts of pugnacity or acquisitiveness". "If there are any such complex unlearned elements of human behavior, they have as yet resisted discovery."

It follows that all of the more complex forms of activity are built up through experience in a definite social environment. Will, conscience, personality, character, individuality, soul,—none of these are simple things or forces, but rather certain complex forms of acquired behavior. They are to be understood in terms of the particular experiences the individual has undergone. They are to be controlled by furnishing a proper environment. Though as yet we know little about the very complex processes through which these characteristic functions are organized, we can already look forward to the time when we shall be able to control them far more than we can today, when we can at least guard against the formation of certain obviously undesirable traits.

Mr. Storck surveys critically what we already know about the factors at work as the almost completely indeterminate activity of the infant gradually acquires the set of the fully-developed personality of maturity. He is a careful guide through the many recent theories of what happens when life is reorganized at adolescence about the sexual factors. He sketches the many lines of investigation by which we can hope to understand the manifold elements that enter into personality, such as the functioning of the endocrine glands and the knowledge of the psychiatrist.

Individual development consists in large part in assimilating the great social complexes that run through all institutions. From [Page 214]the objective viewpoint of the anthropologist Mr. Storck offers an analysis of the part played in group life by routines, tools, machines, and language. He explains the process of choice of values, the way in which social change takes place, how criticism brings social standards and knowledge of fact to bear upon customs. He makes clear the notion of a culture as a continuously changing thing, always seeking a better adjustment with its environment, always having to remake its institutions in the light of improved physical mastery of nature. One is left with the clear conviction that every idea and every ideal is a human way of meeting human needs, is developed to meet a particular situation, and must change when the problem changes.

In the concluding section the same functional attitude is applied to the great social organizations of life, the complex and overshadowing institutions of economic life, the family, art, science, and religion. There are many wise and pertinent comments; but most of all there is the all-permeating conception of these things as activities, as organizations of human impulses to meet biological and social needs, as parts of cultures. So far as possible, anthropological material is drawn upon, and the attempt is made to rise from the consideration of our family arrangements, our organization of the artistic impulses, our type of religious life, to the part played by such activities in other groups and civilizations. It is precisely such an emancipation from provincialism that the anthropologist can teach us. By giving a sense of the wide variety of such forms, of the equal success of very different arrangements, of the historical genesis of our own institutions, he can reveal both what can be done with such human materials and the importance of guiding their ever changing forms intelligently. Mr. Storck treats the family, with a wealth of fact, as an institution that is today rapidly changing its form and function; he raises the basic questions involved in its revision to meet the needs of an industrial civilization. Best of all is his chapter on art, where the functional attitude is brilliantly used to clarify our tangled thought, and the passing fads of aesthetic theory are keenly analysed. [Page 215]Man and Civilization can be heartily recommended as the best existing introduction to what is most valuable in contemporary social science. It makes clear the fundamental notions involved in thinking scientifically about man and his affairs; it shows what they actually imply as tools for the analysis and solution of social problems. No one who does not find these conceptions at the bottom of his thought about human affairs can claim to have learnt the best that science has to offer him. No one who does will be quite so easily swept off his feet by the winds of doctrine and the storms of prejudice.

3. THE SCIENCES OF MAN

MAN AND CIVILIZATION, by JOHN STORCK (Columbia U. P.) Brings together the findings of psychology and anthropology to give a unified picture of human nature.

How the psychologist views human nature:

A BOOK ABOUT OURSELVES, by H. A. OVERSTREET (Norton) THAT MIND OF YOURS, by D. B. LEARY (Lippincott) Two recent elementary and popular accounts.

THE NEW PSYCHOLOGY, by A. G. TANSLEY (Dodd, Mead) DYNAMIC PSYCHOLOGY, by R. S. WOODWORTH (Columbia U. P.) SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY, by F. H. ALLPORT (Houghton Mifflin) Three general surveys of the results of experimentation.

BEHAVIORISM, by JOHN. B. WATSON (Norton) PSYCHOLOGY FROM THE STANDPOINT OF A BEHAVIORIST, by JOHN B. WATSON (Lippincott) Simplified statements of the modern experimental attitude. [Page 216]GESTALT PSYCHOLOGIE, by WOLFGANG KÖHLO (Boni and Liveright) The most recent program of investigation, critical of the results of the simplified analysis of the behaviorists.

THE NATURE OF INTELLIGENCE, by L. L. THURSTONE (Harcourt) HOW WE THINK, by JOHN DEWEY (Heath) THE PSYCHOLOGY OF REASONING, by E. RIGNANO (Harcourt) THE ART OF THOUGHT, by GRAHAM WALLAS (Harcourt) The nature and functioning of man's mind.

INFLUENCING HUMAN BEHAVIOR, by HARRY A. OVERSTREET (Norton) Practical lessons in social control from a psychologist.

How the anthropologist views human culture

MAN AND CULTURE, by CLARK WISSLER (Crowell) The anthropologist's viewpoint.

EARLY CIVILIZATION, by A. A. GOLDENWEISER (Knopf) PRIMITIVE SOCIETY, by ROBERT H. LOWIE (Boni and Liveright) Popular accounts of simple societies.

The psychological and anthropological attitude applied to our own civilization

HUMAN NATURE AND CONDUCT, by JOHN DEWEY (Holt) COMMUNITY, by R. M. MACIVER (Macmillan) THE GREAT SOCIETY, by GRAHAM WALLAS (Harcourt)

Scientific criticisms of theories of racial superiority

THE RACIAL BASIS OF CIVILIZATION, by F. H. HANKINS (Knopf) PRIMITIVE MAN AS PHILOSOPHER, by PAUL RADIN (Appleton)

(Prof. Randall's list will be followed in later issues by similar lists on the subjects of Religion, Science, Education and Ideals of Life.) [Page 217]

NOTES AND ANNOUNCEMENTS

The new outlook of the biologist appears clearly and forcefully in Prof. Best's essay THE BIOLOGICAL SANCTIONS OF WORLD UNITY, the second and concluding part of which is published in this issue. To the non-technical layman, the great advance which has been made in the presentation of material in this key science consists in a gradual but definite shifting in the biologist's point of view. Whereas the writer of the older generation attempted to limit man to the narrow frame of the physical world, the writer of today insists upon a continuity into the worlds of mind and spirit and in fact bases his general conclusions upon the larger reality experienced by man. Readers of WORLD UNITY MAGAZINE have not failed to see the parallels between the new scientific outlook established by Prof. Best and the intuitive convictions of the ancient Hindus quoted by Alfred W. Martin.

The great circle of human experience has indeed been joined in a universal unity the evidences of which lie everywhere to hand in this new age. Witness a poet's testimony of kinship with the scientists as expressed by Mary Siegrist in her department THE NEW HUMANITY this month, in addition to the parallels between modern scientist and ancient mystic already pointed out.

The most powerful confirmation, however, may be found in the growing realization of kinship and cooperation between the peoples of East and West. In these two profoundest of human divisions every aspect of personal and group antagonism has been developed to its ultimate degree: differences of race, of language, of nationality, religion, custom, environment, tradition, government—the very polarity of subjective and objective opposition. THE INTERACTION OF EUROPE AND ASIA by William R. Shepherd, in a series of six articles begun in the present number of WORLD UNITY MAGAZINE, applies the trained historian's viewpoint to this complex, fateful situation and unravels many threads long entangled in snarls of prejudice, ignorance and suspicion. The information which Prof. Shepherd has assembled and analyzed, organized as it is with an invincible commonsense which seems the fruit of sincere faith, offers a perspective upon the present tense relations of East and West unobtainable, so far as the editors are aware, in any other critical work. So potently can this broad-based truth reinforce and supplement every program aiming for world peace and progress that the editors feel justified in requesting the cooperation of all readers in bringing Prof. Shepherd's series to the attention of interested institutions, societies and individuals. [Page 218]Unavoidable mechanical necessities have made it necessary to defer the publication of THE VEXED PROBLEM OF INDIAN UNITY, by Kenneth James Saunders, until January, 1928. Prof. Saunders’ analysis of factors conditioning the internal relations of India makes an admirable approach to that balanced view and poised attitude which alone can bridge the extremist doctrines now struggling to control public opinion in the West.

The addition of several new names to the list of Contributing Editors this month brings WORLD UNITY MAGAZINE nearer to its ideal goal: the endorsement and cooperation of distinguished scholars, scientists, authors and responsible progressives so thoroughly representative not only of the nations and races but also of the religions and social professions that the magazine can be said truly to express the emergence of the international conscience and mind.

International editorial staffs have long existed in the case of publications functioning in the field of the arts and sciences, and the extent to which this form of intellectual cooperation has been developed may be seen by reference to the notice of the review ‘SCIENTIA published in the advertising pages of WORLD UNITY MAGAZINE this month. The collective action of specialists, however, is less significant than cooperation which transcends any or all forms of specialization and manifests a more general, a more human ideal. The mental and moral resources of humanity will not be fully measurable until administrative processes have been worked out capable of yielding the specific contribution of each science, art and faith to one organic, all-inclusive social plan. The cross-fertilization possible between science, philosophy, art, religion and ethics is overwhelmingly important, and indicates the sources whence may be evolved a new and worldwide renaissance.

Several special numbers of WORLD UNITY MAGAZINE are in process of development, detailed information of which will be given at a later date. These numbers are to be in the nature of symposiums each devoted to a general theme having unusual possibilities of interest. The subjects selected are: The spiritual element in education, Inter-racial amity, and Religious unity. Mechanical necessities compel the editors of WORLD UNITY MAGAZINE to date each issue after the manner of publications whose contents reflect the more immediate changing interests; but the aim and purpose of WORLD UNITY MAGAZINE would be more faithfully served the twelve issues published in the course of the year could be regarded rather as successive chapters in one volume striving to record the major victories of truth. [Page 219]

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Knowledge of the fundamental issues dealt with by the contributors to World Unity Magazine is not merely a personal privilege but also an educational supplement to your present technical or professional information.

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THE WORLD UNITY CONFERENCES

'N the World Unity Conferences a new and distinctive type of public meeting has been established, one which strongly appeals to all who desire to come into contact with the forces making for universal unity yet prefer not to identify themselves with any formal organization through membership or dues. I

A World Unity Conference consists of several consecutive meetings at which responsible leaders in the fields of education, science, philosophy, ethics and religion interpret those fundamental principles of human association capable of overcoming traditional prejudice and promoting the ideals of brotherhood and world peace.

Conferences are held at frequent intervals in cities throughout the United States and Canada. These meetings are open to all, without dues, admission ticket or collection. The committee will be pleased to receive correspondence from organizations and individuals willing to cooperate in the extension of this independent platform dedicated to the promotion of harmony and understanding among religions, races, nations and classes. .

Kindly use reply coupon on last page of this announcement

WORLD UNITY CONFERENCE COMMITTEE JOHN HERMAN RANDALL FLORENCE REED MORTON ALFRED W. MARTIN MARY RUMSEY MOVIUS HORACE HOLLEY MOUNTFORT MILLS

Program of Meetings-December, 1927-May, 1928

Boston, Mass.-December 16, 17, 18 Philadelphia, Pa.-January 22, 23, 24 Washington, D. C.-February 19, 20, 21 Detroit, Mich.-March 20, 21, 22 Cincinnati, Ohio-March 27, 28, 29 Cleveland, Ohio -April 23, 24, 25 Pittsburgh, Pa.-May 21, 22, 23 [Page 221]

THE WORLD UNITY CONFERENCES

From March, 1926, to June, 1927, World Unity Conferences were held in the following cities: Worcester, Mass.; Eliot, Maine; Philadelphia; Buffalo; Cleveland; Boston; Dayton, Ohio; Chicago; New York; Springfield, Mass.; New Haven, Conn.; Rochester, N. Y.; Hartford, Conn.; Montreal, Quebec; and Toronto, Ontario.

The Evening Transcript of Boston described the Conferences in an article published December 11, 1926. "The phrase 'world unity' is still so comparatively new that it probably summons up a quite different thought in every mind that considers it. Whether we regard world unity as a feasible program or a remote, unattainable ideal, the fact that prominent scientists, educators and statesmen, as well as representative Christians, Jews and followers of other faiths are willing to participate in a public meeting devoted to this object is a very significant indication of the new trend.

"To many, world unity implies something in the nature of a formal political organization, like an extension of the much debated League of Nations. To others, it suggests a further perfection of the machinery of communication, including airplanes for physical going about, and radio for the dispatch of ideas. There are some who perhaps feel that world unity suggests at least a tentative working alliance between capital and labor, while a few would undoubtedly point to the fact of increased religious tolerance as indicating a future possible unity between the various religious bodies of the East and the West.

"It is world unity as a deeper understanding and stronger spirit of cooperation between peoples themselves, quite apart from their present political, economic or religious affiliations, however, which is the ideal promoted by the World Unity Conferences. This view considers that it is essential to rise above all partisan questions and appeal direct to the latent humanity obscured in the hearts of men. To achieve this result, the first beginning has been made by establishing a platform independent of any existing social organism, and thus cap: ble of giving equal respect to the ideals and principles of all. Probably no more universal public forum exists in this country today than the World Unity Conferences supply, since they offer the same hospitality to Jew and Moslem as to Christian, and to scientist or philosopher as to religionist, while the black and yellow races have also found on this platform a place not inferior to that accorded the white. The selection of speakers, however, does uphold a strict standard of suitability, in that each speaker must represent some approach to the problem of world unity."

WORLD UNITY CONFERENCE SPEAKERS

March, 1926-June, 1927

MR. ALFRED W. MARTIN Society for Ethical Culture, New York

Ma. Louis GREGORY National Lecturer on Racial Amity

ALI-KULI KHAN, N.D. Former Persian Minister to the U. S.

REV. KAPRIAL BREDOSIAN Church of the Martyrs, Worcester, Mass.

DR. JOHN HERMAN RANDALL Community Church of New York

SYUD HOMAIN Editor The New Orient

THOMAS QUE HARRISON Youth Movement

PROP. CLARENCE SKINNER Tufts College [Page 222]

THE WORLD UNITY CONFERENCES

PROF. HENRY W. HETZEL President, Esperante Assoc. of North America

REV. ALBERT R. VAIL National Lecturer on Religious Unity

REV. LAWRENCE PLANK First Unitarian Church, Rochester, N. Y.

PROF. JESSE HOLMES Swarthmore College

DR. HERBERT ADAMS GIBBONS Historian

Dr. S. P. CAPEN Chancellor, University of Buffalo

DR. TEH-YI HSIEH Chinese Trade Commissioner, Boston

DR. DILWORTH LUPTON First Unitarian Church, Cleveland, Ohio

DR. JOEL HAYDEN Fairmount Presbyterian Church, Cleveland, Ohio

PROF. HERBERT A. MILLER Ohio State University

RABBI HILLEL SILVER The Temple, Cleveland, Ohio

PROF. KIRTLEY F. MATHER Harvard University

PROP. WILLIAM E. HOCKING Harvard University

RABBI HARRY LEVI Temple Israel, Boston

PROP. FRANK D. SLUTZ Moraine Park School

JUDGE FLORENCE E. ALLEN Supreme Court of Ohio

MR. LORADO TAFT Sculptor, Chicago

MRS. CHARLES S. CLARK President, Presidents' Conference of Women's Clubs, Chicago

DR. SHAILER MATHEWS Dean, Divinity School, University of Chicago

MR. HORACE J. BRIDGES Society for Ethical Culture, Chicago

Ma. J. C. CHATTERJI Vidya Varibdi, Cambridge, England

DR. EUSTACE HAYDON University of Chicago

DR. FREDERICK CARL EISELEN President, Garrett Biblical Institute, Northwestern University

DR. JACOB PISTER St. Paul's Lutheran Church, Chicago

REV. FRED MERRIFIELD All Souls' Church, Chicago

DR. MAX MASON President, University of Chicago

RABBI LOUIS L. MANN Sinai Congregation, Chicago

REV. PRESTON BRADLEY The People's Church, Chicago

DR. WILLIAM R. SHEPHERD Columbia University

ALAIN LOCKE, Ph.D. Author of The New Negro

HON. ZIANG-LING CHANG Chinese Consul General, New York

Mas. MARY CHAPIN International New Thought Alliance

Da. L. L. DoGGETT President, International Y.M.C. A. College, Springfield

Dr. S. L. JOSHI Dartmouth College

DR. AUGUSTUS O. THOMAS President, World Federation of Education..! Associations

PROF. KENNETH SCOTT LATOURETTE Yale University

MR. DEVERE ALLEN Executive Editor, THE WORLD TOMORROW

PROF. VLADIMIR KARAPETOPP Cornell University

MR. MOUNTPORT MILLS Bahá’í Movement

Miss AGNES MCPHAIL, M.P. Ottawa, Canada

REV. JOHN BEVAN, M.A. London, England

DR. DEXTER PERKINS University of Rochester

DR. WILLIAM MOSHER University of Syracuse

Da. E. M. BEST United Theological College, Montreal

PROP. D. M. KEYS University of Toronto

DR. JAMES L. HUGHES Inspector of Schools, Toronto

PRINCIPAL MAURICE HUTTON University College, Toronto

PROP. R. M. MACIVER University of Toronto

WORLD UNITY CONFERENCES, 4 EAST 12TH STREET, NEW YORK CITY

I am interested in the aims and purposes of the World Unity Conferences. Please send announcements □ I will cooperate locally ☐

NAME. ADDRESS. [Page 223]

Some One Like You

OU have a friend and friends who "talk your language", who read and profit by the magazines carrying articles they need and want to read. This page is written that you may serve those who, like you, will want to read and discuss not only the material on the subject announced for each issue but in addition the TWO SERIES OF SIGNIFICANT ARTICLES by distinguished critics of contemporary life which are running in THE WORLD TOMORROW.

A Group of 12 Articles on VITAL RELIGION

Bishop Francis J. McConnell Richard Roberts Charles W. Gilkey Sherwood Eddy Adelaide Case Mordecai W. Johnson Maude Royden Harry F. Ward and Jerome Davis Reinhold Niebuhr Halford Luccock David Bryn-Jones

Recent Gains in American Civilization

Charles A. Beard . . . . . . Government Harry Emerson Fosdick . . . . . Religion Mary Austin . . . . . . . . . . . Literature Stuart Chase . . . . . . Business and Finance Rockwell Kent . . . . . . . . . . Art Charles S. Johnson . . . . . . Race Relations Norman Thomas. . International Relations Oswald Garrison Villard . . . . . Journalism Dallas Lore Sharp . . . . . . . Education Heywood Broun . . . . . Stage and Screen Mary Van Kleeck . . . . .Industrial Relations David Starr Jordan . . . . . . . Science

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THE FOUNDATIONS OF WORLD UNITY

by ‘ABDU’L-BAHÁ

A book for those seeking the inmost spirit of the new age

To ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, world unity was not a mere linking together of formal institutions developed by society in its age of spiritual darkness and division, but a meeting and blending of minds and hearts awakened to a new consciousness of the destiny of humanity. As by the action of a pure solvent, his vision served to melt away the outer self imposed by environment and quicken the inmost center of being where response is to the universal Will. The purposes and powers of that Will were upheld by him in a victory of love so complete that the sum total of his life becomes a vindication not of a nation, not of a race, not of a religion, but of mankind.

At a time when even the most enlightened liberalism conceived of unity in partial terms—a limited unity affecting only one plane of experience, such as religion, ethics, science or politics—‘Abdu’l-Bahá by word and deed created a truly universal conception of the new term.

The present work consists of selections from public addresses delivered by ‘Abdu’l-Bahá during his journey through Europe and America immediately preceding the War, or from letters written to friends in the West answering questions of similar theme. This journey was in itself a significant sign of world unity, in that he spoke before audiences representing practically every social division or interest of our complex modern life. From Columbia University in New York to Leland Stanford in California, from the Bowery Mission to the dinner table of a diplomat in Washington, ‘Abdu’l-Bahá traversed not merely the geographical but also the spiritual area of the American people.

112 pages, paper covers. Seventy-five cents a copy at your bookstore. From the publisher, eighty cents postpaid.

WORLD UNITY PUBLISHING CORPORATION 4 East 12th Street, New York