World Unity/Volume 3/Issue 1/Text

World Unity Volume 3, Issue 1

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WORLD UNITY

C. F. ANSLEY W. W. ATWOOD 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

A. MENDELSOHN BARTHOLDY BARON BAUDRAN L. F. DE BEAUFORT GERRIT A. BENEKER PIERRE BOVET EDWIN ARTHUR BURTT HARRY CHARLESWORTH No PooN CHEW RUDOLPH 1. COFFEE BAYARD DODGE GEORGES DUHAMEL ANNA B. ECKSTEIN HAVELOCK ELLIS AUGUSTE FOREL C. F. GATES V. SCHULZE GÄVERNITZ HELLMUTH VON GERLACH HERBERT ADAMS GIBBONS KAHLIL GIDRAN CHARLOTTE PERKINS GILMAN JOHN W. GRAHAM FRANK H. HANKINS A. EUSTACE HAYDON WILL HAYES YAMATO ICHICHASHI RUFUS M. JONES MORDECAI W. JOHNSON DAVID STARR JORDAN SAMUEL LUCAS JOSHI ERNEST JUDET VLADIMIR KARAPETOFF P. W. Kuo RICHARD LEE HARRY LEVI ALAIN LOCKE GEORGE DE LUKÁCS LOUIS L. MANN SIR JAMES MARCHANT VICTOR MARGUERITTE R. H. MARKHAM ALFRED W. MARTIN F. S. MARVIN KIRTLEY F. MATHER LUCIA AMES MEAD MARJA GRUNDMANN-KOSCIENSKA KARIN MICHAELIS HERBERT A. MILLER FRED MERRIFIELD DIAN GOPAL MUKERJI IDA MÜLLER HARRY ALLEN OVERSTREET DEXTER PERKINS JOHN HERMAN RANDALL, JR. PAUL RICHARD CHARLES RICHET FORREST RIED TH. RUYSSEN WILLIAM R. SHEPHERD MARY SIEGRIST ABBA HILLEL SILVER ISIDOR SINGER DAVID G. STEAD AUGUSTUS O. THOMAS GILBERT THOMAS ISABELLA VAN METER RUSTUM VAMBÉRY WALTER WALSH HANS WERBERG 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, secretary. 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 parpenses of the magazine. Printed in U. S. A. Contents copyrighted 1928 by WORLD UNITY PUBLISHING CORPORATION. [Page 2]THERE is no phenomenon more noticeable in the intellectual and political world today than the and the dreams of idealists have become the formulae of statesmen in international discourse and the theses of students of world politics. That it is possible for all the nations of the world to live in harmony is now the accepted starting point of treaty negotiations, of economic schemes, of bankers' contracts. We assume that there can be peace and goodwill. We strive to make permanent the successes already achieved in this direction. Thoughtful men of all nations are working for the same end. We do not hear the word "impracticable" nearly so often as we used to.

But statesmen and writers and preachers can make little real headway in the democracies that now rule the most powerful nations unless there is awakened the enlightened conscience of the mass of the people. Education alone will accomplish this. We need more light on the causes of wars and racial and national rivalries, on the necessities of the various nations in their international relations, on the problems confronting those who govern when they look beyond their own borders, History, geography, sociology, political economy, political science—all these branches of learning are involved—or rather contribute their part—in the study of the means toward world unity. Biology, anthropology and geology are called upon for aid in getting at the heart of the barriers that have been and are being raised against world unity. None can cover the whole field. But most important of all is to begin with the study of concrete current questions that affect friendly understanding among the nations.

HERBERT ADAMS GIBBONS [Page 3]

ELEMENTS OF A WORLD COMMONWEALTH

IV. The Supreme Sanction of Love

BY A corrupted imagination and a perverted will the condition of universal peace could scarcely be conceived and only weakly desired had not occasional periods of universal peace already lighted lamps of vision along the human road.

Among the believers who arose in the early days of every true religious faith, however, we perceive actual realizations, throughout the area of their own limited community, of that peace which may be termed universal peace, the peace of brotherhood, the peace not of repression but of love.

These communities inspired by spiritual faith, summoned forth from the mass of unresponsive humanity by the strange power manifested in the prophetic figure of the Christ, the Moses, the Buddha, anticipate every degree and condition of that world order people of goodwill crave and seek in all parts of the earth today. Surrounded by organized militarism, they voluntarily disarm and abandon the very habit of violent resistance to oppression and attack. Living in societies sanctioning slavery, they learn the practice of equality in the new brotherhood of faith. Oppressed by civil authority based upon despotism, they establish the status of democracy as an attitude toward man reflecting their conscious relationship to God.

Called into being at a time when civilization has passed its apex and begun to perish, releasing the most sinister expressions of immorality and hate, their survival, their gradual rise to supreme power through martyrdom, vindicates, in terms of [Page 4]objective historical reality, the superior authority of love and peace as the law controlling mankind. Separated frequently by barriers of language and race, divided likewise by hostile traditions and customs, these spiritual communities have established the only examples of internationalism the world has ever known. They receive, and overcome by non-resistance, the insane and detestable violence representing the death-struggle of an age; out of their daily habits and religious practices are born the constitutional laws, the philosophies, the sciences, the arts, as well as the morality of the new civilization.

By no other door has universal peace ever yet entered human society. This door is the illumined soul of the prophet, the quickener and inspirer, the teacher of man. Through his consecration a new and higher power flows outward and penetrates other lives, transforming thein, as darkness is transformed by light. They become conscious of another aspect of the universe which has been revealed, another law to be obeyed voluntarily and as a privilege, another principle of human association transcending the blind inertia of the ethics and customs to which they were born. Their loyalty, in proving itself more powerful than any force which the age can direct against them, discloses at once the reality of spirit in the universe and the capacity of men to respond and live by it when its source and channel touches their inner lives.

At a time when the most democratic and soundly established government on earth finds it impossible to uproot by legislation a social habit which popular opinion had long termed a vice and which had previously been condemned by responsible business executives, the limits of all those influences bearing upon the involuntary aspect of human life must be realized as the most vital factor in connection with the effort to establish peace.

World peace will be the fruit of world unity; and world unity will emanate only as the conscious and voluntary loyalty of those men and women who, irrespective of race, nation, creed or class, discover within themselves the supreme sanction of love--the law of God. [Page 5]

EDUCATION AND RELIGION

by JOHN HERMAN RANDALL

AMID the myriad confusions that becloud human thinking in this dawning of the twentieth century there is no one that is more dense in all its manifold ramifications, more stubborn to enlightenment, and at the same time more obstructive to human advance and progress than the widespread confusion that surrounds the whole subject of the relation of education to religion.

On every hand one hears, either frankly expressed, or vaguely suggested, the note of distrust of modern methods of education from religiously inclined people. These sincerely perturbed critics of education, many of whom are themselves the products of our educational institutions, feel more or less vaguely that there is "something lacking" in the training that boys and girls receive in our schools and colleges, and that this "lack" has to do vitally with the morals and religion of the boy and girl; that while the head may be informed and trained those deeper elements that have to do with character building are being left undeveloped. These people feel, rightly or wrongly, that education ought to lead on to the clear unfolding of the moral and religious life of youth, in preparation for their mature manhood and womanhood, and this supreme thing they feel the schools are neglecting, or at least, that they are doing it in a very far from adequate way.

When educational leaders realize how obsolete is the viewpoint of the fundamentalists and how the most ardent modernist is often guilty of serious compromise with truth, when they see how many of the churches are completely out of vital touch with the moral and social thought of today, and how [Page 6]lacking is all their work in any truly scientific approach to the modern problems of life, when they realize how utterly foreign to the highest aspirations of the age is the spirit of sectarianism that dominates the churches—a spirit that means the negation of democracy, and that must forever shut the churches off from having any real part in the realization of a nobler, truer democracy than now exists—we should not be surprised that the feeling is so widespread that organized religion has had its day, that the churches are slowly but surely disintegrating, and that more and more, education is to supplant religion as we have known it in the past. Are we justified in taking this increasingly gaining view? Shall we turn our backs upon the cause of religion as outgrown, and henceforth devote our energies to "the greater cause" of education? Must we, like so many others, make the choice between education and religion, as we realize that these two can no longer dwell harmoniously together? These are in no sense academic questions; they search the very roots of our life today; they suggest the basic sources of the confusion that characterizes the minds of modern men and women.

In attempting to answer such probing questions, let me first emphasize the fact that no one can gainsay, that in the last generation or more a gradual separation of education and religion has unquestionably been taking place, that this has led to what amounts practically to a divorce between the two, and that in far too many instance it is a hostile, not a friendly divorce, with unjust accusations and more or less bad feeling on both sides.

According to the medieval view the school was a handmaid of the church and the church conceived her mission as that of saving men's souls from eternal perdition. A religion broad enough to include everything that is worthy of being a part of our temporal life, and a religious education equally broad, were in no sense characteristic of the period. The medieval view of religion was exclusive rather than inclusive; it contrasted the goods of religion with the goods of this world, the blessings of eternal salvation with the fleeting things of time; and as a result it could not utilize in education the whole of man's accumulated [Page 7]

EDUCATION AND RELIGION

experience, but only a part of it. The educator was the priest—not the man within the priest—but the priest as representing the goal of life abstracted from the content of life.

This tendency persisted down to comparatively recent times. As everyone knows, the American college originated as an institution of religion, and largely for the purpose of preparing young men for the Christian ministry. Its president was some ordained minister, chosen usually for his standing in the church rather than for his scholarly or even his administrative ability. Its teaching force was largely made up of ex-ministers who found the classroom more congenial than the pulpit. Its curriculum contained Hebrew and New Testament Greek and doctrinal studies, with especial emphasis laid on the "Evidences of Christianity."

But great and momentous changes have taken place in the curriculum, the teaching force, the students, and in the spirit and aim of the early American college; and in addition, we have today the great state universities that have come into being entirely apart from religious traditions and independent of all the churches. The students have multiplied by leaps and bounds and have become heterogeneous; they are no longer a chosen religious set. The teaching force has changed in the same direction, because more and more stress is placed upon specialized attainments, and less upon denominational or even religious standing. Very few professors are now chosen from the ministerial ranks, except in the smaller denominational colleges. Meantime the range of instruction has been immensely narrowed with respect to religious subjects; all of these, with the possible exception of elective courses in the Bible, and occasionally in a few of the larger universities, courses in comparative religion, have been turned over to the theological seminaries. Instruction in all but the most pronounced denominational colleges has been almost completely freed from dogmatic limitations. Until the fundamentalists began their recent attack, the professor of history or of geology or of almost any other subject, unless it be social economics, was scarcely conscious of a need of conforming [Page 8]his teaching to a standard that exists outside the facts of the subject itself. Another notable change lies in the fact that all religious activities in these institutions have come to be managed chiefly by the students themselves. And finally, the college has come vastly closer to all so-called secular occupations. It is in much closer touch today with law and medicine and journalism and all forms of scientific and social research, and even with business, than it is with the ministry.

It is perfectly conceivable, however, that these changes might have taken place in our schools and colleges without at the same time creating the cleavage that now unquestionably exists between education and religion. Instead of the criticism and hostility that we now witness, these two might be working hand in hand in closest sympathy and cooperation. How have they become so alienated? What has dug the gulf and brought about this evident lack of sympathy between them? The answer to these questions takes us back to the source of so many of the momentous changes in modern times—the influence of modern science.

Gradually, since the days of Francis Bacon, of Descartes, of Galileo, the scientific method has been extended to one field of inquiry after another, until by slow yet sure degrees, and in no sense evenly, science has at last captured the whole field of education. Here in America, for example, as the result of the development of the last fifty years especially, our schools and colleges have become increasingly scientific, or in other words, our institutions of education are today dominated by the scientific viewpoint, the scientific method and the scientific spirit in all departments of instruction. But what do we mean by this?

By "scientific method," we mean a characteristic mode of approach to the study of any field of human experience. This method of approach consists of two definite steps: (1) the observing and testing of a body of facts, and (2) the systematizing of those facts, by the discovery or creation of appropriate conceptions and hypotheses, into general truths. The "scientific spirit" is the patient, disinterested, painstaking spirit of willingness to [Page 9]

EDUCATION AND RELIGION

search for the facts, all the facts and nothing but the facts, and to postpone the drawing of any final conclusion until all the facts are known. And the "scientific viewpoint" is that which frankly recognizes that all our real knowledge-that is, all that we really know in contrast to what we imagine or believe, or think we know-in every field of human inquiry, must be based in the last analysis on the facts which have been carefully tested and verified. Education can be said to be a science in just the degree that it becomes dominated by this scientific viewpoint, method and spirit. And I think it can be said without exaggeration that here in America, our educational institutions, and to the largest degree our colleges and universities, have approximated more nearly to these scientific ideals than in any other country in the world. It is the scientific viewpoint, method and spirit that is imparted to the student from the beginning to the end of his training. If he does not gain these, he misses the supreme thing which his instructors desire above all things to teach. And let us bear in mind that the essence of these is-knowledge based alone on verified facts.

While this rapid development toward scientific ideals has been taking place in both our educational theory and practice, what has been happening in religion? Is there any sense in which the scientific viewpoint, method and spirit may be said to have captured religion as they have come to dominate education? Are the religious leaders, clergy and laity, possessed by the passion for knowledge that is based alone on verified facts? Of a few Christian scholars, scattered here and there, this is certainly true, as it is of a comparatively small number of church leaders. But the strength of the fundamentalist movement, as we are witnessing it at this very hour, only proves how pitiful is the minority of those in all churches who are seeking to carry the ideals of education into their religion.

For by far the great majority of conventionally religious men and women, the scientific approach to the problems of religion or of human life is absolutely unknown. To them the authority in religion is not the supreme authority of truth, it is [Page 10]rather the authority of an institution or a creed or a book. The only pathway they know to knowledge in religion is the pathway of faith, not the pathway of verified facts; and it is faith conceived not as the sum total of a man’s attitude toward life, but as something that is synonymous with belief in certain dogmas. To them the truth in religion comes not through earnest seeking until one finds the facts, but it comes through a "revelation" handed down through centuries to this modern age. And when the spirit of free inquiry begins to investigate the facts of this "revelation," the cry of heresy is immediately raised.

How much do any of our churches know of the scientific approach to the moral or social or economic problems of today as compared with the outstanding en and women who are working in these particular fields in the educational world? Think how much of the home, foreign or city missionary work of the churches is carried on under ideals and according to methods that are leagues removed from scientific ideals! Remember how much of the benevolent and charitable work of the churches makes no attempt to get at the underlying causes of conditions that make for poverty and disease, immorality and crime, but only seek to assuage their surface symptoms!

I am not questioning the sincerity of any man, or of any organization, nor do I deny that a certain kind of "good" is being done through all these traditional and conventional methods. What I am trying to make clear is that organized religion, of whatever brand, in its fundamental conceptions of the universe, of human life, and of human relationships as these apply to religion, as well as in its method of approach to modern problems, is hopelessly antiquated and belated. It has scarcely been touched, much less transformed, by the scientific ideal and spirit as these have permeated and transformed education from top to bottom.

Whatever shortcomings there may be in modern education—and there are many—education today is unquestionably devoting itself more and more unreservedly to the realization of the ideals and the spirit of science in every branch of inquiry. While what— [Page 11]

EDUCATION AND RELIGION II

ever good organized religion may be doing-and it is assuredly accomplishing much good-it has never dared as yet to surrender itself to the scientific ideals, and it knows little or nothing of the scientific spirit. To education, the pathway to knowledge is through the discovery and verification of facts. To religion, the pathway to knowledge is through faith which, in most instances, means belief in certain dogmas of the past.

This is the basic explanation of the fact that cannot be denied, though it is often glossed over, that there has come a serious separation between education and religion in our day, that a cleavage exists that fair words do not heal, that a gulf divides that no compromise can bridge. And the cause lies here: In all its thinking, its methods and its spirit, education has become scientific; while in all its thinking, its methods and its spirit, religion has remained pre-scientific.

Having pointed out the fact that such a gulf of separation does exist between education and religion, I want to emphasize just as strongly another fact-that our modern conceptions both of education and of religion are essentially the same, and that if we could but clearly grasp these conceptions and come to realize how fully they express the soul of both education and religion, the gulf of separation that now exists would be filled in and the world might have a new lease of light and life.

It is difficult to find a definition of education that is wholly satisfactory. The best of them seem to leave something out. I would like to recommend the defining of education as a possible exercise for private meditation. Let each one ask himself what he means by "education"; and if he ponders the question deeply he will discover that in order to answer it he will have to probe down to the innermost meaning of life itself. Thinking earnestly about the meaning of education compels us to face the fundamental questions of life as we never have before. Such thinking, for example, reveals the fact that religion and education are not two separate things, but one thing; two only on the surface, but one in the ultimate foundations and the final aim. They are not two things that can say to one another: "You go your way [Page 12]and I will go mine," as they are inclined to say today; but things that must move together, and move in the same direction, if each is to attain its highest ends.

Is the goal of education knowledge? Assuredly yes, but knowledge for what? Is its goal power? Again yes, but power to what end? Is its goal social adjustment? The modern age replies emphatically, yes, but what kind of adjustment shall it be, and determined by what ideals? That education aims not at mere knowledge or mere power of any kind, but at knowledge and power put to right uses is clearly recognized by the most progressive educational thought, though not by the popular opinion of the day.

That education therefore is both ethical and social in its end and its process, is clearly indicated in the following statement from John Dewey, the foremost exponent of the "new education" in this country: "I believe that education is the fundamental method of social progress and reform. . . . I believe that education is a regulation of the process of coming to share in the social consciousness.. . I believe that the school is primarily a social institution. Education being a social process, the school is simply the form of community life in which all those agencies are concentrated that will be most effective in bringing the child to share in the inherited resources of the race, and to use his own powers for social ends. I believe that education, therefore, is a process of living and not a preparation for future living."

The "new education" has for its great end, therefore, the training and development of the individual for social ends, that is, for the largest service to man. This involves the directing of whatever knowledge and power is gained through education to the highest moral and social ends.

If it is difficult to find a satisfactory definition of education, it is far more difficult to find a definition of religion that will satisfy the modern mind. All the old classic definitions either imply a conception of the supernatural that has been banished from modern thought, or else contain theological implications whose contents are no longer vital to our age. Let me give you [Page 13]

EDUCATION AND RELIGION

the statement of Edward Scribner Ames in his book, "The Psychology of Religious Experience." He describes religion as "the consciousness of the moral and social values of life." Here is no suggestion of any supernatural, no hint of any theological implications whatever. To those, therefore, for whom religion is still bound up with conceptions of the supernatural or with the dogmas of some theology, this statement may seem to lack certain of the essential elements of religion as we have known it in the past, or as we hear it presented today.

But let us reflect for a moment on the history of all religions. The priest in religion always precedes the prophet. When the prophet appears, with his burning moral and social message, he finds religion all bound up with systems of metaphysics, with rituals and creeds, with the formalism of institutions of various kinds. And it is always his great mission to re-discover real religion and to liberate it from all the complexities of ritual and creed in which he finds it embedded. And so Buddha teaches his noble "Eight-fold Path" in which religion is set forth in simple terms of moral and social relationship, apart from all conceptions of theology; and in the Sermon on the Mount, where we have the summation of the teachings of Jesus, there is not a hint of creed or ritual, of theology or church as such, but rather, the enunciation of great principles for the conduct of life in its moral and social aspects. In the message of its great prophets religion has always been a social thing, that is to say, it has preached unity, it has broken down distinctions, it has practised brotherhood; in a word, dependent on the age and the environment, its prophets have always recognized and made supreme the moral and social values of life in contradistinction to the priest’s emphasis upon the theological and ecclesiastical side of religion. The priestly conception of religion is always exclusive, while the prophetic conception is always inclusive; and in the inclusiveness of the prophet’s message lies the foundation of all moral and social values.

If we could only free our minds from these priestly conceptions of religion, which have always been in the world but [Page 14]against which the true prophet of God in every age has always contended, and clearly grasp the prophetic conception as it has come down through the centuries in terms of man's moral and social life, it might not be so difficult for some of us to see that this modern statement of Ames contains the very heart and kernel of true religion, and that, regardless of creeds and organizations which change from age to age, and which have always been, and must always continue to be, different to different people, religion in its universal, its moral and its spiritual terms, is nothing else than the consciousness of the moral and social values of life. On this basis all good men and true are included in religion, regardless of creed or church, if only they have awakened to the moral and social values of life. The only men who could not be regarded as religious, regardless of their creed or church, would be those to whom the moral and social values of life had no meaning, and from whom they called forth no response.

In spite, then, of the gulf of separation that lies today between education and religion, judged by the most modern conceptions of the ideals and aims of both, as voiced by their foremost leaders, education and religion are essentially one—they both have as their great end, though employing somewhat different means, the developing in man of the consciousness of the moral and social values of life.

The problem for this age thus becomes clear: How can this essential unity between education and religion be grasped and realized by all, as it is today only by the few? How can the existing gulf be bridged so that educationists and religious teachers, college professors and ministers, shall come to think of themselves as cooperators in a common task, while they work in different places and employ different means? How can all education become religious in the sense that we have defined religion, and how can all religion become educational, in the sense of accepting frankly the ideals and spirit and vision of science?

We commonly classify education under three heads—primary, secondary and higher. To these three I should like to add [Page 15]

EDUCATION AND RELIGION

a fourth, highest. The highest education is religion, but it is also education. There is a sense in which it needs to be prepared for by the three kinds which precede it in point of time, but there is a deeper sense in which the highest education should always be present in the other three, not directly but indirectly, like a background, an atmosphere, the clear and conscious vision of the end to be attained through the process of the education obtained in school and college, but even more, through the still broader education that never ceases in the larger school of life itself. That which begins as primary education should end in religion—the clear, full consciousness of the moral and social values of life. And that which ends as religion should begin in primary education. Religion in the modern sense, and also in its purest form, too, might be defined as education raised to its highest power, even as our foremost leaders of education are visualizing it today.

What is imperatively needed is the bringing both religion and education so close to the real life of this modern age, as to show the vital relation of both to the whole, all-around life of man, so that the old, false and vicious divorce between a "secular" education on the one hand, and a "sacred" religion on the other, may be at length forever banished from the minds of men, and that together, in closest sympathy and cooperation, education and religion may do their supremely great work in developing in men and nations the consciousness of the moral and spiritual values of life.

With acknowledgment to Dodge Publishing Company. XC [Page 16]

THE NEED OF A SPIRITUAL ELEMENT IN EDUCATION

1. By RUFUS M. JONES Haverford College

is becoming fairly obvious that our present types and methods of education are inadequate for the preservation of the kind of democratic society to which in ideal we, as a nation, are committed and quite insufficient for the world mission to which we are plainly called. I am not pretending in this paper to give the outlines of the new education, or to work out the nature of its technique. I am dealing for the moment with the need for a more impressive spiritual element in modern education.

I am not writing as a pessimist. I am not giving voice to a note of despair or disillusionment. I am not an old man, afraid of the ways of youth. I am only quietly and simply calling attention to laws and forces which operate irresistibly in this universe of ours, which execute themselves and which settle the deepest issues of life, however we, as individuals, may cast our own personal vote in the matter.

One of the great prophets of Israel, in an acute crisis of national history, saw God holding a plumb-line in His hand. It is a vivid figure and it stands as an indubitable reality, not only in Biblical times, but in all generations as well. There is a principle of moral gravitation which works as universally and as unescapably as does the physical force which Newton defined in his famous law. No one likes "gravitation" when, through his own blunders, his staging has broken and he finds himself sliding down a steep roof, to take a plunge into space out beyond the eves. But gravitation goes right on "working" in spite of the loud cries of protest. So, too, this other, deeper, kind of [Page 17]gravitation, which reveals the moral trend of the eternal nature of things, does not always consult our likes and dislikes, does not wait for our vote of approval. It operates, and leaves us staring in wonderment. It is well, perhaps, that someone should call attention to the fact that that old plumb-line of God, which the prophet saw, is still there and, what is more ominous, that much of the structure which we are now building is unplumb and top-heavy, and likely to collapse.

As a person walks the streets of Tokyo or Yokohama today, he is hardly conscious of the fact that these cities suffered a disaster four years ago greater than any that ever befell a city of major size in the history of the world. It appears, then, that a country can survive a catastrophe which touches only its visible assets, which destroys only its warehouses, its office buildings, its shops and its homes. But if some calamity affects the fertility of the soil of a country, or saps away the vitality of its atmosphere, then the collapse, as has happened more than once in the course of history, proves to be final and irremediable. Among these deeper invisible assets, without which life on a lofty scale cannot go on, one must include the moral and spiritual quality of a people. It is the most vital and essential single asset of a civilization and, when that asset wanes and vanishes away, the civilization that has lost it inevitably collapses. Now, it is just there, in that kind of a collapse, that our present danger lies.

We have surpassed all previous limits of knowledge, wealth, and the use of motive power. The conquests of science form the main marvel of our age. We have discovered forty thousand stars in the space of the sky where Job saw only the seven Pleiades. We have pushed the date of creation billions of years back beyond the old traditional chronology, which satisfied our forefathers. Geology has opened out the same stretches of infinity in time that astronomy has found everywhere in space. We have exploded the epic myths which for centuries fed the imagination of children and which furnished data for what once passed as "history. We have invaded the bowels of the atom and read its mysteries like an open book. We have diagnosed the life cell, and we talk " [Page 18]with ease and wisdom about the germ-plasm, the "genes" and the "somes" which form the elemental units of life-stuff. We have rewritten Euclid's mathematics and Newton's laws of nature in terms of a fourth dimension that involves relativity everywhere in the universe. The scientist speaks as one having authority, an authority which is the envy of all other departments of life.

The increase in wealth is just as striking. We talk in terms of billions of dollars with the same ease with which our fathers counted millions, and our fathers dealt in millions where their fathers modestly used thousands. We have life insurance companies which write an average of ten million dollars in policies for every day in the year. The comforts of life have surpassed all the dreams of nineteenth century hedonists. The working man has his bathroom. The farmer has his telephone and radio. There is an automobile for every fifth person in the United States, and the humblest citizen and his wife have conveniences of life that were unknown to the lords of creation only as far back as the eighteenth century. We have single millionaires who could buy up the whole of Greece as it was in the days of Socrates, or the whole of Palestine at its valuation in the period of Christ's life, and not feel the outlay much more than they feel the payment of their income tax!

Still more impressive is the increase in the application of motive power to the practical tasks of the world. I have recently returned from the most populous country on the globe, the country too, of the most ancient continuous civilization. There, power is estimated mainly in terms of "man-power." The wheelbarrow and the rickshaw are the universal carriers both for freight and passengers, supplemented by the man-driven, or woman-driven, sampan. Here at home, on the other hand, we have marvelous devices for utilizing the expansive power of steam. We have learned too, how to explode gasoline in minute explosions and with great rapidity and this force has enabled us to cover the earth with cars and motor-engines, and, what is more, to compete with the eagle for the mastery of the air. [Page 19]

THE NEED OF A SPIRITUAL ELEMENT IN EDUCATION

Already one of our heroes has flown through storm and darkness from New York to Paris without stop, and greater triumphs are just ahead. Even more important is our successful utilization of the electrical forces of the universe. They are inexhaustible and we know now how to draw upon that immense reservoir of energy that fills every cubic inch of space. This is, however, only a beginning, for we shall soon be able to liberate atomic energy and use it with the same ease as we now use steam or gasoline.

But, alas, none of these achievements makes us better men. There is no equation between bank accounts and goodness of heart. Knowledge is by no means the same thing as wisdom or nobility of spirit. Increase of power has brought with it a whole new crop of temptations. We have unearthed tremendous secrets of life and death, and they do not stay hidden away in laboratories and scientific books. They filter down and become the property of the rank and file of our people. The common man of the street has them to use and he is not morally trained to use them. We have flung open the doors of freedom to persons of every class and walk of life, and we have not in a corresponding degree brought up the moral and spiritual side of life, without which the world cannot be made safe for democracy or for any other issues of responsibility.

Just that constructive work of building the foundations of society is, no doubt, what our vast educational system ought to be doing. But unfortunately, it is not doing it. The world has never seen before such an immense army of educators at work on the youth of the country, nor has there ever been before the history of the world, such a generous outlay of money for education, both lower and higher. The total effect, however, is disappointing, and misses the central point. Our institutions of learning produce some good scholars and give a body of scientific facts to a great number. But there is pitiable failure in the main business of education which is, or should be, the formation of character, the culture of the spirit, the building of the soul. We do everything else well—except just those [Page 20]imponderable things which are, after all, of the most supreme importance.

We have learned almost magically, how to increase speed of travel, but we have not learned how to utilize the time we have saved so as to improve in a corresponding way the quality of the life of the traveler. We can go with unbelievable rapidity, but we have only the vaguest idea as to where we are going, or as to what kind of persons we shall be when we get there! We have conquered the atom, but we have neglected the deeper problem of the soul of man. We know how to build bridges and sky-scrapers with marvelous ingenuity and engineering skill, but we are profoundly ignorant about the laws and principles of building personal lives and characters. None of us would trust his precious body on a bridge which was built in the hit-or-miss fashion according to which we shape the personalities and build the interior lives in the youth entrusted to us. We have only the slightest insight about the right method of shaping disposition in the lives of little children and yet disposition is a primary factor for either happiness or success of life. We have done very little to organize and sublimate the primitive instincts and emotions of our children and yet it is by such means that all the highest loyalties of the soul are formed. We have no technic for the right culture of imagination. We teach boys and girls to use the question mark everywhere, but we do not equally well teach them to feel wonder, awe and admiration-in short, to use the exclamation point. They finish their education with a head full of items of knowledge, but with untrained hearts and unformed spirits. They fail to see what life is for. They have lost their vision splendid of the significance of things. They flounder about with mechanistic theories and materialistic views. Our entire system of education needs revision and our whole technic of moral and spiritual culture needs to be re-formed. There are genuine, unspoiled youth, like Lindbergh, among us, in all our States, and in most of our towns and villages, but there are unmistakable signs of danger and clear intimations that all is not well with us. [Page 21]

THE NEED OF A SPIRITUAL ELEMENT IN EDUCATION

Macbeth thought he heard a voice say: "Sleep no more! Macbeth doth murder sleep." So now, we cannot lie down and be at our comfortable ease. It is not the time to say: "Peace, Peace a little more sleep, a little more slumber, a little more folding of the hands in sleep." Melville's extraordinary story of "Moby Dick," the white whale of the southern seas, is a significant parable of life. There are giant forces, like "Moby Dick, blind and furious, wild and destructive, if they are once aroused and let loose. We see them at the present moment, playing havoc with the old settled civilization of Russia and of China and we may well believe that "Moby Dick" has not yet run his full course of destructive endeavors.

One way out of the difficulty is to get some Mussolini to manage our world for us. We have discovered how dangerous freedom is. We know what "a mess" we make of it when we get it. Shall we revert to the old remedy proposed by Thomas Hobbes in the seventeenth century? He declared that man always acts selfishly. He is always "mean, ferocious, and nasty": therefore life can be made safe only by setting up a government with absolute power, in the form of what Hobbes called a "Leviathan." His "Leviathan" is a soverign to whose will everyone must submit as to a god with divine right of control.

This "Leviathan" solution is no solution at all. We shall never get our good world by selecting a despot to manage our freedom for us. Self-government is a bold adventure, but we shall never be satisfied with any social and political world in which we cannot all share and which we do not all help to build.

The real solution, the only sound solution, is a truer, deeper moral and spiritual society. Science can help us to build that. It can assist us to eliminate some of the survivals that have carried over from ages of superstition and it can enable us to utilize the forces which the laboratories discover. It can perhaps, by a sound system of eugenics, lead the way toward a better biological race of men. But, after all, as Kant said long ago, nothing is absolutely good in this world, or in any other world, but a good will, and the good will is not the product of [Page 22]the scientific method. There is no substitute for self-discipline, or for moral insight and control. I am appealing, then-not certainly for a restriction of science-but for a deeper and more constructive culture, a culture that concerns itself with the fun- damental aims and values of life. I am asking that we should be as profoundly interested in the nature of the soul as we now are in the structure of the atom, that we shall take up the task of building lives with the same seriousness we have shown in our immense engineering triumphs over external obstacles. What we lack most is the discovery that life is an adventure great enough and interesting enough to draw upon all our springs of interest and to quicken all those deeper and diviner capacities in us, which make us really men.

2. By PIERRE BOVET

Director International Bureau of Education

Surely nobody will deny that this need exists. Yet it may be useful to show why and how there may be at the present time a particular necessity of emphasizing it. Allow me to do so from the somewhat narrow standpoint of a professor of education.

These last fifteen or twenty years have brought about, all the world over, an extraordinary change in the way in which educational problems have come to be considered. Pedagogy, which used to be a philosophical discipline, has become an applied science, a chapter in human engineering. How swift this transformation has been is perhaps best shown by the extraor- dinary development of the American Schools of Education. When Dean Russell came to Teacher's College this institution num- bered 67 students; today they number thousands. And that was twenty years ago. Now there is sca.cely an American University which has not its School of Education.

The outward growth of the schools has been paralleled by a development of the curriculum. Psychology has grown to a science commanding respect, and applied psychology has made use of all the scientific methods worked out in the laboratories. [Page 23]

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Not only have some marvelously complicated instruments been devised to study, for instance, such apparently simple processes as reading, and utilized in the interests of the class room to detect slow readers and to give all children from the start good habits in reading—but the whole test movement has been set in motion. There would be no room left in this paper if I should even attempt to allude to all the I.Q.s and A.Q.s which have been devised, to the correlation formulas, etc., which are now deemed indispensable to the progress in experimental education. Let me however remind my readers of the careful studies connected with the revision of the curriculum. Truly, the present preparation of a teacher resembles but little what it was ten years ago.

No doubt this transformation is particularly notable in the United States. But these new methods and ambitions are spreading all over the world. Not only has the International Institute published surveys on education in the Philippines and in Porto Rico, but everywhere the problems in education come to be stated in the same terms, and their solution involves the same appeal to highly elaborated methods of educational measurements. Interesting tests are being carried on in Mexico, problems of bilingualism arising in Bengal are studied with the help of the newest developments in educational psychology, not to mention Ballard and Burt in London, Stern and Bobertag in Germany, Decroly in Brussels, and our own work at the Institut J. J. Rousseau, founded by Claparède in Geneva. Some of the newer countries are doing really splendid work—Czechoslovakia and Poland for instance.

These efforts appear as legitimate—nay, as absolutely necessary. If we wish to advance in education, we must, as has been so often pointed out, be able to know whether we are advancing or not, and find methods to settle questions that for years have only been a matter of academic disputes. The part we ourselves have taken in promoting this movement in Switzerland, and through the international constituency of the Institut J. J. Rousseau, in all parts of the world, may be cited as proof that I am [Page 24]in no way pooh-poohing the admirable efforts I have attempted to describe. I greet this scientific movement in education as something great and indispensable.

Yet there is no doubt about it, the very success of this movement may be dangerous. The peril may be stated in two ways. First, there is the danger that the highly-elaborated means may be taken by some as an aim in themselves. This tends to be the case everywhere. In education it is particularly unfortunate, as the aim is of such incontestable importance. There have been abuses already, and not only in countries where the enthusiasm for a new discipline may serve as an excuse. I do not wish to polemize here against anybody; I shall quote no names; but let me give an illustration that seems to me most striking. In one of the States of the Union, a Committee assembled some years ago and decided to make a general survey of the religious life of the people. This included among other researches a study of the text-books used for religious instruction, and it was found useful to put up a scale, in agreement with the best methods of scales in reading, writing, reckoning, etc., of text-books in religion. A hundred pages are devoted to the outward appearance of the books, printing, type, and illustrations. Then follows this statement:

"In the present status of our knowledge about selecting content, it is possible to proceed by either of two methods in an effort to measure books scientifically.

"I. Make such allotments of credit without scales as conditions permit.

"2. The other method would be to omit consideration of content entirely.

"On the whole, the writer is inclined to recommend the latter method. That recommendation does not rest on a false perspective regarding the relative importance of form and content, but merely upon the belief that it is better for us to recognize our limitations and not try to do "scientifically" what does not at present lend itself to scientific procedure."

While recognizing, and even in a way admiring, the frank- [Page 25]

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ness of this statement, I think we are bound to see in a survey like this an urgent appeal to emphasize the need of the spiritual element in education, even in religious education. And this is only one illustration among many that might be given.

Another way of stating the same danger: the great attention we give to the mechanisms of education and teaching may obliterate in us the elementary knowledge that an engine, however perfect, is incapable of work as soon as the motor power fails. In education the power driving the machinery of methods and school organization can only be the spiritual (in the broadest sense of the word) power of the teacher. Here again a very striking illustration borrowed from the most recent developments of science may be useful. We used to think that no class could go without a teacher. And most of us would probably have summed up his or her functions in two principal items: the imparting of knowledge (the teaching proper) and the control of learning (the examining and questioning). Now the radio furnishes us with a marvelous "ersatz" of the first function of the class-teacher; why should not the children simply listen to one master who will be selected in each country or district for his powers in clearness, vividness, erudition and so on? But there is more. I have seen in Ohio State University a wonderful machine which does all the questioning work of a teacher. By the method of multiple choice test, it asked me many questions in American history, recorded the points where I failed, and even handed me a candy as a recompense when I eventually gave evidence of a knowledge of dates or events! I thoroughly admired the machine. And I blessed it too, because it seemed to me a very much needed and irrefutable argument in favor of a new conception of the teacher's functions and duties. His real task is not the imparting of knowledge; a distant speaker or a good textbook may do that satisfactorily; nor is it the control of learning. It is the kindling of the flames of interest, the stimulation of the many activities of the mind and soul. It is a spiritual task, which no machinery can replace—the expanding of a spirit under spiritual influences, the unfolding of a personality. All devices. - [Page 26]all methods, all measurements must be auxiliary and subordinate to this. Let us perfect them in order to free the thoughts and liberate the forces which will bring us nearer to the ultimate and only goal.

3. By HUGH MORAN

Fellow, National Council of Religion

Any civilization which has great material prosperity without a corresponding spiritual vigor has passed its zenith, and will assuredly fall into decay. Where the taproot of life is cut, the plant withers and dies. As one of the great minds of our time expresses it; "A civilization which develops itself on the material, and not in a corresponding degree on the spiritual, side is like a ship with defective steering-gear, which becomes more unsteerable from moment to moment and so rushes on to catastrophe. The result of the voyage does not depend on the speed of the ship, whether it be a fast sailer or somewhat slower, nor on the method of propulsion, whether by sails or by steam, but on whether or not it keeps a true course, and whether or not its steering gear remains in order."

The world today, despite the recent cataclysm, has a standard of living which has seldom if ever been equaled, while America has a degree of material prosperity of which the mind of man never before dreamed. Have we a corresponding degree of spiritual vitality? If so, what mean the crowded movie houses and straggling congregations on Sunday evenings in every city and town throughout the land? What mean our tabloid newspapers, and even our respectable press blazoning forth on their front pages the Peaches Brownings and the Lita Grays, the Elk Hills and the Teapot Domes? What mean the governors in Atlanta penitentiary, the Senatorial election frauds, the Chicago gunmen—even our sport commercialized and often tainted with scandal! Why drag out the list for of such is the mental pabulum of our people—not only of the masses but of the educated classes

Dr. Albert Schweitzer, M.D., Ph.D., D. Theol., in his "Civilization and Ethics," p. 1 ff. [Page 27]

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to a large degree as well. Who read the Elmer Gantrys, and the Plastic Ages, who carry the flasks on the hip, jazz away the nights, and crowd the revues and outre shows at five dollars or more per seat? Certainly the wealthy and the privileged, who if they had that reverence for themselves and for life which comes of the Spirit, would find only disgust in such pastimes. All of these things go to make up our education, for that from which we learn and which forms our habits of thought and action educates. They are therefore causes as well as symptoms of a present spiritual poverty. But one of the major and underlying causes, perhaps the greatest, of our materialistic age is the lack of the spiritual element in our formal education. Whether, after a hundred years of secularized education, the restoring of a rightful spiritual element in our schools and colleges could stop the impetus of the downward rush, remains an open question. It is at least a paramount necessity that we should make the attempt, and that we should make it with courage and determination.

By restoring a rightful spiritual element in our schools and colleges I do not mean the teaching of dogmatic religion, a turning over of our public education to sectarian domination. Far from it. The separation of church and state in America is an achievement that is not to be abandoned. But it is also an experiment which, in the field of education, needs reinterpretation. In the establishment of the American constitution we achieved both political and religious liberty. But our political liberty is established neither on an anti-religious nor on a non-religious basis. Our government is founded on the divine, God-given rights of humanity. The men who founded it were religious men, almost without exception deeply spiritual, and many of them as devoted to the church as they were to the state. They believed not in the abolition of the church, but in the separation of church and state. Both were to them fundamental to human society, parallel and essential.*

• James Madison, who proposed the provision in the Virginia constitution for the separation of church and state was ardently religious, and a life-long supporter of the church.

[Page 28]But the principle of the separation of church and state as applied to education were not then clearly analysed, and the results of a negative interpretation of such separation were not foreseen. Education had until that time in all ages and civilizations—in the schools of the Hebrew prophets, in the mysteries of the Persian magi, and in the official halls of the Confucian examinations—been entrusted to the moral and ethical teachers of the established religion. Up to the time of the establishment of the Republic, education in the American colonies, such as it was, was in the hands of the church, either of the established churches of Massachusetts and Virginia, or of the voluntary schools of the clergy. Almost without exception the founders of the republic, had had the major portion of their education under ordained ministers as teachers.

But, and here is the crux of the whole matter, the fathers of the Republic found an enlightened public opinion necessary to the maintenance of free institutions. They therefore set up the public school system, which in time was capped by high schools, normal schools, colleges, and universities, as an arm of government. In the old Colonial states, where there had always been a certain amount of religious and moral instruction in the schools, such instruction was to a large extent continued—though as the decades have passed, it has generally become something of a formality, or unsuited to modern conditions. But as the new states grew up to the Westward, the separation of church and state was interpreted literally and negatively. Many states put provisions in their constitutions prohibiting any religious teaching in the public schools.* In one Western state, by a decision of the State Supreme Court the Bible is barred from school libraries as a sectarian book. In others no one shall be compelled to pay taxes for the support of any institution where religion is

• Twenty-nine states have constitutional provision against the appropriation of public money for schools under sectarian control; fifteen have constitutional provision against sectarian instruction, three prohibit the use of public money for religious worship, exercises, or instruction; four others have somewhat similar provisions. For full particulars regarding the many and varied statutes and constitutional provisions see Bulletin No. V, of the National Council on Religion in Higher Education, published at Barnes Hall, Ithaca, New York, to be had on request. See also "Religious Education," for March, 1927, article by Carl Zollman.

[Page 29]

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taught. Such is the pass to which sectarian jealousies have brought these United States.

Secularism has been carried so far that moral and ethical instruction as well has been practically barred from all public institutions. It is a result which the founders of the Republic never contemplated and certainly did not foresee. In this regard we are more intolerant and backward than China and Japan, where moral and ethical teaching form an important part of the public school system.

Millions of our American children are growing up ignorant of the ten commandments, or of anything which might conceivably take their place.

Religion and morals are generally left to the voluntary agency of the Sunday School, though of recent years the Scouts and similar organizations have grown up as valuable adjuncts.

But only about fifty per cent of the children ever attend Sunday School, and they are generally the same group who go into Scouting. With half of our young people lacking such training altogether the other half who do attend get astonishingly little out of it. The average Sunday School provides one hour a week for forty weeks, with irregular attendance, and often poor discipline, untrained teachers, and all but twenty or thirty minutes of the time taken up in "exercises,"—organization, announcements, and moving about. Even then it is a question how much of the lesson is adapted to the religious inspiration and moral enlightenment of the children. Probably the singing of hymns, where rightly chosen, carries the major portion of permanent values. Despite recent improvements, most Sunday Schools break down in the 'teen ages, and fail to carry through to mature life.

All this would be a sorry and an alarming picture were it not for the inherent good implanted in the hearts of most people, and the excellent mores and moral standards handed down to many children through the home, through parents, relatives, teachers, and society. It is in fact more by example and imitation than by formal instruction that habits are formed and standards set. Yet there is a lurking suspicion that we are in large part running on the impetus of a past spiritual inspiration, which [Page 30]must eventually play out, unless renewed in the experience of each succeeding generation.

I would not say that our young people are any worse; perhaps judged intrinsically, they are somewhat better than those that have gone before. But there is, in the judgment of many careful observers, a spiritual apathy abroad in the land, a preoccupation with trivialities, a lack of clear moral judgment, an irresponsibility, a meaningless activity that leads nowhere,—a contempt of high ideals and lofty purposes, a failure to respond to the appeal of suffering and injustice, a lack of reverence for all the well-springs of life. A few examples. Students at a great university who will spend $20,000 on a single football game, another $20,000 on a Junior Prom, and so through the year, hesitate to give any of their father's hard-earned money for religion or philanthropy. In some colleges they will hardly average a dollar a year in gifts for all purposes. In colleges where a foot-ball game will attract from 20,000 people up—a well informed speaker on the student life of Europe is fortunate if he secures an audience of a hundred people. A high-class concert will be attended by the faculty and outsiders, while the undergraduates flock to a movie show or a dance with a jazz orchestra. Students pay for an expensive education, and then many of them try to secure as little for their money as possible. I know good students who conceal their high marks from friends and fraternity brothers in order to retain their popularity as good fellows. The honors popularly acclaimed are not Phi Beta Kappa and Sigma Xi, but football and the senior societies. It is evident therefore that much of our education does not educate, and that there is abundant need of a more spiritual element in American education.

Despite all this I am an optimist. A little leaven will leaven a large lump, and that little we have. A slight knowledge of history is enough to show that a few noble spirits, as in the days of the American Revolution and the founding of the Republic, can accomplish great feats, in the midst of discouragement, apathy, and opposition. It is simply a question, how best to use [Page 31]

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the resources we have, and where to break into the vicious circle of deadening influences in order to increase the number of those who are spiritually alive. One can not lift himself by his own bootstraps. The main avenues of approach are the home, the Sunday School, the school, and the college. We can not expect parents who measure life in terms of material prosperity and social position to produce spiritually minded children, nor teachers, who think of education as so many dead facts to be learned, to inspire idealism in their pupils. We can not at present select the fit to become the parents of the next generation of children, nor can we do much to train or guide those who are already adults. We can look to the next generation who will be some day parents. We can select and train our teachers, and we can change the method, content, and objectives of our education. Although all recent investigations point to the home as the greatest influence in character formation, we can in a measure and by slow degrees reach future homes by present education.

In a paper of this sort, it is of course, impossible to cover the entire field. The Sunday School in particular, important as it is, lies outside our present scope. A few principles and practical suggestions may at least be offered regarding public education.

In the first place, if public money is to be spent by the million to educate good citizens, good citizenship should be taught; and it should be appropriately taught in the lower grades where every child will get it. I went through the public schools of a great western state, and aside from a certain respect for the flag and the singing of America ad nauseam, I remember never a word or a suggestion that was calculated to make one a better citizen. There was a course in the High School in government, which few took. It could in no sense be called citizenship, but was rather the mechanics of government, mechanically taught. By citizenship, I mean those qualities which go to make up a good citizen-diligence, honesty, purity of thought, fair-mindedness, respect for parents, for authority, and for law-reverence, above all reverence-reverence for life, for goodness, for truth, and for beauty, and withal a recognition of the social nature and social [Page 32]responsibilities of humanity. In this teaching, the home with all its relationships and responsibilities should play a large part, as basic. Such citizenship should be taught not alone by precept and discussion, it should be taught by project and the laboratory method of experience, taking a leaf from the Boy Scouts who have perhaps given us the best example so far of the project method.

In the second place, though such citizenship can and should be taught directly for its own intrinsic value, with a splendid by-product of reverence, and not infrequently spiritual experience, it should not be fenced off, apart from life and the rest of learning. All other departments should be laid under tribute. Geography can be so taught as to broaden the sympathies, and break down race prejudice and a negative nationalism. History instead of a succession of dates and battles, should be an inspiring story of man's struggle upwards from barbarity and oppression to culture and liberty. American history in particular, instead of making the eagle scream, to the accompaniment of discomfited roars from the British Lion, can be taught in terms of the consecrated acts of noble men and women. These men and women can be made to live, and can inspire the deepest spiritual enthusiasm of boys and girls. The moral code of the boy Washington, his prayer at Valley Forge, his refusal to be made a king, are spiritual material of the highest order, as is the moral struggle of the young Franklin, or the self-sacrificing devotion of a Horace Mann or a Mary Lyon. Just so, in nature study, and in all science, reverence can be taught for the beauty and wonder of life, and for the Infinite Wisdom which pervades it, without infringing the provisions of the most ironbound state constitution.

Thirdly, if we are to provide these spiritual values in our common school education, we must have teachers capable of, and prepared to, inspire them. The real beginning lies therefore in our normal schools, teacher's colleges, and universities. If we can turn out a spiritually minded product from them of teachers and administrators for our educational system—and if [Page 33]we can provide them a technic for spiritualizing present-day life and occurrences, we will have gone far towards solving our problem. There will be little need of amending our laws or constitutions, for on close inspection practically all of the legal enactments dealing with the relations of church and state are definitely directed against sectarianism, not against the spiritual element in education. We will need rather to reinterpret these laws and enactments in a liberal and constructive way, in the spirit of the patriotic and generally spiritual minded men who enacted them, and further to see that we ourselves are sufficiently broad and spiritual-minded to seek no partisan advantage in any interpretation we may seek.

Finally it seems to me that the key to the whole situation is in the hands of the administrative officers of our institutions of higher learning, and that this master key fits into the lock of faculty offices. If the college and normal school administrators will give preference and advancement on their faculties to men and women of personality, spiritual minded, and with a human interest in their students, men and women who will be student centered instead of curriculum centered in their teaching, rather than filling their appointments on a strict basis of technical scholarship, we will find a spiritual atmosphere entering into our class rooms, and in time from there permeating down into our general educational system. The most essential element of that spiritual atmosphere is reverence, a deep and humble reverence for truth and for life in all its forms. In an atmosphere of reverence before all the mystery and glory of creation, the spiritual natures of our students will blossom like flowers in the sunshine.

4. By CHARLES PARKER CONNOLLY

Church of the Christian Union, Rockford, Illinois

The spiritual element in education is comprehensively stated in the declaration of Herbart: "The chief business of education is the ethical revelation of the universe."

Our greatest national problem then is this: How should we [Page 34]secure this ethical revelation in education? Since that is our greatest national problem it should be as such our chief solicitude as citizens.

We should not seek the ethical revelation of words in books. We need a revelation of life in educators. We cannot dispense with the fascinating moral personality as the impelling, vitalizing revelation of truth.

All earnest thinkers on the subject are substantially agreed that the greatest asset in moral education is the personality of the educator. That is the paramount, the indispensable consideration.

There is today a revival of considerable faith in systematic courses of formal ethical instruction. If these experiments ultimately demonstrate that formal ethical training is valuable the American people must not be misled. The need of such courses, in that event, will still be a minor need. The major need, never to be ignored nor disparaged, is the inspiring educator in school and church.

Without such leaders the best course in character-building becomes wooden, and with such leaders formal instruction may become almost superfluous, if not actually something of a strait-jacket. No matter how well accredited the direct instruction may be without the inspiring educator, children will be certain to protest "What you are thunders so loud that I cannot hear what you say about our duties."

The informal, incidental, luminous, interesting comments of the humanizing educator will have a moral stimulus that no formal precepts possess. Well did G. Stanley Hall observe "Daily contact with some teachers is itself all-sided, ethical instruction for the child without a spoken precept."

I recall two teachers in my schoolboy days. Doubtless the reader can recollect similar illuminating observations. One of these teachers had a silent moral influence; the other a voluble, ethical tongue. The first with her fine poise commanded respect, attention and order. The second actually invited pandemonium and was disdainfully nicknamed "flannel mouth." The first said [Page 35]

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little about discipline, almost nothing indeed, but when her eyes swept the room in disapproval it seemed to at least one awed student as if all the stars in the heavens were rolling in protest.

Dr. Adolph Harnack affirmed: "We can learn all sorts of things from books and other impersonal means through which knowledge is transmitted, but we can get educated only by educators—by personalities, whose own force and life make a deep impression upon us." Such characters may say with L. P. Jacks: "We teach religion all day long. We teach it in arithmetic, by accuracy. We teach in language, by learning to say what we mean yea, yea, and nay, nay. We teach it in history, by humanity. We teach it in geography by breadth of mind. We teach it in handicraft by thoroughness. We teach it in astronomy by reverence. We teach it in the playground by fair play. . . . We teach it by showing the children that we, their elders, are their friends and not their enemies." Moral power comes silently, irresistibly when a class has such an educator. It comes perhaps like the kingdom of God "without observation." The lack of labels and professions must not deceive us. Such educators bring us something better than labels, courses, precepts. They bring life, and bring it abundantly. They have lived something that they may impart it vitally.

The great importance, the sacredness, yes the actual glory of the educator's function has not been appreciated broadly. That explains why Dr. Abraham Flexner could lament as he did in his Inglis lecture at Harvard last year. He pointed out that 750 of the 769 higher institutions of learning in our country "are more or less poverty stricken;" and stressed the regretable fact that many college professors do not receive a sufficient salary to permit them to give undivided attention and allegiance to their profession.

It is an era of magnificent buildings for educational purposes. That fact in connection with the meagre salary of teachers might seem to indicate that the cathedrals had become so glorious that they can dispense with the religion for which they were intended! Without any protest against the fine buildings a believer in the [Page 36]spiritual element in education cannot but feel a sense of dismay that we are not accompanying our building programs with a commensurate interest in educators to man the buildings.

To attract the right youth to the teaching profession the American people must be willing to pay the price; it is not a price of money alone, though it will be financially costly, but it must be also a price of respect rising to actual reverence—a reverence both for the latent spiritual powers of their own children and for the sublime ministry of the right educators for those children. They must believe it sober truth, not florid rhetoric in Col. F. W. Paker's ringing declaration: "When the teachers come all the marvels of the nineteenth century will sink into insignificance before the full manhood and womanhood of realized possibilities."

Searching tests indicate that typical children of our schools have enough moral information if applied to live honorable and useful lives. It is evident that many of them have not had sufficient moral inspiration to deter them from vice and crime. We have accordingly resorted to law making only to encounter abundant evidence that this external device is not character-making. It is obvious enough that we need youth who govern themselves in accordance with the great ideals whose meaning they have come to appreciate under the inspirational guidance of noble educators. Such educators are better far than police or legislators in securing proper conduct. [Page 37]

IV. Where Do We Go From Here?

SINCE no scheme of progress that is not based upon the consideration of existing conditions merits the attention of thinking people, in order to show that the project I advocate is not in any sense Utopian and impracticable, I shall indicate briefly the outstanding difficulties that an association for general enlightenment would encounter in its efforts to steer society in the direction of its ultimate goal by influencing public thought, and suggest how these difficulties might be resolved.

The chief sources upon which the stream of public thought draws, outside of religious organizations, which will be discussed in subsequent articles, are our educational system, the press, and, also, more recently, the motion picture and the radio.

The great difficulty with our educational system is "externalism," control by those who are not primarily educators. Our public schools and state colleges are subject to political control and our endowed universities are subject to capitalistic control. Teachers are mere employees; their instructions must conform to the ideas of their comparatively ignorant employers. In public schools, particularly in our large cities, teachers are bound round and round with red tape, forced to do an appalling amount of bookkeeping, and by all kinds of pressure, discouraged from manifesting any initiative in their work. The text books they use must assert nothing that runs counter to generally sanctioned notions of man's nature, origin and obligations, or that contradicts the racial prejudices, religious creeds, and [Page 38]political philosophy of the rank and file of our citizens. As a result of this system, little children, while still in the grammar school, are inoculated with local and racial prejudices, and before they reach the age of reason the minds of many of them are hardened into moulds incapable of expanding to hold new conceptions.

Those who control our educational system manifest a passion for standardization that is worthy of a better cause. They insist that the same subjects shall be taught everywhere in so far as possible in the same way, in the same order, and at the same time. They recognize that our schools and colleges may be a unifying force capable of transforming our heterogenous amalgam of races into a single people and a single consciousness. But in place of the concept of unity in diversity, of a mosaic composed of a vast number of differently shaped variously colore units joined in a harmonious design, their conception is that of unity by uniformity, consisting of an aggregate of drab units, shorn of all individual distinctions and all stamped with the self-same pattern.

While our educational system tends to keep moving in certain well-worn ruts, experimenting, for the greater part, only in methods, thinking people perceive that the new age calls for education based upon entirely new foundations. Thanks to the recent research work of biologists, psychologists, psychoanalists and psychiatrists, we have begun a penetrating examination, a thorogoing stock-taking of the greatest of our national resources, ourselves, and in consequence, we have reached a new conception of our minds. We know, to quote Glenn Frank's picturesque phrases that "mental freedom" is vastly more important than the "mental furniture" which our schools strive to stuff into resisting minds. We realize that emotional factors are more important than mental factors, that education is largely a process of eliciting the appropriate emotional response, of freeing the individual from degrading fears, of building up resistance against herd hysteria, of encouraging the habit of social responsibility and the attitude of the open mind. [Page 39]

WHERE DO WE GO FROM HERE?

How, in the face of existing conditions, can these new principles be put into operation? For my part, I think it is useless at the present for an outsider to butt the system—the proper agents for that task are those teachers' colleges that are alive—that the entering wedge can be made indirectly by promoting private experimental schools. We have several scattered in various parts of the country that are doing valuable pioneer work; and to encourage the development of originality and initiative and at the same time to foster the spirit of cooperation in those who shall be leaders in the coming generation, we need many more such schools. Experimentation in adult education needs to be stressed more, too. For eventually children grow up and have to adjust themselves to a world managed by adults. And there is small chance that liberally educated children will develop into liberal maturity in a society that is overwhelmingly anti-liberal. To prove effectual, experimentation in primary education and in adult education must be conducted contemporaneously.

Undoubtedly this work could be expedited by the union of all who are engaged in it in an association that would maintain a central clearing house to keep in touch with all new experiments and to synthesize the experience of all for the benefit of each unit.

The press, and in particular, the newspaper, is perhaps an even more important factor in moulding the public mind than the school is. Little children, under school age, clamor to have the "funnies" read to them. Thus early they acquire the newspaper habit. And when they have learned to read themselves, they devour, not only the "funnies," but the sensational news as well. And after they leave school, their education, or rather their miseducation, is continued from this same source.

Since Americans read newspapers more than the people of any other country, it is especially important that the news presented in the daily press be accurate and impartial. But the contrary is the case. The local news which comes into the newspaper office is a bewildering hotchpotch of rumor, fact and propaganda, and he who sifts the facts from the fiction in this medley and selects what sets of facts shall be ignored and what shall be [Page 40]emphasized wields in his limited domain a power similar to that of the Pope of the Roman Catholic Church during the Middle Ages. In the realm of national and international news, the Manager of the Associated Press censors arbitrarily the news read by millions of readers every day. Hearst, with his numerous magazines and newspapers manipulates public opinion to his taste. He owns 26 dailies. The Scripps-Howard combination owns 27. The trend in newspaper business as in other types of business is toward large scale combinations. Practically all of the newspapers in this country are owned by men of wealth, singly or in combinations, and they are all autocratically managed, and while the dering is not done by any one man, but by a great number, these are remarkably unanimous in their selection and stress. Given the political party and the economic affiliations of the newspaper you can predict quite surely the perspective in which the news will be presented. Editors and reporters alike know what news is to be hushed up and what topics are to be given publicity and emphasized by headlines and other editorial devices. The result of this system is that our newspapers are organs of propaganda rather than dealers in impartial information.

In the trial by jury of an individual case, the taking of testimony is protected by infinite precautions. Put in public affairs where the stake is vastly greater, since it may involve the lives of millions and the fortunes of all, the jury is the whole community, the virtuous and the criminal, the wise and the ignorant without discrimination. To this jury testimony is frequently given anonomously with no criterion of reliability and no penalty for perjury. Dependent upon this source for information, and protected by no rules of evidence, the public responds emotionally and reacts to the excitement of its hopes and fears. Individuals who have no grasp of the relevant facts of their environment are invariably victims of agitation and propaganda. They are the easy prey of quacks, charlatans and jingoists. The environment to which they react is not that of the realities themselves but a simulacrum consisting of rumors and suspicions; [Page 41]

WHERE DO WE GO FROM HERE?

and since there is no reliable means of ascertaining the truth, they give credence to whatever corresponds with their preconceptions. Uncertainty and confusion under a strong stimulus run inevitably into panic. Under the influence of sensational headlines and panicky articles, the contagion of fear spreads rapidly over the community, primitive instincts slip the leash of customary inhibitions, and we have mob spirit and mob action.

Newspapers are commercial enterprises. Their prime purpose is not to supply news, but to make money. Therefore they are careful not to print anything which will displease their big advertisers; they must not champion unpopular causes; and this brings about a stereotyping of opinion. And they pander to the baser passions of the majority of their readers. In their pages murders, suicides, divorces, scandals, gossip and all manner of revolting crimes follow each other in endless succession and in sickening detail, for such news appeals to the deep rooted instincts and sells the paper. The pity is that the dailies are avidly read by the youth of the country just because of these features and their appetite for them grows by feeding.

Of course, our dailies are not all equally vicious in these particulars; some are comparatively clean; many censor their advertising meticulously; and in general they are less subservient to political parties and to special economic interests than they were a generation ago.

A determined, but by no means widespread effort is being made to counteract the prevailing commercial tendencies of the press. The Christian Science Monitor, for example, is absolutely free from all the vices of commercialism and it is notable for the extreme care it takes to print accurate foreign news. And though it is an organ of the Church it is free from religious propaganda. The only objection one can make on this score is that news relating to sickness and death is censored in accordance with the peculiar tenets of the Church. We have also a few progressive weeklies and monthlies, which seek to ferret out the truth and to present significant aspects of important issues that are ignored by the purely commercial press. [Page 42]The pernicious influences apparent in the average newspapers are less obvious in the case of books, but the commercial element enters here, too, for a highly organized book trade can dictate by means of advertisements that certain books shall sell widely while others not thus singled out by favorable comment shall have a limited circulation.

The press, as an agent of our cultural life, is powerfully supplemented by the radio and the motion picture. The latter, because of its vividness of mental impact, wields an incalculable influence over the masses, who being mentally immature are swayed wholly by their emtions. This institution also is highly commercialized. The attempt to protect the public from the vices of commercialism in this field by means of censorship is inadequate as all purely negative devices inevitably are. What we need is more good pictures, pictures with a higher artistic and moral standard, and also a powerful emotional appeal, but an appeal to the higher instead of to the lower impulses.

So far we have been considering the means for the dissemination of truth. Now let us glance at the chief means for arriving at truth, scientific research.

Extensive research in the natural sciences, has resulted in raising the standard of living on the material plane and in enabling man to adjust his physical environment to his needs. Corresponding research in the social sciences would result in raising the standard of living on the spiritual plane and in establishing more harmonious social relations. The changes wrought in our age by the discovery of new principles in physicochemical science have been largely of an external nature and they are essentially quantitative. But the changes that may be engendered by research in social science touch the inner life of man and thus are essentially qualitative. For the latter offer possibilities of improving the racial stock and through such improvement and through a more rational system of education, of the functioning of the mind of man on higher levels, and through closer cooperation and better combinations of psychical faculties. of the emergence of new values and new powers. [Page 43]

WHERE DO WE GO FROM HERE?

But though research in social science is so promising, it meets with obstacles such as do not exist in the case of research in natural science. Thus when the physical scientist lights upon a fact that runs counter to his preconceived ideas, he follows the fact, hot on the scent, and abandons his former hypothesis. And this easy surrender of misconceptions and ready pursuit on the trail of fresh evidence is the path of progress that leads directly to the discovery of new principles. But in the case of social science the disproved hypothesis is frequently a tradition about which human emotions are closely entwined, and these emotions resist being dislodged. Even in many of our universities certain traditions are held sacrosanct and freedom in the teaching and study of them is denied.

The fear of questioning the validity of some sacred tradition and of affronting the mores of some group is back of the externalism that is the deadly menace of our whole system of education. Here I speak of "externalism" not in the sense of outside control, but in that of the habit of dealing with vital subjects in an external manner, with a remoteness of interest, failing wholly to relate facts to individual experience and so reach the inner life.

That there is a baneful hiatus between learning and life is generally realized. A futile attempt to stop this gap has been made in the last quarter of a century by installing business courses in our secondary schools and colleges. While such courses have their place, they are properly but a side issue. The primary function of education is not to teach the student how to make money, for money is of slight avail to one who does not know how to spend it productively, and the individual with very little of this world's goods may have a rich experience.

Culture is the pursuit of the art of living; it uses, but does not consist in accumulations of material goods and of facts; it is not an enameling process; it is an organic growth. To educate is to lead forth, to draw out the human spirit; it is simultaneously to release and direct human potentialities. The mind follows the lead of interest, and it cannot assimilate what is forced upon it [Page 44]from without. And if knowledge appropriate to the type and stage of development of the individual is not offered and if it is not presented in such a way as to seem to him related to his experience, his mind is stultified or it becomes preoccupied with the pursuit of sensation. The prevalent thirst for more and more violent sensations, the mad quest for the pleasures of sense that characterizes the present age is a powerful witness of the utter inadequacy of our educational system. Make education a process of experimental research from the very beginning, lead the child forth to fields of knowledge relevant to his nature and experience, there let him explore to his heart's content, encourage him to think of his proper relation to all the facts of his environment, and he will grow as naturally in wisdom as he grows in stature.

In our universities the student finds many courses "the bunk" because he sees in them, as they are presented, no relation to his own experience. The social sciences, however, where the teaching and study of them is unhampered, offer material that is obviously vitally relevant to the life of every individual, and to the student with altruistic leanings, they afford, besides, singular opportunities for social service of great value.

The value of such studies both to the student and to society could be vastly augmented by systematic cooperation. My idea of effective cooperation is that of association of the various departments of social science in our colleges and universities with a central directing and coordinating research bureau for the common investigation, in the spirit of science, of those points in our social structure where the strain is greatest. The nature of the investigation would be a first hand examination of actual conditions with a detailed and penetrating analysis of all the factors involved, followed by a socially constructive synthesis.

A notable example of the method I have in mind is furnished by the Race Relations Survey on the Pacific Coast, under the central direction of Professor Robert E. Park of the University of Chicago. The story of this unique experiment in the field of [Page 45]

WHERE DO WE GO FROM HERE?

sociology is told by Professor Bogardus, of the University of Southern California, one of the five regional directors of the survey, in "The New Social Research." The investigation covered a geographical area reaching from British Columbia on the North to Mexico on the South. It was supported by five regional committees and by the Institute of Social and Religious Research of New York City. Regional organizations were established at five centers where there were colleges and universities where students were already studying certain phases of the problem of race relations. The director showed these individuals how, by extending their studies, they could contribute to the work of the Survey and he coordinated their separate studies by bringing together in local conferences individuals in different colleges and in different sciences who were investigating the problem from a special point of view. "Special studies," to quote from Professor Parker's "Preface," "gained a new interest and a new significance when they were seen in relation to one another and to the practical and local issues which were disturbing the public."

Further the practical nature of the Survey aroused in the students and instructors a deep interest in social research which resulted eventually in the establishment of a permanent Society. The Survey proved equally stimulating to many community leaders who had cooperated variously with those conducting the investigations. Frequently appeals come to the Society from them asking for assistance in solving different local problems.

"Some of the persons," Professor Bogardus notes, "are beginning to reflect the methods of social research in their thinking, and thus the leaven is working."

In widespread research work of this nature have we not the destined approach to a more rational organization of society and the nucleus of an institution that will prove a worthy substitute for, or at least a powerful supplement to, some that are breaking now under the strain and stress of our highly complex but ill-integrated civilization? Apparently this is the conclusion of Professor Bogardus, for he writes, "As politics is a substitute [Page 46]for war, so social research is a substitute for politics, 'politics does not get at the truth; it is a method of fighting out issues." Social research is a way of making unnecessary much of what now passes for politics."

Social research begins with the researcher. Self knowledge is the beginning of wisdom. Only those who can appraise their own motives are capable of sounding the depths of social problems.

Social research, experiment in the field of primary education, and continuous adult education, are all closely related features of one general movement that is perhaps the most portentous offspring of the prolific concept of evolution. It had its inception many decades ago, but it did not become self-conscious till the close of the Great War.

To the liberals of the generation preceding the war, the hope of progress was democracy, and the handmaid of democracy was politics. The obvious failures of democracy, we said, were due to half measures, and this conviction was expressed in the popular slogan, "The cure for the evils of democracy is more democracy. Accordingly, we labored for the enfranchisement of women, the extension of public school education, and the humanization of our institutions by abolishing sweat shops and by establishing the eight hour day and juvenile courts. And when Lincoln Steffens opened our eyes fully to "The Shame of the Cities" we set about to wipe out the evils he disclosed by such political devices as the initiative, referendum and recall, by a system of preferential voting, by extension of civil service tests, by commission government and city management plan. But our efforts, we found, availed very little. Humane legislative measures do mitigate social suffering somewhat, but they do not cure the disease that causes the suffering, and it is impossible merely by altering phrases in a city charter, to prevent unscrupulous politicians from exploiting the people so long as the masses are indifferent and devoid of social conscience.

The war and its aftermath brought growing doubts to a head: it became plain that something was fundamentally wrong [Page 47]

WHERE DO WE GO FROM HERE?

with our whole system. Then we gave ear to the revelations of Freud and Jung and Adler, and G. Stanley Hall in our own country, revelations upsetting our conventions and challenging our most cherished traditions; and all in a mental ferment, we began to delve into the depths of ourselves and to examine in earnest the human material of society. Here at last we reached rock bottom.

Now our perspective is genetic. Education is seen to be a process of unfoldment, and teaching, the opening up to all, in a series of successively higher stages, of the path to sublimation found in the past only by the intuitive few; always reckoning with the powerful undercurrent of the subconscious, hitherto ignored; and vigilantly guarding against the arch enemy of all progress, individual and social, the persistent tendency to revert to earlier forms of response that are incompatible with adult behaviour in civilized life. At no point is the educational process complete; at maturity the graduate may not hang up his diploma and congratulate himself that his education is finished. Post graduate courses in the people's college and in the school of experience await him. Education is co-terminous with life. Thus conceived, life becomes a never-ending adventure, with a clear conception of the ultimate goal for a guiding star, pointing ever to higher and higher ranges of reality.

So far, this conception of progress, which we feel is to be the moulding force of the new age, is stirring only the vanguard of society, and in order to effect social reconstruction it must penetrate to the mind of the masses.

For social progress demands that the total social aggregate shall move together in the same direction under the leadership of the wisest members. But there is at present almost no connection between the masses and the wise. Unity calls for close and constant communication between the leaders and the led. Social research provides a suitable instrument for ascertaining truth and training leaders. Our schools, press, radio, moving pictures, and forums furnish instruments for the disemination and popularization of the truths thus ascertained. But practically [Page 48]all of these sources of public opinion are controlled by political and commercial interests. The natural result is that people are led astray. The whole pack is kept running after one false scent after another while the real issue is ignored.

Therefore, in order that those who are capable of leadership shall assume the task that is their reasonable service, a mechanism must first be contrived for securing mental contact with the rank and file of our population. This is the immediate problem upon the solution of which I urge all those who look forward to a better tomorrow to bend their minds.

For my part, after pondering this question from, I think, every possible angle, I have reached the following general conclusions.

First. The magnitude of the problem calls for the close cooperation of all our forward looking citizens; and such cooperation can be made possible only by their union in a single progressive association.

Second. The many sidedness of the problem calls for a division of labor. To carry out a complete program the association should maintain four main departments, as follows:

(1) Department of Education. To promote adult education and elementary educational experimentation, to keep in touch with other agencies working along similar lines, and to consider the practical problem of putting into operation in public schools the principles and methods proved of value in the experimental schools.

(2) Department of Social Research. To work out by first hand examination of actual conditions the principles involved in the adjustment of human relations in such a way as to produce a minimum of friction and a maximum of harmony.

(3) Department of Publicity. To disseminate and popularize the truths ascertained by the other departments of the Association for General Enlightenment.

(4) Department of Coordination. To coordinate [Page 49]

WHERE DO WE GO FROM HERE?

the efforts of the above-mentioned departments and direct the carrying out of the general program determined upon by the administrative officers of all four departments in annual conferences.

Third. To facilitate detailed specialization, the main departments would naturally be divided into numerous sub-departments.

Fourth. To keep out the element of commercialism, all administrative officials should serve without remuneration. An association of the type that I have outlined would prove vastly more effective than the various isolated organizations with similar aims already in existence, because of the economy of effort involved in cooperation on a large scale and further because of the power conferred by concerted action all along the line.

Herbert Spencer prophesied a half century ago that in the course of progress cooperation would supercede competition. This principle prevails already in certain phases of American business practice, and it is undoubtedly the chief reason for American economic superiority. It is destined, we believe, to operate more and more in all the relations of life and in measures ranging from the voluntary collaboration of a few choice spirits in artistic and literary creation to the interlacing of gigantic corporations. In this connection, Dr. Edward Craft declared in a recent address before the students of the California Institute of Technology, that a new order of things had come into being and that henceforth group or gang work would take the place of individuality in research work. As an example of the efficacy of this method, he told the story of the demand of newspapers four years ago for the transmission of pictures by wire. The problem was given to six groups of men. At the end of six weeks they were operating a transmitting set in their laboratories and two months later they were sending photographs over the public telephone wires. "It would have taken one man years and years to have done this," he assured them; "By the gang method or [Page 50]group method it was accomplished in six weeks.... It's the new thing."

Cooperation, we believe, is the keynote of the new age, and nowhere will it prove more valuable to society as a whole than in the field of altruistic endeavor. By recourse to a specific instance we can visualize the benefits that might well result from cooperation between the different departments of an association such as I have sketched. Let us suppose that for a certain period it were determined to concentrate the combined forces of the association on the subject of race relations. The Department of Social Research would lead off by organizing a nation-wide survey dividing the country into separate geographical districts on the basis of the racial factors of the population, and by apportioning the work of research to appropriate local groups. The Department of Education would assist wherever possible while conducting its own regular work. The survey would proceed, we assume, somewhat on the order established in the Pacific Coast Survey. At the completion of the survey detailed reports and a book summarizing the results of the survey would be published, and social service periodicals would print articles dealing with the more significant matters. By these means the findings of the survey would be made known only to a select number of people. This is the situation now with respect to important issues. But if there were a publicity cooperating agency consisting of speakers and writers who had joined the association because of a desire to serve in their own fields, at this stage, the detailed reports, presenting altogether a complete picture of local conditions, would be turned over to this agency. Here in these reports, speakers would find raw material for their use in forums and radios, and writers would find themes with plenty of local color suitable for imaginative treatment in the form of dramas, motion pictures, short stories of the O. Henry type, Voltairean satires, and brief articles in either a sympathetic or a caustic vein.

And through the service of these writers skilled in presenting ideas in a graphic and arresting manner, it would be possible to [Page 51]

WHERE DO WE GO FROM HERE?

reach the masses who had not come into contact with the research workers in their own community and who would never glance at a sociological book or magazine. By concrete instances, the fact would be made evident to unreflecting people that their racial antagonisms spring largely from misconceptions and the unreasoning, infantile habit of disliking whatever is strange, and that they cause much unnecessary suffering and discord. And by the emphasis on what the different races have in common, that most powerful bond of union, consciousness of kind, would be intensified and bear fruit in more harmonious relations.

In this age of multitudinous monthlies and weeklies, voluminous dailies and almost hourly movies and radios, the individual is so bombarded by mental stimuli that no one idea holds his mind long unless it is repeated and all the changes are rung on it. Then by the force of cumulative impacts it does make a dent, that explains why isolated movements appealing through a single channel are bound to remain ineffectual. Moreover, mental force like pressure in physics, may be dissipated by being spread over too large a surface. That happens when a single organization tackles several evils simultaneously. But an association for general enlightenment, with highly specialized and closely coordinated separate departments, and with independent access to all of the avenues of public opinion, by harping consistently on one theme in "divers tones" for a given season, could arouse a widespread interest and thus exercise a potent influence upon the public mind.

The influence thus exercised would not be undue in any sense. The association would disdain recourse to any form of censorship or mental coercion. It would not seek to impose upon the public any particular point of view. It would simply stir people to think for themselves by thrusting upon their attention issues of common import which under present conditions are obscured by clouds of dust kicked up by sensation mongers and muckrakers, by the fogs engendered by dealers in cooked-up information for political and private ends, and by traffickers in sugar-coated trivialities and mental pacifiers. To a society [Page 52]distracted by selfish jarring movements, it would seek to restore a just balance by stressing those things which make for harmony. It would seek to disperse ignorance and misconceptions by letting in more light, and to clear away the miasmas of prejudice and antagonism by giving the bases of these evils a thorough airing, always encouraging the free expression of opinion in forums and in the press, and taking in all of its operations the high stand that every subject must submit to the test of accurate investigation, and every social problem be studied, not in accordance with preconceived opinions and tribal shibboleths, and not in the spirit of sloppy sentimentality, but impartially, in the attitude of science, and yet, also sympathetically, in the light of the "moral imagination."

The issue chosen for emphasis in each case would not be selected arbitrarily. The sole recognized criterion of the value of any project would be that it was clearly a step in the direction of the ultimate goal, and, so far as human wisdom could foresee. the next step logically in our belated social development.

Might not an association motivated by the aims and employing the methods that I have indicated exercise the integrating function of which our civilization is in manifest need and constitute the agency for telic guidance which further progress demands? [Page 53]

THE WISDOM OF THE AGES

Edited by ALFRED W. MARTIN Society for Ethical Culture, New York

The Sacred Scriptures of Buddhism-Concluded

THE philosophical ideas bound up with the Buddha's ethical teaching are given us in minute detail in the Abbiddhamma-Pitaka. The "expansion-Pitaka" it literally is, enlarging on what had already been set forth in the other two Pitakas, e.g. the soul and its impermanence as contrasted with the conception of personality and its persistence; the operation of the law of Karma and the allied doctrine of reincarnation, as contrasted with transmigration. Here, too, is additional discourse of the Buddha on the subject of "Nirvana" the ultimate outcome of that process of ethical self-discipline, called "the noble eight-fold Path."

This third of the three Pitakas is far more difficult reading than either of the others. So diffuse are its manifold expositions, so severely do the chapters with their repetitions tax the reader's patience and perseverance, that one turns with grateful relief to an alternative source of information already referred to, a literary work of art which, though uncanonical, yet takes rank among the Sacred Books of Buddhism, second only to the Pitakas themselves. It is known as The Questions of King Milinda, and has been included in the series of English translations edited by the late Max Müller, The Sacred Books of the East," volumes XXXV and XXXVI. This uncanonical but sacred book, consists of imaginary conversations between Milinda (Menander) - the Greek king who carried on, in Bactria, the dominion founded by Alexander the Great-and "the venerable Nagasena,' a [Page 54]thorough-going Buddhist of the old school. "The questions" raised by the King concern for the most part the soul, death, continued identity after death, reincarnation, Karma and Nirvana. And Nagasena, in offering his answers, almost always refers to some portion of the Abbiddhamma-Pitaka, one of our fountain-sources of information for the teaching of the Buddha. "The Questions of Milinda" being a work of decided literary charm, it is not to be wondered at that it occupies a unique position in the sacred literature of the Buddhists, or that, while lacking the canonical status of the Pitakas, it is yet considered of equal authoritative value. Let us look at these basic ideas underlying the teaching of Gotama and see how they have been given expression in the sacred scripture.

THE SOUL

All metaphysical systems, contemporary with the Buddha’s doctrine of salvation, assumed that there is a soul, an ego, which. with its load of deed-effects, passes from life to life in the reincarnation process, receiving in each new birth its due of Karma-compensation. But the Buddha denied the reality of any such entity commonly called the soul. According to him, the empirical individual is only a transient combination of five components (Skandhas),—bodiliness, sensation, perception, predisposition, consciousness, and at death this complex is resolved into its several impermanent elements. The subject of the very first sermon preached to "the five disciples" with whom he began his work, was the absence of any sign of "soul" in any of the constituent elements of individual life. That sermon is embodied in the Mahavagga of the Vinaya Pitaka. There we read:

"The Blessed One thus spake to the five disciples— The body, O, Disciples, is not the self. If the body were the self, the body would not be subject to disease, But since the body is not the self, Therefore the body is subject to disease." [Page 55]

THE SACRED SCRIPTURES OF BUDDHISM

Sensation, O disciples is not the self, nor is perception the self, the Sankharas, (the dispositions) are not the self; consciousness is not the self,

"Now, what do you think, O, Disciples? "Is the body permanent or perishable?" 'It is perishable, Lord." And that which is perishable, does it cause pain or joy?' 'It causes pain, Lord.' "And that which is perishable, painful, subject to change, is it possible to say of it 'This is mine, this am I, this is myself. 'That is impossible, Lord'

"Therefore, O, Disciples, whatever the body has been, will be and is now gross or subtle, distant or near, All that body is not mine, is not me, is not myself."

Elsewhere the Buddha expressed the same thought in these four lines: "What is impermanent is suffering. "What is suffering is not I. What is not I is not mine. It is not I, it is not myself."

In the "Questions of King Milinda" the same conviction is expressed by the venerable Nagasena in conversation with the King as to his name.

"I am known as Nagasena, O, King, and it is by that name that my brethren in the faith address me. But although parents give such a name as Nagasena or Virasena, yet this, Sire, is only a generally understood term, a designation in common use; for there is no permanent individuality (no soul) involved in the matter." (II.1.1). Elsewhere in the same book it is written:

"The King said: Is there such a thing as a soul? And Nagasena, with discourse drawn from the Abbiddbama convinced the King there is no such thing as a soul." (II.2.3.6).

"The venerable Nagasena said to the King 'Explain to me what is the chariot in which you came. Is it the pole, or the [Page 56]axle, or the wheels, or the framework, or the yoke, or the spokes, or is it all these parts that are the chariot?' To all of which he answered 'No.' 'What then is the chariot you say you came in? 'It is on account of its having all these parts that it comes under the generally understood term of chariot.' 'Very good, your Majesty has rightly grasped the meaning of chariot. Even so is it on account of the thirty-two kinds of organic matter in the human body and the five Skandhas of being that I have come under the generally understood name of Nagasena. Just as when the parts are there, the word chariot is used, so it is when the Skandbas are there, we talk of a soul." (Q. of K. M. II.1.1.)

As there is no chariot in itself, so there is no individual person in itself. Nevertheless, persons are not for that reason less real than chariots.

The Katha-Vatthu of the Abhidhamma places the question of the soul in the foreground of all it discusses, declaring there is but one thing, 'Karma' and that which is called atman, or soul, is not a separate entity, but Karma as it presents itself in any given moment: there is a self, but not a soul-substance; mind, but not mind-stuff; personality, but no atman. In other words, an analysis of the constituent elements of a person reveals no such soul-entity as was popularly believed to exist; only the body with its organs of sense, the sensations that stream in through them, the perceptions of sight, smell, taste, touch and hearing; the Samskaras or dispositions or abilities resulting from past conduct in an earlier life, carried over as a stock of character with which to begin a new life, only these are real; but in none of them is there a soul to transmigrate.

Clearly then primitive Buddhism in its conflict with current systems based on belief in the reality of a transmigratable soul, denied its existence, but at the same time held that the thinking, feeling, aspiring soul which from experience we know ourselves to be, cannot be denied. And only when all delusions about the soul have been fully and finally renounced is one fitted, according to the Buddha, to make progress in ethical living. So long as men are fretted by fears and doubts about their souls, they [Page 57]remain unemancipated and unequal to pursuing the higher life that leads to cessation of rebirth.

REINCARNATION

But, if there be no permanent entity called soul to migrate from one life to the next, how can Buddhism still hold to a doctrine of reincarnation? What meaning can identity have when no soul-entity survives the death of the body? If there be no soul to leave the body at death, to be re-born elsewhere, what then, is it that passes from one life to the next, psychologically, if not physically, continuous with the deceased, ready to suffer or enjoy what he in a previous existence had prepared for himself by his behavior? What is the real link connecting one life with the next in the series? If the real identity between a man in his present life and in the future be not a conscious soul, capable of leaving his body when dead, in what does the identity consist? That which passes from one incarnation to the next, the Buddha said, was "Karma and nothing but Karma"; the real identity, he held, is that of cause and effect, expressed in the Samskaras, or deed-structures; Karma takes the place of the soul; character passing from one being to another in the succession of beings, united in destiny.

As it is written in the Sutta Pitaka:- "Not grain, nor wealth, nor store of gold, Not one amongst his family, Not wife, nor daughters, nor his sons, Nor any one that eats his bread, Can follow him who leaves this life, For all things must be left behind. But every deed a man performs, With body, or with voice, or mind, ’Tis this that he can call his own, This with him take as he goes hence, This is what follows after him, And like a shadow ne’er departs. [Page 58]Let all, then, noble deeds perform, A treasure-store for future weal; For merit gained this life within Will yield a blessing in the next."

And the blessing will come not to another but to him who did the noble deeds even though he be then a different person from what he was before. Nagasena illustrates the point as follows:

"Suppose a man, O king, were to light a lamp, would it burn the night through?"

"Yes, it might do so."

"Now, is it the same flame that burns in the first watch of the night, Sir, and in the second?"

"No."

"Or the same that burns in the second watch and in the third?"

"No."

"Then is there one lamp in the first watch, and another in the second, and another in the third?"

"No. The light comes from the same lamp all the night through."

"Just so, O king, is the continuity of a person or thing maintained. One comes into being, another passes away; and the rebirth is, as it were, simultaneous. Thus neither as the same nor as another does a man go on to the last phase of his self-consciousness." (Q. of K. M. II.2.1.)

KARMA

Gotama held with adamantine inflexibility to the moral order. His whole view of life was founded on the reality of it. Not even death could frustrate the operation of the law of Karma. The body might dissolve into dust, consciousness cease, but out of the years just ended, out of the thoughts just stilled, came unseen potencies which begot a new person to pursue a fresh career in accordance with that law. [Page 59]

THE SACRED SCRIPTURES OF BUDDHISM

The word Karma, it will be remembered,* means "deed," but refers more especially to the effect of the deed on the subsequent character of the doer. The deed itself is transient but the traces it leaves on the character endure. These are called in Sanskrit Samskaras, in Pali (the Sanskrit dialect in which the Buddhist Scriptures were written) Sankharas, meaning memory-structures or deed-effects. A man's character, therefore, consists of his Sankharas which are the product of Karma and make reincarnation possible, Karma being the mysterious law that binds each existence to the next. By means of Karma the ends of justice are automatically, dispassionately, and inevitably worked out and with an eternal margin of hope, because no matter how low a man may sink in the moral scale, he can in the course of successive reincarnations raise himself to perfection at last by simply practicing the course of ethical self-discipline set forth in the Sutta-Pitaka.†

Karma-Reincarnation, then, according to the Buddha, is the reappearance of the same character, but it is no transmigration in the sense of a transfer of any soul-substance because there is no soul-substance. The only transfer is that of the deed-structures, Sankharas, which the operation of Karma mysteriously produces. But for their survival there could be no continuity beyond the dissolution of the individual in death. Rebirth depends on Karma and the person's reappearance is analogous to that of the voice in an echo or to that of a seal in its imprint or to the reappearance of the form of a face in a mirror. In the words of Gotama's most distinguished disciple, Buddhagosha, "As echoes, light, the impressions of a seal, and shadows have sound, etc., for their causes and exist without having come from elsewhere, just so is it with this mind." (Visuddhi-Nagya XVII). As there is no soul substance, there can be no soul transmigration, yet is there rebirth and reincarnation; a continuance of personality beyond the dissolution of the individual in death. Favorite illustrations of the idea are the following. When a lamp is lit at

• See March number of this magazine, p. 416.

† For a critique of the Karma reincarnation doctrine, see "My Faith in a Future Life," Chap. VII. [Page 60]a burning lamp, there is a kindling of the wick but no transmigration of the flame. When a boy learns a verse from his teacher, the verse is incarnated in the boy's mind but there is no transmigration of the verse in the proper sense of transmigration. The verse is impressed into the boy's mind but there is no material transfer.

"Where there is no transmigration, Nagasena, can there be rebirth?"

"Yes, there can."

"But how can that be? Give me an illustration."

"Suppose a man, O king, were to light a lamp from another lamp, can it be said that the one transmigrates from, or to, the other?"

"Certainly not."

"Just so, great king, is rebirth without transmigration."

"Give me further illustration."

"Do you recollect, great king, having learnt, when you were a boy, some verse or other from your teacher?"

"Yes, I recollect that."

"Well, then, did that verse transmigrate from your teacher?"

"Certainly not."

"Just so, great king, is rebirth without transmigration." (Q. of K. M. III.5.)

NIRVANA

The progress toward perfection issuing in permanent exemption from rebirth is marked by a number of stages and these for most believers cover more than one lifetime. The highest earthly stage, Arhatship (Sainthood), is rarely reached in the course of a single life, implying as it does perfect mastery of the four noble Truths and the eight-fold Path. Beyond this highest terrestrial attainment lies the supreme goal,--Nirvana, or Nibbana as it is called in Pali, though better known in its Sanskrit form, Nirvana. The word derives from the verb Nirvati, "to go out," in the sense in which a lamp goes out when no more oil remains to feed the flame. We read in the Scriptures: [Page 61]"They who have steadfast mind and become exempt from evil desire and well-trained in the teaching of Gotama, are in the enjoyment of Nirvana. Their old Karma is exhausted, no new Karma is being produced; their hearts are free from the longing after a future life; the cause of their existence being destroyed and no new longing springing up within them, they, the wise, are extinguished like this lamp."

In the Jataka it is written:

"Wherein does Nirvana consist? And to him whose mind was already averse to passion the answer came: When the fire of lust is extinct, that is Nirvana; When the fire of hatred and infatuation is extinct, that is Nirvana; When pride, false belief and all other passions and torments are extinct, that is Nirvana."

Again in the Digha Nikaya of the Sutta-Pitaka it is said:

"He who surrenders the error of self ceases to attach himself to anything in the world, and being free from attachment he is never agitated, and being never agitated he obtains to Nirvana in his own person."

From these quotations it would seem that according to the Buddha, Nirvana did not mean annihilation but rather deathlessness. The saint lives, but does not cling; he is energetic but free from passion. As Nagasena puts it in the "Questions of King Milinda," "He that is not free from passion experiences both the taste of food and also passion due to that taste, while he who is free from passion experiences the taste of food but no passion due to that taste." The Buddha was persuaded that he would pass away with all the roots of existence cut off, that Karma would have on him no more power. But whether he would live again or not he did not say, and his silence inevitably gave rise to considerable speculation on the essential nature of Nirvana. For instance, Childers and Oldenberg are of the opinion that to Gotama Nirvana meant annihilation. Max Muller contended that it described an "absolute peace of soul of which the rese of the saint is a foretaste." Rhys-Davids held that the term [Page 62]signifies a perfection to be attained in this life and has nothing to do with the hereafter. But Gotama gave out no positive information, describing Nirvana simply as that blessed state in which rebirth is forever impossible.

A further difficulty attaching to our understanding of Nirvana is this: When in the perfected person the operation of Karma ceases, what is there left to continue existence on? It would seem as though the Buddha had not worked out the logic of his thought to its legitimate and ultimate conclusion. Indeed Nagasena's conversation on the subject of the passing of the Buddha gives justification to this surmise.

"The king said: 'Is there such a person as the Buddha, Nagasena?’ 'Yes.' 'Can he then, Nagasena, be pointed out as being here or there?' 'The Blessed One, O king, has passed away by that kind of passing away in which nothing remains which could tend to the formation of another individual. It is not possible to point out the Blessed One as being here or there.' 'Give me an illustration.' 'Now what do you think, O king? When there is a great body of fire blazing, is it possible to point out any one flame that has gone out, that it is here or there?' 'No, Sir. That flame has ceased, it has vanished.' Just so, great king, has the Blessed One passed away by that kind of passing away in which no root remains for the formation of another individual. The Blessed One has come to an end, and it cannot be pointed out of him, that he is here or there. But in the body of his doctrine he can, O king, be pointed out. For the doctrine was preached by the Blessed One." (Q. of K. M. III 5.10).

Verily, is the positive content of Nirvana a vexed question, and the most we are warranted in saying is that for the Buddha. Nirvana meant a peaceful end, unmarred by any prospect of rebirth. The conflict ended, there remained only endless peace. [Page 63]

THE NEW HUMANITY

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

Edited by MARY SIEGRIST Authur of "You that come after," etc.

"The song of the flute is not air, it is fire. Perish be who has not this fire!"

THE Persian mystic, Jelal-Ud-Din-Rumi, knew that this flute is indeed the flute of the "Unlimited One"—that the function of its notes is to "pierce and tear the veils that wrap the soul. It is the power of love that is in the flute—sometimes divinely shattering. It is through this power that men are drawn into the larger understandings and fellowships. The very evolution of creation from mineral to plant life, from plant to animal and from animal to the human being is the gradual development of love through every stage. Stones and rocks, inarticulate, have yet their own rhythm of song. In human beings the rhythm has become or is becoming articulate. Until they have listened long and been able to hear the Song of the Flute within themselves and at the heart of life, they have hardly as yet even entered humanity's estate. But when the flute-notes are heard in the heart, then man stretches out the hand of comradeship to all living things and becomes a human being.

When this flute sings through the ear, it is heard in rhythms that we call poetry. When it sings through the eye, the song is seen in vibrations of light. This is the unearthly radiance that illumines the canvas of the artist who is dedicated to the flute-song. This is the light that irradiates the forms of the sculptor who has tuned in to it. This is the ecstacy of the saint who has [Page 64]heard the Divine Song in the chambers of the soul. This is the joy of all those who are brought together in the higher fellowships of being. This will surely be more and more the joy, not of a limited few, but of multitudes throughout the world as the Flute-Song of World Unity gathers depth and volume and ushers in the New Humanity.

All who have heard the flute-song or seen its vibrations must consecrate themselves to "keep forever the rhythm of the universe" and to become everywhere the teachers—silent or audible—of others. To work for World Unity or perish. This surely, is the test of all great art and great living. The true artist has sworn in his soul to keep the rhythm of the universe entrusted to his ears and eyes. His art therefore bodies forth the unbroken rhythm of the flute-song.

BEATITUDES FROM A BUDDHIST HERMIT'S "LION'S ROAR"

What a time a man, in wisdom old age close scanneth and death— How all that this world fast cleaveth to—Pain it is gendereth; Well wotting how at last whence pain forever afresh updwelleth, He dwelleth apart, with mind and heart upcaught In rapture of holy thought: Ah, how might a God be indued with more perfect beatitude?

What time the base mingler of bane he banneth who wrought the pain, The monster Greed, who unmanneth man, as again and again He doth drive him to writhe in the web of possessions that would fain enmesh all flesh, The haunting anguish of fear, for aye to be free, he expelleth, And dwelleth apart, with mind and heart upcaught In rapture of holy thought: Ah, how might a God be indued with more perfect beatitude?

What time in clear vision afar, fair and happy, he beholdeth the Path— Fourfold for the corners four of two worlds—which never end hath, [Page 65]

THE NEW HUMANITY

Save in the soul's purity only, that the whiteness of light excelleth, He dwelleth apart, with mind and heart upcaught In rapture of holy thought: Ah, how might a God be indued with more perfect beatitude?

What time with brave labor the illuming fixed Mind hath the path of peace Shown plain, true, cleared of sorrow, where importunate troublers cease, The outcasting of whatso defileth, the snapping of bonds in sunder, that under About the above would withhold and ensnare, till release he compelleth And dwelleth apart, with mind and heart upcaught In rapture of holy thought: Ah, how might a God be indued with more perfect beatitude?

What time in the lowering heaven the fierce stormrack's drums roll thunder, And the straight flight of birds go astray in thick darkness and rain, yet no wonder, Nor awe the Saint in the hollow heart of the hill impelleth, Who dwelleth apart, with mind and heart upcaught In rapture of holy thought: Ah, how might a God be indued with more perfect beatitude?

What time by the brimming river, on whose marges there mass a gay crowd-- Wild forest festoons of blossom-of their many-hued splendor proud, Long and long, serene, the incense of their pure souls he enhaleth Who dwelleth apart, with mind and heart upcaught In rapture of holy thought: Ah, how might a God be indued with more perfect beatitude? [Page 66]

Leaves of the Greater Bible

What time at the grim dead of night, in the jungle's gruesome gloom God poureth His wrath, and beasts prowl ravening and roar out his doom, The Saint in the still heart of the hill to his spirit his calm joys telleth, And dwelleth apart, with mind and heart upcaught In rapture of holy thought: Ah, how might a God be indued with more perfect beatitude?

What time by Restraint he straitly bridleth the headlong course of the will, and taketh him forth to the mountain's bosom per- force, Where composed, at large, in a cool cave sheltered, all doubt he dispelleth, And dwelleth apart, with mind and heart upcaught In rapture of holy thought: Ah, how might a God be indued with more perfect beatitude?

What time made whole in soul, at ease he abideth so, When Attainment hath wrought out stain, the rock of offense and woe, Wide-opening to peace the gates, unscathed of the furtive thrust of lust, Unwooed by maddening draught, foe and fiend undismayed he quelleth And dwelleth apart, with mind and heart upcaught In rapture of holy thought: Ah, how might a God be indued with more perfect beatitude?

WILLIAM NORMAN GUTHRIE [Page 67]

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 Future of Christianity

The problems presented by American Protestantism today have been made familiar by a host of books. One of the most thoughtful, Reinhold Niebuhr's Does Civilization Need Religion? was considered in these columns a short while ago. It is all the more interesting, therefore, to find a treatment of the present state of Christianity written from a point of view novel to most American readers. In Christianity Past and Present, M. Charles Guignebert combines a popular account of the historical development of the Christian religion with a critical appraisal of its present tendencies. M. Guignebert is Professor of the History of Christianity at the Sorbonne. He is proud to have stood with Loisy and the other Catholic Modernists in the struggles of 1907 against the Papacy; he is anxious to let it be known that he was always somewhat further to the left than Loisy himself. While he endeavors to write with scholarly detachment and impartiality, his sympathies are with the modernist movement, and his chief emphasis is upon the religious life of the Catholic Church and the Franch nation. Protestantism he treats only incidentally, and then with a somewhat excessive respect for its present vitality and for the success of the liberal movement.

Religions, thinks M. Guignebert, are living organisms

• Charles Guignebert, Christianity Past and Prunt. Macmillan. xxvi, 527 pp.

[Page 68]which are born, grow to maturity, decay, and finally disappear.

"From the social milieu in which a religion establishes itself it borrows the primary elements which form its substance and sustain it in organizing themselves. By undergoing more or less thorough transformation of its organs, it adapts itself to the demands of the diverse and successive spheres to which it is afterwards transported. Like all living beings, it eliminates its worn-out and dead particles by degrees, and assimilates others derived from its surroundings which renew its flesh and blood until the day comes when, in the inevitable course of time, its powers of adaptation relax their activity and finally stop short. That means it has become unable to rid itself of the inert and noxious waste matters it is accumulating, unable also to nourish its life; death gradually takes possession of and congeals it, until at last the moment arrives when it is good for nothing but to engender, from its own decaying tissues, a new religious organism, destined to a similar fate."

These great living bodies of faith are each, in a sense, unique. "It is impossible to characterize by the same terms the religion of an Australian aboriginal tribe and the Christian religion, for instance, except by disregarding all that the second contains more than the first." There is no discoverable "essence of religion;" nor is there an underlying core which persists through long changes, even in Christianity.

In fact, one of the merits of the volume is its recognition of the diversity that exists within a single religious body. "Many distinct religions exist side by side in the same community." There is neither homogeneity nor coherence nor solidarity; rather are there stratified layers each of which corresponds with a social class. No religion can be truly understood if one confines himself, for example, to the intellectuals who formulate its theological concepts, or to the prophets and saints who proclaim its noblest moral ideals. It is rather to the popular beliefs and practices of the mass that one must go. Consequently M. Guignebert forsakes the customary accounts of doctrinal growth and moral development to examine the course of popular Christianity. He is especially interested in those periods when simple, ignorant [Page 69]

THE FUTURE OF CHRISTIANITY

folk imposed their religious life on an organization already crystallized, when the religious instincts and superstitions of the multitude had their way. This occurred in three great eras, he believes. The first was in the 4th and 5th centuries, when great populations were "converted." The second was the dominance of popular religiosity and ignorant mysticism in the 10th and 11th centuries. The third is taking place at present, when, with educated men turning away in disgust, the Church is left a prey to the most ignorant and unthinking. The whole course of Christian history appears to M. Guignebert as a series of compromises with the world, as the reassimilation of cruder elements left behind by great reformers.

Thus the original Jewish impulse of Jesus and his first disciples was absorbed into an Oriental mystery religion of personal salvation, more intolerant than its rivals, less addicted to mythology. This Jewish mystery cult soon rationalized itself in terms of Greek speculation, and organized itself in terms of Roman administration. Christianity emerged as the heir of Hellenistic civilization, not so much a new religious faith as a fusion of all the forces, intellectual, spiritual, moral, and political, of the Mediterranean world. In the combination the special moral and religious insight of Jesus was submerged. But when this complex religious life was transmitted to the West, it no longer found itself amid the conditions in which it rose and of which its doctrines were a natural interpretation. "Western peoples in the early centuries of the Christian era never really understood the Christian dogmas, nor have they understood them since. The religion which they have constructed upon these dogmas through their own efforts was something different, both in spirit and in essential, from Eastern Christianity; issuing, as it did, from the depths of their own mentality, and in accord with their own sentiments, it was cast in formulas ill able to contain it. The Western peoples have, strictly speaking, never been Christians Christians in name, but bearing the impress only of the Christian legend and nourished upon formulas passively repeated, these men the vast majority of professed Christians—remained [Page 70]actually pagans, and still do within the tulds of the Catholic Commonwealth. Occasionally they have seemed to comprehend something of the spirit of the Bible or of the Gospel. That has been when they sought in the extremity of their needs for 2 formula for their social claims or justification for indignation against their lot. But neither the Bible nor the Gospel can be confounded with the Catholicism of St. Augustine, revised by St. Thomas Aquinas and confirmed by the Jesuits, any more than the true Gospel spirit of St. Francis, 'God's little poor man, can be likened to the spirit of the Roman curia."

In the Middle Ages a second wave of Hellenistic and Oriental thought swamped Christianity. Under the Schoolmen and the mystics the medieval faith took form. Yet even then the religious life of Europe was shaped far more by its intellectual culture and material condition than by the subtle and elaborate intellectual formulas of the theologians. "In spirit, practice, intention, and even in its complex substance, the active popular Christianity of the West, down to our own times, is only a syncretistic paganism worn underneath an outside Eastern cloak."

At the time of the Reformation, the Church made a last attempt to adjust itself to the demands of the modern world. Under the Jesuits the tide of revolt was stemmed. Yet the price was surrender to the most superstitious of popular practices- Mariolatry, miracle-working shrines, and the rest. Worst of all, the Council of Trent crystallized what had been a comparatively free intellectual life in the medieval church into the harsh rigidity of dogmatic pronouncements on absolute truth. "Until then an evolution marked by a series of fresh adaptations had preserved contact between religious reality and religious theory. Today evolution is no longer possible, and no remedy for the evil remains other than revolution. If the efforts of the Council and the Jesuits saved the Catholic Church in the great crisis of the Reformation, they prepared her decadence and overthrow in the future by deliberately depriving her of the indispensable faculty of readjustment to the changes going on around her, by means of which she had hitherto insured her survival." [Page 71]

THE FUTURE OF CHRISTIANITY

The 18th century Enlightenment perceived the importance of modernizing Christianity. But they found no solution, and their work remained negative, largely because they offered nothing but "moralism" to men who were craving mysticism. The Romantic reaction brought a rebirth of clerical power, political and social rather than religious. The Church was unalterably allied to reaction, opposed both to liberalism in politics and to science. In the face of the revolutionary ideas in philosophy, historical criticism, and natural science, the Church was adamant. It opposed sheer authority to the scientific spirit of doubt and search for facts. The triumph of ultramontanism, or Romanism, has been complete. M. Guignebert grimly records the pontificate of Pius IX, the political obscurantism of the clericals, the rise of miracle-mongering, the ignorance of the laity, the agnostic welcome of clerical domination for the masses, the fostering of a medieval philosophy. Passionately he writes of the efforts of the Modernists to bring the Church into touch once more with contemporary thought. Their failure he finds in the papal monarchy, in the rigidity imposed at Trent, and in the complete stagnation of Catholic thought.

"If the Church from the 13th century on had been able to preserve to Catholicism the pliancy and plasticity she had known up to the time when the Schoolmen took possession of her, and had the Trentine Fathers only not sterilized her by a decree of immobility which deliberately placed her outside and above association with religious life in the living of it, of which they were afraid, the distance between Catholicism and modern men would no doubt be less and it could be more easily bridged. It is too late now. . . . To the independent historian orthodox Roman Catholicism seems a phenomenon of the past, which long since reached the end of its evolution, a thing achieved, crystallized, dead. It may happen that a new religion may one day issue from it, that a life-principle of religious revival may well forth from its ruins, but as far as it is strictly speaking Catholicism, that is, as far as it is one of the definite historic forms of Christianity, its role seems to be virtually at an end in the world. [Page 72]Its hearth is still red but there is no more fuel, and the fire is slowly expiring, the chill of death upon it."

The much vaunted revival since the War M. Guignebert discounts. To men disillusionized in their social hopes and fallen into pessimism, the Church still offers consolation, balm for grief and anguish. "It is during periods of mental unrest that feeling triumphs, and the Church is a past-mistress in the art of embodying feeling in faith and belief." But she has made no impression on the alienated masses. Her present activity is not spontaneous, but rather the work of professional politicians. It has brought no real religious revival.

Protestantism receives short shrift. The Reformers remained dogmatists; their appeal to the Scriptures resulted in the multiplication of sects. But literal "Biblicism" is decaying, and in all sects the evolution of Protestantism is toward the abandonment of dogmatism and to a purely personal, individualistic religion. Liberal Protestantism has departed far from the essence of historical Christianity. "Frequently nothing is more difficult than to determine exactly what a Protestant believes. Generally, if not bound by the regrettable prejudices of a very mediocre culture, he sees in Christ but the Master, divinely inspired, of perfect morality and of the religion of the spirit; the Man from whom issues legitimately a humanity better than its pagan predecessor, rising toward an ideal set for her by Providence, becoming perfected through constant effort to walk in the way which the Lord has opened to her. The time has come when everyone carves out for himself under the label of Christi religion made to his own measure and to suit his personal reds." hen y a

The sectarian liberty of Protestant cults has allowed their more thoughtful adherents to avoid a deadly formal ritual and to escape from clerical psychasthenia. "As a result unity of belief among Protestants necessarily becomes dissolved in a mist of individualisms, but the Christian idea still dominates them all and is always vital in them; at any rate it continues to impregnate their moral and spiritual life; a state of things which may last almost indefinitely. In these circles, too, the authentic [Page 73]Christianity of the East has never existed, and it is just as great a mistake to believe that it will be found in the Bible as to look for it in the spirit of Rome. It must be understood, too, that the Master whom Liberal Protestants venerate and follow bears scarcely any more likeness to the Jesus of history than the Christ of the Catholics. At any rate, however, Protestantism has been able to avoid drawing itself into mortal combat with modern science and the modern mind, for to all practical intent it has modernized itself.

Yet indifferentism is growing in all the forms of Christian faith, and is as common in Protestant as in Catholic churches. "It is thus that all religions end, religions which, like living organisms, are born of a need, nourished upon death, die day by day of life, and finally lapse again into the eternal crucible." [Page 74]

BOOKS RECEIVED

The Intelligent Woman's Guide to Socialism and Capitalism, by George Bernard Shaw, Brentano's.

Europe, by Count Hermann Keyserling, Harcourt, Brace.

The League of Nations, by John Spencer Bassett, Longmans, Green.

The Other Side, by Struthers Burt, Scribner's.

The Money Illusion, by Irving Fisher, Adelphi.

Possibility, by Scott Buchanan, Harcourt, Brace.

Stream of History, by Geoffrey Parsons, Scribner's.

Building of Cultures, by Dixon, Scribner's.

History of European Liberalism, by Guido de Reggiero, Oxford.

The Pilgrimage of Buddhism, by Pratt, Macmillan.

The Tendency of History, by Adams, Macmillan.

Indian and Christian Miracles, by W. N. Brown, Open Court.

The Life of Protap Chunder Mozramdor, by Suresh Chunder Bose, Nababidhan Trust.

La Costituzione e l'evoluzione della meterea, by Professor P. Maglione.

The War Debts, An American View, by Philip Dexter and John Hunter Sedgwick, Macmillan.

Heading for the Abyss, by Prince Lichnowsky, Payson and Clarke.

The Wars of the Godly, by Maury, Robert M. McBride.

The Builders of America, by Ellsworth Huntington and Leon F. Whitney, William Morrow and Company.

Tolstoi, by Henry Bailey Stevens, Crowell.

The Truth About Evolution and the Bible, by Dr. and Mrs. F. Homer Curtiss, Curtiss Philosophic Book Company.

History of Mankind, by Hutton Webster, D. C. Heath.

Science in Search of God, by Kirtley F. Mather, Henry Holt.

Our Relations to the Nations of the Western Hemisphere, by Charles Evans Hughes, Princeton Univ. Press. [Page 75]

NOTES AND ANNOUNCEMENTS

WORLD UNITY is gratified to note that the essays by Kirtley F. Mather, published in the first volume of this magazine, and recently published in book form by Henry Holt & Co. under the title "Science in Search of God," was selected as the August choice of the Religious Book-of-the-Month Club. The manuscript of this work was prepared by Prof. Mather for the series of lectures he delivered at the Institute of World Unity during the summer of 1927. The book deserves the cordial recommendation of all WORLD UNITY readers.

The question of interracial marriage, raised by World Unity Forum some months ago, continues to receive consideration in the pages of liberal magazines. The editors of WORLD UNITY are glad to call attention to the article "When Races Intermarry" in the July 25th issue of The Nation. This article is thoroughly documented, and will be very informative to those who want facts rather than theoretical discussion.

The symposium on The Need of a Spiritual Element in Education in this issue is one of the most important contributions which WORLD UNITY MAGAZINE has so far been privileged to make to the universal ideal of world fellowship and peace. Read in conjunction with the articles on education published in WORLD UNITY last June, by Harry Allan Overstreet, William Lowe Bryan, Arnold H. Kamiat and Harry Walker Hepner, the symposium indicates both the nature and extent of the profound revolution working out its destiny in the modern soul. That the human spirit has been quickened is clear; that the mirror of reason is turning more and more to the realities above the manifestations of matter is no less obvious; but the question still to be answered is how soon will this new insight be able to ally itself with sufficient moral power to effect the necessary transformations in institutions and customs? Perhaps the keynote was struck by Dr. Nathaniel Schmidt during one of his lectures at the Institute of World Unity last summer when he remarked that young children should not be indoctrinated with religious teachings, but influenced to acquire the higher human virtues—sympathy, self-sacrifice and cooperation.

The religion taught those who have acquired the human virtues in childhood might then approach the highest ideals of science on the plane of reason, and of art on the emotional plane. [Page 76]

WORLD UNITY — A Monthly Magazine, A Summer School, A National Conference

FOR those whose acquaintance with World Unity begins with this issue some statement about its attendant activities and diversified contact with the public seems desirable.

While the purpose and scope of the magazine are explained in the Statement of Purpose published in each number, and the magazine carries no text unrelated to that general purpose, nevertheless in the Institute of World Unity and the public Conferences maintained by World Unity Foundation, the magazine has an additional significance and influence to offer individuals and organizations truly interested in the ideal of world fellowship and peace.

The relation of these activities to the contents of World Unity Magazine is that of action to thought—in and through the Institute and the Conferences, the principles underlying world unity are carried directly to the public in a popular form offering abundant opportunities for positive cooperation.

You may obtain programs and additional information by applying to World Unity Foundation, at the same address as the magazine. World Unity Magazine subscribers, it is believed, have more than a merely passive attitude toward the vast mental and social changes being interpreted by our Contributing Editors and authors from month to month.

While World Unity Magazine desires to increase greatly the number of its readers this coming year, it wants far more to arouse active workers in behalf of the universal Cause of international brotherhood and peace.

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