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[Page 237]

WORLD UNITY

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

JOHN HERMAN RANDALL, Editor HORACE HOLLEY, Managing Editor

Contributing Editors

(F. ANSLEY W. ATWOOD A. MENDELSOHN BARTHOLDY BARON BAUDRAN 1. DE BEAUFORT GERRIT A. BENEKER PIERRE BOVET EDWIN ARTHUR BURTT HARRY CHARLESWORTH No POON CHEW RUDOLPH I. COPPER BAYARD DODGE GEORGES DUHAMEL ANNA B. ECKSTEIN HAVELOCK ELLIS AUGUSTE FOREL CF. GATES SCHULZE GÄVERNITZ HELLMUTH VON GERLACH HERBERT ADAMS GIBBONS KAHLIL GIBRAN CHARLOTTE PERKINS GILMAN Jens W. GRAHAM A. EUSTACE HAYDON WILL HAYES YAMATO ICHICHASHI MORDECAI W. JOHNSON RUFUS M. JONES DAVID STARR JORDAN SMUEL LUCAS JOSHI ER: EST JUDET VLADIMIR KARAPETOPP P. W. Kuo RICHARD LEB 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 FRED MERRIFIELD MARJA GRUNDMANN-KOSCIENSKA KARIN MICHAELIS FRANK H. HANKINS HERBERT A. MILLER DHAN GOPAL MUKERJI IDA MÜLLER YONE NOGUCHI HARRY ALLEN OVERSTREET DEXTER PERKINS JOHN HERMAN RANDALL, JR. M. D. REDLICH FORREST REID PAUL RICHARD CHARLES RICHET TH. RUYSSEN NATHANIEL SCHMIDT WILLIAM R. SHEPHERD MARY SIBGRIST ABBA HILLEL SILVER ISIDOR SINGER DAVID G. STEAD AUGUSTUS O. THOMAS GILBERT THOMAS ISABELLA VAN METER RUSTUM VAMBARY WALTER WALSH HANS WERBERO 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 and in all other countries (postage included). THE WORLD UNITY PUBLISHING CORPORATION and its editors welcome correspondence on articles related to the aims and purposes of the magazine. Printed in U. S. A. Contents copyrighted 1929 by WORLD UNITY PUBLISHING CORPORATION. [Page 238]

I

MODERN natural science has attained a definite result, it is because there is no such thing as rest in the unequivocal and absolute sense in which this is conceived by unreflecting man, and because motion is the ultimate irreducible datum of all reality; the reason being that not matter, but force in the widest sense of the term is the ultimate reality in nature. . . . What, then, is the reason that permanent states in the face of this irreducibility of motion (as such) are not altogether impossible? The reason is that Nature manifests herself articulated in closed systems and that, taken as a whole, she possibly herself represents in the last analysis a closed totality. This compression of every system makes for that quality of harmonious order which, as far back as antiquity, caused the wonderment of the Greeks when contemplating the starry sky....

But every such tem an rall in so far as its own specific law determines, repre end. Of its own resources it is incapable of chang its motions are caught once and for all in a har cious circulation. The normal state of nature which mankind believes harmonious thus corresponds to what, from the point of view of life, is dead. . . . This view of things lifeless then furnishes, by way of contrast, the adequate view of life. Life is a something-beyond-nature. It is related to nature as meaning is to expression, suggesting, from the standpoint of the latter, an ever-renewed miracle.

—The Recovery of Truth COUNT HERMANN KEYSERLING [Page 239]

INTERNATIONAL LABOR

The Black Plague, devastating Europe in the Middle Ages, quickened the germs of modern economic life among the very graves of the myriad dead. At one blow the scarcity of labor destroyed the servitude which fastened the feudal serf to the home soil. From the right to choose work, and receive wage in coin recognized in all markets, the labor movement, as it is termed today, started its long march toward personal integrity and collective power.

The European War, like the plague, marked an era in the transformation of the worker's status. In countries as diverse as Russia and England, labor has achieved the supreme responsibility of national administration. Labor programs are no longer class aspirations or group philosophies alone—they have become public policy directing general affairs.

It would be difficult to exaggerate the international significance of the recent election in England, which placed representatives of labor at the head of the government. Overnight as it were, the basic conditions of the problem of disarmament have been altered. The decision has been wrested from professional statesmen and their technical advisers and placed in the hands of those who see and feel the larger human meanings of war and peace. From the international point of view, the essential virtue of labor is that it has no matured political tradition and therefore has produced no corps of administrators whose outlook and convictions bring to State, Army and Navy Departments the psychology of Napoleonic times. The possibilities of constructive cooperation which confront Mr. MacDonald and Mr. Hoover at this time seem greater than any which have existed for statesmen since 1919. [Page 240]Since war, and the burdens of armed peace, constitute the world’s gravest economic problem, the labor movement will have more than vindicated itself if, through a new international spirit manifested in England, France and Germany, it succeeds in breaking the present deadlock preventing true disarmament among the military powers. A world assured of enduring peace can produce sufficient surplus wealth in one generation to capitalize practically any program of cultural and material betterment for the poor, the distressed and downtrodden people of all lands.

“If European capitalism” has failed to eliminate the causes of war on account of the fact that its political administrators crystallize the state of mind of an individualism based on conditions now past, European “labor” may likewise fail to contribute a truly creative international economic program—the next step in civilization for a corresponding reason. That is, its corps of technical administrators is only too liable to remain inert within the closed limits of economic theories attempting to maintain or develop the world of Karl Marx.

Present-day political struggles mask the greater moral and intellectual battle which must be fought before humanity can achieve civilization on a world scale. Karl Marx repudiated the possibility of changes in the human spirit and substituted for positive human relations a system relating material things. In this system, man is negative to material relationships—his fundamental spiritual responsibility transferred to the external world. The process of socializing industry and trade must somehow be made subsidiary to the evolution of higher powers and nobler attributes in man. [Page 241]

THE WAY TO BROTHERHOOD

by JOHN HERMAN RANDALL

JOHN GALSWORTHY's well-known play, entitled "Strife," we have set before us the last stages of a long strike that has taken place in the Trenartha Tin Plate Works. The chief action of the play revolves around a series of conferences held between the Directors of the Company and a Committee of the workmen. In the course of the conferences the results of the long-drawn-out fight are made clearly plain. The workmen have been reduced to absolute want, and their families-- women and little children-are on the verge of starvation and suffering from the cold of a severe winter; many of them are sick as the direct result of their deprivations caused by the strike. The Company has lost fifty thousand pounds and the stockholders are clamoring for dividends; besides, competitors are cutting into the business seriously. The Chairman of the Board holds out doggedly for his policy of a fight to the finish. He presents all the old stock arguments why the demands of the workers must be refused, no matter what the cost to the Company or to the men and their families. The Chairman of the workmen's committee, on the other hand, refuses on behalf of the men to concede a single item in their demands. And thus the struggle comes once again to a deadlock, with the feeling of bitterness inflamed on both sides.

Just as this crisis has been reached, the news comes of the death of the wife of Roberts, the Chairman of the workmen's committee, from starvation and cold. In the revulsion of feeling that follows, both groups brush their respective leaders aside and come to terms, and the strike is settled. A moment later the secretary of the Board turns to the Trades Union official and says [Page 242]excitedly, "Do you know, sir-these terms, they're the very same we drew up together, you and I, and put to both sides before the fight began? All this all this-a woman dead, and the two best men broken and and what for?"

These last words of the play reveal with startling clearness the true meaning of all strife, whatever form it may take, with its tragic waste both material and spiritual-its losses that can never be made good. As the play makes clear, in every form of human strife there are always strong convictions on both sides-convictions made up of many elements-ideas, opinions, beliefs, so-called "principles," and these, all bound together by personal or partisan feelings; neither side willing to concede an inch, each holding out obstinately for the letter of the law and forgetting its spirit. And in all such strife, whether individual or industrial or international, does not reflection make us feel that a little more of the spirit of humanity, a little deeper understanding of the other side, a little less insistence on individual or collective rights in view of human duties, a little willingness to forgive and forget, in short, just an influx of human kindliness with the temper of heart and mind which it creates, would do more to banish our differences, to dissolve our prejudices, to bring our divided humanity together in the spirit of cooperation and fellowship, than anything else in all the world?

My plea, therefore, is for more of kindliness in all our human relations, if we are ever going to solve our great complex problems. This does not mean that I would disparage by a single iota the need of convictions in the tasks that lie before us. It is not less but vastly more conviction that is needed, but conviction clarified, broadened, deepened and brought into harmony with all the facts. We do assuredly need "more mind," that shall consist of a quickened intelligence far wider and better adapted to the problems we confront, with all their many implications and their far-reaching significance. But convictions, ideas, beliefs, however true they may be, can never become effective and will never lead to brotherhood unless they are suffused, permeated and vitalized by the spirit of human kindliness. It is [Page 243]convictions and kindliness, then, for which I plead, if we are to build that better world for which we yearn.

This is in no sense a new message; it is as old as religion. Every great prophet of religion has always laid the supreme emphasis upon love as the summum bonum of life. Jesus of Nazareth summed up the teachings of both the law and the prophets in the one word, love, and many of his followers have indeed enshrined love in the central citadel of their lives. St. Francis of Assisi, who has been called the most Christ-like man after Jesus, was the "slave of love." He lived as nearly the seless life as we can conceive; his love went forth freely to all men and women and little children, and even to the beasts of the field and the birds of the air. His entire life was devoted to service for others.

But St. Francis lived at a time when no man dared to believe that this world, as such, could be made any better. The world belonged to the Devil and in due time was bound to go to destruction; only the few within the Church would be saved. No one disputes the fact that St. Francis lived a beautiful and useful life, and his character has been, and is, an inspiration to countless others as an example of the way in which love can control and banish the selfish impulses of human nature.

But because of the limitations of his a St. Francis never dreamed that the world itself could be saved. He had no convictions that society could ever be transformed. He knew nothing about social theory and he never formulated a social program. He knew the secret of kindliness, but he knew nothing of the forces and factors that made society what it was, much less could he have conceived of any method or technic whereby they could be moulded and directed to higher ends. His love was a beautiful and an admirable thing, but it was shorn of its power in bringing to realization human brotherhood, because it lacked the other thing needed--the vision, the ideas, the convictions as to how the great end could be achieved.

This makes clear why organized religion has failed, up to the present, in the realization of human brotherhood. When we remember that social religion, in the sense that we use those [Page 244]words today, is a comparatively recent thing, and that the conviction that it is the business of religion to transform human society and not simply "to save" a few individual lives and see them safely through this wicked world to some distant heaven of bliss, has only just begun to grip some of the churches, and that, even now, our fundamentalist friends in all the churches still firmly believe that this is the Devil's world and can never be made any better, we can understand why human brotherhood still seems to tarry in the far distance.

Organized religion, to be sure, has professed to preach a Gospel of Love down through the centuries, but not always consistently; it has been so mixed up with a dogmatic teaching of creeds that always divide and of a sectarianism that inevitably separates, that its power has been largely vitiated. But it is even more clear today that unless love is translated into its social terms, unless we know what it means "to love our neighbor as ourselves" in a society like ours, unless the "love" that religion prescribes is applied intelligently to all the manifold relations of life, it tends to become merely a sentimental thing without depth or meaning. When we speak, therefore, of the "failure of organized religion," what we mean is that the churches have been long on talking about love, but short on practising it and, especially, in applying it to social relationships. In a word, organized religion has believed in love as a beautiful sentiment, at least in theory, but it has lacked the other thing—the vision, the ideas, the intelligence, the convictions as to how the principle of love could be translated into the life of society.

But if organized religion with its teachings of love has failed to transform society and usher in the brotherhood of man because it has never yet combined with its love the intelligent convictions as to how love might be made the basic principle for the reorganization of society, it is just as true that, again and again, the enunciation of clear and sound convictions as to what might be done to gain a better world has failed of fulfilment simply because the spirit of love to make them effective has been lacking in the hearts and minds of men. [Page 245]In 1795 Immanuel Kant published his famous essay on "Perpetual Peace." As Edwin D. Mead says: "Immanuel Kant's Perpetual Peace,' and his collateral writings, are the Magna Charta, the Declaration of Independence of the International World, its independence of that militarism, imperialism, and bastard patriotism' which constitute the original sin of nations and have kept mankind in hate, fear, suspicion, jealousy and eternal war.... Kant showed the world a century before Edith Cavell died for the truth, that 'patriotism' is not enough! He showed us, a century before Goldwin Smith declared it, that above all nations is humanity,' and that any statesman who does not make that principle the corner-stone of his policy is doomed to certain failure. The follies of a whole generation of Treitschkes and Bernhardis had been exposed and undermined in advance by Germany's own greatest thinker as by no other, showing for all who cared to understand, where militarism and absolutism inevitably lead; and his words are still written on the sky for all who will heed them."

As a reasonable and practical statement of principles that would make for world peace, most intelligent people would accept Kant's program. But as Kant himself proved in the Critique of Pure Reason, the rational by no means exhausts the whole man. The difficulty comes when we remember how many irrational factors there are in human nature—selfishness, greed, short-sightedness, inhumanity, etc., impulses and motives that cut directly across reason and logic. If we are ever to secure world peace the reasonable and logical principles must be combined with an intelligent technic adapted to the conditions of the age; but beyond these conditions there must be the awakening and education of the moral nature in man to the point where it is able to control all the lower impulses in men and nations, and thus furnish the great dynamic of kindliness and goodwill that must find expression if the principles that make for peace are to be effective. This is only an illustration of the ineffectiveness of sound convictions or true principles, simply because the atmosphere of kindliness in which alone they can be put into [Page 246]execution is absent. This is the reason that so many of our present-day convictions as to the way to peace fall short of realization, the will to make them effective is wanting because that temper of mind and heart in men and nations that we call kindliness seems to have vanished strangely from our life.

It certainly needs no fresh arguments to prove that kindliness on the part of men and nations is the greatest need of our age? Of "convictions," both true and false, we have enough and to spare. We are printing them in countless books and papers, we are talking them continuously from pulpit and platform; we are arguing, debating, discussing them on every street corner, we are shouting our particular shibboleths from the housetops, we enter into controversy with almost everyone we meet. But with all our ideas, beliefs, convictions, we seem to get no whither. We walk around in circles and come back to the place we started. Our "convictions" do not seem to get across" to others; we persuade few and convince none; and as a result, progress lags in all directions. What is the trouble? When you ask someone the question he shakes his head mournfully and replies, "I don't know. It's a strange age we are living in. It's talk, talk, talk—argue, argue, argue—but nothing doing; the springs of action seem to be paralyzed at their source."

But there is a simpler answer. You remember Matthew Arnold's definition of culture. He called it the combination of "sweetness and light"—the light of clear, full knowledge plus the temper of goodwill, the disposition of kindliness. When John Galsworthy was in this country the last time, in one of his public addresses he said that the trouble with this age was that we had forgotten to be gentlemen, we had lost the art of simple courtesy, we no longer knew how to be considerate of others, much less of their opinions. He said we were, often all unconsciously, rough, brutal, impatient, intolerant, cruel, in what we did to others and what we said about others; we no longer regarded gentleness as a virtue; and as a result, we were losing all those finer qualities of character that make the true gentleman or gentlewoman. Sir Rabindranath Tagore, the poet-phi- [Page 247]

THE WAY TO BROTHERHOOD

losopher of India, who recently visited in Milan, is reported to have told the Italians that Europe is troubled by a lack of love, that peace is something spiritual that grows in the heart and cannot be forced by command. At Turin his arrival was anticipated with much joy, but the people were bitterly disappointed when told by the authorities that he would not be allowed to speak because his doctrines smacked of Communism.

Bertrand Russell, who combines in a marked degree those qualities of culture which Matthew Arnold called "sweetness and light," sums it all up in his "Icarus," where he says: "Science has not given men more self-control, more kindliness, or more power of discounting their passions in deciding upon a course of action. It has given communities more power to indulge their collective passions. . . . The heart is as important as the head. By the 'heart' I mean for the moment, the sum-total of kindly impulses. Where they exist, science helps them to be effective; where they are absent, science only makes men more cleverly diabolic. . . . And so we come back to the old solution: only kindliness can save the world."

These are not the words of a sentimental religionist, but of a hard-headed philosopher who has given the world many books in which he emphasizes the "conviction" side of our present-day problems. He has striven as earnestly as anyone for the light," the knowledge, the technic that may make possible the realization of a larger measure of brotherhood in this world. But when he has given us all his opinions and theories, he comes back to the conclusion, that "only kindliness can save the world."

Are these men right in their attempts to diagnose the malady of our age? Is the lack of love, the absence of kindliness, the really fundamental obstacle to progress toward peace and tellowship? Let us think for a moment. The very word, love, has well-nigh lost its great meaning for this age. The war drove it out of most pulpits and banished it from most human hearts. To the majority of people it has been narrowed to the sphere of the home and the family. It is treason to speak of loving one's enemies; it is disgraceful to talk of love for those of another [Page 248]race; one loses standing if he looks with loving interest upon those of another class. To use the word love in connection with statesmen and rulers, or with the life of nations, or in regard to international readjustments, brings the smile of scorn to the lip or condemns one, as in the case of Tagore, as a communist. The word love no longer has a respectable standing in the larger life of men. Very few of us still believe in love as "the greatest thing in the world."

We do, however, cherish our "convictions"—often with a vengeance whether as conservatives or radicals, laborites or capitalists, republicans, democrats, socialists or communists, fundamentalists or modernists; but, in all our varied partisanships we talk and argue and often fairly shout our convictions in anything but the spirit of kindliness. We carry our convictions as if they were chips on our shoulders, and we strut around defying others to knock them off. In like manner we regard the convictions of others, who may differ from us, as chips which we must knock off. We seldom argue a question solely on its merits, but we tend to become personal and soon begin heaping abuse upon individuals. We find it hard even to talk about peace without becoming belligerent in our pacifism. A hostile note creeps into all our discussions. We become suspicious of others. and we end by questioning the sincerity of all those who do not agree with us.

We are consumed by a social discontent, but as Glenn Frank has remarked, we shall never get anywhere until our social discontent becomes a scientific discontent. His meaning becomes clear when we remember that the wrongs of today are not so much due to individuals as to institutions. So long as we are satisfied to remain merely "socially discontented," our discontent is pretty apt to vent itself in personal spleen and abuse of those whom we regard as responsible for the injustices of society. This spirit, in turn, reacts on the one who harbors it, creating bitterness of heart and anger of mind against individuals as such, and by just that much, blinding one’s eyes to the real question at issue. [Page 249]When we begin to see, however, that the actual trouble lies in the maladjustments of our form of civilization, of which all individuals are the victims, and that the only solution of the problems involved lies in a scientific approach to these problems in a disinterested and dispassionate attempt to find out what is wrong, why it is wrong, and how the wrong can best be righted in justice to all, then our bitterness and anger disappear in the earnest and intelligent effort to solve the problems scientifically. It is the difference between the man whose car breaks down and who is content to walk around it and talk loud and angrily about the accident, the loss of time, inconvenience, etc., and the mechanic at the garage, who doesn’t lose his temper but quietly crawls under the car, finds out what is the matter, makes the proper adjustment and then starts it running again. Social discontent, for the most part, is talking loud, getting angry and heaping abuse upon people, while scientific discontent is studying the problem presented and then finding the best solution, but keeping your temper meanwhile. It is the difference between trying to solve our social problems in the spirit of kindliness, or in the spirit of hostility, of bitterness and of anger; and today, it is this last spirit, unfortunately, that for the most part governs our lives.

The influence of kindliness in the adjustment of all our human relationships must be self-evident to all. It is kindliness alone that creates the atmosphere in which prejudices are overcome, misunderstandings are dissolved, differences are adjusted and agreements are reached. Even more important, kindliness brings the best in human nature to the surface and gives it a chance to find expression, in spite of all the selfishness and greed to which we are prone. How many times in a group of angry, prejudiced people, one kindly person, with patience and tact, has been able to bring harmony out of discord and thus achieve desired results!

But again, kindliness is the power that breaks down opposition. Bertrand Russell suggests that if M. Poincaré had taken a kindly attitude toward the Ruhr miners, Lord Curzon to the [Page 250]Indian Nationalists, Mr. Smuts to the natives of what was German South West Africa, or the American Government to its political prisoners, the world might be leagues nearer to peace and brotherhood than it is today. As we look back upon subsequent events, it is not difficult to visualize a very different kind of Peace Conference than the one that sat at Versailles. We can, at least, imagine a Conference, in possession of all the facts, that should have sought in the spirit of kindliness to heal the open wounds of war, to do justice to all the peoples, great and small, and to pave the way for a United States of Europe. Do you think that if this had been the atmosphere at Versailles, we should be facing the conditions that exist in Europe today? The opposition and bitternesses and hatreds we now face would have long since vanished. You say, "that is too much to expect of human nature, especially of political states." Perhaps, and yet if Bertrand Russell is right, it is only kindliness exercised by nations in their dealings with each other that will ever save the world. It must come some day, but it will only come when the moral evolution of men and nations has gone much farther than at present.

But lastly, it is kindliness that furnishes the dynamic without which the will to achieve is powerless. We have our convictions, our ideals, our theories, yes, and our practical programs too—but we seem to be able to push them just so far and then they stick at something, and we fail of achievement. I venture to think that we have, all about us today, sufficient conviction and intelligence to take the first steps, at least, toward peace and world reorganization, and I dare to believe that there are enough men and women in all the countries who are ready for these first steps and eager to put them into effect. But here is the difficulty: The really progressive people in all lands are not united; they are separated by so many things—race, religion, party, class, etc. If on occasion a few of us do manage to get together we immediately begin falling out among ourselves over what is usually some mere technicality that has little to do with the main issue. And so our dreams come to naught. If there were [Page 251]more of kindliness in our hearts and in our personal attitude to one another, we would minimize our differences instead of magnifying them as we do now, and together we might indeed proceed to translate our fundamental convictions into action.

It is the propulsive power of a new affection" that the world needs most today, that will lift us out of the "rough, brutal, intolerant, inhumane" state into which John Galsworthy says we have fallen, and then flood our lives with the temper of kindliness in our attitude toward all mankind.

Let me illustrate briefly the way this spirit has worked in human history whenever it has been given a chance. In the old Russia, we know the attitude taken by the government toward the progressive and radical thinkers. It was the policy of suppression and repression; it involved the spy system, imprisonment, Siberia, death. This policy-the opposite of kindliness-led directly to the revolution of 1905. No one questions but that it was responsible for the form that the revolution took in Russia in 1918. The iron-hand policy of the Russian Government through many years had aroused an opposition, engendered a bitterness and created a hatred in the hearts of the people that waited only the opportunity to revenge itself on the oppressor. And when the time was ripe, the outraged victims of such intolerable tyranny struck back and destroyed the old régime root and branch. The old government knew no kindliness for the people, and Russia today is paying the penalty for the past of cruelty and wrong.

Take England, on the other hand. During the same period the growing power of labor in England was bringing that country steadily nearer to revolution. But in accordance with her long-established policy of toleration, there was little or no disturbance, no attempt at ruthless repression, no wholesale arrests or imprisonments. And when the revolution came and Ramsay MacDonald, with his labor cabinet, took over the reins of government of the British Empire, there was no disorder, not a drop of blood was shed, and the conservatives gracefully accepted this radical change in the ordering of their national affairs. In [Page 252]England, at least in its home policy, we have a good illustration of the way in which great and radical changes in political and social life can be brought about without force or violence, through a certain kindliness of temper manifested. by both sides to the peaceful struggle.

The opium conferences held in the fall of 1924 at Geneva furnish another illustration of the need of just human kindliness in the solution of such moral problems in the world's life. As we followed the proceedings of these conferences in the papers we noted how the first conference ended in a deadlock, and how the second conference that opened January 12th at first faced the same deadlock again. At the first conference, with England. France, Holland and Portugal all saying that they couldn't possibly stop opium smoking in their colonies because of the smuggled opium from China, Japan rose up and showed these nations a plan which is bringing excellent results in Formosa, which they might all follow if they honestly wished to end the evil. The East teaching the West, and, more humiliating still. appealing to the West in the name of all the great Christian principles, decency, humanity and fair play!

As Ellen La Motte, writing from Geneva, said: "The opium problem is so vast and complicated, its roots go so deep into the social, economic, financial and political fabric of so many countries, that with the best will in the world, it is tremendously difficult to solve. But without that will, it is insoluble. The first requisite is the attitude toward drugging. As long as any nation, large or small, regards drugging as something to be continued, condoned, excused and defended, no progress can be made. Note, the "first requisite is the attitude toward drugging." This involves the human rather than the economic attitude, the unselfish concern for the well-being of men and women rather than the selfish motive of profit-making, in a word, it means the temper and spirit of kindliness on the part of the nations that must solve this world problem.

The same principle applies to all problems which the nations must increasingly discuss together. In these coming conferences. [Page 253]can the human phase of the problems involved be put first and foremost? Can self-interests be subordinated to the larger interests of humanity as a whole? Can selfishness and greed be replaced by unselfishness and the spirit of kindliness? Back of all other questions of social theory, of technic and method, behind all our intellectual convictions of what ought to be, lie these still deeper questions that challenge the leaders of this and the coming generations. These are not new questions; in fact, they are so old that to many they seem to have lost their meaning. But old as they are, they are the burning questions of our age none the less, and we ignore them only at our peril. We must come to see far more clearly, more widely, more deeply, with "the eyes of the head," but pray God! the "eyes of our hearts" may be opened before it is too late, that we may come to feel our common humanity and so learn the great art of being kind.

If it is true that "only kindliness can save the world," the twofold problem becomes simply this: How can we produce kindliness in ourselves, and how can we awaken it in others? If we can answer the first, we have answered the second, for persistent kindliness invariably begets kindliness in others, just as inhumanity begets inhumanity. In the long run we get what we give, no more, no less. How then can we develop the temper and spirit of kindliness in ourselves? We mu believe first of all in the possibility of such development in ourselves and in all men. In a recent address Felix Adler calls attention to the fact that the Freudians have much to tell us about the subconscious but when they speak of things subconscious they generally mean the primitive things, the instinctive things, the things which we share with the creatures beneath us in the scale of life. He then proceeds to affirm his conviction that there is also present in the subconscious something of which the Freudians are not in the habit of speaking, "that is, a divine power-hidden, latent, apparent only here and there on the surface, but present in all men. That power I call the spiritual possibility. And by spiritual possibility I mean definitely the possibility of responding to the idea of perfection." The better human world for which we yearn [Page 254]is a world in which all human beings will respond to the ideal of kindliness as the few eminent ones do now. It is our faith in the possibility of a kindlier world that calls into being the latent kindliness in our own natures, and through us, in all with whom we come in contact.

But on the basis of this faith we must resolve upon a course of rigid self-discipline. It will not be so easy as, Bertrand Russell rather playfully suggests, through the injecting into one's vein's some substance yet to be discovered which will flood one's life with benevolence toward his fellows. It will only be accomplished as all the instinctive impulses of selfishness and greed and hatred are brought under subjection to the higher and nobler impulses of unselfishness and kindliness, so that the higher nature in us shall come at last to dominate the lower-that which we have inherited from the animal and the savage. Only thus do we become truly human; it is alone through such discipline that we develop our divine possibilities. To be satisfied with less than this, is to surrender the greatest opportunity that life affords-that of becoming one's true, one's ideal self.

With acknowledgment to Dodge Publishing Company. [Page 255]

THE WORLD WE LIVE IN

Men live less and less in geographical and more and more in spiritual communities. The involuntary elements of existence tend to be limited to the regional area, the voluntary elements find increasing opportunity of self-expression through association of likeminded people selected out of the entire population by identity of interests and ideals. In this department, World Unity Magazine will publish each month a brief description of some important modern movement, voluntary in character and humanitarian in aim, believing that knowledge of these activities is not only essential to the world outlook, but also offers the true remedy for the sense of isolation and loneliness which has followed the breakdown of the traditional local neighborhood.

THE CHINA INSTITUTE IN AMERICA

by EUGENE SHEN, PH.D. Secretary

IT IS A generally recognized fact that the history of Chinese-American relationship has been marked by a sustained feeling of friendliness. Such mutual good feeling, however, should be supported by a broader understanding of each other's culture and institutions. This need is at least partly met by the creation of the China Institute in America.

The China Institute came into existence in May, 1926, as the result of a resolution adopted by the Trustees of the China Foundation for the Promotion of Education and Culture. This was created in 1924 to administer the funds from the second remission of the American portion of the Boxer Indemnity. Aside from grants to various universities and other educational organizations, the China Institute, like the Metropolitan Library and the Department of Social Research, is an enterprise which the Foundation has directly undertaken. The general aim of the Institute is to promote a closer educational and cultural relationship between China and the United States. As conceived by the Board of Trustees of the Foundation, there are four lines of activities which the Institute should undertake: [Page 256]1. The dissemination of information concerning Chinese an American education. 2. The promotion of a closer relationship between Chinese and American educational institutions through the exchange of professors and students. 3. Assisting Chinese students in America in their educational pursuits, and also helping American students interested in the study of things Chinese. 4. The stimulation of general interest in America in the study of Chinese culture.

The Board of Trustees elected as the Director of the Institute Dr. P. W. Kuo, who has been deeply interested in the promotion of friendly relations between China and America. During the two and a half years of its existence, the Institute has been quite fortunate in securing the cooperation of various Chinese and American organizations as well as individuals in its effort to realize the aims for which it was established. Its activities are best summarized according to the four divisions as already out-lined.

(1) In the first place, the Institute has acted as a clearing house for inquiries concerning Chinese and American education. As far as possible, such inquiries are answered by giving printed material and furnishing references to other sources. An outstanding event which may be mentioned under this topic is the organization in 1926 of the Chinese educational exhibits in the Sesqui-Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia. The exhibits were administered by the Institute upon the request of the Chinese National Association for the Advancement of Education which was responsible for the collection and sending of the material. The exhibits attempted to convey to the American public the idea of the continuity of Chinese culture, of the rapid progress in modern education, and of the evolution of a new Chinese civilization as a result of contacts with the West. It received considerable attention from visitors and called forth not a few favorable com ments. The International Jury awarded a Grand Prize to Chin "for the development of a comprehensive system of public educa [Page 257]

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tion," and the Institute received a Medal of Honor for "its unique and original presentation of the Chinese Educational Exhibits." Diplomas were also awarded to the thirty-five educational institutions and organizations which collaborated in furnishing the material for the exhibits.

(2) For the past several years educational work in China has been carried on under such adverse conditions that the establishing of exchange professorships with American universities is obviously impracticable. Nevertheless, the China Foundation was able to secure Professor J. G. Needham of Cornell University to lecture and direct research in biology, and the Chinese National Association for the Advancement of Education invited Professor W. J. Kilpatrick of Teachers College, Columbia University, to make a lecture tour on education. A number of other American educators who visited China were extended assistance by the Institute. Similar assistance was extended to a number of Chinese educators visiting America. During the present year, we have in America Mr. Y. C. James Yen, Director of the National Association for the Mass Education Movement, and Professor William Hung of Yenching University, who is with the School of Chinese Studies at Harvard University. Dr. Hu Shih has been offered the Haskell Lectureship from the University of Chicago for 1929. The Institute has also assisted several American universities in securing instructors in their departments of Chinese.

(3) In regard to Chinese students in America, the Institute has also tried to be of assistance in a number of ways. Considerable correspondence has been carried on to facilitate the admission of Chinese students in American colleges and universities, to give introductions and testimonies, to assist advanced students to secure opportunities for practical experience, and to adjust difficulties which sometimes arose with the immigration authorities. The Institute also participated in the administration of a loan fund which was specially created for emergency aid to Chinese students. Assistance to American students interested in Chinese studies chiefly consisted in answering inquiries and furnishing references to original sources of information. [Page 258](4) The general public in America has been very much interested in the study of China’s conditions, especially those relating to political and international affairs. The Institute received a large number of requests for speakers on these topics. Such requests were as far as possible complied with, either by members of the Institute staff or by others recommended for their special qualifications. Dr. Kuo has, since the establishment of the Institute, addressed many audiences in different parts of the country. Such efforts cannot but create a clearer and more sympathetic understanding of China by the American people and the results must be very far-reaching. Further American interest in the study of Chinese culture is shown by the recent establishment of the Harvard-Yenching Institute of Chinese Studies made possible by the action of the trustees of the estate of the late Charles M. Hall. A number of Americans and Chinese have expressed their desire to create some organization on the Pacific Coast to cooperate with the Institute, and students in the University of California interested in China are organizing a club for the study of Chinese culture. The Institute has recently undertaken to make a survey of the American colleges and universities in regard to courses of instruction which relate to China’s cultural background as well as China’s present conditions.

Besides the activities outlined above under the four divisions, there are items in the program of the Institute which do not relate to any one of the four lines in particular. At irregular intervals, the Institute published a number of bulletins. One of these, Bulletin 4, is a list of “Theses and Dissertations by Chinese Students in America,” which includes five hundred sixty-eight titles. About one hundred and fifty additional titles have since been collected, including both old ones which came in too late to be printed in the list and new ones which were completed since its publication. Another, Bulletin 5, is a list of “One Hundred Selected Books on China,” collected and annotated for reference for the general public. Demands for this list have been so many that a revised edition will have to be issued in the near future.

In attempting to realize its aims and to carry out its activities, [Page 259]

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the Institute endeavors to cooperate with organizations having similar interests and purposes. It has received assistance and cooperation from such organizations as the Institute of International Education, the International Institute, the China Society of America, the American Friends of China Society, The Institute of Pacific Relations, and the World Federation of Education Associations. A plan is now being contemplated for a closer cooperation with the Institute of Pacific Relations. The Institute, of course, is also cooperating with organizations in China, such as the National Association for the Advancement of Education, the National Committee of Chinese Y. M. C. A.'s, and the World's Chinese Students Federation. In the Second Biennial Meeting of the World Federation of Education Associations held in Toronto, August 7-12, 1927, the Institute cooperated with the Chinese National Association for the Advancement of Education in organizing a delegation to represent China at the various groups in the meeting.

In various other ways, the Institute has attempted to be generally useful in promoting a better relationship between China and the United States. On several occasions the Institute has lodged protest against certain motion-picture filins which present wrong ideas of China to the American public, resulting in revisions of the films. It has also acted as a representative for the China Foundation, and assisted in disseminating information and making investigation in the United States. It made a survey of the situation preliminary to the creation of certain fellowships by the China Foundation.

The Institute has so far remained a direct enterprise of the China Foundation. At the last meeting of the Trustees of the Foundation in June, Dr. Kuo submitted a proposal whereby the Institute might in time become self-supporting and render a greater service. A membership would be created, and a board of directors with a secretariat would be established. The Trustee < of the China Foundation have already accepted the recommendation and have authorized Dr. Kuo to work out the details with the Director of the Foundation. [Page 260]If this plan will materialize and if sufficient funds can be raised, larger quarters or a special building will be secured and the program of the Institute can be broadened and more vigorously carried out. The projected plan is to include the following items of activities:

1. To promote: 1. The exchange of professors between Chinese and American educational institutions. 2. The creation of fellowships and scholarships for Chinese to study in American colleges and universities. 3. The creation of fellowships and scholarships for Americans to study in China. 4. The study of Chinese culture in American educational institutions. 5. Lectures on Chinese subjects. 6. Conferences on problems relating to Chinese-American relationship. 7. Exhibits of Chinese art, education, and other phases of Chinese civilization. 8. Better publications, plays, pictures, etc., relating to China.

II. To maintain: 1. A reference library and research department. 2. An information service. 3. A lecture bureau. 4. A travel service. 5. An appointment agency to serve Chinese organizations seeking proper American trained men. 6. A student section to promote the intellectual and social welfare of the Chinese students in America. 7. A section to promote the welfare of Chinese residents in America. 8. An American section to keep in touch with Americans who either have been to China or are otherwise interested in China, and to seek their cooperation. [Page 261]

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III. To publish:

1. Monographs on special subjects relating to China and Chinese culture.

2. A periodical devoted to shorter articles, discussions, and items of current interest relating to China and Chinese culture.

A program like this of course cannot be carried out all in one day. But, judging from the interest shown by so many people in the present Institute, it will undoubtedly receive the most hearty support in various quarters. Dr. Kuo has consulted many prominent people both in this country and in China in regard to this proposed program, and has received much encouragement.

It is also within the scope of the plan to establish an American Institute in China to reciprocate the work of the China Institute in America. American friends of China like Dr. Paul Monroe, Dr. Edward H. Hume, and others, are very much interested in the creation of such an institute, which will certainly also receive support from people in China. The two institutes can then intimately cooperate with each other in their common task of promoting a better understanding between the two peoples on both sides of the Pacific. [Page 262]

SCIENCE, PHILOSOPHY AND RELIGION

by EDWIN ARTHUR BURTT Department of Philosophy, University of Chicago

IV. THE EFFECT OF SCIENCE UPON PHILOSOPHY

One will not survey the history of science long before noting the heightened emphasis laid in each succeeding age of scientists on the importance of formulating hypotheses and laws in mathematical terms. So far as ancient science was concerned, outside of the pure mathematical disciplines of arithmetic and geometry, only a few meagre branches were mathematical in form, of which the most consequential were astronomy and optics. A handful of theorems in mechanics might be included in the list. Today it is evident that all science strives to articulate itself in a mathematical frame as far as it can. In the early period of modern science physics was revolutionized by the verification of a few mathematical relations in the motion of physical bodies; Newton's law of gravitation is the outstanding example. Soon a quantitative structure became central in the foundations of chemistry, and in the nineteenth century biological knowledge moved forward by leaps and bounds whenever, as in the case of Mendel's laws of inheritance, a mathematical relation offered the key to an intriguing biological process.

In our day it is the social sciences which exemplify the tendency most notably. Contrast their present form with the social science that functioned in the thinking of ancient or medieval students. The most transparent difference will surely be found in the place of statistics and coefficients of correlation in the statements of verified discovery presented by modern social [Page 263]

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scientists. Now these technics are nothing but ways of putting in quantitative form facts and relations that lack the universality which the exact sciences have often been able to establish. The difference between a statistical statement about marriage and the law of heat is that the former records just such a number of people in a given community as entering the marriage relation in a given time, while the latter states that all cases of change of heat are cases of transformed motion after a certain quantitative pattern. The difference between a correlation of growth in height with growth in intelligence and the relation between mass and distance in the formula of gravitation is that the latter is universal and unqualified while the former attempts to put in quantitative form the percentage of universality revealed by the relation. And one of the avowed motives behind the program of the behaviorists is that by concentrating upon what individuals do in their reaction to stimuli rather than upon mystic revelations from within it is possible to introduce methods of measurement and thus state the reaction in mathematical terms.

Why this expanding craze for mathematics in science? A liberal part of the answer is found in the need of science for exactitude. Where a fact or relation is dressed in loose qualitative terms we cannot make the confident use of it for further understanding or for practical control that is our reward when the statement is given mathematical precision. The ancients knew, for example, that the motion of a falling body was one of acceleration, but not knowing the mathematical rate of acceleration they had no suggestive basis for relating such motion to that of the planets, as Newton did, and showing that the latter were really falling bodies obeying the same law. Nor, of course, without such additional knowledge would it have been possible to manage with accuracy such practical engines as the piledriver or to determine the range of a gun at a given angle. And in social science the term probability could be given no precise meaning nor could the enterprise of insurance companies be sanely justified if statistical methods of stating facts were not at hand.

Beyond this concrete value of the more detailed understanding [Page 264]and confident control made possible by this quest for exactitude in science, there is, as in the case of universality and tentativeness, a broader human significance due to the pressure of the emphasis on men’s attitudes and character.

How vehement and how sadly distorting in its outcomes is the ubiquitous human tendency to let the wish be father to the thought has been illustrated in the preceding chapter. Now experience shows that it is almost impossible to minimize or correct this tendency unless we make conscious use in all our thinking of those ideas which are most objective and least perverted by emotion and prejudice. These are just the ideas of number, of quantitative relationship. We may argue interminably as to which of two great works of art is the more beautiful but there seems no way, in such questions, of fully discounting the variations of personal emotional response. Why do we not lapse into the same bewilderment in questions of distance as well as of beauty? Because distance is a mathematical notion; when it is involved we leave debating for measurement and the question is settled to the satisfaction of any honest enquirer. One cannot argue with fairly collected figures. If beauty were a quantitative idea, should we not do the same in esthetic matters? Eagerness to apply mathematics everywhere in science is thus an aspect of the desire to secure results that transcend individual biases and are socially acceptable; it is that desire expressing itself in the form of utter candor and strict intellectual integrity. This moral quality of science it was that most strongly seized upon Huxley in his essays on the value of science. When one informs me not merely that a certain thing is so, but that precisely thus much of it has been observed to be so or that it has been seen to be so in just such a number of cases, I glean that the statement is not the product of emotional dogmatism, but attests a sincere, careful, and patient effort to square preconceived bias with an objective study of the matter, I see in it also a willingness to put the outcome in such a guise as will enable later investigators to use it to the full in distilling a still more exact result based or more complete observation. It reflects honest cooperation in the enter [Page 265]prise of knowledge as against dogmatic haste to mouth broad generalities without qualification. Emotional pressure on our beliefs leads so easily in all of us to a strain of pretentious hypocrisy that a weapon by which its effects can be annulled gains high value in scientific research.

It would not be wholly gracious to religion to say that by reason of its dogmatism and its will to subordinate lucid thinking to emotional absorption its influence has on this point been thrown in the contrary direction to that of science, because integrity has often been a high religious virtue along with submissive faith in tradition. The reason why religion has not been able to stand squarely for the former is, however, bared in the work of science; one cannot combine it with passive acceptance of traditional ideas. But its tremendous human value as against the latter is patent when we note that the same considerations arising from our practical needs which enforce the desirability of dependable knowledge enforce likewise the desirability of stating that knowledge in exact terms. Here again it is science that has pushed into the foreground a virtue, hitherto ambiguously regarded, that must be made central in human character if the more enduring satisfaction of our needs shall be realized.

But so much analysis of what has been termed the ideal of science ought to suffice to clarify and justify the thesis of the introductory chapter. Before we turn to the definite corollaries that ensue for the problem of religion let us face more fully a question broached in preliminary fashion in the opening chapter and answered in the second so far as touches the implications of universal law. What confidence may we have that these values of tentativeness and exactitude which underlie the procedure of science do not constitute arbitrary and evanescent vagaries, but express ends deeply rooted in human needs?

As concerns the bearing of tentativeness on the problems of religion, answer to this question is left to the following chapter. But it will help us reach a general point of view on the question if we consider the effect of science on modern philosophy. It is the ambitious task of philosophers to attempt in a more persistent [Page 266]way than others to "see life clearly and see it whole." Whether any of them comes very near the ideal expressed in this now classic phrase, at least because it is their especial function to pursue such a goal it may be legitimately assumed that they are more apt than other folk to glimpse the more momentous issues within the changing trends of their time. It is for this reason that the repeated emphasis of philosophers in one century may reveal to a keen eye what are destined to be the prevailing beliefs and attitudes of the next. The essence of medieval life was prophesied by the increasing tendency in the later ancient philosophy to appeal to a divine being as the source of all good and the standard of all truth. Likewise the chief tendencies of the modern period to date are clearly glimpsed in the Renaissance philosophers whose visions came to full clarity in men like Bacon and Descartes. Accordingly it ought to be possible by examining the trend of contemporary philosophy to test the power and promise of the ideal of science; is philosophy more and more emphasizing the characteristics we have been expounding, or is it passing them by as transitory and superficial?

Well, the two philosophical currents which will be most generally acknowledged as growing in influence today are those termed pragmatism and realism. We shall attempt a brief analysis of the contemporary philosophical situation and see whether it bears a verifying relation to the conclusion reached in probing the scientific spirit.

The distinctive purpose of philosophers, it was said, is to see life clearly and see it whole. If we ponder the results of this attempt at synoptic understanding, however, we soon discover that very different ideas are supposed by different philosophers to constitute such understanding and test its attainment. Fundamental disagreements among philosophers are proverbial. This indicates that one thinker does not have the same thing in mind by "understanding the universe" as the next thinker does, and if our analysis in chapter three of what happens in an attempted explanation of anything be recalled, a ready reason for this variation will appear. This lies in the fact that our explanatory [Page 267]activity is necessarily affected by dominant interests which differ in different individuals. If we would grasp, then, what philosophers are really doing when they try to understand life as a whole we must penetrate the motives ruling their thinking and accounting thus for the radically different ways in which they interpret what is supposedly the same object.

Prior to the present generation the philosophy most relished in the western world has been idealism. This way of interpreting the world assumes diverse forms in detail, of course, but there is a core of unity in all these forms which on account of its powerful and long-continued appeal it highly behooves us to appreciate.

As just suggested, the way to win this appreciation is to probe the controlling motives of idealism, that is, to bring into the open what idealists implicitly if not explicitly take to be the essential purpose of philosophy.

Fortunately, some idealists have themselves been quite conscious of the need of dislodging for scrutiny such underlying assumptions of purpose. Consider a recent statement by a well-known idealist.

Says Professor Hoernlé in the introductory chapter of his Idealism As a Philosophy: "There is a deep-seated need in the human mind, the roots of which strike far beneath all other needs and interests. This is the need to feel at home in the universe. From this source spring all philosophies and all religions, though it is only in the most highly developed philosophies and religions that we have become reflectively conscious of this need and of what it demands for its satisfaction. It is a need which at once demands to understand the universe and to approve,-nay, to love it. It wants at once truth and perfection. It wants what men mean when they say 'God.'"

Professor Hoernlé evidently assumes here that the effective push in philosophical inquiry is the one behind most of our serious thinking prior to the advent of modern science. The radical need of man, as he sees it, is a sense of unshakeable certainty, of basking in full possession of ideas so firmly grounded in the structure of things that we need never fear their loss of validity and [Page 268]hence need never waver in our loyal devotion to them. It would be superfluous to point out the violent contradiction between this attitude and the thoroughgoing tentativeness of the scientific mind, at least if either be believed universally legitimate.

Now the fact that religion has continued to function in the modern world as a powerful intellectual as well as general cultural force accompanying the growth of science, may help to account for the fact that idealism has remained a popular and influential philosophy down to the present generation. But so vigorous is the growth of pragmatic and realistic tendencies today that among the younger philosophers who begin to engage attention in America there is hardly an idealist to be found, and in slightly lesser degree the same tendency is apparent in other countries. What is the significance of this fact?

If we uncover what pragmatists and realists are trying to do in their philosophical speculations we shall see the indelible stamp of the purpose of science as the latter has been described in the preceding pages, but these philosophies have been influenced in different ways, each of very great concern.

Both pragmatism and realism are united in a common and basic opposition to idealism. In the broadest meaning of realism, which such opposition furnishes, both are realistic. They would join in a vigorous denial of Professor Hoernlé's definition of the fundamental purpose of philosophy and in a deep-seated distrust of the philosophical premise of the attitude there expressed. The purpose of philosophy, they would say, is to understand the world, but not to insist beforehand that this understanding must polish it into a scene of perfection and consequently render it an object of love or worship. Such precommitment to an optimistic interpretation both would regard as highly dangerous, since it might easily plunge us in intellectual dishonesty. It might encourage one to blind himself to those aspects of experience which involve evil, pain, and ugliness, or at least commit him to a too facile justification of them as always transient and always issuing in some more durable good. The philosopher's duty is to face the event without any such moral or religious bias so far as it can [Page 269]

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possibly be quenched. In short, just as modern science had to dismiss as irrelevant the appeal to final causes before it could really get under way in the exact and objective interpretation of nature (which means, as we saw, that it had to free its thinking from the harassing assumption that everything that happened took place for the sake of some good), so these contemporary philosophies claim freedom for our thinking in general from the same kind of appeal; they are convinced that unless it is resolutely abolished there is the same danger of a suborned and hence untrustworthy metaphysic that threatened three hundred years ago a traditionalist, unverifiable, and hence not confidently applicable science. Philosophy, like science, must promise no final comfort for human cravings. Sound speculation, accordingly, from their standpoint, does not seek at-homeness in the universe except in the very limited sense that exact understanding always yields a greater touch of familiarity in dealing with its objects than was present before. It may combine this feeling of familiarity with a posture of complete neutrality as regards the ultimate issue between optimism and pessimism, or even with a staunch if futile opposition to the universe instead of reverent worship.

Pragmatists and realists thus place unbounded faith in the feature of scientific method which consists in extruding from our explanatory thinking a bias toward a genial result. The notion that philosophy must not only satisfy our desire to understand but also other vibrant interests, can and should be routed. All our thinking, on the most ultimate problems as well as those with which empirical science deals, must be purged of this original sin, on pain of forfeiting the impartiality which is always a part of its aim and giving rise to what may prove illusory confirmation of extra-intellectual hopes. In what way and how far this faith is justified we shall ask in due time; at present the vital point is to see vividly its continuity with the growth of scientific method in modern times.

Beyond this focus of their common opposition to the cheery assumption of idealism pragmatists and realists tend more or less to part company. [Page 270]The fundamental motive of pragmatism is to universalize the tentativeness, the readiness for continued change and growth, which as we saw in the last chapter is one of the pervasive characters of scientific thinking. For pragmatism the realm of knowledge as well as the world of reality is always and essentially incomplete. Time is strenuously real, in its obvious and universal character of creation, of the ceaseless production of novelty. Nothing is fixed, all is process. At every moment old things are passing away and new things are coming to be. The pragmatist distrusts any distinction between the world of human experience and any supposed world beyond it. If experience is eternally changing, then reality is changing, for reality is experience. If human knowledge is never final, but in process of constant enlargement and self-correction, where lies the warrant for postulating a being who is actually omniscient and can accordingly learn nothing new, or a realm of meanings eternally fixed? Not only, so holds the pragmatist, is it wise to surrender the craving for certainty at the points where science has already renounced it in favor of frank readiness for novelty; this attitude is the only judicious one in all our thinking. Become adventuresome; abandon the attempt to hold fast to your neat intellectual abodes and strike out into the wilderness of reflective discovery. It is always more important to uncover a better idea than to hold fast to even the best one that past achievement has captured.

Pragmatism has already achieved such vigorous and semi-popular influence that it has created a supporting atmosphere for itself in contemporary thinking. Accordingly a very brief treatment ought to suffice in its case, and we shall turn at once to a slightly more extended analysis of realism. This trend in contemporary philosophy has not achieved any such popular influence, and for reasons that will soon be apparent.

The realist, in the main, follows science at a distant point from that seized upon as central in the speculations of pragmatists. It is rather the exactitude of science and its hobby for mathematical articulation that seem to him to express the values that philosophy needs to promote. [Page 271]

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We may find the scent of what the realists are about if we examine one stage of the process in which we all engage when we think our way through any puzzle that enmeshes us. This is the stage at which, a hypothesis having been entertained of a possible solution of the problem, we attempt to see, by mental manipulation, what is bound up with that hypothesis, what it means in relation to other things; what must of necessity be true, in short, about matters to which we can turn for empirical corroboration, if the hypothesis be sound.

Now such reflections suggest an inclusive and weighty problem. This is the problem of subjecting the ideas which at any given time form the material from which we distill hypotheses and develop deductions, to the most exact analysis of which we are capable, bringing to light important relations that had not been noticed before, baring inconsistencies or logical gaps in meanings that had been used with too implicit confidence, in short, clearing up muddledness wherever it exists in the intellectual capital with which we perforce meet the enveloping flux and replacing it by clarity and precision. This general problem is one which philosophers of all schools have recognized and attacked; pick up almost any essay in a current philosophical journal and twenty to one you will find that this is the kind of thing the author is doing. Contemporary realists, however, have been peculiarly distinguished by the perspicuity with which they have recognized this need and the persistence with which they have attacked it.

In the second place, the ideal of exactitude which guides their studies, and the analytic method by which it is pursued, show in another way the seasoning force of modern science.

We are all aware that mathematics is, so to speak, the logic of exact science. I mean by this that it furnishes the quantitative structure in terms of which all laws of exact science must be couched and whose relations their deductions constantly use. Now one of the most enticing themes in the history of science is the way in which abstract thinking in the form of pure mathematics has fruitfully filled its function of outstripping the emergence of [Page 272]other scientific problems, as also the way in which problems depend upon the achieved mathematics if they are to be exactly stated and clearly solved. One of the most striking examples of this is the theory of conic sections, which was developed in considerable detail by the Greek mathematicians. These ancient geometers did not dream of any application of their results to problems in other sciences; with them it was a matter of pure mathematical theory, pursued because of their spontaneous delight in the discovery of geometrical order. For a millennium and a half this theory of conic sections remained sterile, simply maintaining its place as a branch of geometry and furnishing the minds of mathematicians with a group of curves with which to play in any geometrical speculation to which they seemed relevant. Then when Descartes created his analytic geometry as a new tool for the application of mathematical theory to the astronomical problems exercising thinkers of his day, a totally unexpected application of the theory of conic sections became possible. For not only could the essential nature of the various curves be expressed in a single algebraic formula, namely the general equation of the second degree, but the whole theory of the motions of bodies under the forces of attraction and inertia proved to depend upon the mathematical principle exhibited in the conic section and symbolized by the equation. Bereft of this groundwork of pure mathematical theory spun forth without any idea of further application, the great scientists of the seventeenth century would have lacked a store of exact ideas pointing to consequences susceptible of experimental verification, to which they could fruitfully resort in their endeavors to formulate the laws of motion.

This is but a shining instance of the service which abstract mathematics is constantly rendering the other sciences which seek quantitative formulation. Now philosophy, as the realist would reconstruct it, finds its true function in performing this service for our thinking at large. It is its task to discipline and canalize the meanings of the concepts we shall need to use in our future thinking, clarifying and arranging them in an orderly system. Wherever it finds a loose or flimsy idea it should proceed to clothe it with [Page 273]

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solidity, or expel it from discourse. It is no accident therefore that realists have moved in the forefront of a most notable revolution and expansion of logical theory in recent times. In the course of this revolution not only has the ancient conception of deduction been purged of many errors, but it has been demoted to a part of a much more comprehensive system which includes the whole of mathematics and may be called indifferently logic or mathematics. The aim of this revolution is not only to reduce the assumptions of all lucid thinking to a single harmonious order, but also to provide an infinite number of exact meanings to serve as fruitful hypotheses in our attempt to deal successfully with the novelties which future experience will be sure to thrust upon us.

Of course the realist does not suppose that the results reached by such chessplay with ideas must hold without further ceremony of the world of empirical observation. To establish the validity of any hypothesis in the realm of sense-experience it must be subjected to experimental testing in precisely the manner that science requires. Philosophy cannot anticipate such verifications; it cannot pronounce a priori or with finality upon the nature of the actual world, and thus it cannot justify beliefs as to the moral quality of the entire universe, nor optimistic hopes of human destiny. Its realm is the chilly and bare but immaculate playground of the logically possible. Its function is that of a generalized forerunner of scientific knowledge.

I trust that this statement of these growing movements in contemporary philosophy, cursory though it is, has not only shown undeniably the influence upon them of the spirit and method of science, but has also brought striking confirmation from the field of philosophy for the conviction that these scientific values of tentativeness, exactitude, and the rest, mirror deep-seated human needs and indicate the direction in which all sound growth in thought and character must take place.

We have long enough been occupied by preparation and indirection with the conflict between science and religion. To a square facing of that conflict and an attempt to outline what the preceding discussion means for religion we may next turn. [Page 274]

WISDOM OF THE AGES

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

The Sacred Scriptures of Muhammedanism (Continued)

THAT Muhammed was an impostor it is difficult, if not impossible, to believe. Orthodox Christians and crude rationalists, it is true, have united in so regarding him. Voltaire it was who voiced their common view in a verse as satirical as it is unjust:

"Chaque peuple à son tour a brillé sur la terre Par les lois, par les arts et surtout par les guerres. Le temps d'Arabie est enfin venu: Il faut un nouveau culte, il faut de nouveaux fers, Il faut un nouveau Dieu pour l'aveugle univers."

Voltaire's thought was that credulous humanity had been victimized by the crafty prophet of Arabia, who palmed off a new cult, new chains, and a new God on an unsuspecting public! "Amen," cried the crude rationalists, for to them all religion is deception, an unscrupulous invention of politic priests and scheming prophets. But I hold that among the notions to be relegated to the realm of prejudice and superstition are these: religion is an invention, all prophets are impostors, Muhammed perpetrated the most egregious fraud on record.

That Muhammed was not an impostor can be proved by reference to several significant incidents in his career. As a young man he had received a handsome salary for serving as custodian of the "Kaaba" that enshrined the sacred stone worshipped by resident believers and by visiting pilgrims. But in time there I came to be associated with this object of veneration certain [Page 275]

THE SACRED SCRIPTURES OF MUHAMMEDANISM

superstitious practices which Muhammed could not conscientiously endorse. To criticise them meant loss of his position and salary, yet he did not hesitate to denounce them and promptly sacrificed his profitable custodianship. Surely such conduct was not that of an impostor. Again, when implored by his wealthy uncle to desist from preaching "radical" views, Muhammed to name his own price for the silence his uncle desired, he repudiated the tempting offer, preferring the luxury of free thought and free speech with poverty, if need be, to the luxury of ease and wealth with a tarnished soul. Read his own brave and uncompromising utterance: "Were I to be offered the sun in my right hand and the moon in my left hand to induce me to abandon my undertaking, the offer would be futile, for I will not rest until the Lord carry his cause to victory, or till I die for it." Could such be the part of an impostor? Once more, his only claim was that of being the instrument through which God had revealed His will, as recorded in the Sacred Book. He made no claim to be infallible, or sinless, or supernatural. "Praise me not," he said, "as Jesus was praised. I am liable to err as other men,-I, too, need forgiveness for sin." Such, surely, is not the language of an impostor. Without pausing to adduce further evidence of Muhammed’s sincerity and integrity of purpose, we may justly believe that nothing but the bigotry, malice and jealousy of enemies originated the charge of imposture. And nothing but blind prejudice and lazy indifference to truth can account for perpetuation of the charge.

The Muhammedan scriptures are certain to fall short of their due if the reader comes to them with any of the traditional estimates of their author. These have ranged all the way from that of the Muslim to whom he is the Prophet, to that of orthodox Christians who call him "the lying prophet" and look upon his name as a synonym of Satan. Dante described him as rent from the chin to where the body ends, wandering aimlessly about in the darkest region of hell among those who rent Christianity by controversy and schism. Luther, in one of his vehement expostulations upon people he despised, exclaimed, "Oh, fie, you horrid devil, you damned Muhammed." Melancthon declared that [Page 276]Muhammed was “inspired by Satan.” For seven centuries after the prophet’s death, not a public word in his defense or behalf was heard. The first just and kindly utterance came from the lips of Sir John Mandeville, an English traveler, and his tribute sounds like a bugle-note in the long, dark night of bigotry and hate. Four centuries later, Lessing, in his “Nathan der Weise,” paused to pay his respects to the essential worth of Muhammed’s religion and by his parable of the three rings, taught posterity a permanently helpful lesson in the ethics of criticism. Then came Carlyle, fairly stunning the British public by placing Muhammed among the heroes of history. Yet notwithstanding the enlightening utterances of these candid investigators, prejudice, born of ignorance, persists in maintaining and circulating opinions about Muhammed that are without any valid basis whatsoever. Pulpit, platform and press must all plead guilty to unwarranted misrepresentation. I cite the preacher who described Muhammed as “a fanatic who used his religion as a cloak of immorality.” I quote a lecturer who said that “Muhammed’s religion was synonymous with bravery, bigotry, knavery, sensuality and abysmal ignorance.” I recall the definition of Muhammedanism in an early edition of Webster’s Dictionary—“a religion of imposture.”

But, thanks to the labors of the distinguished Ignaz Goldziher, the foremost expositor of the Koran, and other contemporary scholars, appreciation is steadily taking the place of prejudice, and knowledge of the truth about the Prophet banishing what ignorance and antipathy have produced.

As an aid to thorough understanding of the contents of the Koran we must take account of the influence exerted by environment. In our study of the Sacred Scriptures of Hinduism, we saw how the warm, benignant climate and rich, fruitful soil of southeastern India fostered a brooding, speculative tendency among the devotees of Brahmanism. Similarly in our study of the Avesta we saw how the less favorable environment of the Parsees in ancient Persia (Iran) precluded philosophizing and compelled hard work, Zoroaster making of industry a sine quâ non of salvation. So, too, the Arabian desert left its mark on Muhammedan— [Page 277]

THE SACRED SCRIPTURES OF MUHAMMEDANISM

ism, moulding, in no small measure, both the thought and imagination of the Muslim. The dry electric air of the desert, the sharp diurnal changes of temperature, the unmitigated solar radiation, the empty environment, all conspired to make tense the nerves and turn the Semite to meditation and contemplation of the supernatural. Again, the stern fatalism and determinism so often met with in the Koran, far from being a deduction from the postulate of Allah (Muhammed was no philosopher), must be ascribed to desert-influence. "Nowhere," it has been said, "is Nature so implacable, the sky so pitiless, the earth so miserly and prayer and effort so unavailing. In the presence of the water-hole gone dry, or the descending cloud of locusts, man is overwhelmed by the sense of the utter uselessness of struggle with an unrelenting and inescapable fate." A recent explorer of the Sahara reports the fatalistic mood which settled upon an entire caravan when confronted by the danger of death from thirst. Fatalism was a large factor in the victories of early Islam because it benumbed the fear of death in battle. Once more, the admonition to "give alms," repeatedly recurring in the Koran, is another instance of adaptation to a desert-environment inasmuch as the ghazus, or robber-raids, left many a man, like Job, wealthy yesterday, a beggar today.

Thus, the desert-setting in which Muhammedanism arose accounts for much of its recorded teaching and for the imagery in which Muhammed presented it. He made the mirage a symbol of the false hope of unbelievers (Sura 24), and the sand, drifting before the wind-storm, emblematic of the destruction that would overwhelm them (Sura 67). We read of Allah seating himself on his throne as a camel-driver seats himself firmly on the camel’s back; of date-palm groves in the oasis, a simile for Paradise; of "yellow camels" likened to "sparks from the fires of hell" (Sura 78); of the revival of the earth after a rainfall as symbolic of the resurrection (Sura 50).

The Koran "that which is to be recited,"—was at first not a book at all, but a collection of admonitions, threats, promises, instructions addressed by Muhammed to groups of turbulent and [Page 278]untutored Arabs, each set of "revealed" utterances jotted down at the time by an amanuensis on any material ready to hand. Finally, the collection of disconnected revelations, covering twenty-one years, was edited and put into permanent form by the beloved disciple and immediate successor of the Prophet, Abu Bekr, in 634. For the next eight years this was the standard text of the Koran. But in the making of copies from this original, various readings of sundry passages were inevitably recorded, giving rise to many disputes as to which version was the correct one. To prevent perpetuation of these disputes, the Caliph Othman, in 642, established a final standard text and all earlier copies of the Koran were committed to the flames. Thus this sacred Book exists in but a single edition and is the work of but a single author. The unity of thought, the uniformity of diction and the peculiarly labored style all combine to show that the suras (chapters) of the Koran are the work of but one mind. The eternality of the Koran is a cardinal belief of Muslim; they hold that if all extant copies were to be destroyed no permanent loss would be thereby entailed because an everlasting copy of the Book is preserved in Heaven by Allah’s throne and by means of relays of angels the total content of the Book could be "revealed afresh. "It is a glorious Koran, written on the preserved Tables. Rejoice in what hath been sent down to thee." (Sura 85, 13.)

Described in a single sentence, the Koran is a potpourri of myths, legends, narratives, legal statutes, ethical precepts and ceremonial injunctions. It is a reservoir into which, through Muhammed’s mind, many different streams of Jewish, Christian and Arabian thought have been emptied. As a conductor of caravans Muhammed must have acquired considerable information on Biblical subjects. Tales of Abraham, Moses, the Prophets, Jesus, related by not very competent reporters, entered Muhammed’s head and fermented there. What he knew of Old and New Testament characters he never derived from direct contact with these books. Possibly he never saw a Hebrew Old Testament or a Greek New Testament, for there existed no Arabic version of [Page 279]the Old or New Testament prior to the time of Muhammed. Nor is there more than one direct quotation from the Bible in the Koran, viz. (Sura XX 85) "My servants, the righteous, shall inherit the earth" (Ps. XXXVII 29.) But many a Hebrew and Christian story, as recorded in Rabbinical books, he doubtless heard, while such apocalyptic books as Joel, Daniel, Ezekiel, Enoch, Revelation, exerted their influence, as the Koran amply testifies.

His originality was not that of the reformer who is the first to conceive and present a fruitful idea, but rather that of him who plants what he has acquired in many minds and fertilizes it there by the persuasive power of his own quickening personality. The genius of Muhammed appeared not in the creation of new material but rather in the adoption and blending of various traditions-Jewish, Christian, Hanifite-to suit the exigencies of each occasion as it arose. Biblical reminiscences, Rabbinic legends, Arabian stories, Christian traditions, drawn for the most part from apocryphal sources, all passed through his active mind and issued thence in strange forms, "tinged with poetry and enthusiasm," to encourage the faithful, or to strike terror into the hearts of the infidels. Muhammed was neither a theologian nor a philosopher but a religious enthusiast with a genius for adoption and adaptation of Jewish and Christian lore. He spoke his revelations" as they came, regardless of their agreement with or contradiction of each other. When modern Muslim find two contradictory injunctions on one and the same subject, they take the one best suited to modern ideas. For this they find warrant in the second Sura: "What verses we cancel or cause thee to forget, we give a better, or its like." Already there are over two hundred such cancelled verses on which Muslim are agreed. The ultimate criterion on which the abrogation of passages in the Koran depends is the agreement of Muslim themselves. "My people," said Muhammed, "will never agree on an error," and in such agreement is the hope of Islam.

From the surcharged brain of Muhammed his thought pushed on undiked, unchanneled, too swift to allow of skilful or [Page 280]consistent expression. No wonder that of all Bibles the Koran is the least attractive to the general reader. Curiosity may draw him to its pages but he is soon repelled by the lack of continuity of thought and the absence of any charm of style, the thought and the style suggesting the camel of the desert-free to browse wherever stubble is to be found. The one hundred and fourteen suras (chapters) of the Book are provided with superscriptions indeed, but these, for the most part, bear no relation to the contents. Nor have the suras been arranged according to any definite system other than that of placing the longest and best-known ones first, though even this has not been adhered to throughout. The events narrated follow no chronological order, and only the patient scholarship of specialists has enabled us to shape from this literary waste the Prophet’s thought.

Carlyle, who was Muhammed’s foremost British admirer, complained that the Koran was the most toilsome reading he ever undertook. He described it as "a wearisome, confused jumble; endless iterations, long-windedness, entanglement; most crude, recondite, insupportable stupidity in short." But, thanks to the labors of European Arabic scholars who have applied the principles of "the higher criticism" to the Koran, we can now arrange its chapters in chronological order, dividing the Book into three sections, corresponding to the three periods in the Prophet’s career. The first of these, marked by doubt, misgiving, misappreciation and opposition, is readily discerned in a series of chapters aglow with enthusiasm bordering on frenzy, recording his visions with a fervor that persuades us of his sincerity. The second period was that of growing appreciation and success, and is reflected in chapters that are marked by calm, dispassionate argument addressed to converts who recognize his authority. The third period finds the Prophet making concessions and compromises for the sake of further success. He has grown shrewd, calculating, politic in his aggressive crusade, and these qualities come to light in a group of chapters whose weak, willowy utterances betray a decided decline from the high plane where sincere consecration and perfervid enthusiasm had transfigured the man. *

See Rodwell’s translation in Everyman’s Library, vol. 380. [Page 281]

THE SACRED SCRIPTURES OF MUHAMMEDANISM

In passing it should be said that the fault found with the style and form of the Koran may be due in no small measure to our difficulty in rightly appraising the psychology of the Prophet. To do him proper justice we must bear in mind his peculiar temperament and the kind of environment to which his message was brought. Moreover, we have to remember that the Muslim regard the Koran as the finest of all terary productions, its matter all true, its manner perfect, its style a veritable miracle.

Professor Margoliouth puts the issue admirably in his introduction to Rodwell's rendering of the Koran, one of the best translations yet produced. "We are here in touch with an untutored but fervent mind, trying to realize itself and to assimilate certain great truths which have been powerfully borne in upon him, in order to impart them in a convincing form to his fellow-tribesmen. He is surrounded by obstacles of every kind, yet he manfully struggles on with the message that is within him. Learning he has none, or next to none. His chief objects of knowledge are floating stories and traditions largely picked up from hearsay, and his over-wrought mind is his only teacher. The only literary compositions to which he had ever listened were the half-cultured, vet often wildly powerful rhapsodies of early Arabian minstrels. What wonder then that his Koran took a form which to our colder temperaments sounds strange, unbalanced and fantastic?" [Page 282]RACIAL RELATIONSHIPS AND INTERNATIONAL HARMONY by FRANK H. HANKINS Department of Sociology, Smith College

V. The Evolution of Social Organization and Integration

THE achievement of an effective institution for the promotion and maintenance of world order seems now to be approaching realization for the first time in human history. The Holy Roman Empire, the empire of Charlemagne and the Roman Empire were the most recent previous agencies of world organization, but they comprised only limited portions of the eastern hemisphere. We now look forward to the perfection of the League of Nations as a world-wide agency for the discontinuance of wars on a major scale and for the cultivation of international amity. Any such end must be a slow attainment. The world is large, the interests of its several parts diverse, the forces of disunion are powerful and little understood, while the agencies for their control are weak and suspect. A brief survey of the major stages of types of organization of the social groups whereby human life has been controlled in the past, will indicate that we have moved a long way from the atomism of primeval man toward that integration of the world of which poets, philosophers and idealists have dreamed.

The family is now generally recognized as the primeval social unit. It was the earliest self-sufficient social group. It probably, from the very first, varied in form, sometimes comprising one man, one woman and their offspring, sometimes one man and several women, sometimes several men and their joint wives, or even one woman with two or more husbands, and offspring. [Page 283]

EVOLUTION OF SOCIAL ORGANIZATION AND INTEGRATION

All these forms still exist. The simple unit of husband, wife and children constituting an economically, politically and culturally self-dependent social unity, is still found occasionally where living conditions are severe and population necessarily scanty, as among the Polar Eskimos and the Tierra del Fuegans. In a broad sense, the primitive families represent societies. They have within themselves not merely the capacity to reproduce, sustain and defend themselves as going and continuing concerns, but to develop and transmit language, morals, myths and religion.

A first step toward a genuine society was made by the congregation of a number of families into a horde. Some hordes are almost wholly lacking in internal unity, splitting up into constituent families with little loss of institutional structures. Others develop a modicum of organization in the form of common leadership and that common sentiment which enforces rules of decorum and morality. The underlying bonds of unity in the horde are common blood and common territory. An Andamanese horde may consist of forty or fifty persons of both sexes and varied ages, who hunt, fish and camp over a fairly well-defined area. They have a separate hut for each family, eight to twelve in number; there is no organized government, and no subordination of the horde to a larger group; but the old men and women who are highly respected, exercise a good deal of authority over their juniors.

The horde is thus a loose aggregation of independent or nearly independent families. It has a territory of its own and realization of common kinship, common language and tradition. And yet its sense of community is not highly developed. Its most serious lack is some governmental agency able to increase internal cooperation and to unite the latent forces of the community. Such agency may, however, be lacking largely because not needed. Hordes not uncommonly live in more or less isolation. They have a tradition of peace, but lack the stimulus of group contacts and competition.

The well-developed tribe is a great step in advance. The tribe is for primitive society what the nation is for advanced. It [Page 284]is the unit of common life, the integral group through which runs the consciousness of common origin and destiny. While tribes differ enormously in size, cohesiveness, organization and strength, they are generally characterized by the exclusive possession of a given territory within which their authority is supreme. They have a strong sense of kinship, possess a language and religion of their own, have military and civil leaders and a powerful tribal loyalty based on myths of origin, and the tradition of great heroes and military prowess. It seems to be universally true that individual consciousness is less highly developed among primitive peoples than among us. They are less individualistic. Perhaps the tenuous hold on life, the strong feeling of mystery in life and nature, the slight command over natural forces and the consequent awe and fear with which their lives are surrounded lead savages to rely more fully than do we on a strong sense of group solidarity. With them religion, patriotism and morality are merged into a body of sacred myths, symbols, ceremonies, codes and social controls which bring it about that, as a rule, the savage lives, moves and has his being much more completely in the bosom of his tribal community than do we. The tribesman deprived of the moral support of his tribe is a miserable lost creature. It follows that the well-organized tribe exerts an amazingly thorough control over its members and presents to all who invade its sphere of influence a sense of great power for good or ill.

Tribes that have common interests and traditions often form leagues or confederacies. Many such were formed by the North American Indians, of which the League of the Iroquois, begun before 1450 and never dissolved, is one of the most notable. This included five (or six) tribes with traditions of common descent, speaking dialects of a common language, inhabiting continuous territory and having a mutual interest in promoting their common defense. Most such leagues were of temporary duration, being dissolved upon completion of the military purposes for which they were formed. Moreover, little power was given to league agencies, the tribes guarding jealously their freedom of decision [Page 285]and action. In the Iroquois League, for example, no action could be taken without unanimous consent. No tribe could be committed to league support or action, except by the express approval of its own members or their duly elected members. It was nearly as difficult for tribal societies to form a genuine internation, with an authority over and above the constituent tribes, as it is to induce modern nations to surrender that modicum of independent sovereignty needed to form a world state.

It seems to be true, as a broad sociological generalization, that the evolution of the nation has, in every case, been accomplished by the transformation of tribal society, first into feudalism, and then into nationalism. Feudalism is a result of the conquest of a peasant or agricultural population by nomadic herdsmen. These conquering nomads have always been patronymic, that is, they have traced descent through the male rather than the female line. This fact is made much of by certain writers who point out that the patriarchal family is more closely knit than the matriarchal. It achieves a greater authority over its members and centralizes this authority in the patriarch. Tribes organized on the patriarchal principle are able to achieve a maximum of unity under sacred and unquestioned authority. They are equipped with horses or camels, drive their herds with them, and thus often achieve an amazing mobility and military efficiency considering their armaments.

Feudalism seems to be a natural mode of settling the turmoil, insecurity and constant resort to force which follow the invasion of a peaceful agricultural area by conquering nomadic herdsmen. It is built on the principle of an exchange of services for protection. The relatively weak place themselves and their lands under the protection of the relatively strong, rendering in return economic (and military) services. It establishes a sharp demarcation of classes. The ruling classes retain exclusive management of the chief agencies of social control and compulsion, such as political and military power and religion. There is a close alliance of nobility and priesthood. The feudal state has been described as the organization of political means for the exploitation of the [Page 286]economic resources (land and labor). Gradually these processes bring about the organization of the country into a great number of counties, dukedoms and principalities, within each of which there is a high degree of peace and order but among which, in spite of alliances and feudal vassalage, there is an enormous amount of intrigue and fighting.

Each of these petty political units tends to develop a strong sentiment of local patriotism in its inhabitants in consequence of the force of religious and moral teaching, the traditions of peace and war, common economic bonds and peculiarities of speech dress and custom. With the appearance, however, of a strong and aggressive personality at the head of an important principality forces of unification over wider areas begin to make themselves felt. By military force and political alliance he extends his overlordship. His judges and officers become the chief agencies for the settlement of local disputes and the administration of justice The religious agencies cultivate a fresh loyalty of the masses to him. The language of his court becomes the official language in all matters of state; it soon becomes the language of the market place and of polite society.

The rise of kingship is accompanied also by the growth o trade throughout the unified political area, a growth often regulated by taxes, tariffs and other legal limitations. Concurrently the military activities create a tradition of hardships shared and glories won under the generals and banners of the king. Such experiences so intensify popular emotions as to produce a true amalgamation of loyalties and a unification of social consciousness. Henceforth the banners, insignia, shibboleths, songs and myths picture a united country under the sacred authority of the semi-divine king.

Feudalism thus culminates in autocratic monarchy, or nationalism under the divine right of kings. But in the eternal flux of all things, even the most able monarchies come to their proper ends. The feudal autocratic state is transmuted into the democratic state by conditions and processes for which the stabilized feudal régime is partly responsible. By widening the area of peace, the [Page 287]monarchical régime releases a larger proportion of popular energy for economic pursuits. Trade increases, a money economy wine general acceptance, and there at length arises a new class imbued with the bourgeois morality of thrift, industry, accumulation and material comfort.

This middle class, being outside the established régime of feudal privilege, sets out to achieve independence for itself and security for trade and property. To this end it advances a new political philosophy based on principles of equality of political and civil rights and the divine right of the people to rule themselves. Growth in power and numbers of those living by trade and manufacture and the increasing attachment to material gain finally give general vogue to democratic ideals. This result was greatly expedited in our own culture cycle by the settlement of America and the powerful reaction of American conditions on European social development. At the same time various processes both of unification and of secularization have made democratic nationalism the outstanding political achievement of recent times. Among factors of unification have been the rapid development of means of communication and transportation, the postoffice, telegraph, telephone, railway and steamboat. Here should be included the newspaper, as an agency in unifying opinion and making possible concerted action over a vast area.

There have also been factors in the process of secularization or the gradual sloughing off of the deadly shroud of religiosity and superstition wherein both public and private affairs are so largely enveloped in primitive communities. Education becomes a state function and scientific research becomes an eager pursuit contributing immeasurably to the advancement of wealth and the elevation of human control over the essential conditions of existence. Civil courts entirely supersede the ecclesiastical and the state rather than the church becomes the final arbiter in matters of wide public concern. In particular the state concerns itself more and more with the regulation of economic and developmental matters, thus revealing the increased solidarity of social lite and the intensified public consciousness of the body politic. [Page 288]The nation thus becomes the full-fledged politico-economic unit, self-conscious, independent, separatistic, jealous. At times in the past a number of nations have been welded into a more or less enduring empire by the same processes that made the nation out of constituent principalities, namely, conquest, uniformity of law and government, a widened area of peace, trade, the spread of an official language, the unification of culture, and ultimately a tradition of common defense against external foes. In the light of precedent, it would seem that the establishment of the "rights of small nations" was a step backward toward the atomism of extreme nationalistic individualism. Logically that process would break up modern nations into their constituent principalities, and these in turn into still smaller units, until we reached the local clan areas of ancient tribal society. Fortunately, however, national sentiments now prevail over local ones in the vast majority of such cases. Moreover, the unification of the modern world cannot be accomplished by the same processes that molded the ancient empires. Political and economic power are too widely diffused and the culturally developed areas are too large to enable one nation to conquer more than a relatively small part thereof. Nevertheless, a brief survey will show that most of the same processes, whereby a number of local political units, each jealous of its independence, were unified into a nation, are now operating to produce a supernation out of many nations. Let us note in the first place that there are no natural geographical limits to politico-economic unity. In other words, nations cannot now be looked upon as natural territorial units. The northern boundary of this country is, except for the Great Lakes, purely artificial. Even the Lakes are no impediment to trade; they are, indeed, an advantage to cheap transportation. Nor is our southern boundary composed of natural barriers. A river is no barrier in this day and age, if it were, the Hudson, Ohio, and Mississippi would be more serious than the Rio Grande. In like manner it can be shown that most of the national boundaries in Europe are based on historical and traditional circumstances rather than geographical barriers. Even mountains, as our own show, are no longer actual dividing lines, [Page 289]Moreover, as has often been pointed out, the consciousness of political unity does not require for its basis unity of race, language or religion. All the great nations include a variety of races, most of whom at one time thought of themselves as quite distinctive. One may here recall the history of Great Britain to advantage. Most European nations still harbor considerable diversity of language, while all have achieved a considerable degree of religious toleration. The prospects for the development of a world community are thus enormously advanced by the decline of religious intolerance; by the development of rapid means of communication and the universal press making possible the cultivation of likemindedness and concerted volition in widely scattered areas, in spite of differences of language; and by the present insignificance of all kinds of natural barriers, including mountains and oceans, which previously enforced provincial isolation but which are today overcome by steam, gasoline and electricity.

If now we analyze those conditions which produce political unity, we will find that the first is the establishment of a central governing authority able to maintain peace and order among traditional enemies. This has historically been accomplished not merely by conquest, but by mutual consent, that is through leagues and federations. The United States is an outstanding example of this latter method. The establishment of a central authority is the sine qua non of success. It works both positively and negatively for the achievement of a genuine integration. Negatively, it allays fears and suspicions, lessens intrigue, and leads to a reduction of armaments and emphasis on military preparedness. For example, once our federal government became securely established over the thirteen states, the latter tended to lose their sense of independent political and military self-sufficiency, their military establishments became militia for use in purely internal difficulties with little expectation of their use against each other.

This establishment of a settled peace works positively for social integration in releasing an enormous amount of energy for peaceful pursuits and thus producing a gradual ascendancy of [Page 290]industrial ideals and pursuits over military. Trade, transportation, communication, travel, freedom of movement, security of person and property, intermarriage, and community of cultural ideals and activities develop unhindered within the peaceful zone

Moreover, certain policies for positive unification can be set up Here are included the extension of the central legal authority over matters of common interest, such as the increasing interstate trade and transportation, the imposition of taxes for the common purposes of peace and prosperity, the establishment of tariffs and tariff unions, and the creation of a common military force for the enforcement of the will of the central authority in all matters of internal difference and for the common defense.

Nearly all these conditions are now working among western nations, throughout what may be called the western community to bring about a more complete unification. When one studies the rise of nationalism and notes the long slow process whereby previously disparate and contentious political units were at length welded into a genuine political unity, he need scarcely doubt that like conditions will ultimately produce a superstate above the present "world powers." The United States was a genuine league of nations or a confederation of independent states in 1789. The processes of unification were slow, largely because communication and transportation were slow and permitted. or even necessitated, the maintenance of local patriotisms and jealousies. Moreover, these same conditions permitted the development of different and exclusive economic systems in North and South. Consequently, it was not until 1865, or seventy-six years after its establishment, that the United States turned out to be, not a league or confederation, but a genuine union.

What the present League of Nations needs above all, is the allegiance of the United States and the added prestige which would be acquired thereby. It has begun weakly, but has grown rapidly in respect and power. If it can maintain peace in Europe for a generation it will have thrown a powerful weight of both economic development and of fresh tradition into the balance for permanent peace. But, in view of its American analogue, one need [Page 291]

EVOLUTION OF SOCIAL ORGANIZATION AND INTEGRATION

not expect that this result will be easily achieved. The time will come when the League will need a military force of its own. This may, however, be made available through units of the constituent states. Meanwhile, international investments, the growth of trade, the modification of tariffs, the development of international trusts and combines, the increasing speed of transportation and communication and the perfection of international news services all work powerfully for the cultivation of an "international mind. We shall see increased attention to educational devices for visualizing the new internationalism in the minds of the younger generation. Finally we shall see the development of symbols, songs, shibboleths, ceremonials and even myth and folklore, whereby the League will become enshrined in the hearts of millions as the supreme object of earthly devotion.

THE END [Page 292]

XIX—STEPHAN KYROFF

by P. M. MATTHIEFF Sofia, Bulgaria

DR. STEPHAN KYROFF is the most important and the most constant worker in Bulgaria who has worked for a peaceful understanding among nations, in this part of the world—the Balkan Peninsula.

Born in August, 1861 in Stara Zagora, South Bulgaria, as a boy of 14 he witnessed the horrors perpetrated during the Russo-Turkish war, 1877-1878. He saw his native town laid waste in the dust by the advancing Turkish army, those of the inhabitants who escaped the massacre fleeing to the mountains and beyond with what was on their backs. The memory of these scenes has never left him, and it has led him in later years to do what was in his power to render their repetition impossible.

In the American Roberts College, Constantinople, where he graduated, he once surprised his professors with an oration on Nationalism and Internationalism, wherein he developed the idea that the one does not exclude the other. Such a subject treated by an "Oriental," then a Turkish subject, was indeed the surprise of the day for the faculty.

He completed his studies in Switzerland, Germany and Belgium. The federative system of these countries impressed him, and the federation of the Balkan States became his leading idea and his principal political and world view.

He held that the main difficulty for an understanding among nations was in the wrong interpretation of sovereignty. The principal ideas which he treats in his doctor's dissertation "Zur Kritik des Staats-Souveränetätsbegriffs," he develops later in his [Page 293]

STEPHAN KYROFF

Inaugural Address as Rector of the University of Sofia, in October, 1906. He combats the absolutist conception of the notion of sovereignty, and his contention is now rapidly gaining ground. The right acceptation of sovereignty he treats further in his article "La Souveraineté et la Société des Nations (à la considération de tous les amis de la Paix)," published in the Lexicon "Menschen und Menschenwerke," Vol. II, 1924. Previous to this in an article "What America Has Given to the World," a contribution to the book in honor of Professor S. S. Bobtcheff (1921) he recommends the Federative Form of Government as a model for the construction of the World's Republic.

In the Bulgarian Peace Society's magazine "Pax per Foederationem," 1919, No. 3, appeared his remarkable notices on the project for the Covenant of the League of Nations, before it had been adopted: on self-determination, on responsibilities and reparations, on disarmament, on the abolition of customs dues, on colonies, on the Russian "evil,"--Bolshevism. All these articles present themselves today as deeply foresighted.

As regards the project of the Covenant or the Constitution of the Federation of Nations, he specially accentuated the services rendered by President Wilson to humanity. (Idem, issue No. 1, PP. 50-51.) The section in this same organ—"The Friends of Peace (and of Bulgaria)"—had for object the recognition of the services of the most prominent Apostles of World Unity.

In 1899, Dr. Kyroff was editor in chief of the Exarchates organ, published in the capital of Turkey. In several articles devoted to the Hague Conference which met in May of that year, he pointed out its great significance.

The proclamation of the Huriet (Liberty) in Turkey in 1908, gave him the opportunity to propagate insistently the idea of mutual understanding with new Turkey, as also with the other Balkan States. The result of an immediate consultation with some prominent leaders of the different political parties was the formation of a Committee of Alliance for the pursuit of peace and understanding. It was this same association which ten years later developed into the first Bulgarian Society of Peace by Federation. [Page 294]The Committee of Alliance worked persistently for the organization of similar societies in Belgrade and Constantinople. Delegates exchanged mutual visits with prominent statesmen in Belgrade and with the Young Turks at Salonica and Constantinople. The Committee entered into relations with the Balkan Committee of London and even with the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. The ultimate unscrupulous conduct of the Turks, and the Balkan wars following, put an end, for the time being, to all progress in this work for peace.

Previous to this, Dr. Kyroff's political activity gave rise to a new political party—the Radical Democratic party. In the platform of that party drawn up by himself, he insisted that the party should be proclaimed as the "Party of Peace" (1906). When during the Balkan wars endeavors failed to stem the rush for war, he withdrew from the party, which soon after admitted the error committed.

We should in this connection mention the energetic struggle he sustained on the eve of the Balkan War against the propagators of that war, although they were the big majority of the nation. On the theme: "Should Bulgaria declare war on Turkey?" many articles were exchanged between "Junius" and "Julius" (Dr. Kyroff) in the Democratic Review, 1910, wherein he foresaw the calamities which would follow for the country even after a successful war against Turkey.

It was only in November, 1918, after the termination of the general war that the Friends of Peace could again resume their work and the Society For Peace Through Federation was, as stated, inaugurated, with Professor Kyroff as its President. The undertaking was taken up with great enthusiasm by the general public.

The current work of the Bulgarian Peace Society and its development are reported in its organ "Pax per Foederationem," edited by Dr. Kyroff. This Society developed in 1921 into the "Union of Bulgarian Societies for the Federation of Nations," and under this title it was received, in the same year, as member of the "Union Internationale des Associations pour la Société des" [Page 295]

STEPHAN KYROFF

Nations," at the Congress of Prague. Finally, in 1926, it reorganized once more under the name of "Bulgarian Society for Peace and for the League of Nations," comprising individual as well as collective members. In view of Dr. Kyroff being at the same time President of the Union of the Cultural and the Professional Associations in Bulgaria, over 70 in number, it can be affirmed that all these societies support, directly or indirectly, the cause of peace in this country.

Each year the Society celebrates the eighteenth of May—the anniversary of the Hague Conference—as a Peace Day, and publishes on that occasion a special number of the Journal of Peace, edited by Dr. Kyroff. He is also the author of a Peace Hymn, set to music by the Director of the Music Academy.

One of the important projects Dr. Kyroff now favors and is working for is the erection in Sofia, the capital of Bulgaria, of a Palace of Peace, the eventual revenue from it to be used for the support of the propaganda for peace among nations. The monument itself is to manifest the love for peace and industry of the Bulgarian people.

I may assert unhesitatingly that there is no other man in Bulgaria who has worked so incessantly and systematically for peace among nations as Professor Kyroff. The field for such work has been very unpropitious; the ruinous moral, economical and political conditions imposed upon the country by the treaty of Versailles, not less than the very novelty of such a theme in this part of the world, so distracted by the conflict of nations and religions, have been and are a dead weight against its advancement. But the more honor to the man who has given his time and energy unreservedly to forward it to the favorable position it has attained.

X [Page 296]

YOUTH AND THE MODERN WORLD

Edited by ISABELLA VAN METER

"Above and beyond all war and death is our deep yearning for the time when we shall be able to work side by side with the youth of the whole world."

During the crucial years since the European war, the youth of the world has been gathering its force as if for a supreme struggle with the militant, destructive past. Repudiating alike its inheritance of institutions, customs and ideals, the generation now assuming manhood and womanhood in East and West is gradually creating the substance of those molded by the past, this manifestacion a different way of life, a new outlook, destined to form a new civilization. Viewed from the ranks its of youth has appeared one of the most tragic, misguided, even sinister of social phenomena, since triumph must involve the overthrow of so much that mankind has done and been. The statement of youth itself, so far as youth has yet defined its own energies, experiences and directions, will tell a different story. In this department World Unity Magazine will publish from time to time brief articles expressing the outlook of youth, by youth itself, on those vital issues which are recurrent from age to age.

THE NICARAGUAN INTERVENTION AND ITS RESULTS

by R. M. HOOKER Moravian College

SA citizen of the Republic of Nicaragua and a student in an American college, I have been repeatedly asked, in student circles, to give my opinion of the recent disastrous revolution which has torn my country asunder and which has resulted in the intervention of the United States Government in the affairs of Nicaragua ostensibly in behalf of goodwill and for the protection of the citizens of the United States residing in Nicaragua.

The United States has been severely criticised for its intervention in Nicaragua not only by foreign correspondents, but even by the strong liberal circle in the United States. Some of this criticism has been just, but much of it was used merely for party [Page 297]propaganda by American politicians who cared more for their own ambitions than for my suffering country.

An analysis of the present Nicaraguan policy cannot be made as hastily and as carelessly as a number of American newspaper men and authors have attempted to do. To expect to understand the temperament and the traditions of the people of Nicaragua to the degree necessary for the complete comprehension of the situation in the space of three months as some of these men have attempted to do is as ridiculous as the speculation on the social and religious order of the Martians. It is this inadequate presentation of the facts in the case not only of Nicaragua but also of Latin America in general which leads the people of the Latin American countries to suspect the United States of clandestine operations. It is my object, therefore, to present to my readers a method of approach to a more sane treatment of the Latin American problem.

A knowledge of the history of a people helps to establish a feeling of goodwill with that people. It is with history, then, that we must go to begin our discussion of the problem. After the discovery of the New World, Central and South America were settled by people of Latin culture who came from countries where democracy was unknown. Their ideas of an aristocracy both of politics and of religion were brought with them. A century later, to North America came the Pilgrim Fathers, representing the Anglo-Saxon culture with its democratic ideals and institutions. In them were imbedded the seeds of Protestantism. Those who followed in their wake were more Englishmen, Germans and Scandinavians, coming from the very cradle of democracy. What inference are we to draw from this? Simply this: politically you are democratic, we are autocratic; in religion you are Protestant, we are Roman Catholic. You destroyed the Indian, we assimilated him by intermarriage. You are phlegmatic and cold, we are temperamental and of a warm disposition. Are these facts considered as of importance in the settlement of our disputes with you? No! Were these factors to be taken into account, I am sure our mutual difficulties would be more easy of solution. Just as [Page 298]in the case of individual friendships where the chief requisite is a more sympathetic understanding of the finer and deeper feelings of your friend, so in the case of nations a sympathetic understanding of national traits will make more firm the bonds of friendship.

The history of Nicaragua may be divided into three periods. The first period began with the coming of the Conquistadores and might be termed the "Colonial Period." It was during this era that many scions of royal families came hither seeking adventure and wealth, found what they desired, and settled on the spot, originating a new aristocracy in the New World. Thus out of a motive which to some seems extremely objectionable—that is the search for wealth—sprang a wholesome life like unto that of Old Spain. It is this point which is most often misinterpreted by historians who consider the first motive to have colored all the later times. But imperialism develops similarly in every case. What at first seems greedy and selfish results in a good and wholesome life.

The second period may aptly be called the "Period of Sectionalism." This began with the Nicaraguan Declaration of Independence on September 15, 1821. Here also began a period of party strife with its attendant hatreds and internecine rivalries. The old families divided themselves into two parties commonly known as the Liberal and Conservative respectively. The latter was composed chiefly of wealthy aristocrats and staunch Roman Catholics, men of renowned business acumen. The chief seats of their power were on the western coast of Nicaragua in the cities of Masaya and Granada. The former was composed of Nicaragua’s best statesmen, scholars and thinkers, who lived in and around Leon, also on the western coast. Thus we have a period of rivalry between cities very similar to that between Venice and Genoa, a period which is little understood in the United States because they have experienced nothing like it. Not a little discussion arose between these two parties over the location of the proposed capital of the independent Nicaragua. Consequently it was decided to locate it midway between Granada and Leon in a city [Page 299]by the name of Managua. This move served only to increase the bitterness of the rivalry since each party now endeavored to gain control of the chief city. The "Period of Sectionalism" was brought to an end by the victory of the Liberal Party under José Santos Zelaya.

With Zelaya was born the "Modern Period" of Nicaraguan history. His rule, lasting for sixteen years, was that of a benevolent dictator. Illiteracy was reduced to a great degree by the general educational and constructive policy of this man and Nicaragua was at last in a very healthy condition. Zelaya is severely criticised by certain Americans because he put up a vigorous opposition to the encroachments of foreign capital. This was the greatest factor contributing to his downfall in the revolution which began in 1909. The fall of Zelaya is one of the most pathetic episodes in the intriguing and turbulent history of my country. The lamentable case of the La Luz y Los Angeles Mining Company, under the control of American capital, is only one of the disastrous incidents in this eventful period.

By the fall of Zelaya, the Conservatives regained the power which they held up to November 6, 1928, when the Nicaraguan general election resulted in an overwhelming victory for the Liberals in the person of José Maria Moncada. The Zelaya administration, despite bitter criticism, was far better than the now defunct Conservative régime, which was profitless as far as the affairs of Nicaragua are concerned, and which resulted in the unfortunate revolution of recent date, the blame for which lies not entirely with the Liberals who were simply supporting a candidate fairly elected to the chief power of Nicaragua.

Some of the questions most often put to me are: Do you think that the United States should intervene in the affairs of the Latin American republics? Did not President Diaz implore President Coolidge for aid? Does not General Moncada, president-elect of Nicaragua, desire Marines to be kept in Nicaragua to keep order? In answer to the first, I say that I am entirely opposed to intervention as it is a violation of our sovereignty. The excuse usually offered for intervention, namely, that the rights of the citizens of [Page 300]the United States residing in Nicaragua have to be protected, may be answered by saying that the rights of American citizens were at no time jeopardized. I have lived through the revolution and know the facts from intimate contact with the affairs. To the second I reply that Diaz did not represent the majority of the Nicaraguan people and as such had no authority to call in American arms against his own countrymen. As to the third, Moncada desires Marines only for the purpose of advice in the establishment of a National Guard, for which my people will be extremely grateful, provided no initiative in matters of jurisdiction be assumed by soldiers from a foreign country.

I do not want to be misunderstood. I do not hate the United States. I have learned to love the great American people and appreciate what they have done for me and my people both here and in my own country. I merely want to point out that we must both change our opinions of each other if we are really going to live in peace and harmony together. We must learn to put human values before material values, love before hate, humility before might. It is a challenge to our higher natures which we cannot afford to reject. [Page 301]

RACIAL AMITY

by CLIFFORD L. MILLER Editorial Department, Amsdem News, New York City

I HAVE great faith in the value of two racial groups sitting down together to consider earnestly their common problems as neighbors. Racial groups are often torn with thorns of racial fears and suspicions. The only way to remove them is by heart to heart talks. These may promote goodwill and racial appreciation.

Two admonitions I would give all white members ready for interracial conferences. There is a saying that even a white man who knows all about black men can never tell what is in a Negro’s brain by what he says. The Negro has been trained by slavery to suppress his real self in the presence of white folk. Self-expression is not always deemed expedient by the self-seeking and time-serving member of my group. The white man still holds the bag. The Negro still has untold needs. Often he is tempted to sacrifice best interest of his race if only he can induce the untieing of the strings to the bag. It is well for the white man to pry into the motives of certain suave members of my race.

The average "Nordic" falls too easily to the subtile flattery of Afro-Americans who simulate to think his thoughts, feel his feelings, dream his dreams. Often the Negro who speaks out in bi-racial meetings brutally and sincerely is a greater friend of "America, the Beautiful" than the one who pretends to swallow all the white man says line, hook and sinker.

When African shrewdness has victimized a white man his usefulness in bringing about more harmonious race relations is at an end. All folks of African blood and lineage laugh at his stupidity and wonder what went wrong with the Nordic’s [Page 302]superior mind to be misled by an unscrupulous Negro. Negroes know unerringly the insincere of their own group. My second admonition therefore is never take a Negro at his own appraisal Poll the opinion of the unprejudiced crowd of black folks-it is nearer the truth, and one cannot go far wrong.

The Negro race is a cockpit of internecine feuds, which every wise white man will avoid. To allow one's self to be the cat's paw to blast another Negro is a fatal blunder. The psychology of the Negro's soul will yield itself to the student who is patient and sympathetic, but to the prejudiced and arrogrant Anglo-Saxon the Negro's mind will always be a far off and inaccessible region.

This is so much technic of race relations I offer to all my brothers who plan to do more conference work to improve brotherhood among mankind. [Page 303]

Under the Auspices of World Unity Foundation

The World Unity Conferences are a medium by which responsible leaders of opinion can convey their message to the public without restriction of race, class, nationality or creed. Upholding the ideals of brotherhood found in all religious and ethical teachings, the Conferences strive to quicken the spiritual resources of the community by bringing upon one platform gifted speakers representing the universal outlook and capable of interpreting the meanings of the new age. World Unity Conferences are held at frequent intervals in cities of the United States and Canada, and this educational activity will be extended as soon as possible to Europe. A distinctive feature of the Conferences consists in the local World Unity Councils, composed of leading liberals, established in the various cities to further the world unity ideal. This department will publish the programs and report the activities of the World Unity Conferences and Councils.

Meetings Held at Rochester, New York May 28 and 29, 1929

The final meetings of the World Unity Conferences for the season 1928-1929 were held at Central Presbyterian Church, Rochester, on May 28 and 29. Dr. John Herman Randall, Director of World Unity Foundation, presided at the first session and explained the general aims of the Conferences. An address on "World Peace Through Education" was delivered by Rabbi Joseph L. Fink of Temple Beth Zion, Buffalo, followed by the subject "Toward Racial Friendship," given by Rev. James Clair Taylor of Memorial A. M. E. Zion Church. The chairman of the second Conference was Rev. David Rhys Williams of the First Unitarian Church. Dr. Dexter Perkins of the University of Rochester spoke on "Progress Toward World Peace," and Dr. Randall concluded the meeting with the subject "The Birth of a World and Its Implications for the Twentieth Century."

A large number of local groups and organizations invited the Director of World Unity Foundation to address them in connection with the Conferences at Rochester, among them being: Temple Berith Kodesh, Epworth League, Theosophists, Unity-Center and other cooperating groups, Unitarian Church, Central Presbyterian Church, Y. W. C. A., Brick Presbyterian Church, Memorial A. M. E. Zion Church, Mt. Olivet Baptist Church, Y. M. C. A., University of Rochester Chapel, Rochester Business Institute, Rochester Public Library (lecture on current literature), School of Commerce, Henley Girls' School, Charlotte High School, Monroe High School, Jefferson High [Page 304]School, City Normal School, Italian Business Men's Association.

Rochester World Unity Council

The following will serve as a local Council to carry on World Unity activities in Rochester: Chairman, Rev. David Rhys Williams, First Unitarian Church; Mrs. Helen Probst Abbott; Rabbi Philip Bernstein, Berith Kodesh Congregation; Mr. Thomas A. Bolling, Y. M. C. A.; Miss Elizabeth Brooks; Mrs. Mary Thorn Lewis Gannett; Mr. Frank E. Gugelman; Dr. Raymond Kistler, Central Presbyterian Church; Mr. Clement G. Lanni; Dr. Dexter Perkins, University of Rochester; Dr. Justin Nixon; Miss Helen W. Pomeroy; Dr. Orlo J. Price; Mr. Harold W. Sanford; Mr. LeRoy E. Sayder; Mr. William F. Yust, Rochester Public Library.

Providence, R. I., World Unity Counci

The Council established at Providence, following the public Conferences held in that city on May 14 and 15, has a membership which includes: Chairman, Mrs. John H. Wells, Honorable Chairman, Dr. W. H. P. Faunce, President, Brown University, Dr. John L. Alger, President, Rhode Island College of Education; Mrs. James E. Cheeseman; Rev. Arthur W. Cleaves; Mrs. George H. Crooker, Prof. L. M. Goodrich; Rabbi Samuel M. Gup, Temple Beth-el; Rev. Richard McLaughlin; Miss M. S. Morriss, Mrs. Frank E. Peckham; Rt. Rev. James de Wolf Perry; Rev. O. S. P. Thompson. [Page 305]

NOTES AND ANNOUNCEMENTS

With the termination of the 1928-1929 program of public Conferences conducted by World Unity Foundation, some comment on this direct application of the ideals and principles served by World Unity Magazine will be opportune.

World Unity Conferences have been held, between October 8, 1928, and May 29, 1929, in fourteen cities of the United States and Canada, with from two to four meetings in each city. Thus a combined audience of many thousands has been created for addresses by leading educators, Christian and Jewish ministers and active liberals of many different races and creeds uniting to promote “those ethical, humanitarian and spiritual ideals which create harmony and understanding among religions, races, nations and classes.”

In addition to these Conferences, the Director of World Unity Foundation has vastly extended their influence by speaking to several hundred groups and organizations, relating their special objects to the basic conditions of the age. Finally, the interest aroused in these cities has been consolidated by means of local World Unity Councils, composed of from ten to twenty resident members, which function as representatives of the Foundation in the community.

The more specialized program of the Institute of World Unity, offering thoroughly organized courses in international affairs, rounds out the educational activities initiated by World Unity—one organic movement expressed through Conferences, Magazine and Summer School. During the early months of 1930, still another important branch will be added, consisting of the publication of a series of books to be known as “World Unity Library,” details of which will be supplied later.

The fundamental idea of World Unity is to provide adequate mediums of expression for that current thought which is concerned with the general problems of modern civilization. Its character is thus broader than that of societies and movements identified with a single aim like peace, or with a single aspect of life, like religion or science.

Those who lament the “decay” of religion fail to recognize the fact that, to retain its force of flow, the religious impulse from age to age creates new modes and new forms. The ideal of World Unity, alone, by no means constitutes a religion, but it does offer adequate ethical and humanitarian expression for people who can no longer be confined by any sectarian division of a revealed religion. [Page 306]

WORLD UNITY BOOK OF THE MONTH

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July 1929 Selection

"RELIGION AND THE MODERN WORLD" by JOHN HERMAN RANDALL and JOHN HERMAN RANDALL, JR.

Volume one in the series "Religion and the Modern Age" Edited by John Herman Randall Published by Frederick A. Stokes

"I do not see how anyone seriously concerned with anything resembling a spiritu life in the contemporary world can dispense with the reading of this volume." Professor Irvin Edman, Columbia University.

"Probably the most dynamic treatment of the modern religious complex which ha yet been published in this country."-Professor Harry Elmer Barnes, Smith College

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I enclose $1.50 for "RELIGION AND THE MODERN WORLD." (or) I enclose $4.25 for "RELIGION AND THE MODERN WORLD" combined with year's subscription (regular price $3.50) to WORLD UNITY MAGAZINE. [Page 307]

The International Journal of Ethics

JAMES H. TUFTS Managing Editor T. V. SMITH Associate Editor

For thirty-five years the leading quarterly in its field, The International Journal of Ethics numbers among its contributors the foremost writers in America and Great Britain.

Its province is both the central field of ethical knowledge and practice, and the bordering fields of law, politics, economics, literature, and religion. Promoting the study of ethics and of other sciences in so far as they bear directly upon conduct, the Journal is a common ground for the interchange of views between students of law and students of ethics and the social sciences.

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THE ONLY scientific review whose contributors are truly international.

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THE ONLY review, therefore, which, while of immediate interest to students of statistics, demography, ethnography, economics, law, the history of religions and sociology in general, by its numerous and important articles and reports relating to these sciences, enables the reader to know, in summarised and synthetic form, the chief problems of all other branches of knowledge.

THE ONLY review which among its contributors can boast of the most illustrious men of science in the whole world. A list of more than 350 of these is given in each number.

The articles are published in the language of their authors, and every number has a supplement containing the French translation of all articles not written in French. The review is thus completely accessible to those who know only the French language. Write for a free copy to the General Secretary of Scientia, at the following address, enclosing 12 cents in stampe of your country merely to cover packing and postage.

SUBSCRIPTION $10 per year, post free. OFFICE: 12, Via A. De Togni, Milan (116), Italy General Secretary: DR. PAOLO BONETTI [Page 308]

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