World Unity/Volume 4/Issue 5/Text

[Page 309]

WORLD UNITY

A Monthly Magazine for those who seck the world outlook upon present

developments of philosophy, science, religion, ethics and the arts

Ss lh aad

Joun Herman Ranovatt, Editor

Horace Hotter, Managing Editor

CF. Anstey

Ww. W. Atwoop

A. Munnstsomn Bartnoipy

B.kon BauDRan

LF. ps Bsaurort

Gaaat A. Banweeer

'Prmane Bover

Eow:in Aataur Burtt

Hannay CoaRtesworts

\, Poon Casw

Repores 1. Corsss

Ravaay Dopcs

Geoaces Dumamet

4xuwa B. Ecxstain

Haveroce Exus

Avouste Fors.

Cb. Gates

\. Scnurzs GAvaanitz

Heomuts von Gaearacn

Hiexpert Adams Gippons

Kantit Giaran naxtotts Peaxins GitmMan

Joun W, Granam

Contributing Editors

A. Eustace Harpon Wier Haves

Yamato Icarcnasm Morpacas W. Jounson Rurvus M. Jonas Davin Stare Jorpan Samust Lucas Josm Eanasst Jupet Viapimin Kanapstorr P. W. Kvo

Ricnarp Las

Haareyr Levi

Aran Loces Guoaos vs Lucics Louis L. Mann

Sin Janes Marcuant Victor Maacugaitts R. H. Marxuam Arrasp W. Maatin F. S. Marvin Kiatiay F. Matuer Lucia Auazs Maap Farp Maerairigip

MtianysGrunpMaNN-Koscignsxa Karin Micnasuis

beanx H. Hanxins

Hersear A. Mizcer

Duan Gorat Mucsays Ipa MUtise Yons Nooucas

. Harnay Arran Ovanstanst

Daxtsa Psacins Joun Heawan Rawpatt, Jr. M. D. Repuica Foaaast Reip

Pau Ricnarp Cuaareas Ricugr

Ta. Ruyssen Natsaniat Scnmipt Witusam R. Suapneav Maay Siscaist

Appa Hircar Sitver Isipor Sincer

Davin G. Steap Aucustus O. Tuomas Gitsert Tuomas Isapezza Van Meter Rustum Vampéry Wartea Watsn

Hans Waenaexo

M. P. Witecocxs Franx Liorp Waicut

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ae Baw Comsceanicn: and its sot welcome oss

articles related to the aims and purposes of the magazine. Prin

Contents copyrighted 1929 by Wor

York City: Mary Rumsey Movivs, president;

Wor.tp dence on in U.S. A. tp Unity PuszisninGc Corporation. �[Page 310]

“e are ts ar YT ine (“e)(o™) ie) taal) Ae, Tie (“ay ye) Hale)

about better international relations and a

more wholesome unity in dealing with each other. This is evidenced in the large number of in- ternational meetings of one kind or another recently held — the International Economic Council at Geneva, the International Chamber of Commerce at Stockholm, the Rotarians at Ostend, the Ki- wanians at Montreal, the Naval Disarmament Con- ference at Geneva, the Conference of the Christian Church at Lausanne, the World Court and the League of Nations, and the Third General Confer- ence with the Second Biennial of the World Federa- tion of Education Associations at Toronto.

It is only in recent years that the people have taken an active interest in foreign affairs. They have considered this a matter wholly for the diplomat and this applies to all countries. International affairs are just as much the concern of all the people as are domestic issues and should interest them quite as much. The nations are now brought into intimate relations with each other. The world has become ‘‘modern."’ This new spirit, this awakening to the new relationship, is evidenced in the activi- ties mentioned above and in many other move- ments.

However, if there are those who think we are going to come immediately into a new order in | which we shall all be actuated by brotherly love, | they are doomed to disappointment. This can come about only after repeated and sustained effort, pos- sibly over generations. The hope lies with the chil- dren who are unprejudiced and may be brought up under proper direction without mistrust or fear of their neighbors and Flas the habit of thinking of foreign relations and business affecting the several countries as free cooperative equals in aiding the progress of mankind.

FR stor the peop'~ are determined to bring

—Avuoustus O. Tuomas President, World Federation of Education Associations

A R PL en eae Pa ee) A ee eae Va �[Page 311]WORLD UNITY MAGAZINE

Vou. IV Avoust, 1929 No. 5 EDITORIAL CAWAS

THE SOVEREIGNTY OF LAW

reasons for law non-enforcement in the United States are

likely to prove exceedingly interesting—provided, of

course, the committee strays from the narrow pathway of routine legal methods and machinery into the wildwood of mass psychology.

Non-enforcement and non-observance of law have ever been the nemesis of institutions which fail to respond to new and vital conditions arising in the surrounding environ™es: When large numbers of citizens, or members, or communicants, pass trom voluntary obedience to indifference or voluntary disobedi- ence, the sources of this transformation of attitude can never be found in the individual bute must be sought in the institution itself. Obedience to law marks a healthy spirit in the social body; non-obedience indicates that the body has become diseased.

An effective approach to the problem of the relations be- tween citizen and state lies in consideration of the so-called ‘gangs’ which have become organized in American cities. In practically every sense of the word, an active and efficient gang is a sovereignty, a state, to its own members. Ie legislates; it maintains courts; it possesses at least the elements of an educa- tional system; it determines such matters as the status of sex relations; it levies taxes; it protects its obedient citizens and punishes its traitors; it wages war and signs treaties of peace; it recognizes boundaries; it conducts foreign relations. Granted its successful continuance for a term of years, the gang evokes the psvchology of patriotism and achieves the status of independent sovereignty among its peers.

T: results of Mr. Hoover's special investigation of the

yun �[Page 312]3132 WORLD UNITY MAGAZINE

_ Regarded only from within, the gang is a worthy and usefy social organism, capable of manifesting, in rudimentary degree x least, the various attributes and functions of the national stax Emotionally and materially, it is that state in primitive forn

We overlook these simple facts because it is impossible fo us to achieve the perspective of the gang member—our perspectis. visualizes the gang only as a sinister act of rebellion against th larger law of the land.

But it will be increasingly necessary for all well meanin; people to overcome within themselves the traditional perspectiv by which every act of the national state is vested with tru complete sovereignty, and nationalism is considered to posses: the status of finality.

From the viewpoint of humanity as a whole, the moder state is itself nothing else than a more highly organized ‘‘gang in sinister rebellion against the supreme order and welfare of th: world. Its acts of warfare are murder; its education for the mos: part a betrayal of crue human interests; its tariffs and immigratio: laws wholly arbitrary expressions of partisan policy and there fore in conflict with the fundamental laws of economics and inter. national cooperation. While national states continue to breai the universal laws of life, and justify the resulting political, economic, cultural and spiritual chaos, how can they expec: from their own citizens that voluntary, whole-hearted obedienc which exists only when the cell is a part of a healthy organism’

Thus it may confidently be expected that if Mr. Hoover’ investigation goes far enough, it will lay bare the fact tha national statutes are only valid when they exist as local applica tions of laws and principles controlling the welfare and vigorou: development of humanity as a whole. Possessing this status. their observance and enforcement will be identical with thox supreme moral and spiritual realities which can alone balanc self-interest and social obligation on the part of individual met and women. Without it, national statutes are a defiance of reality, a source of chaos and an instrument capable of setting state agains: state once more, but for the last time.

�[Page 313]THE SPIRITUAL CRISIS OF THE WEST by

Paul Richard Author of “To the Nations,” etc.

After the war the western world resembled an exploded arsenal. The din of battle over, everything lay in pieces. The ruptured tension, which caused the formidable conflagration, was followed by an obscure and hazardous equilibrium, not that of a balanced and living order, but of chaos itself. Is this what we call peace,—this lifeless death-like peace — this peace of disintegrated things, of an exhausted land which hides itself in the dust?

Empires, traditions, institutions, constitutions, social and economic systems—all are degraded and decaying. The reeking disintegration of the spirit, in the moral realm, completes the breakdown of all forces and forms of the old order in the materia! realm.

The volcano has left its torrents of lava, and as a result, the very landscape is unrecognizable. The face of Europe is altered and disfigured. Its soul even more. Its soul, like its body, is in pieces. Certain pieces, it is true, still appear massive and solid. Certain peoples have fallen back or remained on their own soil. But even if the boundaries are the same, the foundations them- selves on which they were built have been demolished. In place of the mediocre uniformity of pre-war times, a stampede of conflicting and contradictory tendencies has set in. Fascism, on one hand and Communism on the other, menaces the panic-stricken and desperate conservatism of the neutrals. For peace, like war, has its neutrals. Their inertia resists dissolution, but little by little is melted down, while others have deliberately thrown themselves into the abyss led by a hidden and instinctive faith—

313 �[Page 314]€ 314 WORLD UNITY MAGAZINE

splendid with the possibilities of realizing a rebirth ; whilst other; alarmed at the gulf beneath, have struggled up the slipper, precipice toward the old summits of the Past. The neutrals, how. ever, conquerors of yesterday, are sliding back, clutching desper. ately at the old roots, unwilling to slacken hold, hanging on their illusion of being still firmly established on their peaks— rocks which are carrying them into the Void. None of them wil! escape the necessity of touching bottom before being able to climb back toward the even greater heights of the future. Th same disruptive force which, in the political world, has de. composed into extreme tendencies—dictatorship of the one or the many—the broken balance of the old conservative order, ha: its equivalent in the moral and intellectual sphere.

The explosion has shattered the spirit into fragments.

es 8

Before the war, western thought, by a sort of intuition o/ coming events, seemed to be absorbed in the mystic contemplation of pacifist ideals, which the different governments rivalled on another by echoing in their official declarations. In the same way, a steel bar, before snapping, bulges and contracts at the very spot where a fracture will occur.

At the first shock of an event all the more brutal because oi public credulity, the European mind broke up, abandoning it: supra-national ideal in order to entrench itself in as many national strongholds as there were separate interests. In every country souls, like bodies and possessions, were mobilized, requisitioned and militarized. In this common level of new patriotic mysticism in which all were engulfed little souls were elevated and great ones shrunken. Very few were large enough and conscious enough to remain free and escape from this collective suggestion, thes clutches of the jealous god. But in them the purest elements of the Spirit withdrew from the general delirium and regained their heaven “‘par dessus la metée.’’ Such were the results of the first rupture.

The second arose when national entities, having exhausted their force of ‘‘wwiex sacrée’’ for war concentration, had again �[Page 315]THE SPIRITUAL CRISIS OF THE WEST 315

to allow the individual to follow his own bent. After the ex- plosion of war came the disruption of peace. It brought with it no less a denial than war to all yearnings of the Spirit. War destroyed men, but peace killed the illusions by which men lived, and for which they had sacrificed their lives. All that was lefe ot practical idealism was drowned in the brutal realization of facts.

The dove of peace folded its wings and was confined in the sumptuous diplomatic cage, which the victorious powers had reserved for it on the shores of Lake Geneva. ‘World Freedom,’’ for which so much blood and so much gold had been lavishly expended, was now cooped up between higher barriers than before. Its bese symbol is that no one today can travel without undergoing the humiliating formalities and shameful badge of the passport which Russia alone dared to impose before the war. And everyone accepts this as a matter of course. There is today no home for the free citizen of the world. Thus the old demon, thought defeated, was simply dislodged. The nations merely tought to know to which would be vouchsafed the dubious honor of serving as Satan's host.

The storm was over, having swept half the old world away, and brushed the sweepings on to the other half. That is why another cyclone is expected, another sweep of the broom—either war or general revolution—for which the nations are silently preparing. Meanwhile, the Spirit, withdrawn into its luminous home above, and no longer finding a place on earth to alight, casts its giant shadow over the Chaos beneath. And this shadow, suspended over the nations, seems to send them the Future's ultimatum: Regeneration or Death! Science itself has equipped them with formidable means of self-destruction unless they change.

For earth's convulsions have no meaning other than to usher in a New Age and open up a road to the future, by first throwing down all obstacles, by ploughing up the ground if needed. Wars, Revolutions. these are the ploughs which dig the ancient fields tor the sower. These are the armies of Titans which pass in advance of the gods. They are the lordly footfall of the unknown master �[Page 316]316 WORLD UNITY MAGAZINE

who from afar shakes nations, overthrows thrones, levels em.

pires, and destroys in order to create. Chaos is the womb of the future. ee 8

In this Chaos the thought of Europe is losing itself, is break- ing up and returning to its elements. How recognize it in its many separated fragments? How follow it in the dispersion of beliefs and ideas, in the dissemination of its very substance? There is not a single domain in which it is not dissolved into op- posing tendencies and divergent currents. Crises of knowledge, of power, of will, even—such is the present ordeal of the Spirit.

Philosophical crisis, in which the mind, tired of the old dualistic forms, has disappeared in empty agnosticism, which is only an avowal of ignorance. Religious crisis, wherein dogma and life end their long disagreement by getting a divorce. Scien- tific crisis, and that of all systems of philosophy which follow it towards the Unknown, wherein the various hypotheses clash and totter together. Political crisis, in which the State hesitates between the chaining or the unleashing of the many, between the many and the oneness of unity; and succumbs by the dislocation of its very basis; individual wishes and collective will, liberty and authority. Moral crisis, social crisis, family crisis, on all hands thought disjointed, dispersed, dissolved. And the generations themselves, instead of backing up one another, have turned their backs on one another; the parents looking toward the past, which they are ever evoking with sterile regret, the children looking toward their parents and toward the world they have bequeathed them, and to the present, their legacy, full of debt and danger, or to the future, which they regard with misgiving. Severed from the past, overwhelmed with their heavy burden, and discouraged by so great a variety of problems, the majority only seek their own interest, the immediate pleasure. The war, and peace even more, has left them but two idols still standing—Power, which procures Wealth, and Wealth, which procures Power. And if they still gaze toward the horizon for a new ideal, it is ever toward the West that they turn. �[Page 317]THE SPIRITUAL CRISIS OF THE WEST 317

Europe today looks across the ocean towards that other Europe, which continues and augments her,—America. Today the West looks still farther West.

‘*Americanism!—in that is embodied the leading tendency, the overwhelming temptation for what remains of European thoughe. Looks, manners, clothes, and customs, more and more reflect, as in a mirror, the physical and moral characteristics of the real conqueror, the model, banker and master of all—the American business man. But the latter is the offspring of a virgin land and a youthful race, which has all the future for him, since it has no past. How is it possible then, for the exhausted peoples of the Old World to follow in his steps? They envy his aim of power without having the will or virility to use his means—his energetic discipline, his cold self-control—which belongs only to those whose marrow is not yet dried up by culture, art, or life.

While most succumb to the fascination of the Far West, at the other extreme, some, the best perhaps, respond to the spell ot the Orient, they listen to the call of the East.

For the antithesis of Americanism is Asiatic Mysticism. (merica and Asia are the two poles of the modern spirit. Only Asia, and the heart of Asia—India, is another past, the greatest, the oldest, bute the most misty, deceptive and decadent today. Thev look toward that Orient where all suns have risen and set, and not to that as yet invisible, where a new dawn, the sun of comorrow will arise.

When matter begins to evaporate and the atom, at the last ‘tages of its metamorphoses to disintegfate, its energy resolves into currents of opposite poles, into rays which are lost in the unknown of the formless ether, chat Nirvana of substance. The western spirit does likewise. It dies thus, giving back a part of tsclt to the earth, to the present chaos, and the remainder to the incient abyss, which it takes for heaven.

Materialism and spirituality are constantly driving it into (wo opposite directions. By dint of scrutinizing what it took to he inert, tangible and immovable, it has been carried away to the limits of the visible, far from the boundaries of sense towards �[Page 318]318 WORLD UNITY MAGAZINE

those vertiginous regions, where the mass itself disappears 1: vortices of pute energy, and where reality is dissolved in th magic of the imponderable.

On the other hand, wishing to prove by visible, concret and objective means the marvel of the Invisible, it has come to bun the soul, the self, the eternal one, under a mass of material phenom. ena and experimental statistics, and crush it beneath the parapher. nalia and jargon of the laboratory. While scientific inquiry i; gradually leading it toward the sublimation of matter, meta. physical researches drive it back toward a crude materializatio: of what is spiritual. But in this very confusion, in which finally sinks, at the extreme limits of these divergent tendencies. there lies perhaps the hidden germ of some luminous synthesi: of the future. As in the ether undoubtedly, the severed rays of th: vanished substance may join together in order to kindle other suns, somewhere in the beyond.

Meanwhile, the European spirit, whirled about in its twi- light of blood, is carried by the blind storm from one dogma to another, from one gulf to another, from the darkness of traditior to the darkness of negation. In the midst of this delirium ani dispersion of ideas, certain fragments at times come together as the recent Congress of Religions, in which believers from al! the churches met to demonstrate their unity. They met like dead leaves around a leafless tree.

It is the season of winter; the night of the West; a death o: the spirit, preparing its resurrection.

• 2 s

The sign of life is essentially integration—synthesis. It em- bodies that unifying power that comes from the presence of the Spirit. The sign of death is dispersion, crumbling away, dissolu- tion. In the realm of thought this appears in the form of excessive analysis; an incapacity for synthesis, and this is just the pre dominating tendency, the chief characteristic of the Western mind today.

More and more it seems to be sinking in the quicksands ot innumerable facts, detailed observations and analytical data, �[Page 319]® THE SPIRITUAL CRISIS OF THE WEST 319

overwhelmed in plurality—lost in diversity. Its incapacity to erasp the whole—the main outline—and survey the general out- look, is such that the synthetical and intuitive spirit—the true spirit of philosophy—is despised and forgotten in the diverse tendencies of western thought. An inclusive comprehension is more and more rare—to say nothing of true intelligence. For to understand, means to grasp as a whole.

Nevertheless, this excessive tendency to analyze, to dis- sociate, comes of profound inner necessity and has a very real and practical use.

Its very function is to break up obsolete forms of thought and to dissolve wornout dogmas—once the expression of the living faith of the dead, now of the dead faith of the living. For the time has come when the things of the West are necessarily heing destroyed.

In the intellectual sphere, as in all the others, war and revolu- tion have been declared by all that is to be against all that has been -have been declared against everything that might prove an obstacle in the way of the will of the Future. And if there is anvthing able to spare the West and mankind further wars and revolutions, to arrest the catastrophic period that has begun, tor Europe it is only such a possible, radical and entire revolution ot the Spirit—a maelstrom of thought capable of pulling the world out of its infernal vortex.

This crisis of the European spirit is the great crisis of transi- tion which resembles Death, through which it proceeds from the Pase—which is no more—to the Future which is not yet; trom truths which are no longer vital to those which will give lite co the Future. It yields to the ultimatum of life itself. Phoenix- like, the Spirit destroys itself in order to rise again. It destroys in order to create. For creation and destruction are two forms of chergy—two aspects of the Eternal. Only by the right of creation can we destroy. There is no greater destroyer than the creator, and to create is the divine raison d'etre of man, his inner virtue. He is an incarnation of Nature’s supreme power to evoke and attract the new, the non-manifested, which through him takes on form. He �[Page 320]320 WORLD UNITY MAGAZINE

is the fermentation of the potential in the real, of the infinite in the finite,—a victorious challenge of the Known to the Unknown, of the Possible to the Impossible.

The Western spirit has entered into that dark zone in which the mystery of conception is elaborated. It has gone down into the hidden crypts and underground places of the soul, from whence it will at last emerge with new-born powers. For, it is there in the invisible depths that are to be found the obstructed sources of life, the old foundations and the broken bases upon which everything was built, and which have now to be reconstructed.

Too many unforeseen things, for which their foundations were never intended, have been piled upon them; and it is their frailty, giving way beneath the pressure, which has brought about the downfall we are now witnessing. Too many inventions, too many innovations and discoveries have, during the last two centuries, changed the face of the old world, and the organization of its accustomed forms of life.

The extraordinary progress made by the material sciences and the consequent springing up of industries, dependent upon these discoveries, while multiplying and complicating beyond measure the requirements of life, have wrecked the old economic order and broken down the unstable balance of social and mora! ideas. The ruin of the international combinations and the falling of political structures have followed, revealing and accentuating that more irremediable collapse of the spiritual substructure upon which the whole of western civilization rests.

It is to those depths that one has to dig and excavate, clear away rubbish and find the rock to build again.

Every great epoch of human progress has, at its source, a gushing forth of the spirit, at its root some basic idea, some col- lective intuition for the most part unconscious, which contained the germ of what the future is to realize, and in which the mean- ing of life itself is renewed. For it is the meaning of life which 1s changed at each fresh revolution of the spirit. It is from this basic intuition that deep and vivid light is thrown on the rela- tions linking the individual with the universal, man with the �[Page 321]THE SPIRITUAL CRISIS OF THE WEST 321

infinite. I¢ is that which philosophic systems try to translate, cach in its own way, in terms of reason, and which popular creeds express both mystically and mythically by the emotion and image contained in the idea of God. A new thought, a new revelation, a new idea of God—a new God: such is the nebular center of gravity around which all creation organizes itself, the first glimmering of light in the heart of Chaos, the likeness, the secret presence— at once the idea, ideal, idol—which every new-born civilization hatches in its bosom. The source of faith of the western world has overgrown its limits without realizing that the old idol has tallen into the dust. The giant tree has spread out its branches bur failed to deepen its roots. The hurricane has come and up- rooted it. The scale of outer acquisitions and conquests was out of all proportion to its inner growth. It will only bloom again by the establishment of a truer relation between the extension of its Outer consciousness and a deepening within. For there is a necessary harmony between the two planes of existence, the inner and the outer, the psychic and the physical; between the two living worlds, the world of the soul and the world of nature. One cannot break such harmony with impunity, for the objective and the subjective, the temporal and the spiritual are but counter- parts one of the other.

Above all, the qualitative and the quantitative, the in- Jivisible (the invisible—tixe One) and the divisible, those in- separable opposites, adapt themselves and answer one another, i:ke time and space in movement, in which all forms appear, or spirit and matter in life through which all things are born. They are opposite and complementary aspeczs—the two poles of the Real. Once the balance is destroyed, when one of them, spirit or matter, force or form abandons the other, it is the beginning ot the end for both. Western life has divorced them. In so doing it has opened up the abyss beneath its feet. It cannot come back except by giving thought its two wings, to fly in the light of unity. For matter and spirit, the soul and the world, are one.

Spirit is matter in a state of power and matter is spirit in the shape of form. �[Page 322]322 WORLD UNITY MAGAZINE

There is more spirit in matter than there is without, and th one is but the consciousness of the other. And it is the same ir the case of all these opposites which, sundered by the mind, ar. wedded by the Infinite.

All the infinite is in the finite. All the worlds are in thy heavens, and all the heavens are on earth; this must be. All th: gods abide in men. They must be made manifest in him. And thy greatest of these are the first, who march toward the Dawn.

• .* *%

It is always the principle of its greatest faith, of its consciou: or unconscious philosophy, which every society strives to appl in the organization of its political life.

Upon its synthesis of thought depends its social structure from which it receives clarity and stability. A state, in fact, is th visible embodiment of a theological system. And every govern ment, whether willingly or no, is the image and incarnation 0: divine power, single or multiple, relative or absolute, whicheve: the spirit of a people feels it to be. Or it may be its antithesis, its negation, when the people are wearied of this form to the point o: revolution. Theocracy, autocracy, plutocracy, democracy, th power of the Priest, of the King, of the Rich, of the People, are si many forms of divine right. When the thought of nature out- weighs that of God, when Osiris takes the place of Isis, then : monarchy gives way to a republic.

So completely have the foundations of the collective faith o: the West crumbled away, that the traditional forms of the Stat: have gradually decayed, even to the point of anarchy, and after sv tuany attempts, so many avatars, so many metamorphoses, polit:- cal power hardly knows what form to take. All the ancient ghost: of Authority, the very names of which have fallen into disgrace now stand staring at each other in bewilderment, unable recognize or exclude one another. Only the advent of some creativ: idea can solve such a political crisis, in which the mind no longe: finds any force on which it can lean, any form in which to mani- fest. Its problem can only be solved by turning back to the laws o: being, which alone organize living beings and living nations. �[Page 323]THE SPIRITUAL CRISIS OF THE WEST 323

Such laws can reconcile all contradictory formulas, and re- -stablish the necessary harmony between the essential terms of | berty and Unity. They alone can realize the complete unification » tween the two fundamental principles, of oneness and multiplic- tv, of the wish of the individual, which is the basis of true -mocracy, and that of central power and will, unique soul of the cial body. For only in the mutual respect of these two principles an the nations find the secret of their equilibrium, growth, and continuance. No administrative machinery, no arbitrary centrali-

ation can ever hope to replace these laws. The western nations «hich have tried to do so can only pass from the tyranny of the uctator to the anarchy of the demagogue. In the end, they can nly pass away.

While those which have known how to give, in one form or another, the people a divine center, a living symbol, emblem, to sive the whole democratic edifice an arrow pointing toward the sv, have been able, like ancient China, to center for more than ‘orty centuries four hundred million men around their. *‘Sons of ‘icaven,”” or like Japan around its ‘“Tenno,"’ to pass three thou- in! years without submission or defeat, shielded by a con- “nuous succession of man-gods, guarantees of the unity and cberty of all.

The only alternative left to the peoples is to consider them- «ives lifeless things, to be disposed of by the State machine, as -ogs in some central grinder, or as living organisms, which will ~ animated, ennobled and made powerful by the spiritual, yet visible, presence of a Soul and of a God.

• *« £

It is true that the form in which this S 11 and this God of the reople manifested, was sometimes figurat *—more often than ‘cally incarnated—tepresented if not present- sometimes no more ‘an a memory; sometimes a mockery of the Past. For the divine

ca which gave them life is itself incapable of living. It no -onger answers to the ideals or the realities of today. The failure ot institutions reveals that of religions. And the fall of the gods on irth saan follows that in the heaven of the Spirit. If real men- �[Page 324]324 WORLD UNITY MAGAZINE

gods today mounted on the throne of the Past, it would only kx no doubt, to precipitate their downfall, and to bury and annih; late themselves under the ruins of dead forms and obsolete emp:r. in a redeeming holocaust offered to things of the morrow.

For, if a unique soul still mu’t needs manifest itself in th; multitude, an ego in the mass, ti bsolute of the spirit in th. infinite of relative corporeities, t 2 are no longer the spiritles forms of yesterday in which suci « spirit must clothe itself. |:. image cannot be that of the old god potentate, jealous a: arbitrary, a Jupiter with his bolts, or a Jehovah in his wrath. |: will be that of a new god, a god which is not yet; of a god whi does not will to be.

God no longer exists; he can no longer be what he was ma¢: by the human mind; the magnified shadow of its own egoisr thrown on the screen of the Infinite. He has no longer a bein: having immolated himself into non-being so that from it all ca: come into being. He is no longer as Creator; he has spread himse!: throughout all the possibilities of the Infinite, giving to each th: power of creating itself according to its own nature and desire. H: has distributed himself among all creatures. He is no longer th. Almighty; for his whole might has passed into them. In th: heart of each he is nothing but iight and love. It follows then, thi: those who incarnate him in the midse of the nations, should k like himself not the most powerful but the most destitute, no: the richest but the poorest, the most universal. The true king the lawful shepherd of the people, will be known tomorrow by t®. fact that being the greatest of all he will know how to become th least, more impersonal than any; and that possessing all thing: he will have nothing. Being the wisest, he will not be parti: toward or prejudiced against any. He will not judge, he wi understand all. He will be with all—as God, light and love. An so will he be able to lead his people without error or failure alon: straight and luminous ways towards the summits of the futur

Where are such men to be found? The nations, from their ow: bosoms, will bring them forth, when in despair and lost in th: depths which are opening before them. Humanity carries withi: �[Page 325]- THE SPIRITUAL CRISIS OF THE WEST 325

‘self the germ of all the beings of which it dreams, which it seeds. From its needs and dreams they are born. The Rishis of the ast, the Wise Men of antiquity, the Sons of Heaven, are not ai. They may be born again. They shall be reborn more divine ‘van betore. The nations, then, can like mystic Russia descend with faith ‘omard greater misery, greater mystery and darkness. The deeper «the gulf the higher will be the reascent. They can destroy the _toundations and set them deeper than before. These will only ~ all the firmer. And upon these foundations, which the blind tans have hammered and pounded, the gods will build.

• * * =

\ hatever be its form, the new order implies a new ‘‘élite’’— “chte’’ no longer dispersed but homogeneous; the modern uivalene of what in ancient times was the Brahmanic caste, now -cnerate. For its double ideal and permanent example of high oking and plain living was, for centuries, the glory of ancient

i Not a closed caste, proud and hard, but an open ‘‘élite’’ <coptive co all, strict only toward itself.

An ¢lite having its own law, its own way of thought and more beautiful, and noble, more exacting and difficule than others. An élite which could not be an object of envy, us OF COVetousness to any; which will be a constant and ot inspiration to all.

lodav in the West, when the mass looks above, what does it

Politicians, bankers, opera singers—a rabble even worse

a that below.

(certainly there is still scattered in the mass, and gradually solving in it, an élite of men of science, thinkers, artists, and »vilanthropists. There are heroes and saints. But this élite is ‘sored, timid and powerless—even to protect itself against the ocral drift. Allits energy is taken up in maintaining itself and resisting the menace of circumstances, the miseries of life, the understandings of the crowd. The crisis of the Spirit indeed its OWN CFISIS.

ir 1s true that its increasing difficulty to live on the islets, left

~ �[Page 326]326 WORLD UNITY MAGAZINE

by the rising tide of barbarism, will compel it some day, in ore: to defend itself and subsist, to unite and recreate its own forms » life—dignified and simple, which will make a framework | beauty for the working out of its true spiritual ends.

Thus there will be formed above the mass that center irradiating thought, that hearth of constant enlightenment - +) real head of the social body—which is lacking to the weste~ peoples as well as to all others.

Then will shine forth again, higher and brighter than befor. those illuminating beacons of civilization—schools of Pythagor: or Alexandria—to enlighten not only Greece and Rome but ¢: world at large.

A new civilization thus will be born from the ashes of thi which dies. Above the tombs dawn will break. The dawn great Christmases to come, when there shall come forth the So: of God, the Gods of our sons, when the Superman will arise, a: the nations at last quitting their jungle will be made huma: Towards this goal they are led by the crisis of the Spirit —t:: crisis of West and East, of all mankind.

The road to Calvary is not yet over. And after Calvary, t: Cross. But upon the Cross—the Light.

~~ �[Page 327]EX ODN ENO? ODN IER Fa fk aa ~~ . ee

THE WORLD WE LIVE IN

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

- breakdown of the traditional local neighborhood.

CULTURAL RELATIONS WITH LATIN AMERICA

• by

Husert C. HEerrinc Executive Divector

HE Committee on Cultural Relations with Latin America was organized in 1928. Its chairman is Henry Goddard Leach, its honorary chairman John Dewey, and its vice- chairmen Catherine Waugh McCulloch and John A. Lapp. Included in its membership are Willis J. Abbot, Raymond

Buell, Herbert Croly, Paul H. Douglas, Stephen P. Duggan, \ aldo Frank, Ernest Gruening, Robert M. Hutchins, Samuel Guy man, Paul U. Kellogg, Julian W. Mack, Francis J. McConnell, varker T. Moon, J. Fred Rippy, and Ray Lyman Wilbur. The ccutive director is Hubert C. Herring.

The Committee proposes a series of definite projects for tcasing mutual understanding between the peoples of the Vinericas.,

First of all is the annual ‘Seminar in Mexico.'’ The Seminar ‘as inaugurated three years ago by Hubert C. Herring. The ‘ourth session will be held in Mexico City, July 13 to August 3. ic purpose of the Seminar is to enable picked groups of men and vomen, widely representative of the life of the United States, to

-stablish intelligent contacts with the people of Mexico. The 327 �[Page 328]328 WORLD UNITY MAGAZINE

Seminar program includes conferences with the outstanding leaders of Mexico, trips into outlying sections of the republic lectures, etc. The Seminar has been attended by 140 men an: women, and these are proving widely influential in pleading fo: greater appreciation of the spiritual gifts of the Mexican. Thox interested in applying for membership in the Seminar shoul: write the Committee, 307 East 17th Street, New York.

At the invitation of the Committee, Mr. Moises Saenz, th: head of the Mexican educational system, recently spent thr: weeks in the United States, speaking in ten cities. Mr. Saenz represents the finest of the forward looking groups in Mexica: life and is an educator whose work is recognized by leadin: American and European educators. He was able in marked degre: to bring to American audiences the picture of the aims and dream: of Mexico.

The members of the Committee propose to carry this work o: interpretation and mutual understanding into other areas of Latin America. They feel that the great need in our inter-American relations is thegreation of a great body of intelligent and apprecia- tive friends of@atin America. Their purpose is constructive—th: building of appreciation rather than the opposing of any force They feel that suspicion and hate must melt away when peopi: begin to understand the wealth of spiritual insight which thes: others have to contribute to the common life of the Americas

hi �[Page 329]RE DOLE MOLL ORL D

a eee eee

APOSTLES OF WORLD UNITY

XX—CHARLES WAGNER

by WauTIER D AYGALLIERS AND

Wirtram LEonarD SCHWARTZ Stanford University

of them all and with complete sincerity, not as a mocking

skeptic who smiles at everything, but as a believer, one

who believes more than the dogmas express, who tries to seize the truth at the point where all the rays meet!’’ Thus Charles Wagner, author of the most famous French tract of our crimes, La Vie Simple, characterized himself in a page of his private Jiarv.* He held fast ever to the world outlook in religion and ethics, and though several of his fellow countrymen have made more vital contribution to the organized peace movement, few trenchmen have ever possessed a higher conception‘of ideal man- hood or discharged more faithfully the apostleship imposed by a true sense of one common humanity.

Born in 1852 in the parsonage of Wiberswiller, a little village in Lorraine, the son and grandson of Lutheran ministers, Wagner's childhood was spent at Tieffenbach in Alsace, amidst surroundings which enabled him throughout his whole life to retain the strongest brotherly goodwill towards men. ‘*I was born and grew up through childhood and youth in an undivided humanity. No one taugbe me to avoid or suspect anyone else, man or boy, because he belonged to a different religious group, or

• Long extracts from Wagner's correspondence and private papers enrich the recent biography,

7» Homme, le Pasteur Charles Wagner, prepared by his son-in-law, A. Wautier d'Aygalliers (Paris, hishbacher, 1927).

J AM neither Protestant, Catholic nor Jew, but something

329 �[Page 330]330 WORLD UNITY MAGAZINE

another social or political milieu . . . There was only one church in my little Alsatian village, and it was held in common by the Catholics and the Protestants. The believers of each con- fession enjoyed control of it in turn, and from this common place of worship and prayer, close bonds of friendship sprang up which were strengthened by mutual esteem. My father, the parson, was on the friendliest terms with the parish priest . . . who used to bounce me on his knee . . . and the curé often came to see his friend the parson, bringing honey from his hives. This is how | learned, from childhood, to admire and love men who thought differently from myself."’

These childhood experiences also enabled Wagner to con- ceive of the Christian ministry, whose members are to be the “friend of God and men,"’ as the greatest vocation in the world. But at the end of his first year in the Theological School at Strasburg, the young man’s studies were interrupted by the out- break of the Franco-Prussian War. This event found him absorbed in an inner struggle with problems of dogma and destiny, with no time to understand what war meant. ‘I was eighteen,’’ he wrote, ‘‘and I scarcely noticed the war. I only relived it in the mind ata later date. But at that time, I did not realize all that these battles meant which were fought not far from where I was peacefully helping the farmers to cut their hay."’ In fact, it was only after a pastorate of three years at Barr, three years after the German annexation, that Charles Wagner decided to leave the Germanized province of Alsace. *‘Not because I had come to dislike Germany. I shall always love her for her past, and for her special genius. But the annexation of Alsace constitutes a fact of a peculiar character and of infinite seriousness in these times. The con- sequences of this act of force lay so heavily upon independent minds that I did not believe I could live in the resulting moral atmosphere.’’ Wagner only acquired French citizenship in 1884. His two-fold inheritance not only enriched his character, it broadened his sympathies. It was because Wagner was essentially a man from the frontier that in Justice, his first book, the pastor, then in the prime of life, was able to write: ‘“The man who writes �[Page 331]CHARLES WAGNER 331

these pages has always lived among conflicting influences. God has guided him in such a fashion that in social, religious, intel- iectual and national questions, he has been obliged to appreciate the good which lies on both sides of the frontiers.’’

It is not generally known outside of French Protestant circles that the whole of Wagner's ministry at Paris was a work of rligious reconciliation. Such indeed was the achievement of this apostle of world unity. In 1882, when he came to the capital, he was called to minis.er to a group of theological liberals belonging ‘0 an orthodox parish—with two children in his Sunday School! His work prospered on the foundations which he laid, foundations which lie bared in his Diary. ‘‘The most forgotten passage in the \postles’ Creed, about which so much is said, is this one—I h-/teve in the Holy Catholic Church. The members of the Church auversal are already born. The Church universal is not one which acludes all mankind, but the one whose members are open-

-arted enough to fraternize in spite of all social, political, rhilosophical and religious differences.’’ ‘A true believer . . . understands and profits everywhere by the good; he loves God oder all his names and humanity in all its efforts.’’ Followers of all sects naturally gathered about Wagner to hear him preach, and though he had reached the age of thirty-eight without writing anything, he now began to repeat his messages in the form of hooks. Justice, in 1890, made Wagner known in Protestant switzerland. Jeanesse, 1892, translated at the suggestion of Miss (srace King as Youth by Ernest Redwood in 1893, received a prize ‘rom the French Academy. Increasing audiences made it possible ‘or Wagner to be heard in larger halls, until he was enabled to build his own church and seven-storied settlement building, the loser de lL’ Ame, ‘“‘Hearthstone (or Home) of the Soul,’ and ‘cdicate it in 1907. The Rue Daval, a street near the Place de la Nastille, where Wagner's congregation gathered, was renamed in 1424 the rue du Pasteur-Wagner. But the year previously, in the Congress of French churches held at Jarnac on October 24, 1906, Wagner's talents and magnanimity were successful in uniting i rench Protestants as an organization, in the Union Nationale des �[Page 332]332 WORLD UNITY MAGAZINE

Eglises Réformées, at the very moment when Disestablishment o: the separation of Church and State in France had raised difficultie: of the gravest sort.

La Vie Simple, which made Wagner widely known in the United States, appeared in May, 1895. The author had been aske: to preach at the marriage of a carpenter and the waiting maid o: Edgar Quinet’s widow, who witnessed the ceremony in compan with Mademoiselle Buisson, daughter of Ferdinand Buisson, th: recipient of a Nobel Peace Prize in 1927. The young lady wa: married herself a few weeks later and begged Pastor Wagner to speak at her wedding in exactly the same vein. *‘My book was done,’* said Wagner, ‘‘I only had to write it out. It all went onto the back of a calling-card.'’ With the passage of time, perhaps, th exact nature of Wagner's book, The Simple Life, has become for- gotten. ‘‘Simplicity is a state of mind,’’ said the pastor. *': dwells in the main intention of our lives. A man is simple whe: his chief care is the wish to be what he ought to be, that 1; honestly and naturally human. And this is neither so easy nor so impossible as one might think . . . Let a flower be a flower, : swallow a swallow, and let a man be a man, and not a fox, a hare a hog, or a bird of prey: this is the sum of the whole matter.”

Such a message is the lesson of an apostle of world unity, an: it is not surprising that Wagner, after John Wanamaker an: Roosevelt had brought him to America, should have been aske: to address the Thirteenth Universal Peace Congress at Boston :: 1904, speaking in the English which he learned just before comin: to this country. These are some of his very words at Boston and nv translation: *‘I like a neighbor who from time to time comes the wall of the garden and speaks to me and says, ‘Shake hands. neighbor, what are you doing in your garden?’ so that we ca: have talks about everything in the garden. We also should hav: talks across the wall, the thick wall of enmity which is betwee" nations.’’ Much of Wagner's strength was devoted to maintainin: better relations with Germany, where he was admired by a!: classes, even by the imperial family. He visited the Germa: churches in 1910 in behalf of world harmony, and labored alway: �[Page 333]CHARLES WAGNER 333

to preserve the peace. When the International Congress of Liberal Christianity was held in Paris in the summer of 1913, it was Wagner who arranged for a ‘‘Peace Evening’ at the Foyer del’ Ame, where Dr. Jordan spoke, assisted by two German pastors that, as David Starr Jordan tells me, was besieged within the hall by an angry mob of hooligans. Strange as it may seem to those of our generation, few among the clergy of Europe in those days knew any other God than the God of Battles and the God of a Chosen People, and when Pastor Wagner pronounced the words with which this tribute ends, some of the members of the Congress bcheld for the first time a man of God speaking as an apostle of world unity: ‘The existing relations between nations are un- worthy of this century and its magnificent advances. We are like cave dwellers. Our caves are floored with mosaics and lighted by electricity, but we are cave dwellers none the less for our narrow, suspicious, dull minds. Let the best people of every nation associate with one another and remove misunderstanding. Let us not leave the duty of transmitting news from one country to another to the agents of strife who thus poison the public mind with irritating gossip.’ �[Page 334]ee en ee

MY INTERNATIONAL FAMILY

by MarTHA TayLor Brown

EORGE MEREDITH is said to have remarked to a youth,

‘*You have a mind; use it or it will bite you.’’ Observing,

however, that people who do not use their minds are as

a rule the complacent ones, I would alter the phrase thus:

“You have a mind; use it and it will bite you; but you'll have a lot more fun with it.”

I saw this first through the eyes of my father, a man of vigor- ous, original and independent mentality. The unpardonable offenses in his sight were mental laziness and intolerance for the sincere opinions of others. Wobbly logic and emotional bias re- ceived short shrift at his hands; intellectual integrity was re- spected, no matter what was the outcome.

Thus early was I led to beat my wings against the walls of personal prejudice and narrow nationalism which hemmed us all In sixty years ago.

My father often said to me, ‘‘Never let a day go by without learning some new thing from each person you meet.” This inspired my lifelong passion to get the other fellow’s point ot view. It also developed me early into an animated interrogation point, much to the annoyance and scandal of the pedagogues of the 60's and 70's, who expected pupils to be merely the echoes of their wisdom. I well remember the disapproval and consternation of my Sunday School teacher, a young lawyer, whom at the ripe age of ten, I drove squirming to the wall with relentless logic in my ruthless search for truth. Finding no satisfaction in his evasive answers, I ceased attending Sunday School, and started alone into the jungle of human endeavor for a mental and spiritual ex- ploration of the road leading to the Real, the Good, the Beautiful. 334 �[Page 335]MY INTERNATIONAL FAMILY 335

Living for a time in a small German town at the age of twelve, I remember reading *‘Nathan the Wise,"’ and finding its humanity and breadth of outlook a wonderful antidote to the petty provincialism and social priggishness of my environment. \iv mind was also broadened at this time by a wide range of reading, unusual for my years. Fritz Reuter's stories in Platt Deutsch took me into the home of the German peasants, and the gitt on my fourteenth birthday from my sixteen-year-old brother, ot a complete German edition of Goethe, gave me access to the serene and lofty heights of that aristocratic intellect. The follow- ing vear in Paris I saw for the first time a reference to Descartes’ tamous dictum, ‘‘Cogito Ergo Sum."’ This puzzled me, as I was unaware of a metaphysical necessity for proving my own ex- istence, Of which I was so vividly conscious. I must read Descartes and find out"what he meant. As may be imagined, the perusal of Descartes was not very fruitful at my unripe age, but left me wondering why he had not written Sum, Ergo Cogito, which I tele would have been the natural thing to say.

Fate put into my hands soon after this a book which leveled ill barriers between races and creeds. This was James Freeman (larke’s ‘‘Ten Great Religions,’’ antiquated doubtless in this vear of grace, but well calculated fifty-five years ago to widen the Horizon and quicken the understanding of an ardent, growing voung girl. Hungrily I read of the religious aspirations and cultural backgrounds of peoples of many lands. The manifesta- tions were various, but I recognized the same yearnings for truth that I fele within myself. I went back to my Bible as if it were a hook fresh from the printer, finding it powerful and thrilling in proportion as I separated it from conventional dogmas and sects. | now turned eagerly to the bibles of other religions and found therein similar treasuries of the aspirations and experiences of vellow people and brown people of many races. Following the bibles I turned to the philosophers, the dramatists, the poets of other culeures. Thus, by the time I was fifteen, I was pretty. well turnished with an international outlook and sympathies. But hevond a passion for fair play and a constitutional championing �[Page 336]336 WORLD UNITY MAGAZINE

of the under dog in ways more theoretical than practical, I hai little opportunity to live vat my faith in the essential oneness o/ the human family until, at the age of sixty, the merest chanc started my international family.

A friend teaching classes for foreigners in a neighborin; university, said to me one day:

‘There's a dear little Chinese lady in one of my classes who understands so little that she is getting nothing out of it. I wish I knew someone who would like to help her."

• • Send her to me,’ was my reply. * ‘I'll see what I can do."

The following day an exquisite little Chinese bride of nine. teen glided into my room and seated herself before me with high- bred grace and wistful, lonesome eyes, her Chinese-English dictionary folded in a beautiful piece of brocade. Unfortunately she soon afterward observed that we use paper for wrappin; purposes, and thereafter she used newspaper instead of the artistic square of silk. She captured my heart at once with her breeding, poise, sweetness and charm. She was also lovely, with her ivory skin of the finest texture, her aristocratic features and her slender hands with their tapering fingers and carefully tended long nails. It was evident that with them she had never done any work more arduous than embroidery or painting. Her little feet, which had escaped the extreme of mutilation, had been. boun< into a pointed shape and were no larger than a child's. To disguis their smallness she had stuffed the toes of her American shoe: with cotton. Her slightly slanting eyes wore a veil of anxious doubrfulness over the wistful desire to find a personal welcome. I warmed to her at once, and when I took her by the hand anc led her chrough my home, teaching her the names and uses o! my belongings, she dropped her veil of shyness, and I felt her grateful response to human interest. Finding that she was trying to keep house in this strange country without knowing the names of the things she had to use, some of our lessons took place in my kitchen in order to teach her the names of utensils and articles of food.

After several lessons there came a day when for the first �[Page 337]MY INTERNATIONAL FAMILY 337

time I detected a trace of perturbation beneath the sweet serenity of my little friend. As our lesson progressed, her attention flagged, and it was plain that something was on her mind. At the end of the hour she said with a blush:

‘Cannot come get lessons.’

‘‘But why, my dear?”’ said I.

‘‘Days now very cold,"’ she faltered.

‘But cold will not hurt you, and you need to learn more i:nglish,”’ I replied. Seill murmuring:

‘Very cold,’’ in evident embarrassment, she timidly laid an envelope in my lap. Opening it I found a ten dollar bill. In a ‘lash I understood. The allowance from the honorable father was not sufficing for the lessons, which she assumed should be paid tor. I returned the envelope, saying with a smile:

‘‘I do not want money for teaching you. I do it for friend- liness.”’

Puzzled, her shapely hands fluttered the leaves of her odd little dictionary until she found the curious, cryptic combination of symbols which gave her the clue. Then a radiance glowed-in her face, and she asked breathlessly:

‘What day shall I come2?’’ showing of what flimsy texture was her excuse of **Very cold.”

Soon thereafter I was invited to the little home for a Chinese dinner, which included such dainties as stuffed ducks’ eggs, shark's fins, etc. It was all so delicious that I asked my young hostess if it were her mother who had taught her to be so good a cook. 7

“Oh no! My mother not cook. Boy cook. I not cook in my China.”

‘How did you learn?’’ The answer, accompanied by a charm- ing smile, was:

“T just ery.””

A pretty good sermon could be written on that text.

Before long it became apparent that a baby was expected. ‘o | said to my little friend:

‘You are far from your own mother. Let me be your Ameri-

e �[Page 338]338 WORLD UNITY MAGAZINE

can mother and help you about the things that your own mother would do if she were with you.”

She gratefully acquiesced, and thus became the first member of my International Family. After she went back to ‘‘My China,’ as she fondly called her country, many were the charming gifts that found their way to me, as well as much-prized letters always signed ‘‘Chinese Daughter.”’

This seems to be the place to say a few words about the so- called **stony inscrutability of Orientals.’’ This is but a protective mask assumed against the air of superiority, sometimes of arro- gance, shown by many Anglo-Saxons, which must be amusing a; well as irritating to people whose ancestors had evolved a high and elaborate civilization, adorned with superlative art, science and philosophy, at a time when ours were daubed with woad and living in wattled shelters. My experience has shown me that as soon as Orientals see they are to be treated with the kindly courtesy that we give to each other, their mask of reserve is dropped, and they become men and women of varied and interest- ing personalities.

To return to my little Chinese friend: I could be conscious of no aloofness in her when I saw her sometimes flying across the campus to meet me and to encircle me with her arms. There ar at least two things that might profitably be learned from her by American girls of nineteen: charming manners and poise. The former were instinctive and sincere; the latter showed itself to an amazing degree under difficult circumstances. Here she was set down in a strange country with a husband also but nineteen years of age, to face, like two babes in the woods, a multiplicity of problems, a strange language, incomprehensible customs, the new task of doing all her own housework—on those small bound feet—and two babies in as many years. I used to ask myself what American girl under these conditions would carry about with her such an atmosphere of unfailing, cheerful serenity. Any laps from this poise would have been in her estimation a weakness to blush for.

The youthful husband was che son of a Mandarin, who ut- �[Page 339]MY INTERNATIONAL FAMILY 339

doubtedly furnished him with an allowance which would have sufficed in China for a life of ease, but which here was enough for only four dark rooms and no service; but I would wager my soul that no hint of these limitations was sent to the honorable father, as that might seem to embody a criticism or a demand.

After a few months of the new adventure in friendship, a financial exigency set me thinking that what I had undertaken as a labor of love, might, under altered circumstances, be con- tinued as a profession. Thus naturally was my one adopted daughter joined by others until my international family included twenty-thrée nationalities. § began my exploration into many minds, hearts and characters, shown forth often in ways differing from our own, but whose fundamental qualities testified to the brotherhood of ali men.

My second pupil was a graduate of a Japanese University. Coming, as he did, every day and being fairly proficient in Eng- lish, we were able to discuss topics which bore upon his favorite subjects: sociology, ethics and religion. Upon these matters he talked freely and well, but lapsed into bored apathy if I tried to guide him into more usual channels. Thus early did I perceive the folly of set lessons and routine procedure for adults, and ever after I have suited the medium of English instruction to the tastes and development of the person before me, using stories to interest the immature mind and for the ripe and thoughtful, such material as histories, Lincoln's speeches, editorials, good poetry and sometimes articles in the Atlantic. A teacher friend on overhearing a portion of a lesson, remarked that I was using “the ‘project method.” *

“Indeed!” said I, ‘*I thought it was simply using common sense. Why talk about the green umbrella of my father's cousin to a person who only comes alive on the subject of international politics? English can be taught along with any subject.”

So when my Japanese friend asked me at one lesson:

‘‘Am I a heathen?”’ I caught my breath, but tried to discuss that subject as honestly and humanly as possible. I told him that personally I never used the word as it carried odium with it, �[Page 340]340 WORLD UNITY MAGAZINE

but that we would see what the dictionary said. There we found it set forth that a heathen is a ‘‘non-Christian."’

‘‘According to that definition,’ said I, ‘‘you are technically a ‘heathen,’ but that is simply a statement of fact, which need carry no opprobrium. Narrow-minded people of all races call those who do not agree with them by various and unpleasant names. If you do not like the name of ‘heathen,’ remember that some Orientals use for us such names as ‘foreign devils,’ ‘bar- barians,’ ‘Christian dogs,’ etc. We must all endeavor to under- stand each other's point of view instead of calling names."’

‘*Next time I want you to tell me all about Christianity," was the large demand he made upon me.

‘“I¢ would be better to ask someone else,’’ I answered. ‘| am not orthodox, and, as a liberal, I do not represent the majority of Christians."’

“I also am a ‘liberal,’ and I want to hear your point of view,” he insisted.

I do not like to appear to evade any request sincerely pre- sented by a pupil, so at the next lesson I began:

• • Please remember that I am giving you only my own per-

sonal point of view, and that many Christians would not agree with me. To me it seems that all mankind is trying to climb a lofty mountain, on the summit of which the Light of Truth is steadily burning. Some pure and wise souls have surmounted the stones and pitfalls that beset the ascent, and turning toward us in pity and tenderness for our weakness, they reach down helping hands to guide us upward. These seers are of different races, but their spirit and aims are the same. They are known as Christ, Buddha, Zoroaster and others. Unfortunately we do not see the people who are toiling up the mountain on the opposite sides; hence we often deny that they are seeking the same Light of Truth on the summit which is our own goal. We even abuse them and doubt their good faith. How surprised the people of all races will be, when on reaching the summit of the mountain, they recognize each other by the light of eternal verities."’

Another day he wished to discuss the status of the geishas �[Page 341]MY INTERNATIONAL FAMILY 341

in Japan, expressing a wish to use his influence toward the im- provement of their education, which has been neglected because of their rigorous training in the arts of music and dancing, and in the ceremonial of serving food and drink. Taken as young children into the house of the mistress-teachers, their discipline is severe and their general education neglected.

‘To educate them,"’ said I, ‘‘would make them think, and would not increase their happiness, because they would realize that they are simply the toys of men, with no right to themselves. No; keep them ignorant, I beg of you; only thus can they flutter and show their bright colored draperies as unthinking butterflies. But why not change your social system, so that these girls could he set free?”

‘‘But men must be entertained !"’ he maintained.

‘ But not necessarily in tea-houses,’’ was my reply. “‘Let vour sisters and wives learn to entertain you with music, and bring vour friends into your homes to enjoy it with you. You would thus enrich the dull hours of your own women now left so much alone, and, at the same time, emancipate the geishas for a more constfuctive service to society.’

I could see that suggestion seemed to him almost too revolu- tionary for consideration.

In common with all his countrymen this Japanese friend dad an intense love for all the beauties of nature. Nothing de- i ghted him more than to bring me flowers almost every day, and watch my joy in them.

‘Are the Japanese untrustworthy?’

‘Are the Chinese materialists?'’

One has only to duplicate such questions with the substitu- tion of the word ‘‘Americans’’ to know that all kinds of char- acteristics exist in each race, and that generalizations are ridicu- lously untrue. There are materialistic personalities looking out tor the main chance in the Orient and in the Occident. On the other hand, our spiritual leaders, Emerson, Phillips Brooks, et al., are matched by their Tagore, ‘Abdu'l-Baha, Ghandi and

inany others. | (To be continued) �[Page 342]

THE WISDOM OF THE AGES Edited by Auerep W. Martin Society for Exhical Culture, New York

The Sacred Scriptures of Muhammedanism (Concluded)

ur selection of typical passages from the Koran may we! begin with the prayer more frequently recited by be. lievers than any other. It has been called ‘‘the Lord’ Prayer of Muhammedanism"’ because of its frequen repetition by the faithful, and because, like the Lord's Prayer in the gospel of Matthew, it consists of seven verses and is regarde: as a ‘‘summary of the faith.’ Praise be to God, Lord of the worlds! The compassionate, the merciful! King of the day of reckoning! Thee only do we worship, and to Thee do we cry for help. Guide Thou us on the straight path, The path of those to whom Thou hast been gracious; With whom thou art not angry, and who go not astray. Expressive of the utilitarian character of the ethics of the Koran, its advocacy of right conduct with an eye to the hereafter. is the following: Woe to those who stint the measure: Who when they take by measure from others, exact th: full; — But when they mete to them or weigh to them, minish,— What! have they no thought that they shall be raise again for the great day? The day when mankind shall stand before the Lord o the worlds.

342 �[Page 343]THE SACRED SCRIPTURES OF MUHAMMEDANISM 343

Yes! the register of the wicked is ir. Sidjin, a book dis- tincely written. Woe on that day to those who treated the day of judgment as a lie!

Yes; they shall be shut out as by a veil from their Lord on that day;

Then shall they be burned in Hell-fire:

Then shall it be said to them, ‘This is what ye deemed re

Even so. But the register of the righteous is in Illi- youn; a book distinctly written; the angels who draw nigh unto God attest it.

Surely, among delights shall the righteous dwell!

Seated on bridal couches they will gaze around;

Thou shalt mark in their faces the brightness of delight.

In the ethical legislation that Muhammed provided for his the ocracy, special stress was laid upon total abstinence from intoxicatin® liquor and humaneness. Drunkenness is the vice most to be feared in tropical countries and was generally condemned as a violation of Divine Law. Muhammed's opposition to Chris- tianity was based, in part, upon its failure to put an absolute veto on the use of intoxicants. General Lew Wallace, after twenty vears’ residence in Constantinople, declared that while Christian drunkards were to be seen daily in the city streets, he never once saw a drunken Muhammedan. In the estimation of President Eliot of Harvard University, Muhammedanism has been a vastly better ching for many of the tribes of Africa, habitually drunk, than Christianity could have been. A ‘‘Society for the Prevention ot Cruelry to Animals” is unknown in Muhammedan countries except in cities overrun with Christians, and I have observed in lurkish cemeteries, the four corners of the slabs that cover graves are grooved to catch the rainfall, so that the birds may drink and sing over the places where their human brethren sleep.

The charge of advocating polygamy and«slavery has been made against Muhammed many times. But itwefe well if his critics paused to remember that these evils existed for centuries betore his time and that the most he could do was to improve the �[Page 344]344 WORLD UNITY MAGAZINE

condition of slaves and the position of women. From several Suras we learn that he inculcated kindly treatment of slaves and ranked their emancipation as a virtue for which the slaveholder would be abundantly rewarded in paradise. Certainly we today are too near the ‘Emancipation Proclamation’’ to dare to re. proach Muhammed for not having abolished slavery.

In dealing with the problem of marriage and divorce Muhan.- med limited the number of wives a man could have to four, at the same time prescribing monogamy for all who could not make proper provision for more than one wife. He conditioned divorce upon four months’ support of the wife after separation had taken place and he required four witnesses to vindicate a charge o{ adultery, punishing with a hundred stripes and imprisonment any one who failed to prove the charge.

‘*They who intend to abstain from their wives shall wait four months, but if they go back from their purpose, then verily God is gracious. Ye may divorce your wives twice; keep them honorably or put them away with kindness."’ ‘Marry but two, or three, o: four; and if ye have misgiving that ye will not act equitably, ther one only."’ (Sura II.)

“If any of your women be charged with whoredom ther bring four witnesses against her from among yourselves and :! they bear witness to the fact, shut her up within her house til! death release her.’’ ‘Allow not your wives to depart unless the: have committed a proven adultery."’ (Sura IV.)

‘Lodge the divorced according to your means and distress them not by putting them to straits."’ (Sura LXV.)

One integrating ethical idea pervades the Koran—submission The supreme duty of Muhammedans is to submit to the will 0 ‘“the omnipotent, resistless One,’’ the One *‘to whom everything is subject,’’ “‘the Lord of the East and of the West,’’ the ‘‘all- governing, all-compelling One"’; *‘the mighty and merciful One, merciful because omnipotent. He is likened to the wind and al! mankind to a field of grain that sways with the blowing of th wind. He is the heavenly Sultan and Muslim are they who subm: to his decrees; they who, like the willows, bend before the blast

< �[Page 345]THE SACRED SCRIPTURES OF MUHAMMEDANISM . 345

As set forth in the Koran the doctrine of submission involves four distinct duties:

First; To abjure idolatry, which is the bestowal upon false gods of the homage due to Allah alone. Idolatry, indeed, is deemed the unpardonable sin of Islam. ‘'Verily, God will not torgive,’’ we read in the fourth Sura. Nay more, the faithful are bidden by the Prophet not to pray for idolators—witness the in- sunction of the ninth Sura: ‘Ie is not for the faithful to pray for the forgiveness of those who associate other beings with God, after it has been made clear that they are to be inmates of Hell." Just as the subjects of an earthly Sultan are instantly punished to the full extent of the civil law when they dare to enthrone a usurper and do him homage, so idolators who dare to acknowl- edge any other God than this heavenly Sultan will be punished hereafter, on the Judgment Day, to the full extent of the religious law. Every mosque, every palace bears witness to Muhammed's abhorrence of idolatry. Nowhere are statues, or images, or any sort of reproductions of the human form to be seen, but everywhere arabesque decorations,—those geometric traceries that reproduce only objeces from the inanimate world.

Second; To extend the heavenly Sultan's dominion on earth, to make converts and by force if need be, because refusal to ac- xnowledge and obey Allah is rebellion, and rebellio., must be suppressed, by persuasion, if possible, but if not, then by force.

Here we must distinguish between the Prophet's earlier and later injunctions. In the earlier chapters of the Koran he con- stantly exhorts his Meccan followers to bear patiently the wrongs intheted on them because of their religion. His earliest permission to tight is given to those ‘‘who have been driven forth from their homes undeservedly’’ merely for saying ‘Our Lord is God.**: \ more general warrant for making war on the Meccans is given in the second Sura (186-190): *‘Fight in God's way with those who ight with you, but do not take the aggressive; verily God loves not the aggressor."’ Later, Muhammed used force without hesita- tion, not only againse the Meccans, but to subdue other cities.

sutra XXII, go, 42. �[Page 346]346 WORLD UNITY MAGAZINE

like Ta’ if, and to bring the Bedouin tribes into submission.’ But it is clear that the motive of these wars, as of those against the Jews in Medina and its vicinity, was political rather than religious, though Muhammed, as the head of a church-state, doubtless regarded the two as identical. At the moment of his death he ha: an army marshalled for an expedition into Syria. In one of the apparently authentic traditions he urges his followers to make war upon unbelievers until they confess the unity of God and then grant them security. In his aggressive policy he distinguished polytheists and idolators from the adherents of the ‘‘revealed religions, Judaism and Christianity,’ tolerating the latter and exacting a tax from them for protection received, while the former le constrained to abandon their errors and submit to Allah.’

Never has it been either the principle or the practice of Islam to convert people generally, by forcible means. Many of the early caliphs, for economic reasons, disapproved of voluntary conver- sion of their Jewish and Christian subjects. More fanatical rulers laid the adherents of other religions under so many disadvantages that members of them became Muslim for relief. In the first appendix to T. W. Arnolds ‘‘The Preaching of Islam"’ there is an exhaustive array of quotations from the Koran, regarding Muhan- med's attitude to missionary work, which the doctrine of sub- mission requites. Here, in chronological order, the texts are marshalled, including those abrogated by the agreements of the Muslim. :

The third obligation which the doctrine of submission in- volves is obedience to the precepts of Allah, the making of one's moral account ‘“‘square’’ before the Judgment Day dawns. For, on that Day, the heavenly Sultan determines the fate of each human soul. Then will a man walking to the Judgment-seat be met by a loathsome-looking object to which he will say, ‘Be gone’: but it will reply, ‘‘I cannot, I am thy conscience.'’ Then will the

udulent buyer and the fraudulent seller walk to the Judgment- seat with the goods they dishonestly bought or sold tied to theit

• Sura XVI, 37, 84; XXIX, 43; XLII, 47, 257, 64, 12.
• Sura XVI, 126; XLII, 13, 14; Ul, 19, 99, 100; XXII, 66; IX, 6, a1.

�[Page 347]THE SACRED SCRIPTURES OF MUHAMMEDANISM 347

necks. and dragging behind them! No religion has made so much of the utilitarian motive of reward and punishment as has Muhammedanism, nor is it anywhere presented in such frankly materialistic terms as in the Koran.

The fourth factor in the ethics of submission is loyal devotion to the ‘‘five_ pillars of fidelity,’’ as they are called, the simple religious forms, binding upon all believers:—

1. Repetition of the creed, **There is no God but Allah, and Muhammed is his prophet.”’

2. Prayer and ablutions five times daily in response to the Muezzin when he ascends his minaret to summon the faithful to prayer.

3. Almsgiving, two and a half per cent of one’s possessions to be devoted to philanthropy.

‘‘Turn thy face toward the sacred Mosque of Mecca. Where- cver ye be turn your faces toward that part. They to whom the Book hath been given know this to be the truth from their Lord. God is not regardless of what ye do."’ (Sura II.)

‘Give alms for your own weal because such as are saved trom their own greed are prospered. If we lend God a generous ‘oan He will double it to you and fargive you.’ (Sura LIV.)

4. Fasting from sunrise to sunset of the month of *‘Ram- acan,’" in which the prophet fled from Mecca to Medina.

5- A pilgrimage, at lease once in one’s lifetime, to Mecca.

In the simplicity of these requirements Muhammed showed his practical wisdom. Only the fifth was for many a hardship, and eventually it was modified to meet conditions where fulfil- ment was not difficule or impossible. So the Roman Catholic Church protects its members against ceremonial oppression by corresponding concessions; so the apostle Paul abolished the rite of circumcision, though deemed by his fellow-Jews to be the badge ot noblest citizenship. Even in the case of the second requirement iatitude was allowed, witness the following:

O believers! when ye address yourselves to prayer, wash your faces, and your hands up to the elbow, and wipe your heads, and your feet to the ankles. �[Page 348]348 WORLD UNITY MAGAZINE

And if you have become unclean, then purify your. selves. But if ye are sick, or on a journey, and ye find no water, then take clean sand and rub your faces and hands with it.

God hath promised to those who believe, and do the things that are right, that for them is pardon and a great reward.

But they who are infidels and treat our signs as lies— these shall be meted with Hell-fire.

When we remember the utterly uncivilized character of the tribes that inhabited Africa and parts of Asia at the time o! Muhammed's appearance, we may well believe that his gospel o/ submission (islam) was exactly suited to the needs of thox peoples. They were still in the childhood stage of development in which obedience to rulers and rules is the highest virtue Nor is anything in religious history more remarkable than the way in which Muhammed fitted his transfiguring ideas into the existing social system of Arabia. To his everlasting credit it must be said that in lifting to a higher plane of life the communities of his day and place, he achieved that which neither the Judaism nor the Christianity of medieval Arabia could accomplish. Nay more, in the fulfilment of that civilizing work Muhammed rendered invaluable service, not only to Arabia, but to all the world.

THE END �[Page 349]

SCIENCE, PHILOSOPHY AND RELIGION by

Epwin Artuur Burtt Departement of Philosophy, University of Chicago

V—Tue RECONCILIATION OF SCIENCE AND RRELIGION

E rEcuR to the form usually taken by the conflict of science and religion in the modern world. This has consisted in the establishment, from time to time, by scientific research, of conclusions which violated ideas precious to religious feeling, followed first by bitter attack on the conclusions in defense of the jeopardized beliefs and second bv gradual adjustment of religious feeling to the notions scien- ufically authenticated. There have been two critical periods of such conflict to date. One was the overthrow, by the Copernican astronomy, of the whole medieval cosmology which at che beginning of modern times comprised the set of ideas about the world ia terms of which men's religious experience developed, and which produced an intellectual and emotional struggle of centuries before men learned to be religious again in face of an infinite universe in which our earth is but a speck of cosmic dust. [he second was the downfall of man's supposedly privileged position in the biological world by the Darwinian theory of evolution, whose later stages are present to our very eyes. A third transformation is doubtless beginning to have general public influence, arising from the application of scientific canons ot historical research to the study of the Bible. 2 Now as we look at these illustrations of the conflict we note that on the one hand science continues to apply its method to whatever new problems excite the interest of scientific men, while on the other the persistent attitude of religious folk in re- 349 �[Page 350]350 WORLD UNITY MAGAZINE

sponse to the situations thus created, is a feverish eagerness to remain loyal to as much of the ancient faith as can still be em- braced with some recognition of the rights of scientific truth “How much can I still believe?’ is the question patheticail; asked. And because of this frantic zeal to cling to as much as can be held, coupled with the necessity of surrendering what scicnc demands to be surrendered, we see the tendency in modern r- ligious thought to whittle down, from generation to generation what are judged to be the essentials of faith. Beginning with two score or more doctrinal articles there ensues a.process of elimina- tion and attenuation till today, in liberal circles, the minimum creed seems to have been reduced to three tenets: belief in Go confidence in immortality, and conviction of spiritual uniqueness in Jesus of Nazareth. And both religious intellectuals and piou: scientists seem to spend much of their energy at present in th: attempt to prove to themselves and others that science has.dis. covered nothing and is not likely to discover anything that Wil. upset this trinity of fundamentals. Thus the pathetic game o: give what must, hold what can, continues.

But if our analysis is on the right track the conflict is reall: much deeper than this, and religion will for ever continue thi: hopeless reconciling without becoming reconciled unless th: true nature of the conflict be clearly grasped and the only wav o: genuine reconciliatior be frankly adopted. The conflict is a: bottom one of fundamental attitudes, of pervading ideals as to what is of greatest value in life. The ideal of science is that o: intellectual honesty and social verifiability, pursued in an atmos phere of complete tentativeness and mutual cooperation. Thc ideal of religion has been that of personal salvation, attained bi inflexible loyalty to some revered leader, institution, or doctrine It is this conflict of ideals that must be once for all resolved it harmony of religion and science is to be won in the modern worl: comparable to the profound unity of the two in the great age 0: unquestioning faith.

Now if this be granted it is evident further, from the cor- siderations of our introductory chapter, that the ideal of science �[Page 351]THE a OF SCIENCE AND RELIGION 351

xe some of its fruits have been tasted, cannot be surrendered . anv of us, and accordingly reconciliation cannot be secured . abandoning science in favor of religion. For in the interest of . itself, to say nothing of prosperous life, it is imperative to rasp those regular relations which condition control of the actors on which life depends, such as the procuring of food, the antenance of group relations needed for protection and eco- . cooperation, and the like. ihe one available general alternative then is that religion rm itself from the ground up, to the extent of becoming igh and through harmonious with the spirit of science. this be done, and anything properly entitled religion still |o answer this question we must engage in a brief survey he history of religion and note what seems to be essential in ‘hat not. As a result of that survey we shall see that while son everywhere begins with an object of worship character- mainly by power, its development is marked by the will to racterize that object more and more by goodness and to sur- ‘ whatever elements in the conception are found inconsistent the ideal of goodness. The early stages in this history are 4d most elearly in the religion of peoples who had not yet { intellec@al and moral culture. Their gods are primarily ic beings who are feared and placated because it is on their ‘ that the welfare of the community depends. The fear of ri is for them the beginning of wisdom. Other elements ‘) some sense of family kinship with these beings are not ‘. but this is the main factor in the conception and it deter- most of their religious practice. \s intelligence grows and moral consciousness becomes more and active, however, fear inevitably becomes transcended central motive in man’s relation to the gods. To become ‘gent and morally self-conscious means that one can no <r bow dewn in abject fear, terrified by external power. tion of individual selfhood spells emancipation the control ofumere force; as the Stoics so vigorously in-

ich reali; �[Page 352]3§2 WORLD UNITY MAGAZINE

sisted, the man who has attained this realization can be master: by nothing outside of him except so far as he is willing to yiei: to its sway. Even torture cannot force him if he will not flinc) Such a man is free, superior to the whole world of external powe: He has discovered something of ultimate value within, atteste: by his sense of self-respect and personal dignity, which cannot made to quake by terror of anything outside. The consequence to: religion of this emancipation is momentous. From this point o: man cannot worship God because of the mere display of omni;- otence; the fact that God can punish him for rebellion is ne: enough to prove that he should not become a rebel. Now he ca: worship only what his moral consciousness tells him is goo worthy of worship, and sheer power in the guise of deity no long: has any claim upon him. The gradual attainment in the race o this moral self-consciousness is accordingly paralleled in religzo: by the gradual ascription to the deity of ideal qualities in additio: to those of power, and the equally gradual elimination of ¢!: ments hopelessly warring with these ideal qualities. God become more and more essentially the ideal of human character, for tx moral man who has gained freedom from fear of power a*. realizes that in his moralselfhood lies the thing of ultima: worth can experience the emotions of reverence, awe, and wo: ship only before what enshrines such an ideal of goodness.

he consequence of this for our whole problem of attainis: a genuine reconciliation of science and religion will soon enga« us directly, bute we must first consider the peculiar form take: today by the failure of liberal tendencies in Christianity to w: the full spiritual freedom toward which this lengthy evoluti: points.

The external power which still holds liberal religion « Captivity and estops it from attaining the full identification © deity with moral goodness is the power of a great historic tra¢: tion, appealing almost irresistibly as that tradition does to som: of the strongest and best emotions of human nature. The vige' of our attachment to this tradition, the loneliness and cosm: weakness which even the most daring souls appear to feel whe: �[Page 353]THE RECONCILIATION OF SCIENCE AND RELIGION 3$3

sithdrawn from its support, furnish the most astonishing testi- mony both to the might of the human craving for an absolute ‘cus of certainty and to the real grandeur of the ideas achieved » that prophetic past from whose encircling attraction we thus ec] ourselves unable to pull away. But the free soul must emanci- pate itself from worship of the past, however great its contribu- son to our moral life, just as ic must rise beyond the worship of any other external power. An ideal of perfection can never reside > the past, it can never be fully embodied in anything already a hicved. A moral self can never worship any merely past revela- on of divinity. Consequently for such a self there can never be anv ching absolute in past tradition; that which has already been ‘calized in the way of spiritual attainment exists for it as a means the pursuit of the Good, it can never be itself identified with sat good. And the inability of liberal religion today to recognize rors truth and act upon it honestly spells its failure to make the _ mate and drastic sacrifice that must be made if western religion - to attain the goal of its tortuous pilgrimage and at the same ne become capable of reconciliation with science.

It this criticism lack decisive point by its generality, we shall asten to the crucial illustration. Drive a religious man of liberal mrsuasion today away from every other tenet that used to be

‘ tundamental in the Christian philosophy of history, and «ill come back to one point of historic fixity which he feels ist be insisted upon as absolute. There is something in Jesus ' Nazareth which is ultimate, to be maintained without reserva- ) and never surrendered. If it is not his deity it is his divinity

Jistinction which at one stage of recent theological discussion

1s ot considerable moment); if it is not his divinity it is his uc leadership in the spiritual enterprise of humanity. Detach us soul from something final in the historic Jesus and he is religiously speaking.

(On the other hand, even if no such difficulty as this stood

‘oe Way, a scientific mind would have to recognize that ad- ‘cats of other religions make similar claims about the founders cheir faith, and it would have t@ engage in a quite impartial �[Page 354]354 WORLD UNITY MAGAZINE

comparison of these various founders in order to see just wha: merits could honestly be ascribed to each. But willingness engage in such an inquiry transcends at once the attitude o: absolute loyalty; one cannot honestly compare individuals wit: each other if his thinking is ultimately controlled by a lurkix; commitment of feeling to a particular one of them. Moreove: once such an impartial inquiry is really entered, it can neve: result in attributing finality to even the prophet who appears i a result of that inquiry most worthy. For in the nacure of the cax it would have to be remembered that some other individu might appear at any time superior to any in the group compare: and also that further historical records might come to light whi: would change the verdict even with reference to them. In oth: words, the resulting attitude would have to maintain the flex: bility and tentativeness without which the inquiry could no: get under way, and which are inherently inconsistent wit: locating any absolute focus of religious feeling in a histori individual. Can science be barred from investigating these que: tions of history and comparative ethics? On what grounds? \\: see, in short, that so far as religion insists upon any finality « past tradition, thus submitting to the fascination of what | external to the present needs of men, it is quite irreconcilab:: with the scientific outlook.

But to clinch the lesson to which all this points and un:: the two threads of scientific interest and religious history, it « imperative to note that the same attribution of finality to Jesu or to any other focus in the past is inconsistent with what is bes in western religious experience itself. Religion is not only in coz flict with science by reason of its tendency to hug, in howev: attenuated form, its traditional loyalties; it is in conflict wit itself for the same reason, and the conflict can only be overcon: by the complete surrender of such inflexible attachments.

That love is the greatest thing in the world and that Go: as at once the highest ideal and the supremely real is the spic: of love wherever it be found, the reader will probably accept @ the most erilightened and the most soberly appealing assertio: �[Page 355]THE RECONCILIATION OF SCIENCE AND RELIGION 355

s our sacred tradition. As noted above, it has not quite been meant without reservation, but if we should dare to take it seri- sly it would at once tear us loose from all fixities of historical ovalty and render our religious thinking as flexible as the most ocxorable champion of science could ask. What does it really mean to love my neighbor? Well, if I love him I shall be sincerely cerested in his welfare, and this means that I shall be eager to Ip him solve his own problems in the form which they take his own experience, and that in my relations with him I shall ¢ want to insist upon anything which he does not actually ‘ ot help in meeting his difficulties. Can this attitude of sincere -iptulness which intelligent love must mean be combined with sstence upon ideas derived from past tradition as final? Obvi- iv noc. If T love my neighbor nothing will be farther from »» purpose than the attempt to force his experience into any preconceived mold of my own; I shall cherish no dogma as to sat his salvation must mean. or as to how it is to be secured. . his salvation I shall mean the solution of whatever real puzzles s upon him, whether they be similar or found different to « with which I am already familiar; it is not my business, for ample, to conduct him safely to eternal bliss in a world beyond ess such celestial bliss is the thing he most deeply wants. \o! whether his greatest need is for this or for something else, hall surely not insist that a belief about or attitude toward ‘5, or anyone else in past religious history, is to be taken as a -cssarv means for the satisfaction of his need. [he bearing of this upon the attainment of world unity is ‘oo-patene to need elaboration. It has often been noted by men summed by the passion for world unity that religion as it exists -cidedly a divisive as well as a unifying force in human life. our discovery of that element in religion which keeps it in mrcontal conflict with science and in contradiction to its own mst insights we have at the same time laid bare the separative heson that has made religion a source of war, persecution, and ‘ical antagonism in the world. The reason for this separative meson in religion lies simply in the fact that religious feeling �[Page 356]356 WORLD UNITY MAGAZINE

tends almost irresistibly to focus upon the values found preciou: in some limited community, and to fix itself in unconquerabi opposition to the values thus precious in other communities

Except then in the rare cases where zeal for world unity has itse!: become the most dominant of these spiritual values, an exclusiy:

element in our religious loyalty is inevitable. We hold to our litt: tribal god, even when doing so makes us devils to other folks

This poison is especially virulent in the western world, wher concern for one’s own salvation and eagerness to propagate th:

notions through which one has found personal help has been ; far stronger motive than concern to appreciate the spiritual need: of other peoples and to cooperate unselfishly in their satisfactioz

Though eastern religions have not nourished the latter they hav:

been less apt to become a nuisance on account of the forme:

There is indeed something uncanny about a missionary sallyin: forth to persuade foreign peoples to believe some historic do- trine about love, when if he vibrated with the higher music o:

his own gospel his activity would be something quite differen:

and far more humane. Such are the amazing anomalies of whic:

human nature is capable.

Religion will at one fell swoop be freed from its inner se!: contradiction, its otherwise endless conflict with science, and :: crime of opposition to the goal of world unity, when it real! identifies God with love as the best present symbol to descrik the ideal of moral goodness, and masters the fundamental lesso: of what sincere and intelligent love means. That lesson, as | hope will be evident now from the whole trend of our discussio: is to be learned mainly from science. Science thus proves itselt : the modern world the true, if unconscious, heir of the best ¢& posit of early western religion. It is at this central point tha religion as it might be and science as it already is converge int: one, namely at the point of their brooding ideal and informin: spirit. Live in religion is but the extension to the whole of 11: in all its phases and moods of the zeal for social universality an: the attitude of live freedom and unflinching honesty that cha‘ acterize science in its search for dependable explanations ©: �[Page 357]THE RECONCILIATION OF SCIENCE AND RELIGION 357

‘sings. Religion will find itself un the modern world when it envisions its object of worship in terms that square with the »uman values for which science stands.

A religion and science thus brought together in one is the ‘cepest need of the modern world. Science alone is not enough, ‘or we cannot confine experience to the ceaseless search for laws aod the application of them to further problems. Fundamental also 1s the human need to feel the glory of the world in the order

reveals as a system of means through which shines the ideal of

cood that lightens the experience of every earnest man. This ideal, odered intellectually clear by the impartial, cold and restrained practice of scientific research, must in religious experience be suffused with emotion, giving it the warmth and beauty without which it could gain no hold upon our deeper selves. It must not verely form an intellectually justified object of worship but actually aterace to itself our feelings of reverence and awe. Orher- «isc personality in its wholeness cannot be unified about it. ‘hat love may furnish such an object is amply attested by liter- sture and art as well as religion. Or, putting the mattez another ‘ay, itis that conception of supreme value as surrounding itself th the chrillkof romantic attachment instead of merely guiding

nuitic research, that constitutes religious experience as Op- cto the experience of cold inquiry.

ihe fundamental question, into which all else sinks, is this:

.. religious emotion be disciplined to this extent? Such a ques- must be faced very frankly. Earnest hearts have often accused sophers of substituting a pale emotionless concept in place

4 truly religious object, and have done duty by reminding them ‘© men are moved by feeling rather than by reason. Precisely

‘ev indeed are creatures of feeling—but that is not quite

‘hole story. Men have been sufficiently moved by reason

‘an intense conflice between scientific intelligence and religious ‘¢ to arise. The conflict cannot be ended by turning away

"reason and enveloping ourselves in mere feeling, for however assionately our emotions are attached to an unworthy god we °0 longer worship him when our intelligence sees him to �[Page 358]358 WORLD UNITY MAGAZINE

be unworthy. Reason does compel our feelings to grow, and ; attach themselves to more adequate objects; but the process : slow and halting, both in any individual and in the racc. T» question is, can this remoulding of our deepest feelings be car: .«. to its indicated limit?

There is probably no transformation of character more di! cult than this. Our religious loyalties entwine themselves abou: our very heart-strings; they constitute our inmost being. (:: we really control them by reason and conscience? Can we insiv upon concentrating them on values that can dependably mai tain themselves before intelligent appraisal, such as this at tiry tather fleeting and tenuous ideal of complete tentativeness a: impartiality of socialized interest? The answer is: We mus: s control them, because nothing less can really meet our decpe need. We must envision ever more clearly the meaning of the living human values; we must hold them before ourselves pf: sistently in all the ways found fruitful in religious history + the wealth of our religious feelings, already forced to aband their former objects, begin to cluster around these richer gov. and feel their peculiar satisfaction in them; the process must co tinue till we come deeply and habitually to prize readiness : transcend any previous emotional absorption more than the mo: stirring emotional experience itself.

This is hard. But it is the only way to that harmony purpose and character that all of us seek by virtue of our sha: in the gift of reason. And religious history if fairly studicd vastly encouraging. This is its own goal, it has ever moved this direction. Since every great prophei has achieved someth::: like this in his own religious experience we have no excuse * doubt that where there is a more rational must there are tc limits to the answering can. Religion can become this, becaus: : must.

Before us, too, in the enterprise of science, there spreads - foretaste in a limited range of experience of such a comple: moralizing of our controlling attitudes. In the integrity, empiric: flexibility, and universal social reference of the scientific interes: �[Page 359]THE RECONCILIATION OF SCIENCE AND RELIGION 359

here it is already embodied in actuality. For to be a scientist in purpose is just to care more for such a method and type of result as can progressively approve itself in the sincere searching of ‘hers than for the sense of personal certainty that comes from .cging appealing but unsharable mystic intuitions or munching

‘he tamiliar fruie of a hoary tradition. ir would go without saying that a church organized in cordance with the principles so far suggested would not require -liet in the existence of God as a condition of membership. For -vcrvone Whose guiding ideal is akin to the one we have de- .cbed would far rather be associated in religious fellowship

• h an avowed atheist who sincerely sought the welfare of his

nomen than with a believer in God whose faith cloaked ‘pose fundamentally inhospitable to such whole-hearted and rward-looking pursuit of social ends. The one thing that would vital in such a church would be comradeship in wership and an service thro gh sharing a supreme ideal; it would be a minor matter it some who prized such fellowship felt so ‘ie continuity between this ideal and what God has meant in tional religion that they preferred not to use the concept. ‘ora church of atheists in this sense of the word than a church theistic Obscurantists or hypocrites. Names are of small cnt where realities are mutually glimpsed. The reality needed /.ommon object of reverent attachinent for feeling yielding tical guidance for action; it is not essential that all should to this object in the customary religious language. A petty would be who cared much what people called him as long

. sincerely strove to be like him. wc may connect this outcome more closely with the scien- assumption of universal law in its implication of the possi- of unambiguous verification by all normally coristituted » We think of God as a being who possesses universal “ty What does that mean? Well, ic means among other ‘s that we think of him as the one God of the whole uni- civhetully claiming the worship of every soul. Now if this ase he ought to be able to approve himself to che sincere �[Page 360]360 WORLD UNITY MAGAZINE

search of every soul; if the experience of any human being is ir evitably such that God cannot be discovered in it the conceptio: of God is then no more valid for anybody else than it is for hin —the universality which is an intrinsic part of the conceptio: is lost. But is anybody's experience inevitably such? We ca: surely never tell till his experience is finished. If we propose « take this implication seriously, and admit that there are exper: ences that initially cast doubt upon God's reality, we must ho!. that he has real existence only so far as he can be continually r- discovered in the sharing of such experiences. For the profounde:: lesson of life, wondrously dramatized in the Christian story © divine incarnation and redemption, is that it is only throug’ the unreserved sharing of evil that evil can be transmuted : good. The term God is then perhaps only pertinent on the lip of one who has previously been overwhelmed with doubt, an: at the moment when, his pain having been transmuted by th unreserved friendliness of another, the world of their unite: experience takes on divine quality for both. To claim the reali: of God is to make him less than universal and hence to den utterly what we essentially mean by the concept, for it is insist that I shall keep on believing in him whether he 1s abi to gain reality for my neighbor or not.

The purpose of these few chapters will have been achieve: if we have glimpsed the human meaning and importance 0 this attitude, its historical dependence upon the pervading ide: which guides scientific research, and something of what can & said for its claim to a central place in the uniiication of life an: character which all of us in some degree struggle to attain. Th: illustration noted of the transformation it is tending to brin: about in the field of philosophy shows its actual power for 1: tellectual reconstruction. As regards religion, the change 1t » initiating is yet in its beginnings; how far the transformati: will actually reach waits for eyes of the future to see.

THE END �[Page 361]LEXROOLE OMAN OOLELO

4 CHALLENGE TO THE UNIVERSAL RELIGIOUS PEACE CONFERENCE

by

CHARLES ParKER CONNOLLY Church of the Christian Union, Rockford, Illinoss

ie religions of mankind should be the leaders; not tl: tollowers. Their leadership in the promotion of peace and goodwill should be powerful. To this end they should tee] sensitively and respond alertly and fittingly to the ccd ot the times. After the Great War they should have perceived 4 great Opportunity for immediate action. There had.been a clear -velation of the ruthlessness and lunacy of modern militarism. spirit of the times demanded a solemn protest against it in name of outraged humanity. The religions were called upon to tc in a concerted and passionate disavowal of war; in a de- ciation of it as a tragic anachronism in a lauded age of prog- as an anti-natural reversion to the spirit of barbarism, ‘yageryv and brutality—the most shocking instance of devolution ail history. \ great parliament of religions should have been called niediately after the war to strike clearly the keynotes of ‘otherhood and goodwill. This parliament should have proven ‘aspiring precursor of all the constructive movements of ‘accesmanship to achieve a warless world ox, at least, to reduce provocations to war. But, alas, the religions seemed either ‘ to hear the voice of manifest destiny or to be indifferent to the ai They did not unite, but statesmen did. We witnessed the ‘icue of Nations, the World Court, the Paris Pact and other table gatherings. (he future historian need utter no word of condemnation to cate the failure of the religions to lead or even to follow 362 �[Page 362]362 WORLD UNITY MAGAZINE

promptly for the establishment of peace. He need but give th: date of the other international gatherings for peace and then a: the bottom of the list the religious conference in 1930!

This protest against the blindness or stolidity of religion: unwilling to assume leadership and permitting statesmen :. precede them while they tardily follow at a long distance is no: intended to quench the smoking flax—smoking, at last, thoug' we vainly hoped for its illuminating flame and warmth long ago It is intended to suggest that if the gathering in 1930 is to be « real success, and not merely a sentimental and futile gesture, :: must have enough sensibility to be conscious of its belatednes: It should repent of its tardiness. No differences of creed or cere: monies should then be permitted to divide the religions as the: confront the perils of war and humanity's need of their concert: faith in brotherhood.

As they were insensible of the need of leadership before, wi! they prove ins -nsible of the need of repentance now? Will the: seek to recover leadership without exhibiting a spirit sensitize: by tragedy and human need and without that honest confession 0 tardiness that a sensitized spirit would compel?

Of course they dare not hope to accomplish in 1930 wha: should have been sought in 1918, but it is not less true that the: cannot do in 1930 what might then be done unless they hav: clear enough vision to perceive the recreancy of their past an sufficient honesty and humility to admit it. A confession at th: outset—‘‘once we were blind but now we see, and now we ak obedient to the heavenly vision’'—might regain the confidence 0: those who believe their former inaction, while statesmen as- sumed leadership and the world needed religious faith and hore. Was an enormous sin of omission.

If this protest stimulates the religions to make the conferenc: a greater success it will not have been in vain.

�[Page 363]re

LEKOOLE MALE SOLED

“OUR CHANGING CIVILIZATION”

by Herpert W. ScHNEIDER Department of Philosophy, Columbia University

LMOST anyone must realize on a moment's reflection chat civilization 1s changing and that all civilizations al- wavs have changed, but few persons realize to the extent that Professor Randall does how significant this

‘ts and precisely how it is significant. What he emphasizes

snations are fertilized by history, is that we are participat- oot in a civilization, but in ‘‘a conflict of civilizations.’ ‘ age resembles one of those crucial epochs in history, like ‘ ot Alexander, or the Fall of the Roman Empire, or the break- ‘ the medieval city states, when the age is ‘‘a dream that is . and another ‘‘coming to birth.’’ To live in such an age -wildering to him who merely sees things coming and going concludes that all things are in flux, but is stimulating to » whom an adequate historical perspective has enabled to dis- suish what is going from what is coming. Ot course, from one point of view, it makes little difference ther a thing is coming or going, so long as it is present, and t.mporal careers of institutions may be regarded as irrelevant ‘ocir value. But the case against such a philosophy is enor- sly strengthened by Professor Randall's book;* for no reader ‘his survey of modern civilization, whether he agrees with the ‘lors interpretations or not, can fail to be impressed with the ight shed upon contemporary problems by having them -cted against the background of traditions and by studying origins and fortunes of these traditions. Professor Randall's "ar Cf anesng Crraltzation, bv John Herman Randall, Jr. F. A. Stokes, New York. 363 �[Page 364]364 WORLD UNITY MAGAZINE

grasp of this historical material and his skill in bringing it t bear on contemporary issues are little short of phenomenal. Ther are many simpler and surer guides to life, but I know of non more conscious of the intricacies of the modern scene, and mor honest in expounding issues and exposing difficulties rather tha: offering simple remedies or preaching trite gospels. Whoeve: knows ‘‘what the world needs’’ will find in this book at leas: some of the reasons why the world does not take his advice. Fo: the ‘illumination or direction to our confused civilization”’ (to use Professor Dewey's words cited on page one) which such ; book as this affords, proceeds not from its prescriptions or con- clusions, but from ‘‘the spirit that is interested in realities an: that faces them frankly and sympathetically,’’ content to ‘‘ob- serve and interpret the new and characteristic scene,’’ not giver to prophecy nor pretending to wisdom.

The theme of the book is clear and its structure symphoni Three major innovating forces or institutions are portrayed: th: city, the laboratory and the machine; and three correspondin: interests or cultural traits are described: business, the scientitx temper and the use of power or control. The new factors ar shown impinging on the more ancient ones, such as the church the state, the arts and the virtues. Finally there is an analysis o: the successive attempts at adjustment between these factor: from the beginning of the eighteenth century, the Newtonia: epoch, to the present. And this ‘‘present,’’ by the way, is Pro- fessor Randall's present; to most of us, as he admits, this preser: is still in the future.

And this suggests what to me is the most valuable feature : the book. The main theme, just stated, is after all an old stor by this time, over-celebrated and repeated mechanically b preacher, playwright and politician until even this mechanica! ag: wearies of it. We know in general that business and scienc: achieved a modus vivendi and a religious sanction in the eighteznt! century, only to be rudely upset by the machine and its concom: tants. But what distinguishes Professor Randall's work is ti searching and detailed analysis of why most of us are not int: �[Page 365]“OUR CHANGING CIVILIZATION 365

mately conscious of a profound conflict and why we adjust our- selves so readily to an age of maladjustment. The great majority ot civilized persons, as Professor Randall has pointed out else- where in more detail,* see nothing incongruous about going to church in a Ford, or praying for social justice, or legislating for ‘Victorian marriage.’’ For from a practical point of view such things are obviously not incompatible. Why shouldn't Christi- anity too use machines; why shouldn't beauty be commercialized; and why shouldn't old virtues be enforced by the most up-to-date methods? But as soon as ¢/person abandons this superficial, practical point of view and ‘enters upon the freer and more im- aginative pursuit of understanding a universe in which both the »urch and the Ford operate, in which experimental technics and authoritarian gospels join‘ hands, in which Venus is a pencil ind La Gtoconda advertises mineral water; as soon as the historical <ttings and functions of,our ideas and practices are understood, che moral and imaginative incompatibilities become glaring. ‘uch themes are here treated in detail and with brilliant nicety. However the theoretica¥ point which is increasingly baffling, as we follow the author into the welter of civilizations in which sc live, is precisely this: who is right, the historian who sees i mass of confusion, or the business man who “‘fuses’’ in practice «hats historically distinct? Is this hopeless muddle creative or -relv transitive? Will the new civilization now in the making a series of compromises or an integrated victory of the new ores over the old? At this point our author wisely resorts to «suion marks. For the whole book is intended to show that sare mere children at this game of changing one civilization “to another. We do not realize what we are doing nor even what ‘< have done. The implications of our work so far transcend our cht that we play along from day to day, asking questions ‘| accepting almost anything for answers, tolerating our play- ates in spite of our quarrels and exercising a child-like faith tie tuture. [he book is so full of detailed historical analyses that a Reltguon and the Modern World (Stokes). _

?

2. �[Page 366]366 WORLD UNITY MAGAZINE

review of them is impossible here. A captious critic might readily find fault with such statements as the following: ‘‘It would not even occur to us to pray for relief from . . . municipal corrup- tion.”’ (P. 248.) ‘The Catholic Church is growing by leaps and bounds, and will wax even more mighty as men come to fealize all chat the new civilization holds in store for them.’’ CP. 284.) ‘“When the Puritans abandoned to business the claim to regulate the whole life of man, they concentrated all the more on the sexual urge.’’ (P. 318.) But in these and most cases of the kind, a great injustice is done the author by taking them out of their context. They are evidently not intended as literal and isolated truths but as suggestive ideas in connection with more gencral themes.

The reader who expects a general vision of the coming age in the last chapter will be disappointed. The book is an analysis and not a gospel. Superficial readers will be inclined to see a new gospel in a combination of the cults of social justice and o! beauty. But the author is careful to point out that such a faith is popular today because it represents ‘‘a fading of intellectual interest’’ (P. 276), and a fading of intellectual interest is the last thing of which this book could be accused.

HO �[Page 367]

' UNITY AND DISUNITY IN INTERNATIONAL POLITICS

Edited by

Dexter PERKINS Department of History and Government, University of Rochester

APPROACHING THE WorzLp Court

HE recent action of the Council of the League of Nations in

its Madrid meeting in approving the so-called Root for-

mula, and in calling a conference of the adherents to the

World Court protocol to meet at Geneva in September, ~rings the United States one step nearer to participation in the “orld Court itself. It may be convenient, in such circumstances, ‘review the history of the World Court controversy, to indicate ‘he existing situation, and to appraise the importance of the action ‘) be urged upon the Senate when the regular session of Congress onvenes in December.

The question of American adhesion to the World Court pro- ‘ocol, that is, to the international instrument which regulates ‘¢ composition and structure of the Court, is now a very old one. \s carly as February, 1923, Presidenc Harding suggested such ation, at the same time formulating a series of reservations

tended to allay the fears of those who feared the close connec- “on of the Court with the League of Nations. It was not, how- cr, until January of 1926 that the Senate took action in the atter, and at that time, while approving reservations of much ‘1c kind suggested by Mr. Harding three years before, it added a -\ teservation of its own, which has been the cause of most of ‘oe difficulty ever since. This reservation has to do with the i‘visory opinions of the Court, and a clear understanding of the

4-visory function is necessary to understand it. 367 �[Page 368]368 WORLD UNITY MAGAZINE

The World Court, it should be understood, functions as a truly judicial body, deciding disputes submitted to it either as 2 result of special agreement or of an obligation to arbitrate this or that particular class of disputes, derived from treaties. In deciding such disputes it makes decisions which are morally and legally binding on the litigants. But under the statute creating it, the Court is also authorized to render what is known as ‘‘advisory opinions,’’ on the request of the Council or the Assembly of the League of Nations.

In theory a case might be made out against these advisory opinions. Since they have no binding legal character, they might be disregarded, when rendered; and were they so disregarded, the prestige of the Court itself might suffer. Moreover, from the Anglo-Saxon viewpoint, it is generally held desirable that court should act only on specific cases brought before them, and not oz hypothetical questions (though exceptions to this principle coul: be readily cited). There are many distinguished jurists who hav not approved of this feature of the new tribunal.

But in practice, advisory opinions have worked well. They have furnished a means of interpreting important internationa: engagements, such as the minority treaties, or the act creating the International Labor Office; and they have provided a means by which legal questions can, in a given controversy, be isolated from political questions, and the way paved towards a settlement bi the determination of the former. Moreover, the very fact that such opinions have no binding legal character ougnt to reassure thos who are critical. In the first place, in such circumstances, the Council of the League is bound to be cautious in asking for suct opinions. It would naturally not wish to run the risk of seeing the Court flouted, and would naturally seek an opinion only when was confident that the opinion would be followed. In the secon: place, an opinion which really did violence to the interest of som: great nation could be. disregarded. Taking these two facts to gether, it is difficult to see what-there was to become very muct excited about in the whole matter.

The Senate, however, thought that some protection agains! �[Page 369]APPROACHING THE WORLD COURT 369

the Court’s advisory opinions might be necessary. To the reser- vations suggested by the administration, therefore, it added another, to the effect that the Court should not hand down any such opinions without the consent of the United States in any case in which the United States might have or claim an interest.

It is this reservation which has caused much, one might al- most say all of, the difficulty for the last three years. By it this country virtually claims a veto upon the action of the Council of the League and of the Court with regard to advisory opinions. The phraseology of the American reservation, with its mention of cases in which the United States ‘‘has or claims an interest,'’ is so broad as to set almost no limits upon American action. It is not surprising, then, to find that the States which had already signed the World Court protocol hesitated to accept this reservation. They were all the more justified in doing so since the Council of the League, in asking for the opinion of the Court, may conceiv- ably act by a majority. This is a knotty legal question that has not heen decided. But were it decided, and decided in the sense just mentioned, then this country would not only be asking for an absolute veto, but for a special privilege.

For a considerable time after the Senate vote of January, 1926, the government of the United States assumed the position that the action of the Senate must be accepted without discussion. It rctused to permit this country to be represented at a conference of ‘he States adherent to the protocol; and it refused to define the meaning of the reservation which was the cause of all the diff-

tics. It showed the most luke-warm attitude toward the whole Hatter. \ The ratification of the Kellogg treaty, however, brought a ange of policy. If this country is to pledge itself to the solution ' all international disputes by peaceful means (and this is pre- ‘vy what it has done by the Kellogg Treaty), it is obviously perative that it should support the international machinery ‘rough which pacific settlements can be accomplished. Accord- Mr. Elihu Root, who had much to do with the original ‘a'ting of the Court statute, was sent to Geneva as one of a

. ~ �[Page 370]370 WORLD UNITY MAGAZINE

committee of jurists to consider possible modifications in th protocol, and ways and means of overcoming the difficulric: created by the fifth reservation. Mr. Root’s labors were highly successful. A new protocol was.drawn up, defining the line of pro- cedure to be followed in reconciling the views of the United State: with the views of the Council of the League on the matter o: advisory opinions. It was provided that this country should k consulted beforehand, that it should have a reasonable time make its objections clear, that objection by the United State: should have the same force and effect as a negative vote in the Council, and that the United States might withdraw its suppor of the World Court if it were not satisfied with the action finall; taken by the Council, without any assumption of ill-will o: prejudice to the Court itself. By this protocol, it will be observed. the question of whether the Council decides by majority o: unanimous vote is skilfully evaded. But if the majority principk should be applied, then the United States, if it disapproves of th: majority action, may exercise its prerogative of withdrawing it adhesion to the protocol. The other adherent States will be ver reluctant to see any such action taken; and the views of thi country will undoubtedly have much influence in determining th: future practice with regard to advisory opinions if the Root pro- tocol is ratified and American adhesion to the statute become: complete.

“If the Root protocol is ratified.’’ It need hardly be said tha: this is the next essential step to American adhesion. Not only mus it be ratified by the Senate of the United States, but also by all th signatories of the World Court statute. The Council of the Leagu has already gone on record as recommending such action, and th Assembly will doubtless take a similar view. Moreover, a cor ference of the signatory States will meet in Geneva in Septembe: and will, in all probability, accept the Root formula. There w:! then remain only the action of the Upper Chamber in Washingtoz and that, too, it is generally assumed, will be favorable.

But even then—and this ought to be emphasized—only th: first steps will have been taken toward American support of th: �[Page 371]APPROACHING THE WORLD COURT 375

World Court. For what is the effect of adhesion to the protocol? Simply this. The United States is entitled to a voice in the election of judges. It will help pay the expenses of the Court. It will have a voice in deciding the action of the Council with regard to ad- visory opinions. But é# wéll not be bound to submit any case whatso- ever to the Court. The extent to which it actually invokes the author- ity of this tribunal will remain to be decided.

Speaking generally, the jurisdiction of the Court is volun- tary, that is, cases are submitted to it only with the special con- sent of the parties, though there are more and more instances of international treaties which stipulate for the decision by the Court of questions arising under them. But the Statute of the Court contains in Article 36 the famous ‘‘optional clause.’’ By this clause certain Classes of disputes are indicated as particularly suited for judicial settlement; and nations which subscribe to the optional clause bind themselves so to settle them. At the present time the optional clause has not been generally accepted by the great Nations; but the present Labor government in Great Britain has indicated its desire to do so, and France is expected in this matter to tollow the lead of Britain. Sooner or later, then, the question mav present itself as to whether the United States will take a similar course. And when and if this is actually done, judicial settlement of international disputes will be given the place to which it is actually entitled.

�[Page 372]QENZODLE OIA ZONE E

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 s1d0+

side with the youth of the whele world.”

During the crucial years since the European war, the youth of the world has been gathering 1: force as if for a supreme struggle with the militant, destructive past. Repudiating alike its inher: ance of institutions, custo s and ideals, the generation now assuming manhood and womarhoo: in East and West is gradually creating the substance of a different way of life, a new outlook, destine: to form a new civilization. Viewed from the ranks of those molded by the past, this manifestatio: of youth has appeared one of the most tragic, misguided, even sinister of social phenomena, sinc: its triumph must involve the overthrow of so much that mankind has done and been. The statemec: of youth itself, so far as youth has yet defined its own energies, experiences and directions, wil! te! a different story. In this department World Unity Magazine will publish from time to time bre articles expressing the outlook of youth, by youth itself, on those vital issues which are recurre:: from age to age.

THe ForeiGn Stupent IN AMERICA

by

Boris G. ALEXANDER Shertleff College

mMeERicA for some time has manifested resentment agains:

the so-called invasion of the foreign born. During the

past few years the unlimited entry of aliens has been

checked by effectual legislation. Entrance has _ beer

denied to those not thought capable of being assimilated into

this nation and to those who do not plan to make this countr their home.

Nevertheless today in American colleges and universities there are thousands of young men and women who have come here not as immigrants but as students—men and women who intend to return to their native countries, and who apparently have come to gain all chey can from the associations and oppor- tunities of American educational ‘nstitutions without giving 372 �[Page 373]THE FOREIGN STUDENT IN AMERICA 373

anv appreciable return. Judging superficially one can see how natural it is that some of the American students would consider such persons as intruders and unwelcome strangers. Perhaps even among you there are some who feel resentful because a Chinese or an Italian sits beside you in the classroom and perhaps impul- sively you have taunted him with being a Chink or a Dago. Perhaps some of you have wondered why America should let the doors of her schools be opened to all races and creeds without .iscrimination. Probably you see much that is repellent and little that is attractive in those who evince strange habits, unusual tastes, peculiar customs and ideals. You resent hearing the ‘anguage you respect badly broken by the unwieldy tongues of ‘orecign students.

If I may, I should like to try to answer your unspoken ques- tion, for I am such a student. I was born on foreign soil. My ways are not your ways. My speech is not your speech. It is with Jithculey that my tongue can form your English sounds. And I, remember, am but one of rhousands in your midst.

Can we students who are foreign born justify our presence here among you? Can we justify our intrusion into your campus ‘ite, into the classrooms of your schools and colleges? True, we come for knowledge, as all students in all ages have sought for .nowledge. True, we come for training as all students every- where seek for training. But we who have found welcome upon the shores of this North American continent will carry with us upon our return home that which is more valued than training, more precious than knowledge. With your help we shall carry with us the inestimable possession of goodwill.

Today the world covets but one thing:—the assurance of peace. International conferences, congresses, leagues and con- ventions afe a witness to humanity's search for the solution of the world's problems. But an elusive search it has been, for the oasis Of the solution of international problems has been lacking. ‘oday we have only a precarious peace; every daily paper tells 4s that we live in a deceptive security. Does that mean that we, the youth of the world, must prepare for another gigantic holo- �[Page 374]374 WORLD UNITY MAGAZINE

caust to satisfy the whims of a few leaders blinded by the rage o: nationalism and spurred to the conflict by the desire for empire’ No, a thousand times no! Even more than ever before we must awaken to the awfulness of war, to its destructive results. It is for us the present generation in the world still broken by the miseries and degradations of the last war to find that solution If these grey-headed and experienced diplomats, these professiona! peacemakers assembled in their leagues and congresses and con- ventions—if these have failed, then we, the youth, must take a major part in building up that goodwill which alone form: the ultimate basis for a solution of any world problem.

Nearly every organized effort thus far has been found want- ing. Why, we do not know, but one would-be explanation chal- lenges our attention. How in a period of a few weeks could th delegates from scores of nations reconcile dislikes, hatreds anc prejudices of ages? It could not be done. The professional wel! wishers have failed because they could not understand th peculiarities of the people of other nations. They did not know how to reconcile racial dislikes, quench national hatreds, an< dispel patriotic prejudices. Imbued by the idea of self-importanc and the greatness and majesty of the state they represent, the have forgotten that other nations also have claims, desires an¢ demands. They would not compromise, they would only pr- scribe. They would not listen, they would only dictate. Finall they would return and carry with them rumors of the intrigues and differences and distrusts which arose out of the clash of pre- conceived convictions and out of the lack of sympathetic under- standing of the desires, plans and aspirations of other nations Paradoxical though it may seem, age through its experience 1s unfitted for the generous and unbiased appreciation of othe: people's interests. Not so with youth. Youth has the courage t0 defy traditions of nationalism; it has faith in humanity and 4 vision of the future for which it is willing to venture. Who ar better fitted to cope with world's problems than we who have come in contact with each other's weaknesses, ideas, prejudice: and hopes while studying together in a classroom or contesting �[Page 375]THE FOREIGN STUDENT IN AMERICA 375

on the athletic field? We who have come to study in America have learned to understand you and you have learned to know us. Though it may be that the statesmen have forgotten it, we know that beneath the superficial differences of language, religion, and citizenship, we all are actuated by the same desires and im- pulses. As babes we were merely human beings. We had neither nationality nor prejudice. Then we must ever remember that manhood and womanhood transcend national differences which are matters of training, not of blood.

During the years that we spend in your colleges and uni- versities we shall get to know not only your habits and your customs, but also you, yourself. In these years we are making trends who in the future will bind us to America by the ties of understanding, confidence and goodwill.

The day will come when scattered in many lands, perhaps in every corner of this world, there will be those who have been privileged to spend a few years in the schools of higher learning in this country. Educated under the new dispensation, taught the principles of democracy and brotherhood, nurtured under the tlag that waves above this free and happy land, we who are 2 America now, shall always strive to reproduce in our own ands the best that we have found in American life. The finest ot vour ideals and your traditions we shall appreciate and shall advocate. We shall be unofficial ambassadors and representatives ot this country, interpreters of her moves and sympathizers with oct problems. Using your own word—we shall be boosters for \merica. Lindbergh, a young and intrepid ambassador of good- “ill with all his far-reaching influence, was able to visit but a

« places for a short time, but among the students who will ‘turn home America will have goodwill ambassadors—the -<tv host.ges of peace, who do not merely visit for a day, but ‘ho shall remain co speak a good word whenever the need shall itise. Many of those educated in America shall become members ' the responsible class with which the government and people

‘ the United States will have to deal. Is there any doubt that

tough them the varied interests of your people shall be ex- �[Page 376]376 WORLD UNITY MAGAZINE

tended, that by them there will be a sympathetic understandin; of your needs, of your desires, of your aspirations?

Such is the benefit that you Americans shall reap as a siz of our gratitude for help and knowledge you are giving us, t). student visitors. Like bread cast upon the waters, your goodw: will return to you a thousandfold. Then my friends, when nev time you shall come in contact with a foreigner who tries : find himself in your school, do not shun him and-do not desp:x him because he was not born under the sun that smiles upon tb: valleys and hills of this great and generous country. Stand 10 aloof from him, but rather accept his proffer of friendship. Fo: only then can you cement the bond of brotherhood and quicke: the spread of what this world of ours so urgently needs—thi sincere goodwill which alone can bring about universal peac �[Page 377]>

™

na

NOTES AND ANNOUNCEMENTS

\Itred W. Martin's article on mmedanism in this issue con-

. his editorial department Wis-

‘ the Ages, which has been a e feature of World Unity since

nrst number, October, 1927.

Mr. Martin has accomplished

production of a usable text on carative teligion—a thoroughly mented work making available

al sources which for the aver-

rcader are scattered too widely

the materials of serious

arship, accompanied by inter- ‘ive Comment imbued with the

A

1 appreciation for the univer- gious experience of mankind. of the Ages has presented the

gy religions: Hinduism, Budd- ‘oroastrianism, Confucianism,

and Muhammedanism—the ‘cliions except Judaism and initv. Plans are now under

‘) publish chis series in book

cod turthe’ announcement will in these columns at a later

• * *

_juded also is Prof. Burtt’s pres- otf the current inter-rela-

t \crence, Phtlosophy and Re- in which unusual depth of ve and lucidity of expression mibined co disentangle many s telt by those whose minds ‘tions still dwell in separate, ‘og worlds. Under the title ‘2 In An Age of Science,”

these chapters have recently ap- peared, in larger form, as a volume in the series published by the F. A. Stokes Company under the editorship of John Herman Randall.

• * x

My International Family, begun in this issue’ and to continue through the next three months, brings World Unity readers the very essence of internationalism — the living out from day to day of the ideals of inter- racial and inter-religious accord. In this life-record we have the heart- consciousness which not only paral- lels but vitalizes the mental concepts of a new age.

• *

Of vastly intriguing interest to many readers, stimulating at least to all, is The Spiritual Crisis of the West, by Paul Richard, the leading article this month. By the internal evidence of the essay itself, even if M. Richard were unknown in America, it is evi- dent that the author is profoundly mystical, reflecting the experience and out!ook both of Europe and the East.

x * *

World Unity next month will de- velop the theme of education as an instrument: for internationalism, largely from the viewpoint of the teacher and student. Among other interesting articles will be published the first prize essay in the 1928 World Essay Contest conducted by the American School Citizenship League.

377 �[Page 378]WORLD UNITY .

BOOK OF THE MONTH

IN THIS SPACE EACH MONTH WORLD UNITY WILL RECOMME\. ONE CURRENT WORK WHICH CAN PROFITABLY BE READ BY ALL WHO SEEK TRUE UNDERSTANDING OF ' THE NATURE OF WORLD AFFAIRS

August 1929 Selection ° “RELIGION IN AN AGE OF SCIENCE”

by EDWIN ARTHUR BURTT Department of Philosophy, University of Chicago

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

“I have read Burtt’s ‘Religion in An Age of Science’ very carefully, and my s judgment of it is that it is a very important book. It is written in a clear x popular style, but its popularity does not mean superficiality; in fact, I believe «. this little book digs down deeper into the real underlying causes of conflict betw:

scicnce and rcligion than any book I have ever read."—Walter M. Horton. 1

Graduate School of Theology, Oberlin College, Oberlin, Obio.

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�[Page 379]

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