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[Page 309]

WORLD UNITY

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

JOHN HERMAN RANDALL, Editor HORACE HOLLEY, Managing Editor

• • Contributing Editors**

C. F. ANSLEY W. W. ATWOOD A. MENDELSONN BARTHOLDY BARON BAUDRAN L. F. DE BEAUPORT GRERIT A. BENBEER PIERRE BOVET EDWIN ARTHUR BURTT HARRY CHARLESWORTH No POON CHEW RUDOLPH 1. Cons BAYARD DODGE GEORGES DUHAMEL ANNA B. ECKSTEIN HAVELOCK ELLIS AUGUSTE FOREL C. F. GATES V. SCHULZE GAVERNITZ HELLMUTH VON GERLACH HERBERT ADAMS GIBBONS KAHLIL GIBRAN CHARLOTTE PERKINS GILMAN JOHN W. GRAHAM MARJA GRUNDMANN-KOSCIENSKA FRANK H. HANKINS A. EUSTACE HAYDON WILL HATES YAMATO ICHICHASHI MORDECAI W. JOHNSON RUFUS M. JONES DAVID STARR JORDAN SAMUEL LUCAS JOSHI ERNEST JUDET VLADIMIR KARAPETOPP P. W. Kuo RICHARD LES HARRY LEVI ALAIN LOCKS GEORGE DE LUKÁCS LOUIS L. MANN SIR JAMES MARCHANT VICTOR MARGUERITTE R. H. MARKHAM ALFRED W. MARTIN F. S. MARVIN KIRTLEY F. MATHER LUCIA AMES MEAD FRED MERRIFIELD KARIN MICHABLIS HERBERT A. MILLER DHAN GOPAL MUKBAJI IDA MULLER YONE NOGUCHI HARRY ALLEN OVERSTREST DEXTER PERKINS JOHN HERMAN RANDALL, JR. M. D. REDLICH FORREST REID PAUL RICHARD CHARLES RICHET TH. RUYSSEN NATHANIEL SCHMIDT WILLIAM R. SHEPHERD MARY SIBORIST ABBA HILLEL SILVER ISIDOR SINGER DAVID G. STEAD AUGUSTUS O. THOMAS GILBERT THOMAS ISABELLA VAN METER RUSTUM VAMBÉRY WALTER WALSH HANS WERBERO M. P. WILLCOCKS FRANK LLOYD WRIGHT

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

WORLD UNITY MAGAZINE is published by WORLD UNITY PUBLISHING CORPORATION, 4 East 12th Street, New York City: MARY RUMSEY MOVIUS, president; HORACE HOLLEY, vice-president; FLORENCE MORTON, treasurer; JOHN HERMAN RANDALL, secretary. Published monthly, 35 cents a copy, $3.50 a year in the United States and in all other countries (postage included). THE WORLD UNITY PUBLISHING CORPORATION and its editors welcome correspondence on articles related to the aims and purposes of the magazine. Printed in U. S. A. Contents copyrighted 1929 by WORLD UNITY PUBLISHING CORPORATION. [Page 310]EVIDENTLY, the peop' are determined to bring about better international relations and a more wholesome unity in dealing with each other. This is evidenced in the large number of international 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 Kiwanians at Montreal, the Naval Disarmament Conference at Geneva, the Conference of the Christian Church at Lausanne, the World Court and the League of Nations, and the Third General Conference with the Second Biennial of the World Federation 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 activities mentioned above and in many other movements.

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, possibly over generations. The hope lies with the children who are unprejudiced and may be brought up under proper direction without mistrust or fear of their neighbors and given the habit of thinking of foreign relations and business affecting the several countries as free cooperative equals in aiding the progress of mankind.

AUGUSTUS O. THOMAS

President, World Federation of Education Associations [Page 311]

THE SOVEREIGNTY OF LAW

The results of Mr. Hoover's special investigation of the 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 environment. When large numbers of citizens, or members, or communicants, pass from voluntary obedience to indifference or voluntary disobedience, the sources of this transformation of attitude can never be found in the individual but 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 between 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. It legislates; it maintains courts; it possesses at least the elements of an educational 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 psychology of patriotism and achieves the status of independent sovereignty among its peers. [Page 312]Regarded only from within, the gang is a worthy and usefu social organism, capable of manifesting, in rudimentary degree a least, the various attributes and functions of the national state Emotionally and materially, it is that state in primitive form

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

But it will be increasingly necessary for all well meaning people to overcome within themselves the traditional perspective by which every act of the national state is vested with true complete sovereignty, and nationalism is considered to possess the status of finality.

From the viewpoint of humanity as a whole, the modern state is itself nothing else than a more highly organized "gang" in sinister rebellion against the supreme order and welfare of the world. Its acts of warfare are murder; its education for the most part a betrayal of true human interests; its tariffs and immigration laws wholly arbitrary expressions of partisan policy and there fore in conflict with the fundamental laws of economics and international cooperation. While national states continue to break 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 obedience which exists only when the cell is a part of a healthy organism

Thus it may confidently be expected that if Mr. Hoover's investigation goes far enough, it will lay bare the fact that national statutes are only valid when they exist as local applications of laws and principles controlling the welfare and vigorous development of humanity as a whole. Possessing this status. their observance and enforcement will be identical with thos supreme moral and spiritual realities which can alone balance self-interest and social obligation on the part of individual men 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 material 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 themselves 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— [Page 314]splendid with the possibilities of realizing a rebirth; whilst others, alarmed at the gulf beneath, have struggled up the slippery precipice toward the old summits of the Past. The neutrals, however, conquerors of yesterday, are sliding back, clutching desperately at the old roots, unwilling to slacken hold, hanging on to their illusion of being still firmly established on their peaks—rocks which are carrying them into the Void. None of them will escape the necessity of touching bottom before being able to climb back toward the even greater heights of the future. The same disruptive force which, in the political world, has decomposed into extreme tendencies—dictatorship of the one or the many—the broken balance of the old conservative order, has its equivalent in the moral and intellectual sphere.

The explosion has shattered the spirit into fragments.

Before the war, western thought, by a sort of intuition of coming events, seemed to be absorbed in the mystic contemplation of pacifist ideals, which the different governments rivalled one 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 of public credulity, the European mind broke up, abandoning its 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, these 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 melie.” Such were the results of the first rupture.

The second arose when national entities, having exhausted their force of “union sacrée” for war concentration, had again [Page 315]

THE SPIRITUAL CRISIS OF THE WEST

to allow the individual to follow his own bent. After the explosion 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 left of 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 best 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 fought 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 for 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]who from afar shakes nations, overthrows thrones, levels empires, and destroys in order to create. Chaos is the womb of the future.

In this Chaos the thought of Europe is losing itself, is breaking 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 opposing 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. Scientific 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

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 thought. 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 of the Orient, they listen to the call of the East.

For the antithesis of Americanism is Asiatic Mysticism. America 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, but the most misty, deceptive and decadent today. They 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 tomorrow will arise.

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

Materialism and spirituality are constantly driving it into two opposite directions. By dint of scrutinizing what it took to be inert, tangible and immovable, it has been carried away to the limits of the visible, far from the boundaries of sense towards [Page 318]those vertiginous regions, where the mass itself disappears in vortices of pure energy, and where reality is dissolved in the magic of the imponderable.

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

Meanwhile, the European spirit, whirled about in its twilight of blood, is carried by the blind storm from one dogma to another, from one gulf to another, from the darkness of tradition to the darkness of negation. In the midst of this delirium and dispersion of ideas, certain fragments at times come together as the recent Congress of Religions, in which believers from all 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 of the spirit, preparing its resurrection.

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

More and more it seems to be sinking in the quicksands of innumerable facts, detailed observations and analytical data, [Page 319]

THE SPIRITUAL CRISIS OF THE WEST

overwhelmed in plurality-lost in diversity. Its incapacity to grasp the whole-the main outline-and survey the general outlook, 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 dissociate, 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 being destroyed.

In the intellectual sphere, as in all the others, war and revolution 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 anything able to spare the West and mankind further wars and revolutions, to arrest the catastrophic period that has begun, for Europe it is only such a possible, radical and entire revolution of 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 transition which resembles Death, through which it proceeds from the Past-which is no more-to the Future which is not yet; from truths which are no longer vital to those which will give life to 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 energy-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]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 moral 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 collective intuition for the most part unconscious, which contained the germ of what the future is to realize, and in which the meaning of life itself is renewed. For it is the meaning of life which is changed at each fresh revolution of the spirit. It is from this basic intuition that deep and vivid light is thrown on the relations linking the individual with the universal, man with the [Page 321]

THE SPIRITUAL CRISIS OF THE WEST

infinite. It is that which philosophic systems try to translate, each 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 fallen into the dust. The giant tree has spread out its branches but failed to deepen its roots. The hurricane has come and uprooted 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 counterparts one of the other.

Above all, the qualitative and the quantitative, the indivisible (the invisible—the One) and the divisible, those inseparable opposites, adapt themselves and answer one another, like 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 aspects—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 of 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]There is more spirit in matter than there is without, and the one is but the consciousness of the other. And it is the same in the case of all these opposites which, sundered by the mind, are wedded by the Infinite.

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

***

It is always the principle of its greatest faith, of its conscious or unconscious philosophy, which every society strives to apply 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 the visible embodiment of a theological system. And every government, whether willingly or no, is the image and incarnation of divine power, single or multiple, relative or absolute, whichever 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 of revolution. Theocracy, autocracy, plutocracy, democracy, the power of the Priest, of the King, of the Rich, of the People, are so many forms of divine right. When the thought of nature outweighs that of God, when Osiris takes the place of Isis, then a monarchy gives way to a republic.

So completely have the foundations of the collective faith of the West crumbled away, that the traditional forms of the State have gradually decayed, even to the point of anarchy, and after se many attempts, so many avatars, so many metamorphoses, political power hardly knows what form to take. All the ancient ghosts of Authority, the very names of which have fallen into disgrace. now stand staring at each other in bewilderment, unable to recognize or exclude one another. Only the advent of some creative idea can solve such a political crisis, in which the mind no longer finds any force on which it can lean, any form in which to manifest. Its problem can only be solved by turning back to the laws of being, which alone organize living beings and living nations. [Page 323]Such laws can reconcile all contradictory formulas, and re-establish the necessary harmony between the essential terms of Liberty and Unity. They alone can realize the complete unification between the two fundamental principles, of oneness and multiplicity, of the wish of the individual, which is the basis of true democracy, and that of central power and will, unique soul of the social body. For only in the mutual respect of these two principles can the nations find the secret of their equilibrium, growth, and continuance. No administrative machinery, no arbitrary centralization can ever hope to replace these laws. The western nations which have tried to do so can only pass from the tyranny of the dictator to the anarchy of the demagogue. In the end, they can only 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 give the whole democratic edifice an arrow pointing toward the sky, have been able, like ancient China, to center for more than forty centuries four hundred million men around their "Sons of Heaven," or like Japan around its "Tenno," to pass three thousand years without submission or defeat, shielded by a continuous succession of man-gods, guarantees of the unity and liberty of all.

The only alternative left to the peoples is to consider themselves lifeless things, to be disposed of by the State machine, as cogs in some central grinder, or as living organisms, which will be 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 Soul and this God of the people manifested, was sometimes figurative—more often than really incarnated—represented if not present—sometimes no more than a memory; sometimes a mockery of the Past. For the divine idea which gave them life is itself incapable of living. It no longer answers to the ideals or the realities of today. The failure of institutions reveals that of religions. And the fall of the gods on earth soon follows that in the heaven of the Spirit. If real men— [Page 324]gods today mounted on the throne of the Past, it would only be no doubt, to precipitate their downfall, and to bury and annihilate themselves under the ruins of dead forms and obsolete empires in a redeeming holocaust offered to things of the morrow.

For, if a unique soul still mut needs manifest itself in the multitude, an ego in the mass, ti absolute of the spirit in the infinite of relative corporeities, t e are no longer the spiritless forms of yesterday in which such spirit must clothe itself. Its image cannot be that of the old god potentate, jealous and arbitrary, a Jupiter with his bolts, or a Jehovah in his wrath. I will be that of a new god, a god which is not yet; of a god who does not will to be.

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

Where are such men to be found? The nations, from their own bosoms, will bring them forth, when in despair and lost in the depths which are opening before them. Humanity carries within [Page 325]itself the germ of all the beings of which it dreams, which it needs. From its needs and dreams they are born. The Rishis of the East, the Wise Men of antiquity, the Sons of Heaven, are not dead. They may be born again. They shall be reborn more divine than before.

The nations, then, can like mystic Russia descend with faith toward greater misery, greater mystery and darkness. The deeper be the gulf the higher will be the reascent. They can destroy the old foundations and set them deeper than before. These will only be all the firmer. And upon these foundations, which the blind Titans have hammered and pounded, the gods will build.

Whatever be its form, the new order implies a new "élite"―an elite" no longer dispersed but homogeneous; the modern equivalent of what in ancient times was the Brahmanic caste, now degenerate. For its double ideal and permanent example of high thinking and plain living was, for centuries, the glory of ancient India.

Not a closed caste, proud and hard, but an open "élite" receptive to all, strict only toward itself.

An élite having its own law, its own way of thought and life more beautiful, and noble, more exacting and difficult than any others. An élite which could not be an object of envy, jealousy or covetousness to any; which will be a constant and silent inspiration to all.

Today in the West, when the mass looks above, what does it ind? Politicians, bankers, opera singers-a rabble even worse than that below.

Certainly there is still scattered in the mass, and gradually dissolving in it, an élite of men of science, thinkers, artists, and philanthropists. There are heroes and saints. But this élite is ignored, timid and powerless-even to protect itself against the general drift. All its energy is taken up in maintaining itself and in resisting the menace of circumstances, the miseries of life, the misunderstandings of the crowd. The crisis of the Spirit indeed is its own crisis.

It is true that its increasing difficulty to live on the islets, left [Page 326]by the rising tide of barbarism, will compel it some day, in order to defend itself and subsist, to unite and recreate its own forms of life dignified and simple, which will make a framework of beauty for the working out of its true spiritual ends.

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

Then will shine forth again, higher and brighter than before those illuminating beacons of civilization-schools of Pythagora or Alexandria-to enlighten not only Greece and Rome but the world at large.

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

The road to Calvary is not yet over. And after Calvary, the Cross. But upon the Cross-the Light. [Page 327]

THE WORLD WE LIVE IN

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

CULTURAL RELATIONS WITH LATIN AMERICA

by HUBERT C. HERRING Executive Director

THE 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 1. Buell, Herbert Croly, Paul H. Douglas, Stephen P. Duggan, Waldo Frank, Ernest Gruening, Robert M. Hutchins, Samuel Guy Inman, Paul U. Kellogg, Julian W. Mack, Francis J. McConnell, Parker T. Moon, J. Fred Rippy, and Ray Lyman Wilbur. The executive director is Hubert C. Herring.

The Committee proposes a series of definite projects for increasing mutual understanding between the peoples of the Americas.

First of all is the annual "Seminar in Mexico." The Seminar was inaugurated three years ago by Hubert C. Herring. The fourth session will be held in Mexico City, July 13 to August 3. The purpose of the Seminar is to enable picked groups of men and women, widely representative of the life of the United States, to establish intelligent contacts with the people of Mexico. [Page 328]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 and women, and these are proving widely influential in pleading for greater appreciation of the spiritual gifts of the Mexican. Those interested in applying for membership in the Seminar should write the Committee, 307 East 17th Street, New York.

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

The members of the Committee propose to carry this work of interpretation and mutual understanding into other areas of Latin America. They feel that the great need in our inter-American relations is the creation of a great body of intelligent and appreciative friends of atin America. Their purpose is constructive-the building of appreciation rather than the opposing of any force They feel that suspicion and hate must melt away when people begin to understand the wealth of spiritual insight which these others have to contribute to the common life of the Americas [Page 329]

XX-CHARLES WAGNER

by WAUTIER D'AYGALLIERS AND WILLIAM LEONARD SCHWARTZ Stanford University

I AM neither Protestant, Catholic nor Jew, but something 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 times, La Vie Simple, characterized himself in a page of his private diary. 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 Frenchmen have ever possessed a higher conception of ideal manhood 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 taught 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, Un Homme, le Pasteur Charles Wagner, prepared by his son-in-law, A. Wautier d'Aygalliers (Paris, Fischbacher, 1927). [Page 330]There was only one another social or political milieu . . church in my little Alsatian village, and it was held in common by the Catholics and the Protestants. The believers of each confession 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 I learned, from childhood, to admire and love men who thought differently from myself."

These childhood experiences also enabled Wagner to conceive 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 outbreak 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 at a 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 consequences 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

these pages has always lived among conflicting influences. God has guided him in such a fashion that in social, religious, intellectual 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 religious 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 to 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 Apostles' Creed, about which so much is said, is this one-I believe in the Holy Catholic Church. The members of the Church universal are already born. The Church universal is not one which includes all mankind, but the one whose members are open-hearted enough to fraternize in spite of all social, political, philosophical and religious differences." "A true believer. understands and profits everywhere by the good; he loves God under 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 books. Justice, in 1890, made Wagner known in Protestant Switzerland. Jeunesse, 1892, translated at the suggestion of Miss Grace King as Youth by Ernest Redwood in 1893, received a prize from the French Academy. Increasing audiences made it possible for Wagner to be heard in larger halls, until he was enabled to build his own church and seven-storied settlement building, the Foyer de l'Ame, "Hearthstone (or Home) of the Soul," and dedicate it in 1907. The Rue Daval, a street near the Place de la Bastille, where Wagner's congregation gathered, was renamed in 1924 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 French Protestants as an organization, in the Union Nationale des [Page 332]Eglises Réformées, at the very moment when Disestablishment or the separation of Church and State in France had raised difficulties of the gravest sort.

La Vie Simple, which made Wagner widely known in the United States, appeared in May, 1895. The author had been asked to preach at the marriage of a carpenter and the waiting maid of Edgar Quinet's widow, who witnessed the ceremony in company with Mademoiselle Buisson, daughter of Ferdinand Buisson, the recipient of a Nobel Peace Prize in 1927. The young lady was 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, the exact nature of Wagner's book, The Simple Life, has become forgotten. "Simplicity is a state of mind," said the pastor. "It dwells in the main intention of our lives. A man is simple when his chief care is the wish to be what he ought to be, that is honestly and naturally human. And this is neither so easy nor so impossible as one might think . . . Let a flower be a flower, a 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, and it is not surprising that Wagner, after John Wanamaker and Roosevelt had brought him to America, should have been asked to address the Thirteenth Universal Peace Congress at Boston in 1904, speaking in the English which he learned just before coming to this country. These are some of his very words at Boston and no translation: "I like a neighbor who from time to time comes to the wall of the garden and speaks to me and says, 'Shake hands. neighbor, what are you doing in your garden?' so that we can have talks about everything in the garden. We also should have talks across the wall, the thick wall of enmity which is between nations." Much of Wagner's strength was devoted to maintaining better relations with Germany, where he was admired by all classes, even by the imperial family. He visited the German churches in 1910 in behalf of world harmony, and labored always [Page 333]

CHARLES WAGNER

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 de l'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 beheld for the first time a man of God speaking as an apostle of world unity: "The existing relations between nations are unworthy 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]

MY INTERNATIONAL FAMILY

MARTHA TAYLOR BROWN

GEORGE 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 vigorous, 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 received short shrift at his hands; intellectual integrity was respected, 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 of 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 exploration of the road leading to the Real, the Good, the Beautiful. [Page 335]

MY INTERNATIONAL FAMILY

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. My 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 gift on my fourteenth birthday from my sixteen-year-old brother, of a complete German edition of Goethe, gave me access to the serene and lofty heights of that aristocratic intellect. The following year in Paris I saw for the first time a reference to Descartes’ famous dictum, “Cogito Ergo Sum.” This puzzled me, as I was unaware of a metaphysical necessity for proving my own existence, 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 felt would have been the natural thing to say.

Fate put into my hands soon after this a book which leveled all barriers between races and creeds. This was James Freeman Clarke’s “Ten Great Religions,” antiquated doubtless in this year of grace, but well calculated fifty-five years ago to widen the horizon and quicken the understanding of an ardent, growing young girl. Hungrily I read of the religious aspirations and cultural backgrounds of peoples of many lands. The manifestations were various, but I recognized the same yearnings for truth that I felt within myself. I went back to my Bible as if it were a book fresh from the printer, finding it powerful and thrilling in proportion as I separated it from conventional dogmas and sects. I now turned eagerly to the bibles of other religions and found therein similar treasuries of the aspirations and experiences of yellow people and brown people of many races. Following the bibles I turned to the philosophers, the dramatists, the poets of other cultures. Thus, by the time I was fifteen, I was pretty well furnished with an international outlook and sympathies. But beyond a passion for fair play and a constitutional championing [Page 336]of the under dog in ways more theoretical than practical, I had little opportunity to live out my faith in the essential oneness of the human family until, at the age of sixty, the merest chance started my international family.

A friend teaching classes for foreigners in a neighboring 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 nineteen 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 wrapping 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 bound into a pointed shape and were no larger than a child's. To disguise their smallness she had stuffed the toes of her American shoes with cotton. Her slightly slanting eyes wore a veil of anxious doubtfulness over the wistful desire to find a personal welcome I warmed to her at once, and when I took her by the hand and led her through my home, teaching her the names and uses of 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]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 English," I replied. Still murmuring:

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

"I do not want money for teaching you. I do it for friendliness."

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 come?" 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.

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

"How did you learn?" The answer, accompanied by a charming smile, was:

"I just try."

A pretty good sermon could be written on that text.

Before long it became apparent that a baby was expected. So I said to my little friend:

"You are far from your own mother. Let me be your [Page 338]American 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 arrogance, shown by many Anglo-Saxons, which must be amusing as 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 interesting 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 are 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 lapse from this poise would have been in her estimation a weakness to blush for.

The youthful husband was the son of a Mandarin, who un- [Page 339]

MY INTERNATIONAL FAMILY

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 continued as a profession. Thus naturally was my one adopted daughter joined by others until my international family included twenty-three nationalities. S 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 all men.

My second pupil was a graduate of a Japanese University. Coming, as he did, every day and being fairly proficient in English, 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]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,' 'barbarians, Christian dogs,' etc. We must all endeavor to understand 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.

"It would be better to ask someone else," I answered. "I 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 presented by a pupil, so at the next lesson I began:

"Please remember that I am giving you only my own personal 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]in Japan, expressing a wish to use his influence toward the improvement 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 be set free?"

"But men must be entertained!" he maintained.

"But not necessarily in tea-houses," was my reply. "Let your sisters and wives learn to entertain you with music, and bring your 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 constructive service to society."

I could see that suggestion seemed to him almost too revolutionary for consideration.

In common with all his countrymen this Japanese friend had an intense love for all the beauties of nature. Nothing delighted 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 substitution of the word "Americans" to know that all kinds of characteristics exist in each race, and that generalizations are ridiculously untrue. There are materialistic personalities looking out for 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-Bahá, Ghandi and many others.

(To be continued) [Page 342]

THE WISDOM OF THE AGES

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

The Sacred Scriptures of Muhammedanism (Concluded)

OUR selection of typical passages from the Koran may well begin with the prayer more frequently recited by believers than any other. It has been called "the Lord's Prayer of Muhammedanism" because of its frequent repetition by the faithful, and because, like the Lord's Prayer in the gospel of Matthew, it consists of seven verses and is regarded 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 the full; But when they mete to them or weigh to them, minish,— What! have they no thought that they shall be raised again for the great day? The day when mankind shall stand before the Lord of the worlds. [Page 343]

THE SACRED SCRIPTURES OF MUHAMMEDANISM

Yes! the register of the wicked is in Sidjin, a book distinctly 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 a lie."

Even so. But the register of the righteous is in Illiyoun; 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 theocracy, special stress was laid upon total abstinence from intoxicating 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 Christianity was based, in part, upon its failure to put an absolute veto on the use of intoxicants. General Lew Wallace, after twenty years’ 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 thing for many of the tribes of Africa, habitually drunk, than Christianity could have been. A "Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals" is unknown in Muhammedan countries except in cities overrun with Christians, and I have observed in Turkish 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 it wefe well if his critics paused to remember that these evils existed for centuries before his time and that the most he could do was to improve the [Page 344]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 reproach Muhammed for not having abolished slavery.

In dealing with the problem of marriage and divorce Muhammed 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 of 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, or four; and if ye have misgiving that ye will not act equitably, then one only." (Sura II.)

"If any of your women be charged with whoredom then bring four witnesses against her from among yourselves and if they bear witness to the fact, shut her up within her house till death release her." "Allow not your wives to depart unless they 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 of "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 all mankind to a field of grain that sways with the blowing of the wind. He is the heavenly Sultan and Muslim are they who submit to his decrees; they who, like the willows, bend before the blast [Page 345]

THE SACRED SCRIPTURES OF MUHAMMEDANISM

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 forgive," we read in the fourth Sura. Nay more, the faithful are bidden by the Prophet not to pray for idolators—witness the injunction of the ninth Sura: "It 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 acknowledge 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 objects 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 acknowledge and obey Allah is rebellion, and rebelliou 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 constantly exhorts his Meccan followers to bear patiently the wrongs inflicted on them because of their religion. His earliest permission to fight is given to those "who have been driven forth from their homes undeservedly" merely for saying "Our Lord is God.": A 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 fight with you, but do not take the aggressive; verily God loves not the aggressor." Later, Muhammed used force without hesitation, not only against the Meccans, but to subdue other cities.

Sura XXII, 40, 42. [Page 346]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 had 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 he 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 conversion 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. Arnold's "The Preaching of Islam" there is an exhaustive array of quotations from the Koran, regarding Muhammed's attitude to missionary work, which the doctrine of submission requires. 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 involves 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 fraudulent buyer and the fraudulent seller walk to the Judgment-seat with the goods they dishonestly bought or sold tied to their

Sura XVI, 37, 84; XXIX, 43; XLII, 47, 257, 64, 12. Sura XVI, 126; XLII, 13, 14; III, 19, 99, 100; XXII, 66; IX, 6, 11. [Page 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. Wherever 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 from their own greed are prospered. If we lend God a generous loan He will double it to you and forgive you." (Sura LIV.)

4. Fasting from sunrise to sunset of the month of "Ramadan," in which the prophet fled from Mecca to Medina.

5. A pilgrimage, at least 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 fulfilment was not difficult 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 of noblest citizenship. Even in the case of the second requirement latitude 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]And if you have become unclean, then purify yourselves. 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 of Muhammed’s appearance, we may well believe that his gospel of submission (islam) was exactly suited to the needs of those 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 EDWIN ARTHUR BURTT Department of Philosophy, University of Chicago

V-THE RECONCILIATION OF SCIENCE AND RELIGION

We 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 by gradual adjustment of religious feeling to the notions scientifically 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 the beginning of modern times comprised the set of ideas about the world in 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. The 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 of historical research to the study of the Bible.

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 [Page 350]response to the situations thus created, is a feverish eagerness to remain loyal to as much of the ancient faith as can still be embraced with some recognition of the rights of scientific truth "How much can I still believe?" is the question pathetically asked. And because of this frantic zeal to cling to as much as can be held, coupled with the necessity of surrendering what science demands to be surrendered, we see the tendency in modern religious 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 elimination and attenuation till today, in liberal circles, the minimum creed seems to have been reduced to three tenets: belief in God. confidence in immortality, and conviction of spiritual uniqueness in Jesus of Nazareth. And both religious intellectuals and pious scientists seem to spend much of their energy at present in the attempt to prove to themselves and others that science has discovered nothing and is not likely to discover anything that will upset this trinity of fundamentals. Thus the pathetic game of give what must, hold what can, continues.

But if our analysis is on the right track the conflict is really much deeper than this, and religion will for ever continue this hopeless reconciling without becoming reconciled unless the true nature of the conflict be clearly grasped and the only way of genuine reconciliation be frankly adopted. The conflict is at 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 atmosphere of complete tentativeness and mutual cooperation. The ideal of religion has been that of personal salvation, attained by inflexible loyalty to some revered leader, institution, or doctrine. It is this conflict of ideals that must be once for all resolved if a harmony of religion and science is to be won in the modern world comparable to the profound unity of the two in the great age of unquestioning faith.

Now if this be granted it is evident further, from the considerations of our introductory chapter, that the ideal of science [Page 351]

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once some of its fruits have been tasted, cannot be surrendered by any of us, and accordingly reconciliation cannot be secured by abandoning science in favor of religion. For in the interest of life itself, to say nothing of prosperous life, it is imperative to grasp those regular relations which condition control of the factors on which life depends, such as the procuring of food, the maintenance of group relations needed for protection and economic cooperation, and the like.

The one available general alternative then is that religion reform itself from the ground up, to the extent of becoming through and through harmonious with the spirit of science. Can this be done, and anything properly entitled religion still remain?

To answer this question we must engage in a brief survey of the history of religion and note what seems to be essential in it, what not. As a result of that survey we shall see that while religion everywhere begins with an object of worship characterized mainly by power, its development is marked by the will to characterize that object more and more by goodness and to surrender whatever elements in the conception are found inconsistent with the ideal of goodness. The early stages in this history are disclosed most clearly in the religion of peoples who had not yet attained intellectual and moral culture. Their gods are primarily invisible beings who are feared and placated because it is on their power that the welfare of the community depends. The fear of the Lord is for them the beginning of wisdom. Other elements due to some sense of family kinship with these beings are not absent, but this is the main factor in the conception and it determines most of their religious practice.

As intelligence grows and moral consciousness becomes more live and active, however, fear inevitably becomes transcended as the central motive in man's relation to the gods. To become intelligent and morally self-conscious means that one can no longer bow down in abject fear, terrified by external power. For such realization of individual selfhood spells emancipation from the control of mere force; as the Stoics so vigorously [Page 352]insisted, the man who has attained this realization can be mastered by nothing outside of him except so far as he is willing to yield to its sway. Even torture cannot force him if he will not flinch Such a man is free, superior to the whole world of external power He has discovered something of ultimate value within, attested by his sense of self-respect and personal dignity, which cannot be made to quake by terror of anything outside. The consequence for religion of this emancipation is momentous. From this point of man cannot worship God because of the mere display of omnipotence; the fact that God can punish him for rebellion is not enough to prove that he should not become a rebel. Now he can worship only what his moral consciousness tells him is good worthy of worship, and sheer power in the guise of deity no longe has any claim upon him. The gradual attainment in the race of this moral self-consciousness is accordingly paralleled in religion by the gradual ascription to the deity of ideal qualities in addition to those of power, and the equally gradual elimination of elements hopelessly warring with these ideal qualities. God becomes more and more essentially the ideal of human character, for the moral man who has gained freedom from fear of power and realizes that in his moral selfhood lies the thing of ultimat worth can experience the emotions of reverence, awe, and worship only before what enshrines such an ideal of goodness.

The consequence of this for our whole problem of attaining a genuine reconciliation of science and religion will soon engage us directly, but we must first consider the peculiar form take today by the failure of liberal tendencies in Christianity to win the full spiritual freedom toward which this lengthy evolution points.

The external power which still holds liberal religion captivity and estops it from attaining the full identification of deity with moral goodness is the power of a great historic tradition, appealing almost irresistibly as that tradition does to some of the strongest and best emotions of human nature. The viger of our attachment to this tradition, the loneliness and cosmic weakness which even the most daring souls appear to feel whe [Page 353]

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withdrawn from its support, furnish the most astonishing testimony both to the might of the human craving for an absolute focus of certainty and to the real grandeur of the ideas achieved in that prophetic past from whose encircling attraction we thus feel ourselves unable to pull away. But the free soul must emancipate itself from worship of the past, however great its contribution to our moral life, just as it must rise beyond the worship of any other external power. An ideal of perfection can never reside in the past, it can never be fully embodied in anything already achieved. A moral self can never worship any merely past revelation of divinity. Consequently for such a self there can never be anything absolute in past tradition; that which has already been realized in the way of spiritual attainment exists for it as a means in the pursuit of the Good, it can never be itself identified with that good. And the inability of liberal religion today to recognize this truth and act upon it honestly spells its failure to make the ultimate and drastic sacrifice that must be made if western religion is to attain the goal of its tortuous pilgrimage and at the same time become capable of reconciliation with science.

If this criticism lack decisive point by its generality, we shall hasten to the crucial illustration. Drive a religious man of liberal persuasion today away from every other tenet that used to be held fundamental in the Christian philosophy of history, and he will come back to one point of historic fixity which he feels must be insisted upon as absolute. There is something in Jesus of Nazareth which is ultimate, to be maintained without reservation and never surrendered. If it is not his deity it is his divinity a distinction which at one stage of recent theological discussion was of considerable moment); if it is not his divinity it is his unique leadership in the spiritual enterprise of humanity. Detach 4 pious soul from something final in the historic Jesus and he is lost, religiously speaking.

On the other hand, even if no such difficulty as this stood the way, a scientific mind would have to recognize that adherents of other religions make similar claims about the founders of their faith, and it would have to engage in a quite impartial [Page 354]comparison of these various founders in order to see just what merits could honestly be ascribed to each. But willingness to engage in such an inquiry transcends at once the attitude of absolute loyalty; one cannot honestly compare individuals with each other if his thinking is ultimately controlled by a lurking commitment of feeling to a particular one of them. Moreover once such an impartial inquiry is really entered, it can never result in attributing finality to even the prophet who appears as a result of that inquiry most worthy. For in the nature of the case it would have to be remembered that some other individual might appear at any time superior to any in the group compared and also that further historical records might come to light which would change the verdict even with reference to them. In other words, the resulting attitude would have to maintain the flexibility and tentativeness without which the inquiry could not get under way, and which are inherently inconsistent with locating any absolute focus of religious feeling in a historic individual. Can science be barred from investigating these questions of history and comparative ethics? On what grounds? We see, in short, that so far as religion insists upon any finality in past tradition, thus submitting to the fascination of what is external to the present needs of men, it is quite irreconcilable with the scientific outlook.

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

That love is the greatest thing in the world and that God as at once the highest ideal and the supremely real is the spirit of love wherever it be found, the reader will probably accept as the most enlightened and the most soberly appealing assertion [Page 355]

THE RECONCILIATION OF SCIENCE AND RELIGION

in our sacred tradition. As noted above, it has not quite been meant without reservation, but if we should dare to take it seriously it would at once tear us loose from all fixities of historical loyalty and render our religious thinking as flexible as the most inexorable champion of science could ask. What does it really mean to love my neighbor? Well, if I love him I shall be sincerely interested in his welfare, and this means that I shall be eager to help him solve his own problems in the form which they take in his own experience, and that in my relations with him I shall not want to insist upon anything which he does not actually hind of help in meeting his difficulties. Can this attitude of sincere helpfulness which intelligent love must mean be combined with insistence upon ideas derived from past tradition as final? Obviously not. If I love my neighbor nothing will be farther from my purpose than the attempt to force his experience into any preconceived mold of my own; I shall cherish no dogma as to what his salvation must mean or as to how it is to be secured. By his salvation I shall mean the solution of whatever real puzzles press upon him, whether they be similar or found different to those with which I am already familiar; it is not my business, for example, to conduct him safely to eternal bliss in a world beyond unless such celestial bliss is the thing he most deeply wants. And whether his greatest need is for this or for something else, I shall surely not insist that a belief about or attitude toward Jesus, or anyone else in past religious history, is to be taken as a necessary means for the satisfaction of his need.

The bearing of this upon the attainment of world unity is too-patent to need elaboration. It has often been noted by men consumed by the passion for world unity that religion as it exists is decidedly a divisive as well as a unifying force in human life. In our discovery of that element in religion which keeps it in perennial conflict with science and in contradiction to its own deepest insights we have at the same time laid bare the separative poison that has made religion a source of war, persecution, and racial antagonism in the world. The reason for this separative poison in religion lies simply in the fact that religious feeling [Page 356]tends almost irresistibly to focus upon the values found precious in some limited community, and to fix itself in unconquerable opposition to the values thus precious in other communities. Except then in the rare cases where zeal for world unity has itself become the most dominant of these spiritual values, an exclusive element in our religious loyalty is inevitable. We hold to our little tribal god, even when doing so makes us devils to other folks. This poison is especially virulent in the western world, where concern for one's own salvation and eagerness to propagate the notions through which one has found personal help has been a far stronger motive than concern to appreciate the spiritual needs of other peoples and to cooperate unselfishly in their satisfaction. Though eastern religions have not nourished the latter they have been less apt to become a nuisance on account of the former. There is indeed something uncanny about a missionary sallying forth to persuade foreign peoples to believe some historic doctrine about love, when if he vibrated with the higher music of his own gospel his activity would be something quite different and far more humane. Such are the amazing anomalies of which human nature is capable.

Religion will at one fell swoop be freed from its inner self-contradiction, its otherwise endless conflict with science, and its crime of opposition to the goal of world unity, when it really identifies God with love as the best present symbol to describe the ideal of moral goodness, and masters the fundamental lesson of what sincere and intelligent love means. That lesson, as I hope will be evident now from the whole trend of our discussion is to be learned mainly from science. Science thus proves itself in the modern world the true, if unconscious, heir of the best deposit of early western religion. It is at this central point that religion as it might be and science as it already is converge into one, namely at the point of their brooding ideal and informing spirit. Love in religion is but the extension to the whole of life in all its phases and moods of the zeal for social universality and the attitude of live freedom and unflinching honesty that characterize science in its search for dependable explanations of [Page 357]things. Religion will find itself in the modern world when it envisions its object of worship in terms that square with the human values for which science stands.

A religion and science thus brought together in one is the deepest need of the modern world. Science alone is not enough, for we cannot confine experience to the ceaseless search for laws and the application of them to further problems. Fundamental also is the human need to feel the glory of the world in the order it reveals as a system of means through which shines the ideal of good that lightens the experience of every earnest man. This ideal, rendered 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 merely form an intellectually justified object of worship but actually attract to itself our feelings of reverence and awe. Otherwise personality in its wholeness cannot be unified about it.

That love may furnish such an object is amply attested by literature and art as well as religion. Or, putting the matter another way, it is that conception of supreme value as surrounding itself with the thrill of romantic attachment instead of merely guiding scientific research, that constitutes religious experience as opposed to the experience of cold inquiry.

The fundamental question, into which all else sinks, is this: Can religious emotion be disciplined to this extent? Such a question must be faced very frankly. Earnest hearts have often accused philosophers of substituting a pale emotionless concept in place of a truly religious object, and have done duty by reminding them that men are moved by feeling rather than by reason. Precisely so they indeed are creatures of feeling—but that is not quite the whole story. Men have been sufficiently moved by reason for an intense conflict between scientific intelligence and religious feeling to arise. The conflict cannot be ended by turning away from reason and enveloping ourselves in mere feeling, for however passionately our emotions are attached to an unworthy god we can no longer worship him when our intelligence sees him to [Page 358]be unworthy. Reason does compel our feelings to grow, and to attach themselves to more adequate objects; but the process is slow and halting, both in any individual and in the race. The question is, can this remoulding of our deepest feelings be carried to its indicated limit?

There is probably no transformation of character more difficult than this. Our religious loyalties entwine themselves about our very heart-strings; they constitute our inmost being. Can we really control them by reason and conscience? Can we insist upon concentrating them on values that can dependably maintain themselves before intelligent appraisal, such as this at first rather fleeting and tenuous ideal of complete tentativeness and impartiality of socialized interest? The answer is: We must so control them, because nothing less can really meet our deepest need. We must envision ever more clearly the meaning of these living human values; we must hold them before ourselves persistently in all the ways found fruitful in religious history till the wealth of our religious feelings, already forced to abandon their former objects, begin to cluster around these richer goods and feel their peculiar satisfaction in them; the process must continue till we come deeply and habitually to prize readiness to transcend any previous emotional absorption more than the most stirring emotional experience itself.

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

Before us, too, in the enterprise of science, there spreads a foretaste in a limited range of experience of such a complete moralizing of our controlling attitudes. In the integrity, empirical flexibility, and universal social reference of the scientific interest... [Page 359]

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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 others than for the sense of personal certainty that comes from hugging appealing but unsharable mystic intuitions or munching the familiar fruit of a hoary tradition.

It would go without saying that a church organized in accordance with the principles so far suggested would not require belief in the existence of God as a condition of membership. For everyone whose guiding ideal is akin to the one we have described would far rather be associated in religious fellowship with an avowed atheist who sincerely sought the welfare of his fellowmen than with a believer in God whose faith cloaked purpose fundamentally inhospitable to such whole-hearted and forward-looking pursuit of social ends. The one thing that would be vital in such a church would be comradeship in worship and human service through sharing a supreme ideal; it would be a very minor matter it some who prized such fellowship felt so little continuity between this ideal and what God has meant in traditional religion that they preferred not to use the concept. Better a church of atheists in this sense of the word than a church of theistic obscurantists or hypocrites. Names are of small moment where realities are mutually glimpsed. The reality needed is a common object of reverent attachment for feeling yielding practical guidance for action; it is not essential that all should refer to this object in the customary religious language. A petty god it would be who cared much what people called him as long as they sincerely strove to be like him.

We may connect this outcome more closely with the scientific assumption of universal law in its implication of the possibility of unambiguous verification by all normally constituted minds. We think of God as a being who possesses universal validity. What does that mean? Well, it means among other things that we think of him as the one God of the whole universe, rightfully claiming the worship of every soul. Now if this is the case he ought to be able to approve himself to the sincere [Page 360]search of every soul; if the experience of any human being is inevitably such that God cannot be discovered in it the conception of God is then no more valid for anybody else than it is for him—the universality which is an intrinsic part of the conception is lost. But is anybody's experience inevitably such? We can surely never tell till his experience is finished. If we propose to take this implication seriously, and admit that there are experiences that initially cast doubt upon God's reality, we must hold that he has real existence only so far as he can be continually rediscovered in the sharing of such experiences. For the profoundest lesson of life, wondrously dramatized in the Christian story of divine incarnation and redemption, is that it is only through the unreserved sharing of evil that evil can be transmuted to good. The term God is then perhaps only pertinent on the lips of one who has previously been overwhelmed with doubt, and at the moment when, his pain having been transmuted by the unreserved friendliness of another, the world of their united experience takes on divine quality for both. To claim the reality of God is to make him less than universal and hence to deny utterly what we essentially mean by the concept, for it is to insist that I shall keep on believing in him whether he is able to gain reality for my neighbor or not.

The purpose of these few chapters will have been achieved if we have glimpsed the human meaning and importance of this attitude, its historical dependence upon the pervading ideal which guides scientific research, and something of what can be said for its claim to a central place in the unification of life and character which all of us in some degree struggle to attain. The illustration noted of the transformation it is tending to bring about in the field of philosophy shows its actual power for intellectual reconstruction. As regards religion, the change it is initiating is yet in its beginnings; how far the transformation will actually reach waits for eyes of the future to see.

THE END

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A CHALLENGE TO THE UNIVERSAL RELIGIOUS PEACE CONFERENCE

by CHARLES PARKER CONNOLLY Church of the Christian Union, Rockford, Illinois

THE religions of mankind should be the leaders; not the followers. Their leadership in the promotion of peace and goodwill should be powerful. To this end they should feel sensitively and respond alertly and fittingly to the need of the times. After the Great War they should have perceived a great opportunity for immediate action. There had been a clear revelation of the ruthlessness and lunacy of modern militarism. The spirit of the times demanded a solemn protest against it in the name of outraged humanity. The religions were called upon to unite in a concerted and passionate disavowal of war; in a denunciation of it as a tragic anachronism in a lauded age of progress, as an anti-natural reversion to the spirit of barbarism, savagery and brutality—the most shocking instance of devolution in all history.

A great parliament of religions should have been called immediately after the war to strike clearly the keynotes of brotherhood and goodwill. This parliament should have proven the inspiring precursor of all the constructive movements of statesmanship to achieve a warless world or, at least, to reduce the provocations to war. But, alas, the religions seemed either not to hear the voice of manifest destiny or to be ifidifferent to the call. They did not unite, but statesmen did. We witnessed the League of Nations, the World Court, the Paris Pact and other notable gatherings.

The future historian need utter no word of condemnation to indicate the failure of the religions to lead or even to follow [Page 362]promptly for the establishment of peace. He need but give the date of the other international gatherings for peace and then at the bottom of the list the religious conference in 1930!

This protest against the blindness or stolidity of religions unwilling to assume leadership and permitting statesmen to precede them while they tardily follow at a long distance is not intended to quench the smoking flax-smoking, at last, though 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 a real success, and not merely a sentimental and futile gesture, it must have enough sensibility to be conscious of its belatedness It should repent of its tardiness. No differences of creed or ceremonies should then be permitted to divide the religions as they confront the perils of war and humanity's need of their concerted faith in brotherhood.

As they were insensible of the need of leadership before, will they prove insensible of the need of repentance now? Will they seek to recover leadership without exhibiting a spirit sensitized by tragedy and human need and without that honest confession of tardiness that a sensitized spirit would compel?

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

If this protest stimulates the religions to make the conference a greater success it will not have been in vain. [Page 363]

"OUR CHANGING CIVILIZATION"

by HERBERT W. SCHNEIDER Department of Philosophy, Columbia University

ALMOST anyone must realize on a moment's reflection that civilization is changing and that all civilizations always have changed, but few persons realize to the extent that Professor Randall does how significant this fact is and precisely how it is significant. What he emphasizes and what most civilized persons fail to appreciate, unless their imaginations are fertilized by history, is that we are participating not in a civilization, but in "a conflict of civilizations." Our age resembles one of those crucial epochs in history, like that of Alexander, or the Fall of the Roman Empire, or the break-up of the medieval city states, when the age is "a dream that is dying" and another "coming to birth." To live in such an age is bewildering to him who merely sees things coming and going and concludes that all things are in flux, but is stimulating to him whom an adequate historical perspective has enabled to distinguish what is going from what is coming.

Of course, from one point of view, it makes little difference whether a thing is coming or going, so long as it is present, and the temporal careers of institutions may be regarded as irrelevant to their value. But the case against such a philosophy is enormously strengthened by Professor Randall's book;* for no reader of this survey of modern civilization, whether he agrees with the author's interpretations or not, can fail to be impressed with the new light shed upon contemporary problems by having them projected against the background of traditions and by studying the origins and fortunes of these traditions. Professor Randall's

\* Our Changing Civilization, by John Herman Randall, Jr. F. A. Stokes, New York. [Page 364]grasp of this historical material and his skill in bringing it to bear on contemporary issues are little short of phenomenal. There are many simpler and surer guides to life, but I know of none more conscious of the intricacies of the modern scene, and more honest in expounding issues and exposing difficulties rather than offering simple remedies or preaching trite gospels. Whoever knows "what the world needs" will find in this book at least some of the reasons why the world does not take his advice. For the "illumination or direction to our confused civilization" (to use Professor Dewey's words cited on page one) which such a book as this affords, proceeds not from its prescriptions or conclusions, but from "the spirit that is interested in realities and that faces them frankly and sympathetically," content to "observe and interpret the new and characteristic scene," not given to prophecy nor pretending to wisdom.

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

And this suggests what to me is the most valuable feature of the book. The main theme, just stated, is after all an old story by this time, over-celebrated and repeated mechanically by preacher, playwright and politician until even this mechanical age wearies of it. We know in general that business and science achieved a modus vivendi and a religious sanction in the eighteenth century, only to be rudely upset by the machine and its concomitants. But what distinguishes Professor Randall's work is the searching and detailed analysis of why most of us are not int [Page 365]

OUR CHANGING CIVILIZATION

mately conscious of a profound conflict and why we adjust ourselves so readily to an age of maladjustment. The great majority of civilized persons, as Professor Randall has pointed out elsewhere 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 Christianity 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 imaginative pursuit of understanding a universe in which both the church and the Ford operate, in which experimental technics and authoritarian gospels join hands, in which Venus is a pencil and La Gioconda advertises mineral water; as soon as the historical settings and functions of our ideas and practices are understood, the moral and imaginative incompatibilities become glaring. Such themes are here treated in detail and with brilliant nicety. However the theoretical point which is increasingly baffling, as we follow the author into the welter of civilizations in which we live, is precisely this: who is right, the historian who sees a mass of confusion, or the business man who "fuses" in practice what is historically distinct? Is this hopeless muddle creative or merely transitive? Will the new civilization now in the making be a series of compromises or an integrated victory of the new forces over the old? At this point our author wisely resorts to question marks. For the whole book is intended to show that we are mere children at this game of changing one civilization into another. We do not realize what we are doing nor even what we have done. The implications of our work so far transcend our insight that we play along from day to day, asking questions and accepting almost anything for answers, tolerating our playmates in spite of our quarrels and exercising a child-like faith in the future.

The book is so full of detailed historical analyses that a

• In Religion and the Modern World (Stokes).

[Page 366]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 corruption." (P. 248.) "The Catholic Church is growing by leaps and bounds, and will wax even more mighty as men come to realize all that the new civilization holds in store for them." (P. 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 general 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 of 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. [Page 367]

UNITY AND DISUNITY IN INTERNATIONAL POLITICS

Edited by DEXTER PERKINS Department of History and Government, University of Rochester

APPROACHING THE WORLD COURT

THE recent action of the Council of the League of Nations in its Madrid meeting in approving the so-called Root formula, and in calling a conference of the adherents to the World Court protocol to meet at Geneva in September, brings the United States one step nearer to participation in the World Court itself. It may be convenient, in such circumstances, to review the history of the World Court controversy, to indicate the existing situation, and to appraise the importance of the action to be urged upon the Senate when the regular session of Congress convenes in December.

The question of American adhesion to the World Court protocol, that is, to the international instrument which regulates the composition and structure of the Court, is now a very old one. As early as February, 1923, President Harding suggested such action, at the same time formulating a series of reservations intended to allay the fears of those who feared the close connection of the Court with the League of Nations. It was not, however, until January of 1926 that the Senate took action in the matter, and at that time, while approving reservations of much the kind suggested by Mr. Harding three years before, it added a new reservation of its own, which has been the cause of most of the difficulty ever since. This reservation has to do with the advisory opinions of the Court, and a clear understanding of the advisory function is necessary to understand it. [Page 368]The World Court, it should be understood, functions as a truly judicial body, deciding disputes submitted to it either as a 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 courts should act only on specific cases brought before them, and not on hypothetical questions (though exceptions to this principle could be readily cited). There are many distinguished jurists who have 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 international 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 by the determination of the former. Moreover, the very fact that such opinions have no binding legal character ougnt to reassure those who are critical. In the first place, in such circumstances, the Council of the League is bound to be cautious in asking for such opinions. It would naturally not wish to run the risk of seeing the Court flouted, and would naturally seek an opinion only when it was confident that the opinion would be followed. In the second place, an opinion which really did violence to the interest of some great nation could be disregarded. Taking these two facts together, it is difficult to see what there was to become very much excited about in the whole matter.

The Senate, however, thought that some protection against [Page 369]

APPROACHING THE WORLD COURT

the Court's advisory opinions might be necessary. To the reservations 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 almost 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 conceivably act by a majority. This is a knotty legal question that has not been 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 refused to permit this country to be represented at a conference of the States adherent to the protocol; and it refused to define the meaning of the reservation which was the cause of all the difficulties. It showed the most luke-warm attitude toward the whole matter.

The ratification of the Kellogg treaty, however, brought a of all international disputes by peaceful means (and this is precisely what it has done by the Kellogg Treaty), it is obviously imperative that it should support the international machinery through which pacific settlements can be accomplished. Accordingly, Mr. Elihu Root, who had much to do with the original drafting of the Court statute, was sent to Geneva as one of a [Page 370]committee of jurists to consider possible modifications in the protocol, and ways and means of overcoming the difficulties created by the fifth reservation. Mr. Root's labors were highly successful. A new protocol was drawn up, defining the line of procedure to be followed in reconciling the views of the United States with the views of the Council of the League on the matter of advisory opinions. It was provided that this country should be consulted beforehand, that it should have a reasonable time to make its objections clear, that objection by the United States should have the same force and effect as a negative vote in the Council, and that the United States might withdraw its support of the World Court if it were not satisfied with the action finally taken by the Council, without any assumption of ill-will or prejudice to the Court itself. By this protocol, it will be observed, the question of whether the Council decides by majority or unanimous vote is skilfully evaded. But if the majority principle should be applied, then the United States, if it disapproves of the majority action, may exercise its prerogative of withdrawing its adhesion to the protocol. The other adherent States will be very reluctant to see any such action taken; and the views of this country will undoubtedly have much influence in determining the future practice with regard to advisory opinions if the Root protocol is ratified and American adhesion to the statute becomes complete.

"If the Root protocol is ratified." It need hardly be said that this is the next essential step to American adhesion. Not only must it be ratified by the Senate of the United States, but also by all the signatories of the World Court statute. The Council of the League has already gone on record as recommending such action, and the Assembly will doubtless take a similar view. Moreover, a conference of the signatory States will meet in Geneva in September and will, in all probability, accept the Root formula. There will then remain only the action of the Upper Chamber in Washington and that, too, it is generally assumed, will be favorable.

But even then—and this ought to be emphasized—only the first steps will have been taken toward American support of the [Page 371]

APPROACHING THE WORLD COURT

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 advisory opinions. But it will not be bound to submit any case whatsoever to the Court. The extent to which it actually invokes the authority of this tribunal will remain to be decided.

Speaking generally, the jurisdiction of the Court is voluntary, that is, cases are submitted to it only with the special consent 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 follow the lead of Britain. Sooner or later, then, the question may 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]

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 se by side with the youth of the whole world."

During the crucial years since the European war, the youth of the world has been gathering its force as if for a supreme struggle with the militant, destructive past. Repudiating alike its inheritance of institutions, custo s and ideals, the generation now assuming manhood and womanhood 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 manifestation of youth has appeared one of the most tragic, misguided, even sinister of social phenomena, since its triumph must involve the overthrow of so much that mankind has done and been. The statement of youth itself, so far as youth has yet defined its own energies, experiences and directions, will tel a different story. In this department World Unity Magazine will publish from time to time brie articles expressing the outlook of youth, by youth itself, on those vital issues which are recurrent from age to age.

THE FOREIGN STUDENT IN AMERICA

by BORIS G. ALEXANDER Shurtleff College

AMERICA for some time has manifested resentment against 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 been denied to those not thought capable of being assimilated into this nation and to those who do not plan to make this country 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 they can from the associations and opportunities of American educational institutions without giving [Page 373]

THE FOREIGN STUDENT IN AMERICA

any 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 impulsively 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 discrimination. 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 language you respect badly broken by the unwieldy tongues of foreign students.

If I may, I should like to try to answer your unspoken question; 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 difficulty that my tongue can form your English sounds. And I, remember, am but one of thousands in your midst.

Can we students who are foreign born justify our presence here among you? Can we justify our intrusion into your campus life, into the classrooms of your schools and colleges? True, we come for knowledge, as all students in all ages have sought for knowledge. True, we come for training as all students everywhere 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 conventions are a witness to humanity's search for the solution of the world's problems. But an elusive search it has been, for the basis of the solution of international problems has been lacking. Today we have only a precarious peace; every daily paper tells us that we live in a deceptive security. Does that mean that we, the youth of the world, must prepare for another gigantic [Page 374]holocaust to satisfy the whims of a few leaders blinded by the rage of 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 professional peacemakers assembled in their leagues and congresses and conventions—if these have failed, then we, the youth, must take a major part in building up that goodwill which alone forms the ultimate basis for a solution of any world problem.

Nearly every organized effort thus far has been found wanting. Why, we do not know, but one would-be explanation challenges our attention. How in a period of a few weeks could the delegates from scores of nations reconcile dislikes, hatreds and prejudices of ages? It could not be done. The professional well wishers have failed because they could not understand the peculiarities of the people of other nations. They did not know how to reconcile racial dislikes, quench national hatreds, and dispel patriotic prejudices. Imbued by the idea of self-importance and the greatness and majesty of the state they represent, they have forgotten that other nations also have claims, desires and demands. They would not compromise, they would only prescribe. They would not listen, they would only dictate. Finally they would return and carry with them rumors of the intrigues and differences and distrusts which arose out of the clash of preconceived convictions and out of the lack of sympathetic understanding of the desires, plans and aspirations of other nations.

Paradoxical though it may seem, age through its experience is unfitted for the generous and unbiased appreciation of other people's interests. Not so with youth. Youth has the courage to defy traditions of nationalism; it has faith in humanity and a vision of the future for which it is willing to venture. Who are better fitted to cope with world's problems than we who have come in contact with each other's weaknesses, ideas, prejudices and hopes while studying together in a classroom or contesting [Page 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 impulses. 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 universities we shall get to know not only your habits and your customs, but also you, yourself. In these years we are making friends 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 flag that waves above this free and happy land, we who are in America now, shall always strive to reproduce in our own lands the best that we have found in American life. The finest of your ideals and your traditions we shall appreciate and shall advocate. We shall be unofficial ambassadors and representatives of this country, interpreters of her moves and sympathizers with her problems. Using your own word-we shall be boosters for America. Lindbergh, a young and intrepid ambassador of goodwill with all his far-reaching influence, was able to visit but a few places for a short time, but among the students who will return home America will have goodwill ambassadors-the very host ges of peace, who do not merely visit for a day, but who shall remain to speak a good word whenever the need shall arise. Many of those educated in America shall become members of the responsible class with which the government and people of the United States will have to deal. Is there any doubt that through them the varied interests of your people shall be [Page 376]extended, that by them there will be a sympathetic understanding of your needs, of your desires, of your aspirations?

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

NOTES AND ANNOUNCEMENTS

Mr. Alfred W. Martin's article on Muhammedanism in this issue concludes his editorial department Wisdom of the Ages, which has been a notable feature of World Unity since the first number, October, 1927. What Mr. Martin has accomplished is the production of a usable text on comparative religion—a thoroughly documented work making available original sources which for the average reader are scattered too widely among the materials of serious scholarship, accompanied by interpretative comment imbued with the spirit of appreciation for the universal religious experience of mankind. Wisdom of the Ages has presented the following religions: Hinduism, Buddhism, Zoroastrianism, Confucianism, Taoism and Muhammedanism—the great religions except Judaism and Christianity. Plans are now under way to publish this series in book form, and further announcement will be made in these columns at a later date.

Concluded also is Prof. Burtt's presentation of the current inter-relations of Science, Philosophy and Religion, in which unusual depth of experience and lucidity of expression have combined to disentangle many difficulties felt by those whose minds and emotions still dwell in separate, conflicting worlds. Under the title "Religion In An Age of Science," these chapters have recently appeared, in larger form, as a volume in the series published by the F. A. Stokes Company under the editorship of John Herman Randall.

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 parallels 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 evident that the author is profoundly mystical, reflecting the experience and outlook both of Europe and the East.

World Unity next month will develop 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. [Page 378]

WORLD UNITY BOOK OF THE MONTH

IN THIS SPACE EACH MONTH WORLD UNITY WILL RECOMMEN 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 sobe judgment of it is that it is a very important book. It is written in a clear and popular style, but its popularity does not mean superficiality; in fact, I believe the this little book digs down deeper into the real underlying causes of conflict betwee science and religion than any book I have ever read."-Walter M. Horton. The Graduate School of Theology, Oberlin College, Oberlin, Ohio.

ORDER BLANK FOR BOOK ONLY OR COMBINED WITH SUBSCRIPTION TO WORLD UNITY MAGAZINE WORLD UNITY PUBLISHING CORP. 4 EAST 12TH STREET, NEW YORK I enclose $1.50 for "RELIGION IN AN AGE OF SCIENCE." I enclose $4.25 for "RELIGION IN AN AGE OF SCIENCE" combined with yea subscription (regular price $3.50) to WORLD UNITY MAGAZINE. [Page 379]

The International Journal of Ethics

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

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

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

Published quarterly in the months of October, January, April, and July Subscription $3.00 per year. Single copies 75 cents THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO PRESS

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International Review of Scientific Synthesis

Published Monthly (100 to 120 Pages Each Issue) Editor: EUGENIO RIGNANO

"SCIENTIA"

THE ONLY scientific review whose contributors are truly international. THE ONLY scientific review having a really worldwide circulation. THE ONLY review of scientific synthesis and unification that deals with the fundamental questions of all sciences: the history of the sciences, mathematics, astronomy, geology, physics, chemistry, biology, peychology and sociology. THE ONLY review, therefore, which, while of immediate interest to students, of statistien, demography, ethnography, economics, law, the history of religions and sociology in general, by numerous and important articles and reports relating to these sciences, enables the reader to win summarised and synthetic form, the chief problems of all other branches of knowledge. THE ONLY review which among its contributors can boast of the most illustrious men of ence in the whole world. A list of more than 350 of these is given in each number.

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

SUBSCRIPTION $10 per year. post free. OFFICE: 12. Via A. De Togni, Milan (116), Italy General Secretary: DR. PAOLO BONETTI [Page 380]

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