The War and Spiritual Experience

THERE is no need to dwell upon the greatness of the present time. We are well enough aware that never in its whole history has humanity been stirred as it is now; that never before has human faculty, capacity, and endurance been so stretched; that never have men shown greater bravery and more willing self-sacrifice, or nations closer unity. We are living in incomparably the greatest times that have ever been: in the most momentous year of all history. And we know that upon our actions now, upon the degree of wisdom we have exercised in the choice of our ideals, and upon the vigor, courage, and steadfastness with which we pursue them will depend the course of humanity, for good or ill, for many long years to come. All this we recognize, and it fortunately needs no emphasis.

But when the welfare of future generations thus depends so much upon what we of the present day do, the old and crucial question must recur to us with redoubled force and must call for clear and convincing answer: Are we or are we not being directed from above by some All-wise, Omnipotent, and Perfect Being who knows all and sees all and can do all, and who, being good, may be trusted to do for us what is best? In these critical times can our public men, our statesmen, our naval and military commanders rely for aid and guidance upon such a Being?

In the inconceivably intricate questions which present themselves continually to our statesmen, can they expect to be shown their way through? When many alternative courses open up, each with its advantages and disadvantages so evenly balanced, can the responsible leaders of a nation expect to be shown the only right one? When a commander is on the eve of attacking or of being attacked can he count upon being supported by an Omnipotent Being? These thousands and millions of men who are daily risking their lives must clearly be actuated by motives which they honestly believe are good; they are therefore deserving of the support of any Omnipotent. Ruler who is also good. Can they safely reckon upon the support of any such Being? Can individual men and women, can nations, can the human race safely depend, in this the greatest crisis of the human race, upon being protected from dangers, diverted from wrong courses, supported and guided on right courses by One who has the power and the will to lead man and men aright?

Without referring to living men (although a prominent, instance is ready to hand) we can find a conspicuous example of one not so long dead, who led his country in most critical times and profoundly influenced the destinies of many other countries, and who did hold the belief that the actions of men were guided from above. Bismarck’s letters to his wife and to his son, written during the Franco-Prussian War, are now available, and they abound in reference to the Deity. After one of the early victories, he writes, ' The campaign will be as good as over, unless God visibly intervenes on behalf of the French, which, I am confident, will not happen.’ He speaks of Sedan as ‘ a victory for which we must thank the Lord our God in all humility.’ He refers to the Emperor Napoleon III as being ‘cut down by God’s almighty hand.’ He tells his wife to ‘trust in God, who has preserved our children from the very jaws of death.’ And when his son complains about being sent to a dépôt squadron, he writes to him, ‘I am too superstitious a father to do anything about it, but let things go as God ordains.’ There is hardly a letter in which God is not mentioned.

Bismarck genuinely believed that the affairs of men were ordered by an Omnipotent Autocrat above. And hundreds of millions of men think as Bismarck did. Most, indeed, of those who are now directing nations think so. And so also do those who are fighting their battles. Have they any real and proper justification for their belief? This is the momentous question we have to ask ourselves, and in a short article we can do little more than raise it and emphasize its importance. But we can at least show that it has not been finally answered yet, and indicate the reply that we ourselves would give.

That the majority of men believe that their lives are ordered and that the world is governed by some Ruler above must be admitted. Yet most would also admit that in this majority few have ever thought this question out or done anything else than accept as true the beliefs which have been handed down to them by their forefathers. Again, it would be acknowledged that a man of affairs like Bismarck would most certainly feel that men really were being swayed by some invisible agency in whose presence even one so powerful as he would seem powerless. But when he assumed that this power was exercised by some Being external to men, he may not have thought the matter out very thoroughly, but have merely accepted the ideas in which he was brought up. Most men do accept this belief on trust; and so might we all, as we would accept the law of gravitation, and not trouble to examine the grounds for our belief, if there were general agreement among those who really have gone into the question.

But in regard to a belief that the world is governed and controlled by a Being external to it there is no such agreement among leading thinkers as there is among scientists regarding the law of gravitation. Some of the deepest and clearest t hinkers do not admit the existence of such a Person. The Unseen Power which even a Bismarck would feel that he had to reckon with, they would say might come from within, not from without, — from within the world and from within men, and not from outside. And they would sec in the want of perfection in any direction whatever, or in one single individual or any part of an individual and at any time, and in the prevalence of imperfection at all times and everywhere, a staggering objection to the view that this world can have been planned, created, and governed by any Being who was both good and all-powerful. We are running great risks therefore if we unquestioningly accept such a belief simply because it was handed down to us by our forefathers; and before we hand it on to our children, to guide them in the still more complex lives which they will have to lead, we should make really certain of our ground for holding it.

I will not restate here the objections which have been urged; but I would briefly outline an alternative conception of things which, as it seems to me, better accords with our observation and experience of the world. It is that the Power which a man feels acting on him, and which he can see is acting on other men and throughout the world, is not exerted by any outside Being, but is something welling up from within the world and working through men and forcing them on toward perfection. Though no single thing or person has yet reached perfection, a view over this earth’s history so far back as we know it — say over five hundred million years—does show a considerable progress. And it seems more natural to hold that the world contains within itself, as part of its nature and constitution, that which orders it and constrains it toward perfection, than to conceive of it as being operated upon by some one outside it. So we would not have in our minds the conception of a Creator, Artificer, and Organizer on the one hand, and, on the other, heaps of inert matter and swarms of men and animals, andof the Artificer fashioning thematerial into shape, ordering the men this way and that, inciting them to do this and restraining them from doing that, pushing them forward in one direction and holding them back in another. For we find, as a matter of scientific observation, that no particles of matter, however small, are in the faintest degree inert, but that all, down to the minutest and simplest, are intensely active, — and active on their own account, — ‘behaving’ strictly in accordance with the dictates of their own inherent nature.

We find further that no one is isolated, standing or moving by itself, uninfluencing or uninfluenced by the others, but that all are interconnected and form a united whole. The interrelatedness of things is the one fundamental fact which science and philosophy have established. All things are interrelated; all things mutually influence each other. The world does not consist of masses of inert nonentities which would lie motionless and inactive unless they were manipulated by some external agent, pushed this way or pulled that, raised up here, pressed down there. It consists of myriads of intensely active —and self-active—entities, with properties and characteristics of their own, all mutually influencing one another to form a real unity. And when we find, as we do, at least on the earth, that the slate of things is improving, it is quite as reasonable to assume that it contains within itself that which brings about improvement as to suppose that an external agent operating upon it from outside produced this result. And if we discover further, as some believe they have found, that man himself has risen from the animals, that animals and plants have arisen from microscopic and simplest forms of life, and these from complex chemical compounds, and so on back and back to the simplest ultimate particles of matter, then man also would be interconnected with the rest, would be part with it of one whole; and would have been uplifted to where he is by that same Spirit which, emanating from the parts, animates the whole, and which, driving on through all the ages, has been making persistently for better and better things.

We were accustomed in our childhood to think of a Creator, Maker, and Ruler, a vague Personage residing remotely in the skies; to think of this earth as something solid and material and everlasting which was ‘made’ by this distant Person, and upon which He now looks down as an aviator might from his machine; and to think of ourselves as having also been made and fashioned in some mysterious way by this Being and set upon this earth and as being there governed and guided by Him.

This is roughly the idea of things which we bring with us from our childhood and which has been handed down to us, generation by generation, from the childhood of the race.

But in the new conception of things which is forming as we grow older and better informed, this Creator, the earth, and we men all merge into one spiritual process. We find that we ourselves sprang from the earth h and in the course of millions of years have arisen from its very bosom and from nowhere else. We discover that what was once a fiery mist has so developed to what we see around us to-day, with all its varied plant and animal life, and with us men and women as the crowning flower so far reached, because it has always borne within it, emanating from its individual component parts, in their mutual influence upon one another, a spring, a vital impulse, an impetus ever bursting upward; because it was so composed and constituted that it had by its very nature to go on reconstituting itself better, in much the same way as the pliable and plastic British Constitution is constantly remodeling itself from within through the activities of individual Englishmen in their mutual influence upon one another, and through their being animated with the spirit of England to which their mutual influence gives rise.

Those who hold the later view will be inspired to an intense degree with the sense of unity. They will know that it will be a unity of differences, and they will expect that as the unity of the whole grows closer, so also will the diversity of the parts. They know that for individuals (men or nations) to maintain and develop their individuality, healthy opposition, conflict, struggle, and controversy are necessary, whether by war or only by words. But the point they will have at the back of their minds is the fundamental unity which exists along with this diversity and in spite of all the opposition.

We have had the most remarkable instances of it in this war. For, on each side, more unity has been displayed than any nation has ever shown before. Neither France nor Germany, neither the British Empire nor Russia, has ever been united as now. And even the Austro-Hungarian Empire has shown a degree of unity which no one had expected. Further, we do not seriously look upon the present conflict as the fundamental and lasting relationship between the nations engaged. Tremendous though it is, it is an episode only, and perhaps a means of paving the way to eventual unity. The fact that France and England, who were so bitterly hostile a century ago, are now allied, should point to the possibility of what may happen a century hence. All the opposition and struggle in life, so necessary for the development of individuality, need not blind us to the unity which underlies it and which the maturing of individuality will only strengthen.

And men who regard themselves as integral parts of a whole, with every single other part of which they are most intimately related, and who also realize that each, in his own small degree, contributes to form that spirit which has made them, will have not only this deep sense of unity, but a craving to make it still closer and still more intimate. They will resent the tyranny of a rigid order imposed from outside, but they will establish for themselves that full and flexible order which free individuals, possessed of the sense of the responsibility which freedom engenders, naturally evolve for themselves. They will allow scope for individuality, for they will know that thereby will unity be increased. And the conflict which the emergence of individuality necessitates, they will seek to humanize and make more chivalrous and courteous, and they will always regard as temporary and ephemeral in comparison with the fundamental unity. It is not so much peace and rest to which they would look forward as the harmony which comes of activity, — an activity bent on fusing all discords.

And the upward thrust, urging all men from the bad to the good, from the good to the better, and from the better to the better still, on and on to perfection, makes men mark out for themselves an ideal at which they can aim. And t he more acute their sense of unity, the more painful will be any difference which separates them from either higher or lower men, and the sharper will be their yearning to reach the level of the higher and to carry others upward with them. A reachingforwardness will they also feel,— an intensity of desire, not only to make the best of themselves, to do their best for the present generation, but to sacrifice all for generations to come; not to save their own souls and not for any future happiness of their own (beyond that joy which comes to all who highly strive and greatly sacrifice), but that they may feel that they have done their mite to leave this world a little better than they found it.

But while men who have the later conception of things of which we have spoken will feel themselves in deepening unity with their fellows and swept upward in the Universal Spirit, it will rest with individual men themselves to achieve in actual fact what they feel themselves incited to attempt.

We may be sure that in any of the countries now at war the statesmen, soldiers, and sailors are inspired by a deep love of country, that this patriotic feeling irresistibly impels them to do their very utmost for their country’s good, and that it upholds them and sustains them in many an hour of trial. We know, too, that men like to put themselves in touch with what deepens and intensifies their patriotic fervor and gives fresh strength and volume to its ardent impulse. But we are also perfectly well aware that the mere possession of this impulse is not enough, and that actually to achieve what is really best for his country, each individual statesman, sailor, and soldier must exert his own will, must put forth his most considered wisdom, and make the utmost of every bodily and mental faculty he has. While he may be swept along with true and noble patriotic feeling, he knows that, when the moment for action arrives, he must keep his head cool and his faculties taut, and must act upon his own responsibility and depend upon his own resources.

So is it with men imbued with the Universal Spirit . They will be sensible of it working through them, making always for what is good, and propelling them upward. They may confidently count upon it to uphold them in every effort toward t he good. And they may seek all means of drawing more and more of it into them and filling themselves with it to the full. And they will often feel themselves carried upward in waves of religious emotion which seem to make all things possible. But yet, in the very midst of the Spirit’s onrush, they will have to realize that it is they, and they alone, who must make the choice from among all the alternative courses which moment after moment present themselves; that it is they, and they alone, who must fix the standard by which to gauge their actions and set up far ahead of them the ideal toward which they will strive; and that it is they and they alone who must furnish the resolution, the steadfastness, and the endurance to persevere along the way they choose.

In one sense we individual men, as minute parts of a whole of unimaginable magnitude, are being swept onward and upward with seemingly irresistible force. In another sense the future of each individual and the worth of all his activity depends solely on himself. And the two views go together, the one being incomplete without the other. But a man’s duty is clear. He must fill himself to the full with this exalting Spirit and lose no opportunity of inhaling it till he is saturated with it through and through, for it is from its inspiration that he will gain both the strength he so much needs and the sensitiveness of taste and touch which is no less essential. On the other hand when action is demanded he will concentrate himself, summon up all his resources, and rely only on himself, for it is he and only he that can create the future.

So we gain the impression of a dayspring from within and not from on high. We have faith in the innate Goodness of Things, in ourselves, and in the future it lies with us to make. We are inspired with hope as we realize what has been accomplished so far and what therefore may be done in time to come. And the sense of being so intimately related in one living whole and of being animated by the same uplifting Spirit deepens and widens our love. These three still remain. And the greatest of them is the same now as it was nineteen hundred years ago. But in the end there will be left only one — the greatest.