{"collection":"philosophy-ethics","full_text_available":true,"graph_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/api/page/gutenberg_33889/graph","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/page/gutenberg_33889","id":"gutenberg_33889","license":"Public Domain (US)","rights_basis":"gutenberg_metadata_copyright_false","source":"gutenberg","source_url":"https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/33889","summary":null,"tags":["Category: History - Modern (1750+)","Category: Philosophy & Ethics","Category: Politics","Category: Sociology","Civilization, Modern -- 20th century","Education","World War I"],"text":"Produced by Chris Curnow, Lindy Walsh and the Online\nDistributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n                     THE SALVAGING OF CIVILIZATION\n\n\n\n\n                             THE SALVAGING\n                            OF CIVILIZATION\n\n                                  BY\n\n                              H. G. WELLS\n\n                      CASSELL AND COMPANY, LIMITED\n                London, New York, Toronto and Melbourne\n\n                                 1921\n\n\n\n\nCONTENTS\n\n\n                                                          PAGE\n     I. THE PROBABLE FUTURE OF MANKIND                       1\n    II. THE PROJECT OF A WORLD STATE                        42\n   III. THE ENLARGEMENT OF PATRIOTISM TO A WORLD STATE      68\n    IV. THE BIBLE OF CIVILIZATION; PART ONE                 95\n     V. THE BIBLE OF CIVILIZATION; PART TWO                118\n    VI. THE SCHOOLING OF THE WORLD                         139\n   VII. COLLEGE, NEWSPAPER AND BOOK                        166\n  VIII. THE ENVOY                                          193\n        INDEX                                              199\n\n\n\n\nThe Salvaging of Civilization\n\n\n\n\nI\n\nTHE PROBABLE FUTURE OF MANKIND[A]\n\n    [A] First published in the _Review of Reviews_.\n\n\nSec. 1\n\nThe present outlook of human affairs is one that admits of broad\ngeneralizations and that seems to require broad generalizations. We are\nin one of those phases of experience which become cardinal in history. A\nseries of immense and tragic events have shattered the self-complacency\nand challenged the will and intelligence of mankind. That easy general\nforward movement of human affairs which for several generations had\nseemed to justify the persuasion of a necessary and invincible progress,\nprogress towards greater powers, greater happiness, and a continual\nenlargement of life, has been checked violently and perhaps arrested\naltogether. The spectacular catastrophe of the Great War has revealed an\naccumulation of destructive forces in our outwardly prosperous society,\nof which few of us had dreamt; and it has also revealed a profound\nincapacity to deal with and restrain these forces. The two years of\nwant, confusion, and indecision that have followed the Great War in\nEurope and Asia, and the uncertainties that have disturbed life even in\nthe comparatively untouched American world, seem to many watchful minds\neven more ominous to our social order than the war itself. What is\nhappening to our race? they ask. Did the prosperities and confident\nhopes with which the twentieth century opened, mark nothing more than a\nculmination of fortuitous good luck? Has the cycle of prosperity and\nprogress closed? To what will this staggering and blundering, the\nhatreds and mischievous adventures of the present time, bring us? Is the\nworld in the opening of long centuries of confusion and disaster such as\nended the Western Roman Empire in Europe or the Han prosperity in China?\nAnd if so, will the debacle extend to America? Or is the American (and\nPacific?) system still sufficiently removed and still sufficiently\nautonomous to maintain a progressive movement of its own if the Old\nWorld collapse?\n\nSome sort of answer to these questions, vast and vague though they are,\nwe must each one of us have before we can take an intelligent interest\nor cast an effective vote in foreign affairs. Even though a man\nformulate no definite answer, he must still have an implicit persuasion\nbefore he can act in these matters. If he have no clear conclusions\nopenly arrived at, then he must act upon subconscious conclusions\ninstinctively arrived at. Far better is it that he should bring them\ninto the open light of thought.\n\nThe suppression of war is generally regarded as central to the complex\nof contemporary problems. But war is not a new thing in human\nexperience, and for scores of centuries mankind has managed to get along\nin spite of its frequent recurrence. Most states and empires have been\nintermittently at war throughout their periods of stability and\nprosperity. But their warfare was not the warfare of the present time.\nThe thing that has brought the rush of progressive development of the\npast century and a half to a sudden shock of arrest is not the old and\nfamiliar warfare, but warfare strangely changed and exaggerated by novel\nconditions. It is this change in conditions, therefore, and not war\nitself, which is the reality we have to analyse in its bearing upon our\nsocial and political ideas. In 1914 the European Great Powers resorted\nto war, as they had resorted to war on many previous occasions, to\ndecide certain open issues. This war flamed out with an unexpected\nrapidity until all the world was involved; and it developed a horror, a\nmonstrosity of destructiveness, and, above all, an inconclusiveness\nquite unlike any preceding war. That unlikeness was the essence of the\nmatter. Whatever justifications could be found for its use in the past,\nit became clear to many minds that under the new conditions war was no\nlonger a possible method of international dealing. The thing lay upon\nthe surface. The idea of a League of Nations sustaining a Supreme World\nCourt to supersede the arbitrament of war, did not so much arise at any\nparticular point as break out simultaneously wherever there were\nintelligent men.\n\nNow what was this change in conditions that had confronted mankind with\nthe perplexing necessity of abandoning war? For perplexing it certainly\nis. War has been a ruling and constructive idea in all human societies\nup to the present time; few will be found to deny it. Political\ninstitutions have very largely developed in relation to the idea of war;\ndefence and aggression have shaped the outer form of every state in the\nworld, just as co-operation sustained by compulsion has shaped its inner\norganization. And if abruptly man determines to give up the waging of\nwar, he may find that this determination involves the most extensive and\npenetrating modifications of political and social conceptions that do\nnot at the first glance betray any direct connection with belligerent\nactivities at all.\n\nIt is to the general problem arising out of this consideration, that\nthis and the three following essays will be addressed; the question:\nWhat else has to go if war is to go out of human life? and the problem\nof what has to be done if it is to be banished and barred out for ever\nfrom the future experiences of our race. For let us face the truth in\nthis matter; the abolition of war is no casting of ancient, barbaric,\nand now obsolete traditions, no easy and natural progressive step; the\nabolition of war, if it can be brought about, will be a reversal not\nonly of the general method of human life hitherto but of the general\nmethod of nature, the method, that is, of conflict and survival. It will\nbe a new phase in the history of life, and not simply an incident in the\nhistory of man. These brief essays will attempt to present something\nlike the true dimensions of the task before mankind if war is indeed to\nbe superseded, and to show that the project of abolishing war by the\noccasional meeting of some Council of a League of Nations or the like,\nis, in itself, about as likely to succeed as a proposal to abolish\nthirst, hunger, and death by a short legislative act.\n\nLet us first examine the change in the conditions of human life that has\naltered war from a normal aspect of the conflict for existence of human\nsocieties into a terror and a threat for the entire species. The change\nis essentially a change in the amount of power available for human\npurposes, and more particularly in the amount of material power that can\nbe controlled by one individual. Human society up to a couple of\ncenturies ago was essentially a man-power and horse-power system. There\nwas in addition a certain limited use of water power and wind power, but\nthat was not on a scale to affect the general truth of the proposition.\nThe first intimation of the great change began seven centuries ago with\nthe appearance of explosives. In the thirteenth century the Mongols made\na very effective military use of the Chinese discovery of gunpowder.\nThey conquered most of the known world, and their introduction of a\nlow-grade explosive in warfare rapidly destroyed the immunity of castles\nand walled cities, abolished knighthood, and utterly wrecked and\ndevastated the irrigation system of Mesopotamia, which had been a\npopulous and civilized region since before the beginnings of history.\nBut the restricted metallurgical knowledge of the time set definite\nlimits to the size and range of cannon. It was only with the nineteenth\ncentury that the large scale production of cast steel and the growth of\nchemical knowledge made the military use of a variety of explosives\npracticable. The systematic extension of human power began in the\neighteenth century with the utilization of steam and coal. That opened a\ncrescendo of invention and discovery which thrust rapidly increasing\nquantities of material energy into men's hands. Even now that crescendo\nmay not have reached its climax.\n\nWe need not rehearse here the familiar story of the abolition of\ndistance that ensued; how the radiogram and the telegram have made every\nevent of importance a simultaneous event for the minds of everyone in\nthe world, how journeys which formerly took months or weeks now take\ndays or hours, nor how printing and paper have made possible a\nuniversally informed community, and so forth. Nor will we describe the\neffect of these things upon warfare. The point that concerns us here is\nthis, that before this age of discovery communities had fought and\nstruggled with each other much as naughty children might do in a crowded\nnursery, _within the measure of their strength_. They had hurt and\nimpoverished each other, but they had rarely destroyed each other\ncompletely. Their squabbles may have been distressing, but they were\ntolerable. It is even possible to regard these former wars as healthy,\nhardening and invigorating conflicts. But into this nursery has come\nScience, and has put into the fists of these children razor blades with\npoison on them, bombs of frightful explosive, corrosive fluids and the\nlike. The comparatively harmless conflicts of these infants are suddenly\nfraught with quite terrific possibilities, and it is only a question of\nsooner or later before the nursery becomes a heap of corpses or is blown\nto smithereens. A real nursery invaded by a reckless person distributing\nsuch gifts, would be promptly saved by the intervention of the nurse;\nbut humanity has no nurse but its own poor wisdom. And whether that poor\nwisdom can rise to the pitch of effectual intervention is the most\nfundamental problem in mundane affairs at the present time.\n\nThe deadly gifts continue. There was a steady increase in the\nfrightfulness and destructiveness of belligerence from 1914 up to the\nbeginning of 1918, when shortage of material and energy checked the\nprocess; and since the armistice there has been an industrious\ndevelopment of military science. The next well-organized war, we are\nassured, will be far more swift and extensive in its destruction--more\nparticularly of the civilian population. Armies will advance no longer\nalong roads but extended in line, with heavy tank transport which will\nplough up the entire surface of the land they traverse; aerial bombing,\nwith bombs each capable of destroying a small town, will be practicable\na thousand miles beyond the military front, and the seas will be swept\nclear of shipping by mines and submarine activities. There will be no\ndistinction between combatants and non-combatants, because every\nable-bodied citizen, male or female, is a potential producer of food and\nmunitions; and probably the safest, and certainly the best supplied\nshelters in the universal cataclysm, will be the carefully buried,\nsandbagged, and camouflaged general-headquarters of the contending\narmies. There military gentlemen of limited outlook and high\nprofessional training will, in comparative security, achieve destruction\nbeyond their understanding. The hard logic of war which gives victory\nalways to the most energetic and destructive combatant, will turn\nwarfare more and more from mere operations for loot or conquest or\npredominance into operations for the conclusive destruction of the\nantagonists. A relentless thrust towards strenuousness is a\ncharacteristic of belligerent conditions. War is war, and vehemence is\nin its nature. You must hit always as hard as you can. Offensive and\ncounter-offensive methods continue to prevail over merely defensive\nones. The victor in the next great war will be bombed from the air,\nstarved, and depleted almost as much as the loser. His victory will be\nno easy one; it will be a triumph of the exhausted and dying over the\ndead.\n\nIt has been argued that such highly organized and long prepared warfare\nas the world saw in 1914-18 is not likely to recur again for a\nconsiderable time because of the shock inflicted by it upon social\nstability. There may be spasmodic wars with improvised and scanty\nsupplies, these superficially more hopeful critics admit, but there\nremain no communities now so stable and so sure of their people as to\nprepare and wage again a fully elaborated scientific war. But this view\nimplies no happier outlook for mankind. It amounts to this, that so long\nas men remain disordered and impoverished they will not rise again to\nthe full height of scientific war. But manifestly this will only be for\nso long as they remain disordered and impoverished. When they recover\nthey will recover to repeat again their former disaster with whatever\nmodern improvements and intensifications the ingenuity of the\nintervening time may have devised. This new phase of disorder,\nconflict, and social unravelling upon which we have entered, this phase\nof decline due to the enhanced and increasing powers for waste and\ndestruction in mankind, is bound, therefore, to continue so long as the\ndivisions based upon ancient ideas of conflict remain; and if for a time\nthe decadence seems to be arrested, it will only be to accumulate under\nthe influence of those ideas a fresh war-storm sufficiently destructive\nand disorganizing to restore the decadent process.\n\nUnless mankind can readjust its political and social ideas to this\nessential new fact of its enormously enlarged powers, unless it can\neliminate or control its pugnacity, no other prospect seems open to us\nbut decadence, at least to such a level of barbarism as to lose and\nforget again all the scientific and industrial achievements of our\npresent age. Then, with its powers shrunken to their former puny scale,\nour race may recover some sort of balance between the injuries and\nadvantages of conflict. Or, since our decadent species may have less\nvitality and vigour than it had in its primitive phases, it may dwindle\nand fade out altogether before some emboldened animal antagonist, or\nthrough some world-wide disease brought to it perhaps by rats and dogs\nand insects and what not, who may be destined to be heirs to the rusting\nand mouldering ruins of the cities and ports and ways and bridges of\nto-day.\n\nOnly one alternative to some such retrogression seems possible, and that\nis the conscious, systematic reconstruction of human society to avert\nit. The world has been brought into one community, and the human mind\nand will may be able to recognize and adapt itself to this fact--in\ntime. Men, as a race, may succeed in turning their backs upon the method\nof warfare and the methods of conflict and in embarking upon an immense\nworld-wide effort of co-operation and mutual toleration and salvage.\nThey may have the vigour to abandon their age-long attempt to live in\nseparate sovereign states, and to grapple with and master the now quite\ndestructive force that traditional hostility has become, and bring their\naffairs together under one law and one peace. These new vast powers over\nnature which have been given to them, and which will certainly be their\ndestruction if their purposes remain divergent and conflicting, will\nthen be the means by which they may set up a new order of as yet\nscarcely imaginable interest and happiness and achievement. But is our\nrace capable of such an effort, such a complete reversal of its\ninstinctive and traditional impulses? Can we find premonitions of any\nsuch bold and revolutionary adaptations as these, in the mental and\npolitical life of to-day? How far are we, reader and writer, for\nexample, working for these large new securities? Do we even keep them\nsteadfastly in our minds? How is it with the people around us? Are not\nwe and they and all the race still just as much adrift in the current\nof circumstances as we were before 1914? Without a great effort on our\npart (or on someone's part) that current which swirled our kind into a\nsunshine of hope and opportunity for a while will carry our race on\nsurely and inexorably to fresh wars, to shortages, hunger, miseries, and\nsocial debacles, at last either to complete extinction or to a\ndegradation beyond our present understanding.\n\n\nSec.2\n\nThe urgent need for a great creative effort has become apparent in the\naffairs of mankind. It is manifest that unless some unity of purpose can\nbe achieved in the world, unless the ever more violent and disastrous\nincidence of war can be averted, unless some common control can be\nimposed on the headlong waste of man's limited inheritance of coal, oil,\nand moral energy that is now going on, the history of humanity must\npresently culminate in some sort of disaster, repeating and exaggerating\nthe disaster of the great war, producing chaotic social conditions, and\ngoing on thereafter in a degenerative process towards extinction. So\nmuch all reasonable men seem now prepared to admit. But upon the\nquestion of how and in what form a unity of purpose and a common control\nof human affairs is to be established, there is still a great and\nlamentable diversity of opinion and, as a consequence, an enfeeblement\nand wasteful dispersal of will. At present nothing has been produced but\nthe manifestly quite inadequate League of Nations at Geneva, and a\nnumber of generally very vague movements for a world law, world\ndisarmament, and the like, among the intellectuals of the various\ncivilized countries of the world.\n\nThe common failings of all these initiatives are a sort of genteel\ntimidity and a defective sense of the scale of the enterprise before us.\nA neglect of the importance of scale is one of the gravest faults of\ncontemporary education. Because a world-wide political organ is needed,\nit does not follow that a so-called League of Nations without\nrepresentative sanctions, military forces, or authority of any kind, a\nLeague from which large sections of the world are excluded altogether,\nis any contribution to that need. People have a way of saying it is\nbetter than nothing. But it may be worse than nothing. It may create a\nfeeling of disillusionment about world-unifying efforts. If a mad\nelephant were loose in one's garden, it would be an excellent thing to\ngive one's gardener a gun. But it would have to be an adequate gun, an\nelephant gun. To give him a small rook-rifle and tell him it was better\nthan nothing, and encourage him to face the elephant with that in his\nhand, would be the directest way of getting rid not of the elephant but\nof the gardener.\n\nIt is, if people will but think steadfastly, inconceivable that there\nshould be any world control without a merger of sovereignty, but the\nframers of these early tentatives towards world unity have lacked the\ncourage of frankness in this respect. They have been afraid of outbreaks\nof bawling patriotism, and they have tried to believe, and to make\nothers believe, that they contemplate nothing more than a league of\nnations, when in reality they contemplate a subordination of nations and\nadministrations to one common law and rule. The elementary necessity of\ngiving the council of any world-peace organization which is to be more\nthan a sentimental international gesture, not only a complete knowledge\nbut an effective control of all the military resources and organizations\nin the world, appalled them. They did not even ask for such a control.\nThe frowning solidity of existing things was too much for them. They\nwanted to change them, but when it came to laying hands on them--No!\nThey decided to leave them alone. They wanted a new world--and it is to\ncontain just the same things as the old.\n\nBut are these intellectuals right in their estimate of the common man?\nIs he such a shallow and vehement fool as they seem to believe? Is he so\npatriotic as they make out? If mankind is to be saved from destruction\nthere must be a world control; a world control means a world government,\nit is only another name for it, and manifestly that government must have\na navy that will supersede the British navy, artillery that will\nsupersede the French artillery, air forces superseding all existing air\nforces, and so forth. For many flags there must be one sovereign flag;\n_orbis terrarum_. Unless a world control amounts to that it will be\nridiculous, just as a judge supported by two or three unarmed policemen,\na newspaper reporter and the court chaplain, proposing to enforce his\ndecisions in a court packed with the heavily armed friends of the\nplaintiff and defendant would be ridiculous. But the common man is\nsupposed to be so blindly and incurably set upon his British navy or his\nFrench army, or whatever his pet national instrument of violence may be,\nthat it is held to be impossible to supersede these beloved and adored\nforces. If that is so, then a world law is impossible, and the wisest\ncourse before us is to snatch such small happiness as we may hope to do\nand leave the mad elephant to work its will in the garden.\n\nBut is it so? If the mass of common men are incurably patriotic and\nbelligerent why is there a note of querulous exhortation in nearly all\npatriotic literature? Why, for instance, is Mr. Rudyard Kipling's\n\"History of England\" so full of goading and scolding? And very\nsignificant indeed to any student of the human outlook was the\nworld-response to President Wilson's advocacy of the League of Nations\nidea, in its first phase in 1918, before the weakening off and\ndisillusionment of the Versailles Conference. Just for a little while it\nseemed that President Wilson stood for a new order of things in the\nworld, that he had the wisdom and will and power to break the net of\nhatreds and nationalisms and diplomacies in which the Old World was\nentangled. And while he seemed to be capable of that, while he promised\nmost in the way of change and national control, then it was that he\nfound his utmost support in every country in the world. In the latter\nhalf of 1918 there was scarcely a country anywhere in which one could\nnot have found men ready to die for President Wilson. A great\nhopefulness was manifest in the world. It faded, it faded very rapidly\nagain. But that brief wave of enthusiasm, which set minds astir with the\nsame great idea of one peace of justice throughout the earth in China\nand Bokhara and the Indian bazaars, in Iceland and Basutoland and\nIreland and Morocco, was indeed a fact perhaps more memorable in history\neven than the great war itself. It displayed a possibility of the\nsimultaneous operation of the same general ideas throughout the world\nquite beyond any previous experience. It demonstrated that the\ngenerality of men are as capable of being cosmopolitan and pacifist as\nthey are of being patriotic and belligerent. Both moods are extensions\nand exaltations beyond the everyday life, which itself is neither one\nthing nor the other. And both are transitory moods, responses to\nexternal suggestion.\n\nIt is to that first wave of popular feeling for a world law transcending\nand moving counter to all contemporary diplomacies, and not to the timid\nlegalism of the framers of the first schemes for a League of Nations\nthat we must look, if we are to hope at all for the establishment of a\nnew order in human affairs. It is upon the spirit of that transitory\nresponse to the transitory greatness of President Wilson that we have to\nseize; we have to lay hold of that, to recall it and confirm it and\nenlarge and strengthen it, to make it a flux of patriotisms and a\ncreator of new loyalties and devotions, and out of the dead dust of our\npresent institutions to build up for it and animate with it the body of\na true world state.\n\nWe have already stated the clear necessity, if mankind is not to perish\nby the hypertrophy of warfare, for the establishment of an armed and\nstrong world law. Here in this spirit that has already gleamed upon the\nworld is the possible force to create and sustain such a world law. What\nis it that intervenes between the universal human need and its\nsatisfaction? Why, since there are overwhelming reasons for it and a\nwidespread disposition for it, is there no world-wide creative effort\nafoot now in which men and women by the million are participating--and\nparticipating with all their hearts? Why is it that, except for the weak\ngestures of the Geneva League of Nations and a little writing of books\nand articles, a little pamphleteering, some scattered committee\nactivities on the part of people chiefly of the busybody class, an\noccasional speech and a diminishing volume of talk and allusion, no\nattempts are apparent to stay the plain drift of human society towards\nnew conflicts and the sluices of final disaster?\n\nThe answer to that Why, probes deep into the question of human motives.\n\nIt must be because we are all creatures of our immediate surroundings,\nbecause our minds and energies are chiefly occupied by the affairs of\nevery day, because we are all chiefly living our own lives, and very few\nof us, except by a kind of unconscious contribution, the life of\nmankind. In moments of mental activity, in the study or in\ncontemplation, we may rise to a sense of the dangers and needs of human\ndestiny, but it is only a few minds and characters of prophetic quality\nthat, without elaborate artificial assistance, seem able to keep hold\nupon and guide their lives by such relatively gigantic considerations.\nThe generality of men and women, so far as their natural disposition\ngoes, are scarcely more capable of apprehending and consciously serving\nthe human future than a van full of well-fed rabbits would be of\ngrasping the fact that their van was running smoothly and steadily down\nan inclined plane into the sea. It is only as the result of considerable\neducational effort and against considerable resistance that our minds\nare brought to a broader view. In every age for many thousands of years\nmen of exceptional vision have spent their lives in passionate efforts\nto bring us ordinary men into some relation of response and service to\nthe greater issues of life. It is these pioneers of vision who have\ngiven the world its religions and its philosophical cults, its loyalties\nand observances; and who have imposed ideas of greatness and duty on\ntheir fellows. In every age the ordinary man has submitted reluctantly\nto such teachings, has made his peculiar compromises with them, has\nreduced them as far as possible to formula and formality, and got back\nas rapidly as possible to the eating and drinking and desire, the\npersonal spites and rivalries and glories which constitute his reality.\nThe mass of men to-day do not seem to care, nor want to care, whither\nthe political and social institutions to which they are accustomed are\ntaking them. Such considerations overstrain us. And it is only by the\nextremest effort of those who are capable of a sense of racial danger\nand duty that the collective energies of men can ever be gathered\ntogether and organized and orientated towards the common good. To nearly\nall men and women, unless they are in the vein for it, such discussion\nas this in these essays does not appeal as being right or wrong; it does\nnot really interest them, rather it worries them; and for the most part\nthey would be glad to disregard it as completely as a lecture on wheels\nand gravitation and the physiological consequences of prolonged\nsubmergence would be disregarded by those rabbits in the van.\n\nBut man is a creature very different in his nature from a rabbit, and if\nhe is less instinctively social, he is much more consciously social.\nChief among his differences must be the presence of those tendencies\nwhich we call conscience, that haunting craving to be really right and\nto do the really right thing which is the basis of the moral and perhaps\nalso of most of the religious life. In this lies our hope for mankind.\nMan hates to be put right, and yet also he wants to be right. He is a\ncreature divided against himself, seeking both to preserve and to\novercome his egotism. It is upon the presence of the latter strand in\nman's complex make-up that we must rest our hopes of a developing will\nfor the world state which will gradually gather together and direct into\na massive constructive effort the now quite dispersed chaotic and\ntraditional activities of men.\n\nAs we have examined this problem it has become clear that the task of\nbringing about that consolidated world state which is necessary to\nprevent the decline and decay of mankind is not primarily one for the\ndiplomatists and lawyers and politicians at all. It is an educational\none. It is a moral based on an intellectual reconstruction. The task\nimmediately before mankind is to find release from the contentious\nloyalties and hostilities of the past which make collective world-wide\naction impossible at the present time, in a world-wide common vision of\nthe history and destinies of the race. On that as a basis, and on that\nalone, can a world control be organized and maintained. The effort\ndemanded from mankind, therefore, is primarily and essentially a bold\nreconstruction of the outlook upon life of hundreds of millions of\nminds. The idea of a world commonweal has to be established as the\ncriterion of political institutions, and also as the criterion of\ngeneral conduct in hundreds of millions of brains. It has to dominate\neducation everywhere in the world. When that end is achieved, then the\nworld state will be achieved, and it can be achieved in no other way.\nAnd unless that world state can be achieved, it would seem that the\noutlook before mankind is a continuance of disorder and of more and more\ndestructive and wasteful conflicts, a steady process of violence,\ndecadence, and misery towards extinction, or towards modifications of\nour type altogether beyond our present understanding and sympathy.\n\n\nSec. 3\n\nIn framing an estimate of the human future two leading facts are\ndominant. The first is the plain necessity for a political\nreorganization of the world as a unity, to save our race from the social\ndisintegration and complete physical destruction which war, under modern\nconditions, must ultimately entail, and the second is the manifest\nabsence of any sufficient will in the general mass of mankind at the\npresent time to make such a reorganization possible. There appear to be\nthe factors of such a will in men, but they are for the most part\nunawakened, or they are unorganized and ineffective. And there is a\nvery curious incapacity to grasp the reality of the human situation, a\nreal resistance to seeing things as they are--for man is an\neffort-shirking animal--which greatly impedes the development of such a\nwill. Failing the operation of such a sufficient will, human affairs are\nbeing directed by use and wont, by tradition and accidental deflections.\nMankind, after the tragic concussion of the great war, seems now to be\ndrifting again towards new and probably more disastrous concussions.\n\nThe catastrophe of the Great War did more or less completely awaken a\ncertain limited number of intelligent people to the need of some general\ncontrol replacing this ancient traditional driftage of events. But they\nshrank from the great implications of such a world control. The only\npracticable way to achieve a general control in the face of existing\ngovernments, institutions and prejudices, interested obstruction and the\ncommon disregard, is by extending this awakening to great masses of\npeople. This means an unprecedented educational effort, an appeal to\nmen's intelligence and men's imagination such as the world has never\nseen before. Is it possible to rationalize the at present chaotic will\nof mankind? That possibility, if it is a possibility, is the most\nimportant thing in contemporary human affairs.\n\nWe are asking here for an immense thing, for a change of ideas, a vast\nenlargement of ideas, and for something very like a change of heart in\nhundreds of millions of human beings. But then we are dealing with the\nfate of the entire species. We are discussing the prevention of wars,\ndisorders, shortages, famines and miseries for centuries ahead. The\ninitial capital we have to go upon is as yet no more than the aroused\nunderstanding and conscience of a few thousands, at most of a few score\nthousands of people. Can so little a leaven leaven so great a lump? Is a\nresponse to this appeal latent in the masses of mankind? Is there\nanything in history to justify hope for so gigantic a mental turnover in\nour race?\n\nA consideration of the spread of Christianity in the first four\ncenturies A.D. or of the spread of Islam in the seventh century will, we\nbelieve, support a reasonable hope that such a change in the minds of\nmen, whatever else it may be, is a practicable change, that it can be\ndone and that it may even probably be done. Consider our two instances.\nThe propagandas of those two great religions changed and changed for\never the political and social outlook over vast areas of the world's\nsurface. Yet while the stir for world unity begins now simultaneously in\nmany countries and many groups of people, those two propagandas each\nradiated from a single centre and were in the first instance the\nteachings of single individuals; and while to-day we can deal with great\nreading populations and can reach them by press and printed matter, by a\nuniversal distribution of books, by great lecturing organizations and\nthe like, those earlier great changes in human thought were achieved\nmainly by word of mouth and by crabbed manuscripts, painfully copied and\npassed slowly from hand to hand. So far it is only the trader who has\nmade any effectual use of the vast facilities the modern world has\nproduced for conveying a statement simultaneously to great numbers of\npeople at a distance. The world of thought still hesitates to use the\nmeans of power that now exist for it. History and political philosophy\nin the modern world are like bashful dons at a dinner party; they\ncrumble their bread and talk in undertones and clever allusions to their\nnearest neighbour, abashed at the thought of addressing the whole table.\nBut in a world where Mars can reach out in a single night and smite a\ncity a thousand miles away, we cannot suffer wisdom to hesitate in an\ninaudible gentility. The knowledge and vision that is good enough for\nthe best of us is good enough for all. This gospel of human brotherhood\nand a common law and rule for all mankind, the attempt to meet this\nurgent necessity of a common control of human affairs, which indeed is\nno new religion but only an attempt to realize practically the common\nteaching of all the established religions of the world, has to speak\nwith dominating voice everywhere between the poles and round about the\nworld.\n\nAnd it must become part of the universal education. It must speak\nthrough the school and university. It is too often forgotten, in\nAmerica, perhaps, even more than in Europe, that education exists for\nthe community, and for the individual only so far as it makes him a\nsufficient member of the community. The chief end of education is to\nsubjugate and sublimate for the collective purposes of our kind the\nsavage egotism we inherit. Every school, every college, teaches directly\nand still more by implication, relationship to a community and devotion\nto a community. In too many cases that community we let our schools and\ncolleges teach to our children is an extremely narrow one; it is the\ncommunity of a sect, of a class, or of an intolerant, greedy and\nunrighteous nationalism. Schools have increased greatly in numbers\nthroughout the world during the last century, but there has been little\nor no growth in the conception of education in schools. Education has\nbeen extended, but it has not been developed. If man is to be saved from\nself-destruction by the organization of a world community, there must be\na broadening of the reference of the teaching in the schools of all the\nworld to that community of the world. World-wide educational development\nand reform are the necessary preparations for and the necessary\naccompaniments of a political reconstruction of the world. The two are\nthe right and left hands of the same thing. Neither can effect much\nwithout the other.\n\nNow it is manifest that this reorganization of the world's affairs and\nof the world's education which we hold to be imperatively dictated by\nthe change in warfare, communications and other conditions of human\nlife brought about by scientific discovery during the last hundred\nyears, carries with it a practical repudiation of the claims of every\nexisting sovereign government in the world to be final and sovereign, to\nbe anything more than provisional and replaceable. There is the\ndifficulty that has checked hundreds of men after their first step\ntowards this work for a universal peace. It involves, it cannot but\ninvolve, a revision of their habitual allegiances. At best existing\ngovernments are to be regarded as local trustees and caretakers for the\ncoming human commonweal.\n\nIf they are not that, then they are necessarily obstructive and\nantagonistic. But few rulers, few governments, few officials, will have\nthe greatness of mind to recognize and admit this plain reality. By a\nkind of necessity they force upon their subjects and publics a conflict\nof loyalties. The feeble driftage of human affairs from one base or\ngreedy arrangement or cowardly evasion to another, since the Armistice\nof 1918, is very largely due to the obstinate determination of those who\nare in positions of authority and responsibility to ignore the plain\nteachings of the great war and its sequelae. They are resisting\nadjustments; their minds are fighting against the sacrifices of pride\nand authority that a full recognition of their subordination to the\nworld commonweal will involve. They are prepared, it would seem, to\nfight against the work of human salvation basely and persistently,\nwhenever their accustomed importance is threatened.\n\nEven in the schools and in the world of thought the established thing\nwill make its unrighteous fight for life. The dull and the dishonest in\nhigh places will suppress these greater ideas when they can, and ignore\nwhen they dare not suppress. It seems too much to hope for that there\nshould be any willingness on the part of any established authority to\nadmit its obsolescence and prepare the way for its merger in a world\nauthority. It is not creative minds that produce revolutions, but the\nobstinate conservatism of established authority. It is the blank refusal\nto accept the idea of an orderly evolution towards new things that gives\na revolutionary quality to every constructive proposal. The huge task of\npolitical and educational reconstruction which is needed to arrest the\npresent drift of human affairs towards catastrophe, must be achieved, if\nit is to be achieved at all, mainly by voluntary and unofficial effort;\nand for the most part in the teeth of official opposition.\n\nThere are one or two existing states to which men have looked for some\nopen recognition of their duty to mankind as a whole, and of the\nnecessarily provisional nature of their contemporary constitutions. The\nUnited States of America constitute a political system, profoundly\ndifferent in its origin and in its spirit, from any old-world state; it\nwas felt that here at least might be an evolutionary state; and in the\npalmy days of President Wilson it did seem for a brief interval as if\nthe New World was indeed coming to the rescue of the old, as if America\nwas to play the role of a propagandist continent, bringing its ideas of\nequality and freedom, and extending the spirit of its union to all the\nnations of the earth. From that expectation, the world opinion is now in\na state of excessive and unreasonable recoil. President Wilson fell away\nfrom his first intimations of that world-wide federal embrace; his mind\nand will were submerged by the clamour of contending patriotisms and the\nsubtle expedients of old-world diplomacy in Paris; but American\naccessibility to the idea of a federalized world neither began with him\nnor will it end with his failure. America is still a hopeful laboratory\nof world-unifying thought. A long string of arbitration treaties stands\nto the credit of America, and a series of developing Pan-American\nprojects, pointing clearly to at least a continental synthesis within a\nmeasurable time. There has been, and there still is, a better\nunderstanding of, and a greater receptivity to, ideas of international\nsynthesis in America than in any European state.\n\nAnd the British Empire, which according to many of its liberal\napologists is already a league of nations linked together in a mutually\nadvantageous peace, to that too men have looked for some movement of\nadaptation to this greater synthesis which is the world's pre-eminent\nneed. But so far the British Empire has failed to respond to such\nexpectations. The war has left it strained and bruised and with its\naffairs very much in the grip of the military class, the most illiterate\nand dangerous class in the community. They have done, perhaps,\nirreparable mischief to the peace of the empire in Ireland, India and\nEgypt, and they have made the claim of the British system to be an\nexemplary unification of dissimilar peoples seem now to many people\nincurably absurd. It is a great misfortune for mankind that the British\nEmpire, which played so sturdy and central a part in the great war,\ncould at its close achieve no splendid and helpful gesture towards a\ngenerous reconstruction.\n\nSince the armistice there has been an extraordinary opportunity for the\nBritish monarchy to have displayed a sense of the new occasions before\nthe world, and to have led the way towards the efforts and renunciations\nof an international renascence. It could have taken up a lead that the\nPresident of the United States had initiated and relinquished; it could\nhave used its peculiar position to make an unexampled appeal to the\nwhole world. It could have created a new epoch in history. The Prince of\nWales has been touring the world-wide dominions of which, some day, he\nis to be the crowned head. He has received addresses, visited sights,\nbeen entertained, shaken hands with scores of thousands of people and\nsubmitted himself to the eager, yet unpenetrating gaze of vast\nmultitudes. His smallest acts have been observed with premeditated\nadmiration, his lightest words recorded. He is not now a boy; he saw\nsomething of the great war, even if his exalted position denied him any\nlarge share of its severer hardships and dangers; he cannot be blind to\nthe general posture of the world's affairs. Here, surely, was a chance\nof saying something that would be heard from end to end of the earth,\nsomething kingly and great-minded. Here was the occasion for a fine\nrestatement of the obligations and duties of empire. But from first to\nlast the prince has said nothing to quicken the imaginations of the\nmultitude of his future subjects to the gigantic possibilities of these\ntimes, nothing to reassure the foreign observer that the British Empire\nembodies anything more than the colossal national egotism and\nimpenetrable self-satisfaction of the British peoples. \"Here we are,\"\nsaid the old order in those demonstrations, \"and here we mean to stick.\nJust as we have been, so we remain. British!--we are Bourbons.\" These\nsmiling tours of the Prince of Wales in these years of shortage, stress,\nand insecurity, constitute a propaganda of inanity unparalleled in the\nworld's history.\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nNor do we find in the nominal rulers and official representatives of\nother countries any clear admission of the necessity for a great and\nfundamental change in the scope and spirit of government. These official\nand ruling people, more than any other people, are under the sway of\nthat life of use and wont which dominates us all. They are often\ntrained to their positions, or they have won their way to their\npositions of authority through a career of political activities which\namounts to a training. And that training is not a training in enterprise\nand change; it is a training in sticking tight and getting back to\nprecedent. We can expect nothing from them. We shall be lucky if the\nresistance of the administrative side of existing states to the\nconception of a world commonweal is merely passive. There is little or\nno prospect of any existing governing system, unless it be such a\nfederal system as Switzerland or the United States, passing directly and\nwithout extensive internal changes into combination with other sovereign\npowers as part of a sovereign world system. At some point the\nindependent states will as systems resist, and unless an overwhelming\nworld conscience for the world state has been brought into being and\nsurrounds them with an understanding watchfulness, and invades the\nconsciences of their supporters and so weakens their resisting power,\nthey will resist violently and disastrously. But it will be an\nincoherent resistance because the very nature of the sovereign states of\nto-day is incoherence. There can be no world-wide combination of\nsovereign states to resist the world state, because that would be to\ncreate the world state in the attempt to defeat it.\n\n\nSec. 4\n\nIn the three preceding essays an attempt has been made to state the pass\nat which mankind has arrived, the dangers and mischiefs that threaten\nour race, and the need there is and the opportunities there are for a\nstrenuous attempt to end the age-long bickerings of nations and empires\nand establish one community of law and effort throughout the whole\nworld. Stress has been laid chiefly upon the monstrous evils and\ndisasters a continuation of our present divisions, our nationalisms and\nimperialisms and the like, will certainly entail. These considerations\nof evil however are only the negative argument for this creative effort;\nthey have been thrust forward because war, disorder, insufficiency, and\nthe ill health, the partings, deprivations, boredom and unhappiness that\narise out of these things are well within our experience and entirely\ncredible; the positive argument for a world order demands at once more\nfaith and imagination.\n\nGiven a world law and world security, a release from the net of\nbickering frontiers, world-wide freedom of movement, and world-wide\nfellowship, a thousand good things that are now beyond hope or dreaming\nwould come into the ordinary life. The whole world would be our\nhabitation, and the energies of men, released from their preoccupation\nwith contention, would go more and more abundantly into the\naccumulation and application of scientific knowledge, that is to say\ninto the increase of mental and bodily health, of human power, of\ninterest and happiness. Even to-day the most delightful possibilities\nstand waiting, inaccessible to nearly all of us because of the general\ninsecurity, distrust and anger. Flying, in a world safely united in\npeace, could take us now to the ends of the earth smoothly, securely\nthrough the sweet upper air, in five or six days. In two or three years\nthere could again be abundance of food and pleasant clothing for\neveryone throughout the whole world. Men could be destroying their slums\nand pestilential habitations and rebuilding spacious and beautiful\ncities. Given only peace and confidence and union we could double our\nyearly production of all that makes life desirable and still double our\nleisure for thought and growth. We could live in a universal palace and\nmake the whole globe our garden and playground.\n\nBut these are not considerations that sway people to effort. Fear and\nhate, not hope and desire, have been hitherto the effective spurs for\nmen. The most popular religions are those which hold out the widest\nhopes of damnation. Our lives are lives of use and wont, we distrust the\npromise of delightful experience and achievements beyond our accustomed\nways; it offends our self-satisfaction even to regard them as\npossibilities; we do not like the implied cheapening of familiar things.\nWe are all ready to sneer at \"Utopias,\" as elderly invalids sneer at\nthe buoyant hopes of youth and do their best to think them sure of\nfrustration. The aged and disillusioned profess a keen appreciation of\nthe bath chair and the homely spoonful of medicine, and pity a crudity\nthat misses the fine quality of those ripe established things. Most\npeople are quite ready to dismiss the promise of a full free life for\nall mankind with a sneer. That would rob the world of romance, they say,\nthe romance of passport offices, custom houses, shortages of food,\nendless petty deprivations, slums, pestilence, under-educated stunted\nchildren, youths dying in heaps in muddy trenches, an almost universal\nlack of vitality, and all the picturesque eventfulness of contemporary\nconditions. So that we have not dwelt here upon the life-giving aspect\nof a possible world state, but only on its life-saving aspects. We have\nnot argued that our present life of use and wont could be replaced by an\ninfinitely better way of living. We have rather pointed out that if\nthings continue to drift as they are doing, the present life of use and\nwont will become intolerably insecure. It is the thought of the large\nbombing aeroplane and not the hope of swift travelling across the sky\nthat will move the generality of men, if they are to be moved at all,\ntowards a world peace.\n\nBut whether the lever that moves them is desire or fear the majority of\nmen, unless the species is to perish, must be brought within a\nmeasurable time to an understanding of, and a will for, a single world\ngovernment. And since at first existing institutions, established\ntraditions, educational organizations and the like, will all be\npassively if not actively resistant to the spread of this saving idea,\nand much more so to any attempts to realize this saving idea, there\nremains nothing for us to look to, at the present time, for the first\norganization of this immense effort of mental reversal, but the zeal and\ndevotion and self-sacrifice of convinced individuals. The world state\nmust begin; it can only begin, as a propagandist cult, or as a group of\npropagandist cults, to which men and women must give themselves and\ntheir energies, regardless of the consequences to themselves. Laying the\nfoundations of a world state upon a site already occupied by a muddle of\nbuildings is an undertaking which will almost necessarily bring its\nvotaries into conflict with established authority and current sentiment;\nthey will have to face the possibility of lives of conflict,\nmisunderstanding, much thankless exertion; they must count on little\nhonour and considerable active dislike; and they will have to find what\nconsolation they can in the interest of the conflict itself and in the\nthought of a world, made at last by such efforts as theirs, peaceful and\nsecure and vigorous, a world they can never hope to see. So stated it\nseems a bad bargain that the worker for the world state is invited to\nmake, yet the world has never lacked people prepared to make such a\nbargain and they will not fail it now. There are worse things than\nconflict without manifest victory and effort without apparent reward.\nTo the finer kind of mind it is infinitely more tragic and distressing\nto find that existence bears a foolish aimless face. Many people,\ntormented by the discontent of conscience, and wanting, more than they\ncan ever want any satisfaction, some satisfying rule of life, some\ncriterion of conduct, will find in this cult of the world state just\nthat sustaining reality they need. And their number will grow. Because\nit is a practical and reasonable shape for a life, arising naturally out\nof a proper understanding of history and physical science, and embodying\nin a unifying plan the teaching of all the great religions of the world.\nIt comes to us not to destroy but to fulfil.\n\nThe activities of a cult which set itself to bring about the world state\nwould at first be propagandist, they would be intellectual and\neducational, and only as a sufficient mass of opinion and will had\naccumulated would they become to a predominant extent politically\nconstructive. Such a cult must direct itself particularly to the\nteaching of the young. So far the propaganda for a world law, the League\nof Nations propaganda, since it has sought immediate political results,\nhas been addressed almost entirely to adults; and as a consequence it\nhas had to adapt itself as far as possible to their preconceptions about\nthe history and outlook of their own nationality, and to the general\nabsence as yet in the world of any vision of the welfare of mankind as\none whole. It is because of this acceptance of current adult ideas\nabout patriotism and nationality that the movement has adopted the\nunsatisfactory phrase, a League of Nations, when what is contemplated is\nmuch more than a league and a very considerable subordination of\nnational sovereignty. And a large share in the current ineffectiveness\nof the League of Nations is evidently due to the fact that men interpret\nthe phrase and the proposition of the League of Nations differently in\naccordance with the different fundamental historical ideas they possess,\nideas that propaganda has hitherto left unassailed. The worker for the\nworld state will look further and plough deeper. It is these fundamental\nideas which are the vitally important objective of a world-unifying\nmovement, and they can only be brought into that world-wide uniformity\nwhich is essential to the enduring peace of mankind, by teaching\nchildren throughout all the earth the common history of their kind, and\nso directing their attention to the common future of their descendants.\nThe driving force that makes either war or peace is engendered where the\nyoung are taught. The teacher, whether mother, priest, or schoolmaster,\nis the real maker of history; rulers, statesmen and soldiers do but work\nout the possibilities of co-operation or conflict the teacher creates.\nThis is no rhetorical flourish; it is a sober fact. The politicians and\nmasses of our time dance on the wires of their early education.\n\nTeaching then is the initial and decisive factor in the future of\nmankind, and the first duty of everyone who has the ability and\nopportunity, is to teach, or to subserve the teaching of, the true\nhistory of mankind and of the possibilities of this vision of a single\nworld state that history opens out to us. Men and women can help the\nspread of the saving doctrine in a thousand various ways; for it is not\nonly in homes and schools that minds are shaped. They can print and\npublish books, endow schools and teaching, organize the distribution of\nliterature, insist upon the proper instruction of children in world wide\ncharity and fellowship, fight against every sort of suppression or\nrestrictive control of right education, bring pressure through political\nand social channels upon every teaching organization to teach history\naright, sustain missions and a new sort of missionary, the missionaries\nto all mankind of knowledge and the idea of one world civilization and\none world community; they can promote and help the progress of\nhistorical and ethnological and political science, they can set their\nfaces against every campaign of hate, racial suspicion, and patriotic\nfalsehood, they can refuse, they are bound to refuse, obedience to any\npublic authority which oppresses and embitters class against class, race\nagainst race, and people against people. A belligerent government as\nsuch, they can refuse to obey; and they can refuse to help or suffer any\nmilitary preparations that are not directed wholly and plainly to\npreserving the peace of the world. This is the plain duty of every\nhonest man to-day, to judge his magistrate before he obeys him, and to\nrender unto Caesar nothing that he owes to God and mankind. And those who\nare awakened to the full significance of the vast creative effort now\nbefore mankind will set themselves particularly to revise the common\nmoral judgment upon many acts and methods of living that obstruct the\nway of the world state. Blatant, aggressive patriotism and the\nincitements against foreign peoples that usually go with it, are just as\ncriminal and far more injurious to our race than, for example, indecent\nprovocations and open incitements to sexual vice; they produce a much\nbeastlier and crueller state of mind, and they deserve at least an equal\ncondemnation. Yet you will find even priests and clergymen to-day\nrousing the war passions of their flocks and preaching conflict from the\nvery steps of the altar.\n\nSo far the movement towards a world state has lacked any driving power\nof passion. We have been passing through a phase of intellectual\nrevision. The idea of a world unity and brotherhood has come back again\ninto the world almost apologetically, deferentially, asking for the kind\nwords of successful politicians and for a gesture of patronage from\nkings. Yet this demand for one world-empire of righteousness was\ninherent in the teachings of Buddha, it flashed for a little while\nbehind the sword of Islam, it is the embodiment in earthly affairs of\nthe spirit of Christ. It is a call to men for service as of right, it is\nnot an appeal to them that they may refuse, not a voice that they may\ndisregard. It is too great a thing to hover for long thus deferentially\non the outskirts of the active world it has come to save. To-day the\nworld state says \"Please listen; make way for me.\" To-morrow it will\nsay: \"Make way for me, little people.\" The day is not remote when\ndisregardful \"patriotic\" men hectoring in the crowd will be twisted\nround perforce to the light they refuse to see. First comes the idea and\nthen slowly the full comprehension of the idea, comes realization, and\nwith that realization will come a kindling anger at the vulgarity, the\nmeanness, the greed and baseness and utter stupidity that refuses to\nattend to this clear voice, this definite demand of our racial\nnecessity. To-day we teach, but as understanding grows we must begin to\nact. We must put ourselves and our rulers and our fellow men on trial.\nWe must ask: \"What have you done, what are you doing to help or hinder\nthe peace and order of mankind?\" A time will come when a politician who\nhas wilfully made war and promoted international dissension will be as\nsure of the dock and much surer of the noose than a private homicide. It\nis not reasonable that those who gamble with men's lives should not\nstake their own. The service of the world state calls for much more than\npassive resistance to belligerent authorities, for much more than\nexemplary martyrdoms. It calls for the greater effort of active\ninterference with mischievous men. \"I will believe in the League of\nNations,\" one man has written, \"when men will fight for it.\" For this\nLeague of Nations at Geneva, this little corner of Balfourian jobs and\ngentility, no man would dream of fighting, but for the great state of\nmankind, men will presently be very ready to fight and, as the thing may\ngo, either to kill or die. Things must come in their order; first the\nidea, then the kindling of imaginations, then the world wide battle. We\nwho live in the bleak days after a great crisis, need be no more\ndiscouraged by the apparent indifference of the present time than are\nfields that are ploughed and sown by the wet days of February and the\ncold indifference of the winds of early March. The ploughing has been\ndone, and the seed is in the ground, and the world state stirs in a\nmultitude of germinating minds.\n\n\n\n\nII\n\nTHE PROJECT OF A WORLD STATE[B]\n\n    [B] Written originally as a lecture to be delivered in America.\n\n\nIn this paper, I want to tell you of the idea that now shapes and\ndominates my public life--the idea of a world politically united--of a\nworld securely and permanently at peace. And I want to say what I have\nto say, so far as regards the main argument of it, as accurately and\nplainly as possible, without any eloquence or flourishes.\n\nWhen I first planned this paper, I chose as the title _The Utopia of a\nWorld State_. Well, there is something a little too flimsy and\nunpracticable about that word Utopia. To most people Utopia conveys the\nidea of a high-toned political and ethical dream--agreeable and\nedifying, no doubt, but of no practical value whatever. What I have to\ntalk about this evening is not a bit dreamlike, it is about real dangers\nand urgent necessities. It is a Project and not a Utopia. It may be a\nvast and impossible project. It may be a hopeless project. But if it\nfails our civilization fails. And so I have called this paper not the\nUtopia but _The Project of a World State._ There are some things that it\nis almost impossible to tell without seeming to scream and exaggerate,\nand yet these things may be in reality the soberest matter of fact. I\nwant to say that this civilization in which we are living is tumbling\ndown, and I think tumbling down very fast; that I think rapid enormous\nefforts will be needed to save it; and that I see no such efforts being\nmade at the present time. I do not know if these words convey any\nconcrete ideas to the reader's mind. There are statements that can open\nsuch unfamiliar vistas as to seem devoid of any real practical meaning\nat all, and this I think may be one of them.\n\nIn the past year I have been going about Europe. I have had glimpses of\na new phase of this civilization of ours--a new phase that would have\nsounded like a fantastic dream if one had told about it ten years ago. I\nhave seen a great city that had over two million inhabitants, dying, and\ndying with incredible rapidity. In 1914 I was in the city of St.\nPetersburg and it seemed as safe and orderly a great city as yours. I\nwent thither in comfortable and punctual trains. I stayed in an hotel as\nwell equipped and managed as any American hotel. I went to dine with and\nvisit households of cultivated people. I walked along streets of\nbrilliantly lit and well-furnished shops. It was, in fact, much the same\nsort of life that you are living here to-day--a part of our (then)\nworld-wide modern civilization.\n\nI revisited these things last summer. I found such a spectacle of decay\nthat it seems almost impossible to describe it to those who have never\nseen the like. Streets with great holes where the drains had fallen in.\nStretches of roadway from which the wood paving had been torn for\nfirewood. Lampposts that had been knocked over lying as they were left,\nwithout an attempt to set them up again. Shops and markets deserted and\ndecayed and ruinous. Not closed shops but abandoned shops, as\nabandoned-looking as an old boot or an old can by the wayside. The\nrailways falling out of use. A population of half a million where\nformerly there had been two. A strangely homeless city, a city of\ndiscomforts and anxieties, a city of want and ill-health and death. Such\nwas Petersburg in 1920.\n\nI know there are people who have a quick and glib explanation of this\nvast and awe-inspiring spectacle of a great empire in collapse. They say\nit is Bolshevism has caused all this destruction. But I hope to show\nhere, among other more important things, that Bolshevism is merely a\npart of this immense collapse--that the overthrow of a huge civilized\norganization needs some more comprehensive explanation than that a\nlittle man named Lenin was able to get from Geneva to Russia at a\nparticular crisis in Russian history. And particularly is it to be noted\nthat this immense destruction of civilized life has not been confined to\nRussia or to regions under Bolshevik rule. Austria and Hungary present\nspectacles hardly less desolating than Russia. There is a conspicuous\nebb in civilization in Eastern Germany. And even when you come to France\nand Italy and Ireland there are cities, townships, whole wide regions,\nwhere you can say: This has gone back since 1914 and it is still going\nback in material prosperity, in health, in social order.\n\nEven in England and Scotland, in Holland and Denmark and Sweden, it is\nhard to determine whether things are stagnant or moving forward or\nmoving back--they are certainly not going ahead as they were before\n1913-14. The feeling in England is rather like the feeling of a man who\nis not quite sure whether he has caught a slight chill or whether he is\nin the opening stage of a serious illness.\n\nNow what I want to do here is to theorize about this shadow, this chill\nand arrest, that seems to have come upon the flourishing and expanding\ncivilization in which all of us were born and reared. I want to put a\nparticular view of what is happening before you, and what it is that we\nare up against. I want to put before you for your judgment the view that\nthis overstrain and breaking down and stoppage of the great uprush of\ncivilization that has gone on for the past three centuries is due to the\nsame forces and is the logical outcome of the same forces that led to\nthat uprush, to that tremendous expansion of human knowledge and power\nand life. And that that breaking up is an inevitable thing unless we\nmeet it by a very great effort of a particular kind.\n\nNow the gist of my case is this: That the civilization of the past three\ncenturies has produced a great store of scientific knowledge, and that\nthis scientific knowledge has altered the material scale of human\naffairs and enormously enlarged the physical range of human activities,\nbut that there has been no adequate adjustment of men's political ideas\nto the new conditions.\n\nThis adjustment is a subtle and a difficult task. It is also a greatly\nneglected task. And upon the possibility of our making this adjustment\ndepends the issue whether the ebb of civilizing energy, the actual\nsmashing and breaking down of modern civilization, which has already\ngone very far indeed in Russia and which is going on in most of Eastern\nand Central Europe, extends to the whole civilized world.\n\nLet me make a very rough and small scale analysis of what is happening\nto the world to-day. And let us disregard many very important issues and\nconcentrate upon the chief, most typical issue, the revolution in the\nfacilities of locomotion and communication that has occurred to the\nworld and the consequences of that revolution. For the international\nproblem to-day is essentially dependent upon the question of transport\nand communication--all others are subordinate to that. I shall\nparticularly call your attention to certain wide differences between the\nAmerican case and the old-world case in this matter.\n\nIt is not understood clearly enough at the present time how different\nis the American international problem from the European international\nproblem, and how inevitable it is that America and Europe should\napproach international problems from a different angle and in a\ndifferent spirit. Both lines of thought and experience do, I believe,\nlead at last to the world state, but they get there by a different route\nand in a different manner.\n\nThe idea that the government of the United States can take its place\nside by side with the governments of the old world on terms of equality\nwith those governments in order to organize the peace of the world, is,\nI believe, a mistaken and unworkable idea. I shall argue that the\ngovernment of the United States and the community of the United States\nare things different politically and mentally from those of the states\nof the old world, and that the role they are destined to play in the\ndevelopment of a world state of mankind is essentially a distinctive\none. And I shall try to show cause for regarding the very noble and\nsplendid project of a world-wide League of Nations that has held the\nattention of the world for the past three years, as one that is, at\nonce, a little too much for complete American participation, and not\nsufficient for the urgent needs of Europe. It is not really so\npracticable and reasonable a proposition as it seemed at first.\n\nThe idea of a world state, though it looks a far greater and more\ndifficult project, is, in the long run, a sounder and more hopeful\nproposition.\n\nNow let me make myself as clear as I can be about the central idea upon\nwhich the whole of the arguments in this lecture rests. It is this:\nforgive me for a repetition--that there has been a complete alteration\nin the range and power of human activities in the last hundred years.\nMen can react upon men with a rapidity and at a distance inconceivable a\nhundred years ago. This is particularly the case with locomotion and\nmethods of communication generally. I will not remind you in any detail\nof facts with which you are familiar; how that in the time of Napoleon\nthe most rapid travel possible of the great conqueror himself did not\naverage all over as much as four and a half miles an hour. A hundred and\nseven miles a day for thirteen days--the pace of his rush from Vilna to\nParis after the Moscow disaster--was regarded as a triumph of speed. In\nthose days, too, it was a marvel that by means of semaphores it was\npossible to transmit a short message from London to Portsmouth in the\ncourse of an hour or so.\n\nSince then we have seen a development of telegraphy that has at last\nmade news almost simultaneous about the world, and a steady increase in\nthe rate of travel until, as we worked it out in the Civil Air Transport\nCommittee in London, it is possible, if not at present practicable, to\nfly from London to Australia, half way round the earth, in about eight\ndays. I say possible, but not practicable, because at present properly\nsurveyed routes, landing grounds and adequate supplies of petrol and\nspare parts do not exist. Given those things, that journey could be done\nnow in the time I have stated. This tremendous change in the range of\nhuman activities involves changes in the conditions of our political\nlife that we are only beginning to work out to their proper consequences\nto-day.\n\nIt is a curious thing that America, which owes most to this acceleration\nin locomotion, has felt it least. The United States have taken the\nrailway, the river steamboat, the telegraph and so forth as though they\nwere a natural part of their growth. They were not. These things\nhappened to come along just in time to save American unity. The United\nStates of to-day were made first by the river steamboat, and then by the\nrailway. Without these things, the present United States, this vast\ncontinental nation, would have been altogether impossible. The westward\nflow of population would have been far more sluggish. It might never\nhave crossed the great central plains. It took, you will remember,\nnearly two hundred years for effective settlement to reach from the\ncoast to the Missouri, much less than half-way across the continent. The\nfirst state established beyond the river was the steamboat state of\nMissouri in 1821. But the rest of the distance to the Pacific was done\nin a few decades.\n\nIf we had the resources of the cinema it would be interesting to show a\nmap of North America year by year from 1600 onward, with little dots to\nrepresent hundreds of people, each dot a hundred, and stars to represent\ncities of a hundred thousand people.\n\nFor two hundred years you would see that stippling creeping slowly along\nthe coastal districts and navigable waters, spreading still more\ngradually into Indiana, Kentucky, and so forth. Then somewhere about\n1810 would come a change. Things would get more lively along the river\ncourses. The dots would be multiplying and spreading. That would be the\nsteamboat. The pioneer dots would be spreading soon from a number of\njumping-off places along the great rivers over Kansas and Nebraska.\n\nThen from about 1830 onward would come the black lines of the railways,\nand after that the little black dots would not simply creep but run.\nThey would appear now so rapidly, it would be almost as though they were\nbeing put on by some sort of spraying machine. And suddenly here and\nthen there would appear the first stars to indicate the first great\ncities of a hundred thousand people. First one or two and then a\nmultitude of cities--each like a knot in the growing net of the\nrailways.\n\nThis is a familiar story. I recall it to you now to enforce this\npoint--that the growth of the United States is a process that has no\nprecedent in the world's history; it is a new kind of occurrence. Such a\ncommunity could not have come into existence before, and if it had it\nwould, without railways, have certainly dropped to pieces long before\nnow. Without railways or telegraph it would be far easier to administer\nCalifornia from Pekin than from Washington. But this great population of\nthe United States of America has not only grown outrageously; it has\nkept uniform. Nay, it has become more uniform. The man of San Francisco\nis more like the man of New York to-day than the man of Virginia was\nlike the man of New England a century ago. And the process of\nassimilation goes on unimpeded. The United States is being woven by\nrailway, by telegraph, more and more into one vast human unity,\nspeaking, thinking, and acting harmoniously with itself. Soon aviation\nwill be helping in the work.\n\nNow this great community of the United States is, I repeat, an\naltogether new thing in history. There have been great empires before\nwith populations exceeding 100 millions, but these were associations of\ndivergent peoples; there has never been one single people on this scale\nbefore. We want a new term for this new thing. We call the United States\na country, just as we call France or Holland a country. But really the\ntwo things are as different as an automobile and a one-horse shay. They\nare the creations of different periods and different conditions; they\nare going to work at a different pace and in an entirely different way.\nIf you propose--as I gather some of the League of Nations people\npropose--to push the Peace of the World along on a combination of these\ntwo sorts of vehicle, I venture to think the Peace of the World will be\nsubjected to some very considerable strains.\n\nLet me now make a brief comparison between the American and the European\nsituation in relation to these vital matters, locomotion and the general\nmeans of communicating. I said just now that the United States of\nAmerica owe most to the revolution in locomotion and have felt it least.\nEurope on the other hand owes least to the revolution in locomotion and\nhas felt it most. The revolution in locomotion found the United States\nof America a fringe of population on the sea margins of a great rich\nvirgin empty country into which it desired to expand, and into which it\nwas free to expand. The steamboat and railway seemed to come as a\nnatural part of that expansion. They came as unqualified blessings. But\ninto Western Europe they came as a frightful nuisance.\n\nThe States of Europe, excepting Russia, were already a settled,\nestablished and balanced system. They were living in final and\nconclusive boundaries with no further possibility of peaceful expansion.\nEvery extension of a European state involved a war; it was only possible\nthrough war. And while the limits to the United States have been set by\nthe steamship and the railroad, the limits to the European sovereign\nstates were drawn at a much earlier time. They were drawn by the horse,\nand particularly the coach-horse travelling along the high road. If you\nwill examine a series of political maps of Europe for the last two\nthousand years, you will see that there has evidently been a definite\nlimit to the size of sovereign states through all that time, due to the\nimpossibility of keeping them together because of the difficulty of\nintercommunication if they grew bigger. And this was in spite of the\nfact that there were two great unifying ideas present in men's minds in\nEurope throughout that period, namely, the unifying idea of the Roman\nEmpire, and the unifying idea of Christendom. Both these ideas tended to\nmake Europe one, but the difficulties of communication defeated that\ntendency. It is quite interesting to watch the adventures of what is\ncalled first the Roman Empire and afterwards the Holy Roman Empire, in a\nseries of historical maps. It keeps expanding and then dropping to\npieces again. It is like the efforts of someone who is trying to pack up\na parcel which is much too big, in wet blotting paper. The cohesion was\ninadequate. And so it was that the eighteenth century found Europe still\ndivided up into what I may perhaps call these high-road and coach-horse\nstates, each with a highly developed foreign policy, each with an\nintense sense of national difference and each with intense traditional\nantagonisms.\n\nThen came this revolution in the means of locomotion, which has\nincreased the normal range of human activity at least ten times. The\neffect of that in America was opportunity; the effect of it in Europe\nwas congestion. It is as if some rather careless worker of miracles had\ndecided suddenly to make giants of a score of ordinary men, and chose\nthe moment for the miracle when they were all with one exception\nstrap-hanging in a street car. The United States was that fortunate\nexception.\n\nNow this is what modern civilization has come up against, and it is the\nessential riddle of the modern sphinx which must be solved if we are to\nlive. All the European boundaries of to-day are impossibly small for\nmodern conditions. And they are sustained by an intensity of ancient\ntradition and patriotic passion.... That is where we stand.\n\nThe citizens of the United States of America are not without their\nexperience in this matter. The crisis of the national history of the\nAmerican community, the war between Union and Secession, was essentially\na crisis between the great state of the new age and the local feeling of\nan earlier period. But Union triumphed. Americans live now in a\ngeneration that has almost forgotten that there once seemed a\npossibility that the map of North America might be broken up at last\ninto as many communities as the map of Europe. Except by foreign travel,\nthe present generation of Americans can have no idea of the net of\nvexations and limitations in which Europeans are living at the present\ntime because of their political disunion.\n\nLet me take a small but quite significant set of differences, the\ninconveniences of travel upon a journey of a little over a thousand\nmiles. They are in themselves petty inconveniences, but they will serve\nto illustrate the net that is making free civilized life in Europe more\nand more impossible.\n\nTake first the American case. An American wants to travel from New York\nto St. Louis. He looks up the next train, packs his bag, gets aboard a\nsleeper and turns out at St. Louis next day ready for business.\n\nTake now the European parallel. A European wants to travel from London\nto Warsaw. Now that is a shorter distance by fifty or sixty miles than\nthe distance from New York to St. Louis. Will he pack his bag, get\naboard a train and go there? He will not. He will have to get a\npassport, and getting a passport involves all sorts of tiresome little\nerrands. One has to go to a photographer, for example, to get\nphotographs to stick on the passport. The good European has then to take\nhis passport to the French representative in London for a French visa,\nor, if he is going through Belgium, for a Belgian visa. After that he\nmust get a German visa. Then he must go round to the Czecho-Slovak\noffice for a Czechoslovak visa. Finally will come the Polish visa.\n\nEach of these endorsements necessitates something vexatious, personal\nattendance, photography, stamps, rubber stamps, mysterious signatures\nand the like, and always the payment of fees. Also they necessitate\ndelays. The other day I had occasion to go to Moscow, and I learnt that\nit takes three weeks to get a visa for Finland and three weeks to get a\nvisa for Esthonia. You see you can't travel about Europe at all without\nweeks and weeks of preparation. The preparations for a little journey to\nRussia the other day took three whole days out of my life, cost me\nseveral pounds in stamps and fees, and five in bribery.\n\nUltimately, however, the good European is free to start. Arriving at the\nFrench frontier in an hour or so, he will be held up for a long customs'\nexamination. Also he will need to change some of his money into francs.\nHis English money will be no good in France. The exchange in Europe is\nalways fluctuating, and he will be cheated on the exchange. All European\ncountries, including my own, cheat travellers on the exchange--that is\napparently what the exchange is for.\n\nHe will then travel for a few hours to the German frontier. There he\nwill be bundled out again. The French will investigate him closely to\nsee that he is not carrying gold or large sums of money out of France.\nThen he will be handed over to the Germans. He will go through the same\nbusiness with the customs and the same business with the money. His\nFrench money is no further use to him and he must get German. A few more\nhours and he will arrive on the frontier of Bohemia. Same search for\ngold. Then customs' examination and change of money again. A few hours\nmore and he will be in Poland. Search for gold, customs, fresh money.\n\nAs most of these countries are pursuing different railway policies, he\nwill probably have to change trains and rebook his luggage three or four\ntimes. The trains may be ingeniously contrived not to connect so as to\nforce him to take some longer route politically favoured by one of the\nintervening states. He will be lucky if he gets to Warsaw in four days.\n\nArrived in Warsaw, he will probably need a permit to stay there, and he\nwill certainly need no end of permits to leave.\n\nNow here is a fuss over a fiddling little journey of 1,100 miles. Is it\nany wonder that the bookings from London to Warsaw are infinitesimal in\ncomparison with the bookings from New York to St. Louis? But what I have\nnoted here are only the normal inconveniences of the traveller. They are\nby no means the most serious inconveniences.\n\nThe same obstructions that hamper the free movement of a traveller,\nhamper the movement of foodstuffs and all sorts of merchandise in a much\ngreater degree. Everywhere in Europe trade is being throttled by tariffs\nand crippled by the St. Vitus' dance of the exchanges. Each of these\nEuropean sovereign states turns out paper money at its own sweet will.\nLast summer I went to Prague and exchanged pounds for kroners. They\nought to have been 25 to the pound. On Monday they were 180 to the\npound: on Friday 169. They jump about between 220 and 150, and everybody\nis inconvenienced except the bankers and money changers. And this\nuncertain exchange diverts considerable amounts of money that should be\nstimulating business enterprise into a barren and mischievous gambling\nwith the circulation.\n\nBetween each one of these compressed European countries the movement of\nfood or labour is still more blocked and impeded. And in addition to\nthese nuisances of national tariffs and independent national coinages at\nevery few score miles, Europe is extraordinarily crippled by its want of\nany central authority to manage the most elementary collective\ninterests; the control of vice, for example; the handling of infectious\ndiseases; the suppression of international criminals.\n\nEurope is now confronted by a new problem--the problem of air transport.\nSo far as I can see, air transport is going to be strangled in Europe by\ninternational difficulties. One can fly comfortably and safely from\nLondon to Paris in two or three hours. But the passport preliminaries\nwill take days beforehand.\n\nThe other day I wanted to get quickly to Reval in Esthonia from England\nand back again. The distance is about the same as from Boston to\nMinneapolis, and it could be done comfortably in 10 or 12 hours' flying.\nI proposed to the Handley Page Company that they should arrange this for\nme. They explained that they had no power to fly beyond Amsterdam in\nHolland; thence it might be possible to get a German plane to Hamburg,\nand thence again a Danish plane to Copenhagen--leaving about 500 miles\nwhich were too complicated politically to fly. Each stoppage would\ninvolve passport and other difficulties. In the end it took me five days\nto get to Reval and seven days to get back. In Europe, with its present\nfrontiers, flying is not worth having. It can never be worth having--it\ncan never be worked successfully--until it is worked as at least a\npan-European affair.\n\nAll these are the normal inconveniences of the national divisions of\nEurope in peace time. By themselves they are strangling all hope of\neconomic recovery. For Europe is _not_ getting on to its feet\neconomically. Only a united effort can effect that. But along each of\nthe ridiculously restricted frontiers into which the European countries\nare packed, lies also the possibility of war. National independence\nmeans the right to declare war. And so each of these packed and\nstrangulated European countries is obliged, by its blessed independence,\nto maintain as big an army and as big a military equipment as its\nbankrupt condition--for we are all bankrupt--permits.\n\nSince the end of the Great War, nothing has been done of any real value\nto ensure any European country against the threat of war, and nothing\nwill be done, and nothing can be done to lift that threat, so long as\nthe idea of national independence overrides all other considerations.\n\nAnd again, it is a little difficult for a mind accustomed to American\nconditions, to realize what modern war will mean in Europe.\n\nNot one of these sovereign European states I have named between London\nand Warsaw is any larger than the one single American state of Texas,\nand not one has a capital that cannot be effectively bombed by aeroplane\nraiders from its frontier within five or six hours of a declaration of\nwar. We can fly from London to Paris in two or three hours. And the\naerial bombs of to-day, I can assure you, will make the biggest bombs of\n1918 seem like little crackers. Over all these European countries broods\nthis immediate threat of a warfare that will strain and torment the\nnerves of every living man, woman or child in the countries affected.\nNothing of the sort can approach the American citizen except after a\nlong warning. The worst war that could happen to any North American\ncountry would merely touch its coasts.\n\nNow I have dwelt on these differences between America and Europe because\nthey involve an absolute difference in outlook towards world peace\nprojects, towards leagues of nations, world states and the like, between\nthe American and the European.\n\nThe American lives in a political unity on the big modern scale. He can\ngo on comfortably for a hundred years yet before he begins to feel tight\nin his political skin, and before he begins to feel the threat of\nimmediate warfare close to his domestic life. He believes by experience\nin peace, but he feels under no passionate urgency to organize it. So\nfar as he himself is concerned, he has got peace organized for a good\nlong time ahead. I doubt if it would make any very serious difference\nfor some time in the ordinary daily life of Kansas City, let us say, if\nall Europe were reduced to a desert in the next five years.\n\nBut on the other hand, the intelligent European is up against the unity\nof Europe problem night and day. Europe cannot go on. European\ncivilization cannot go on, unless that net of boundaries which strangles\nher is dissolved away. The difficulties created by language differences,\nby bitter national traditions, by bad political habits and the like, are\nno doubt stupendous. But stupendous though they are, they have to be\nfaced. Unless they are overcome, and overcome in a very few years,\nEurope--entangled in this net of boundaries, and under a perpetual fear\nof war, will, I am convinced, follow Russia and slide down beyond any\nhope of recovery into a process of social dissolution as profound and\ndisastrous as that which closed the career of the Western Roman Empire.\n\nThe American intelligence and the European intelligence approach this\nquestion of a world peace, therefore, from an entirely different angle\nand in an entirely different spirit. To the American in the blessed ease\nof his great unbroken territory, it seems a matter simply of making his\nown ample securities world-wide by treaties of arbitration and such-like\nsimple agreements. And my impression is that he thinks of Europeans as\nliving under precisely similar conditions.\n\nNothing of that sort will meet the problem of the Old World. The\nEuropean situation is altogether more intense and tragic than the\nAmerican. Europe needs not treaties but a profound change in its\npolitical ideas and habits. Europe is saturated with narrow patriotism\nlike a body saturated by some evil inherited disease. She is haunted by\nnarrow ambitions and ancient animosities.\n\nIt is because of this profound difference of situation and outlook that\nI am convinced of the impossibility of any common political co-operation\nto organize a world peace between America and Europe at the present\ntime.\n\nThe American type of state and the European type of state are different\nthings, incapable of an effectual alliance; the steam tractor and the ox\ncannot plough this furrow together. American thought, American\nindividuals, may no doubt play a very great part in the task of\nreconstruction that lies before Europe, but not the American federal\ngovernment as a sovereign state among equal states.\n\nThe United States constitute a state on a different scale and level from\nany old world state. Patriotism and the national idea in America is a\ndifferent thing and a bigger scale thing than the patriotism and\nnational idea in any old world state.\n\nAny League of Nations aiming at stability now, would necessarily be a\nleague seeking to stereotype existing boundaries and existing national\nideas. Now these boundaries and these ideas are just what have to be got\nrid of at any cost. Before Europe can get on to a level and on to equal\nterms with the United States, the European communities have to go\nthrough a process that America went through--under much easier\nconditions--a century and a half ago. They have to repeat, on a much\ngreater scale and against profounder prejudices, the feat of\nunderstanding and readjustment that was accomplished by the American\npeople between 1781 and 1788.\n\nAs you will all remember, these States after they had decided upon\nIndependence, framed certain Articles of Confederation; they were\narticles of confederation between thirteen nations, between the people\nof Massachusetts, the people of Virginia, the people of Georgia, and so\nforth--thirteen distinct and separate sovereign peoples. They made a\nUnion so lax and feeble that it could neither keep order at home nor\nmaintain respect abroad. Then they produced another constitution. They\nswept aside all that talk about the people of Massachusetts, the people\nof Virginia, and the rest of their thirteen nations. They based their\nunion on a wider idea: the people of the United States.\n\nNow Europe, if it is not to sink down to anarchy, has to do a parallel\nthing. If Europe is to be saved from ultimate disaster, Europe has to\nstop thinking in terms of the people of France, the people of England,\nthe people of Germany, the French, the British, the Germans, and so\nforth. Europe has to think at least of the people of Europe, if not of\nthe civilized people of the world. If we Europeans cannot bring our\nminds to that, there is no hope for us. Only by thinking of all peoples\ncan any people be saved in Europe. Fresh wars will destroy the social\nfabric of Europe, and Europe will perish as nations, fighting.\n\nThere are many people who think that there is at least one political\nsystem in the old world which, like the United States, is large enough\nand world wide enough to go on by itself under modern conditions for\nsome considerable time. They think that the British Empire can, as it\nwere, stand out of the rest of the Old World as a self-sufficient\nsystem. They think that it can stand out freely as the United States can\nstand out, and that these two English-speaking powers have merely to\nagree together to dominate and keep the peace of the world.\n\nLet me give a little attention to this idea. It is I believe a wrong\nidea, and one that may be very disastrous to our common English-speaking\nculture if it is too fondly cherished.\n\nThere can be no denying that the British Imperial system is a system\ndifferent in its nature and size from a typical European state, from a\nstate of the horse and road scale, like France, let us say, or Germany.\nAnd equally it is with the United States a new growth. The present\nBritish Empire is indeed a newer growth than the United States. But\nwhile the United States constitute a homogeneous system and grow more\nhomogeneous, the British Empire is heterogeneous and shows little or no\nassimilative power. And while the United States are all gathered\ntogether and are still very remote from any serious antagonist, the\nBritish Empire is scattered all over the world, entangled with and\nstressed against a multitude of possible antagonists.\n\nI have been arguing that the size and manageability of all political\nstates is finally a matter of transport and communications. They grow to\na limit strictly determined by these considerations. Beyond that limit\nthey are unstable. Let us now apply these ideas to the British Empire.\n\nI have shown that the great system of the United States is the creation\nof the river steamboat and the railway. Quite as much so is the present\nBritish Empire the creation of the ocean-going steamship--protected by a\ngreat navy.\n\nThe British Empire is a modern ocean state just as the United States is\na modern continental state. The political and economic cohesion of the\nBritish Empire rests upon this one thing, upon the steamship remaining\nthe dominant and secure means of world transport in the future. If the\nBritish Empire is to remain sovereign and secure and independent of the\napproval and co-operation of other states, it is necessary that\nsteamship transport (ocean transport) should remain dominant in peace\nand invulnerable in war.\n\nWell, that brings us face to face with two comparatively new facts that\nthrow a shadow upon both that predominance and upon that\ninvulnerability. One is air transport; the other the submarine. The\npossibilities of the ocean-going submarine I will not enlarge upon now.\nThey will be familiar to everyone who followed the later phases of the\nGreat War.\n\nIt must be clear that sea power is no longer the simple and decisive\nthing it was before the coming of the submarine. The sea ways can no\nlonger be taken and possessed completely. To no other power, except\nJapan, is this so grave a consideration as it is to Britain.\n\nAnd if we turn to the possibilities of air-transport in the future we\nare forced towards the same conclusion, that the security of the British\nEmpire must rest in the future not on its strength in warfare, but on\nits keeping the peace within and without its boundaries.\n\nI was a member of the British Civil Air Transport Committee, and we went\nwith care and thoroughness into the possibilities and probabilities of\nthe air. My work on that committee convinced me that in the near future\nthe air may be the chief if not the only highway for long-distance\nmails, for long-distance passenger traffic, and for the carriage of most\nvaluable and compact commodities. The ocean ways are likely to be only\nthe ways for slow travel and for staple and bulky trade.\n\nAnd my studies on that committee did much to confirm my opinion that in\nquite a brief time the chief line of military attack will be neither by\nsea nor land but through the air. Moreover, it was borne in upon me that\nthe chief air routes of the world will lie over the great plains of the\nworld, that they will cross wide stretches of sea or mountainous country\nonly very reluctantly.\n\nNow think of how the British Empire lies with relation to the great sea\nand land masses of the world. There has been talk in Great Britain of\nwhat people have called \"all-red air routes,\" that is to say,\nall-British air routes. There are no all-red air routes. You cannot get\nout of Britain to any other parts of the Empire, unless perhaps it is\nCanada, without crossing foreign territory. That is a fact that British\npeople have to face and digest, and the sooner they grasp it the better\nfor them. Britain cannot use air ways even to develop her commerce in\npeace time without the consent and co-operation of a large number of her\nintervening neighbours. If she embarks single-handed on any considerable\nwar she will find both her air and her sea communications almost\ncompletely cut.\n\nAnd so the British Empire, in spite of its size and its modernity, is\nnot much better off now in the way of standing alone than the other\nEuropean countries. It is no exception to our generalization that (apart\nfrom all other questions) the scale and form of the European states are\nout of harmony with contemporary and developing transport conditions,\nand that all these powers are, if only on this account, under one urgent\nnecessity to sink those ideas of complete independence that have\nhitherto dominated them. It is a life and death necessity. If they\ncannot obey it they will all be destroyed.\n\n\n\n\nIII\n\nTHE ENLARGEMENT OF PATRIOTISM TO A WORLD STATE\n\n\nIn my opening argument I have shown the connexion between the present\nintense political troubles of the world and more particularly of Europe,\nand the advance in mechanical knowledge during the past hundred and\nfifty years. I have shown that without a very drastic readjustment of\npolitical ideas and habits, there opens before Europe and the world\ngenerally, a sure prospect of degenerative conflicts; that without such\na readjustment, our civilization has passed its zenith and must continue\nthe process of collapse that has been in progress since August, 1914.\n\nNow this readjustment means an immediate conflict with existing\npatriotism. We have embarked here upon a discussion in which emotion and\npassion seem quite unavoidable, the discussion of nationality. At the\nvery outset we bump violently against patriotism as any European\nunderstands that word. And it is, I hold, impossible not to bump against\nEuropean patriotisms. We cannot temporize with patriotism, as one finds\nit in Europe, and get on towards a common human welfare. The two things\nare flatly opposed. One or other must be sacrificed. The political and\nsocial muddle of Europe at the present time is very largely due to the\nattempt to compromise between patriotism and the common good of Europe.\n\nDo we want to get rid of patriotism altogether?\n\nI do not think we want to get rid of patriotism, and I do not think we\ncould, even if we wanted to do so. It seems to be necessary to his moral\nlife, that a man should feel himself part of a community, belonging to\nit, and it belonging to him. And that this community should be a single\nand lovable reality, inspired by a common idea, with a common fashion\nand aim.\n\nBut a point I have been trying to bring out throughout all this argument\nso far is this--that when a European goes to the United States of\nAmerica he finds a new sort of state, materially bigger and materially\nless encumbered than any European state. And he also finds an intensely\npatriotic people whose patriotism isn't really the equivalent of a\nEuropean patriotism. It is historically and practically a synthesis of\nEuropean patriotisms. It is numerically bigger. It is geographically ten\ntimes as big. That is very important indeed from the point of view of\nthis discussion. And it is synthetic; it is a thing made out of\nsomething smaller. People, I believe, talk of 100 per cent. Americans.\nThere is no 100 per cent. American except the Red Indian. There isn't a\nwhite man in the United States from whose blood a large factor of\nEuropean patriotism hasn't been washed out to make way for his American\npatriotism.\n\nUpon this fact of American patriotism, as a larger different thing than\nEuropean patriotism, I build. The thing can be done. If it can be done\nin the Europeans and their descendants who have come to America, it can\nconceivably be done in the Europeans who abide in Europe. And how can we\nset about doing it?\n\nAmerica, the silent, comprehensive continent of America, did the thing\nby taking all the various nationalities who have made up her population\nand obliging them to live together.\n\nUnhappily we cannot take the rest of our European nations now and put\nthem on to a great virgin continent to learn a wider political wisdom.\nThere are no more virgin continents. Europe must stay where she is....\n\nNow I am told it sometimes helps scientific men to clear up their ideas\nabout a process by imagining that process reversed and so getting a view\nof it from a different direction. Let us then, for a few moments,\ninstead of talking of the expansion and synthesis of patriotism in\nEurope, imagine a development of narrow patriotism in America and\nconsider how that case could be dealt with.\n\nSuppose, for instance, there was a serious outbreak of local patriotism\nin Kentucky. Suppose you found the people of Kentucky starting a flag of\ntheir own and objecting to what they would probably call the \"vague\ninternationalism\" of the stars and stripes. Suppose you found them\nwanting to set up tariff barriers to the trade of the states round about\nthem. Suppose you found they were preparing to annex considerable parts\nof the state of Virginia by force, in order to secure a proper strategic\nfrontier among the mountains to the east, and that they were also\ntalking darkly of their need for an outlet to the sea of their very own.\n\nWhat would an American citizen think of such an outbreak? He would\nprobably think that Kentucky had gone mad. But this, which seems such\nfantastic behaviour when we imagine it occurring in Kentucky, is exactly\nwhat is happening in Europe in the case of little states that are hardly\nany larger than Kentucky. They have always been so. They have not gone\nmad; if this sort of thing is madness then they were born mad. And they\nhave never been cured. A state of affairs that is regarded in Europe as\nnormal would be regarded in the United States as a grave case of local\nmental trouble.\n\nAnd what would the American community probably do in such a case? It\nwould probably begin by inquiring where Kentucky had got these strange\nideas. They would look for sources of infection. Somebody must have been\npreaching there or writing in the newspapers or teaching mischief in the\nschool. And I suppose the people of the United States would set\nthemselves very earnestly to see that sounder sense was talked and\ntaught to the people of Kentucky about these things.\n\nNow that is precisely what has to be done in the parallel European case.\nEverywhere in Europe there goes on in the national schools, in the\npatriotic churches, in the national presses, in the highly nationalized\nliteratures, a unity-destroying propaganda of patriotism. The schools of\nall the European countries at the present time with scarcely an\nexception, teach the most rancid patriotism; they are centres of an\nabominable political infection. The children of Europe grow up with an\nintensity of national egotism that makes them, for all practical\ninternational purposes, insane. They are not born with it, but they are\ninfected with it as soon as they can read and write. The British learn\nnothing but the glories of Britain and the British Empire; the French\nare, if possible, still more insanely concentrated on France; the\nGermans are just recovering from the bitter consequences of forty years\nof intensive nationalist education. And so on. Every country in Europe\nis its own _Sinn Fein_, cultivating that ugly and silly obsession of\n\"ourselves alone.\" \"Ourselves alone\" is the sure guide to conflict and\ndisaster, to want, misery, violence, degradation and death for our\nchildren and our children's children--until our race is dead.\n\nThe first task before us in Europe is, at any cost, to release our\nchildren from this nationalist obsession, to teach the mass of European\npeople a little truthful history in which each one will see the past\nand future of his own country in their proper proportions, and a little\ntruthful ethnology in which each country will get over the delusion that\nits people are a distinct and individual race. The history teaching in\nthe schools of Europe is at the very core of this business.\n\nBut that is only, so to speak, the point of application of great complex\ninfluences, the influences that mould us in childhood, the teachings of\nliterature, of the various religious bodies, and the daily reiteration\nof the press. Before Europe can get on, there has to be a colossal\nturnover of these moral and intellectual forces in the direction of\ncreating an international mind. If that can be effected then there is\nhope for Europe and the Old World. If it cannot be effected, then\ncertainly Europe will go down--with its flags nailed to its masts. We\nare on a sinking ship that only one thing can save. We have to oust\nthese European patriotisms by some greater idea or perish.\n\nWhat is this greater idea to be?\n\nNow I submit that this greater idea had best be the idea of the World\nState of All Mankind.\n\nI will admit that so far I have made a case only for teaching the idea\nof a United States of Europe in Europe. I have concentrated our\nattention upon that region of maximum congestion and conflict. But as a\nmatter of fact there are no real and effective barriers and boundaries\nin the Old World between Europe and Asia and Africa. The ordinary\nRussian talks of \"Europe\" as one who is outside it. The European\npolitical systems flow over and have always overflowed into the greater\nareas to the east and south. Remember the early empires of Macedonia and\nRome. See how the Russian language runs to the Pacific, and how Islam\nradiates into all three continents. I will not elaborate this case.\n\nWhen you bear such things in mind, I think you will agree with me that\nif we are to talk of a United States of Europe, it is just as easy and\npracticable to talk of a United States of the Old World. And are we to\nstop at a United States of the Old World?\n\nNo doubt the most evident synthetic forces in America at the present\ntime point towards some sort of pan-American unification. That is the\nnearest thing. That may come first.\n\nBut are we to contemplate a sort of dual world--the New World against\nthe Old?\n\nI do not think that would be any very permanent or satisfactory\nstopping-place. Why make two bites at a planet? If we work for unity on\nthe large scale we are contemplating, we may as well work for world\nunity.\n\nNot only in distance but in a score of other matters are London and Rome\nnearer to New York than is Patagonia, and San Francisco is always likely\nto be more interesting to Japan than Paris or Madrid. I cannot see any\nreason for supposing that the mechanical drawing together of the\npeoples of the world into one economic and political unity is likely to\ncease--unless our civilization ceases. I see no signs that our present\nfacilities for transport and communication are the ultimate possible\nfacilities. Once we break away from current nationalist limitations in\nour political ideas, then there is no reason and no advantage in\ncontemplating any halfway house to a complete human unity.\n\nNow after what I have been saying it is very easy to explain why I would\nhave this idea of human unity put before people's minds in the form of a\nWorld State and not of a League of Nations.\n\nLet me first admit the extraordinary educational value of the League of\nNations propaganda, and of the attempt that has been made to create a\nLeague of Nations. It has brought before the general intelligence of the\nworld the proposition of a world law and a world unity that could not\nperhaps have been broached in any other way.\n\nBut is it a league of nations that is wanted?\n\nI submit to you that the word \"nations\" is just the word that should\nhave been avoided--that it admits and tends to stereotype just those\nconceptions of division and difference that we must at any cost minimize\nand obliterate if our species is to continue. And the phrase has a thin\nand legal and litigious flavour. What loyalty and what devotion can we\nexpect this multiple association to command? It has no unity--no\npersonality. It is like asking a man to love the average member of a\nwoman's club instead of loving his wife.\n\nFor the idea of Man, for human unity, for our common blood, for the one\norder of the world, I can imagine men living and dying, but not for a\nmiscellaneous assembly that will not mix--even in its name. It has no\ncentral idea, no heart to it, this League of Nations formula. It is weak\nand compromising just where it should be strong--in defining its\nantagonism to separate national sovereignty. For that is what it aims\nat, if it means business. If it means business it means at least a\nsuper-state overriding the autonomy of existing states, and if it does\nnot mean business then we have no use for it whatever.\n\nIt may seem a much greater undertaking to attack nationality and\nnationalism instead of patching up a compromise with these things, but\nalong the line of independent nationality lies no hope of unity and\npeace and continuing progress for mankind. We cannot suffer these old\nconcentrations of loyalty because we want that very loyalty which now,\nconcentrates upon them to cement and sustain the peace of all the world.\nJust as in the past provincial patriotisms have given place to national\npatriotisms, so now we need to oust these still too narrow devotions by\na new unity and a new reigning idea, the idea of one state and one flag\nin all the earth.\n\nThe idea of the World State stands to the idea of the League of Nations\nmuch as the idea of the one God of Earth and Heaven stands to a Divine\nCommittee composed of Wodin and Baal and Jupiter and Amon Ra and Mumbo\nJumbo and all the other national and tribal gods. There is no compromise\npossible in the one matter as in the other. There is no way round. The\ntask before mankind is to substitute the one common idea of an\noverriding world commonweal for the multitudinous ideas of little\ncommonweals that prevail everywhere to-day. We have already glanced at\nthe near and current consequences of our failure to bring about that\nsubstitution.\n\nNow this is an immense proposal. Is it a preposterous one? Let us not\nshirk the tremendous scale upon which the foundations of a world state\nof all mankind must be laid. But remember, however great that task\nbefore us may seem, however near it may come to the impossible,\nnevertheless, in the establishment of one world rule and one world law\nlies the only hope of escape from an increasing tangle of wars, from\nsocial overstrain, and at last a social dissolution so complete as to\nend for ever the tale of mankind as we understand mankind.\n\nPersonally I am appalled by the destruction already done in the world in\nthe past seven years. I doubt if any untravelled American can realize\nhow much of Europe is already broken up. I do not think many people\nrealize how swiftly Europe is still sinking, how urgent it is to get\nEuropean affairs put back upon a basis of the common good if\ncivilization is to be saved.\n\nAnd now, as to the immensity of this project of substituting loyalty to\na world commonweal for loyalty to a single egotistical belligerent\nnation. It is a project to invade hundreds of millions of minds, to\nattack certain ideas established in those minds and either to efface\nthose ideas altogether or to supplement and correct them profoundly by\nthis new idea of a human commonweal. We have to get not only into the at\npresent intensely patriotic minds of Frenchmen, Germans, English, Irish\nand Japanese, but into the remote and difficult minds of Arabs and\nIndians and into the minds of the countless millions of China. Is there\nany precedent to justify us in hoping that such a change in world ideas\nis possible?\n\nI think there is. I would suggest that the general tendency of thought\nabout these things to-day is altogether too sceptical of what teaching\nand propaganda can do in these matters. In the past there have been very\ngreat changes in human thought. I need scarcely remind you of the spread\nof Christianity in Western Europe. In a few centuries the whole of\nWestern Europe was changed from the wild confusion of warring tribes\nthat succeeded the breakdown of the Roman Empire, into the unity of\nChristendom, into a community with such an idea of unity that it could\nbe roused from end to end by the common idea of the Crusades.\n\nStill more remarkable was the swift transformation in less than a\ncentury of all the nations and peoples to the south and west of the\nMediterranean, from Spain to Central Asia, into the unity of Islam, a\nunity which has lasted to this day. In both these cases, what I may call\nthe mental turnover was immense.\n\nI think if you will consider the spread of these very complex and\ndifficult religions, and compare the means at the disposal of their\npromoters with the means at the disposal of intelligent people to-day,\nyou will find many reasons for believing that a recasting of people's\nideas into the framework of a universal state is by no means an\nimpossible project.\n\nThose great teachings of the past were spread largely by word of mouth.\nTheir teachers had to travel slowly and dangerously. People were\ngathered together to hear with great difficulty, except in a few crowded\ntowns. Books could be used only sparingly. Few people could read, fewer\nstill could translate, and MSS. were copied with extreme slowness upon\nparchment. There was no printing, no paper, no post. And except for a\nvery few people there were no schools. Both Christendom and Islam had to\ncreate their common schools in order to preserve even a minimum of their\ndoctrine intact from generation to generation. All this was done in the\nteeth of much bitter opposition and persecution.\n\nNow to-day we have means of putting ideas and arguments swiftly and\neffectively before people all over the world at the same time, such as\nno one could have dreamt of a hundred years ago. We have not only books\nand papers, but in the cinema we have a means of rapid, vivid\npresentation still hardly used. We have schools nearly everywhere. And\nhere in the need for an overruling world state, and the idea of world\nservice replacing combative patriotism, we have an urgent, a commanding\nhuman need. We have an invincible case for this world state and an\nunanswerable objection to the nationalisms and patriotisms that would\noppose it.\n\nIs it not almost inevitable that some of us should get together and\nbegin a propaganda upon modern lines of this organized world peace,\nwithout which our race must perish? The world perishes for the want of a\ncommon political idea. It is still quite possible to give the world this\ncommon political idea, the idea of a federal world state. We cannot help\nbut set about doing it.\n\nSo I put it to you that the most important work before men and women\nto-day is the preaching and teaching, the elaboration and then at last\nthe realization of this Project of the World State. We have to create a\nvision of it, to make it seem first a possibility and then an\napproaching reality. This is a task that demands the work and thought of\nthousands of minds. We have to spread the idea of a Federal World State,\nas an approaching reality, throughout the world. We can do this nowadays\nthrough a hundred various channels. We can do it through the press,\nthrough all sorts of literary expression, in our schools, colleges, and\nuniversities, through political mouthpieces, by special organizations,\nand last, but not least, through the teaching of the churches. For\nremember that all the great religions of the world are in theory\nuniversalist; they may tolerate the divisions of men but they cannot\nsanction them. We propose no religious revolution, but at most a\nreligious revival. We can spread ideas and suggestions now with a\nhundred times the utmost rapidity of a century ago.\n\nThis movement need not at once intervene in politics. It is a\nprospective movement, and its special concern will be with young and\nstill growing minds. But as it spreads it will inevitably change\npolitics. The nations, states, and kingdoms of to-day, which fight and\nscheme against each other as though they had to go on fighting and\nscheming for ever, will become more and more openly and manifestly\nmerely guardian governments, governments playing a waiting part in the\nworld, while the world state comes of age. For this World State, for\nwhich the world is waiting, must necessarily be a fusion of all\ngovernments, and heir to all the empires.\n\nSo far I have been occupied by establishing a case for the World State.\nIt has been, I fear, rather an abstract discussion. I have kept closely\nto the bare hard logic of the present human situation.\n\nBut now let me attempt very briefly, in the barest outline, some\nconcrete realization of what a World State would mean. Let us try and\nconceive for ourselves the form a World State would take. I do not care\nto leave this discussion with nothing to it but a phrase which is really\nhardly more than a negative phrase until we put some body to it. As it\nstands World State means simply a politically undivided world. Let us\ntry and carry that over to the idea of a unified organized state\nthroughout the world.\n\nLet us try to imagine what a World Government would be like. I find that\nwhen one speaks of a World State people think at once of some existing\ngovernment and magnify it to world proportions. They ask, for example,\nwhere will the World Congress meet; and how will you elect your World\nPresident? Won't your World President, they say, be rather a tremendous\npersonage? How are we to choose him? Or will there be a World King?\nThese are very natural questions, at the first onset. But are they sound\nquestions? May they not be a little affected by false analogies? The\ngoverning of the whole of the world may turn out to be _not_ a magnified\nversion of governing a part of the world, but a different sort of job\naltogether. These analogies that people draw so readily from national\nstates may not really work in a world state.\n\nAnd first with regard to this question of a king or president. Let us\nask whether it is probable that the world state will have any single\npersonal head at all?\n\nIs the world state likely to be a monarchy--either an elective short\nterm limited monarchy such as is the United States, or an inherited\nlimited monarchy like the British Empire?\n\nMany people will say, you _must_ have a head of the state. But _must_\nyou? Is not this idea a legacy from the days when states were small\ncommunities needing a leader in war and diplomacy?\n\nIn the World State we must remember there will be no war--and no\ndiplomacy as such.\n\nI would even question whether in such a great modern state as the U.S.A.\nthe idea and the functions of the president may not be made too\nimportant. Indeed I believe that question has been asked by many people\nin the States lately, and has been answered in the affirmative.\n\nThe broad lines of the United States constitution were drawn in a period\nof almost universal monarchy. American affairs were overshadowed by the\npersonality of George Washington, and as you know, monarchist ideas were\nso rife that there was a project, during the years of doubt and division\nthat followed the War of Independence, for importing a German King, a\nPrussian Prince, in imitation of the British Monarchy. But if the United\nStates were beginning again to-day on its present scale, would it put so\nmuch power and importance upon a single individual as it put upon George\nWashington and his successors in the White House? I doubt it very much.\n\nThere may be a limit, I suggest, to the size and complexity of a\ncommunity that can be directed by a single personal head. Perhaps that\nlimit may have been passed by both the United States and by the British\nEmpire at the present time. It may be possible for one person to be\nleader and to have an effect of directing personality in a community of\nmillions or even of tens of millions. But is it possible for one small\nshort-lived individual to get over and affect and make any sort of\ncontact with hundreds of millions in thousands of towns and cities?\n\nRecently we have watched with admiration and sympathy the heroic efforts\nof the Prince of Wales to shake hands with and get his smile well home\ninto the hearts of the entire population of the British Empire of which\nhe is destined to become the \"golden link.\" After tremendous exertions a\nvery large amount of the ground still remains to be covered.\n\nI will confess I cannot see any single individual human head in my\nvision of the World State.\n\nThe linking reality of the World State is much more likely to be not an\nindividual but an idea--such an idea as that of a human commonweal under\nthe God of all mankind.\n\nIf at any time, for any purpose, some one individual had to step out and\nact for the World State as a whole, then I suppose the senior judges of\nthe Supreme Court, or the Speaker of the Council, or the head of the\nAssociated Scientific Societies, or some such person, could step out\nand do what had to be done.\n\nBut if there is to be no single head person, there must be at least some\nsort of assembly or council. That seems to be necessary. But will it be\na gathering at all like Congress or the British Parliament, with a\nGovernment side and an opposition ruled by party traditions and party\nideas?\n\nThere again, I think we may be too easily misled by existing but\ntemporary conditions. I do not think it is necessary to assume that the\ncouncil of the World State will be an assembly of party politicians. I\nbelieve it will be possible to have it a real gathering of\nrepresentatives, a fair sample of the thought and will of mankind at\nlarge, and to avoid a party development by a more scientific method of\nvoting than the barbaric devices used for electing representatives to\nCongress or the British Parliament, devices that play directly into the\nhands of the party organizer who trades upon the defects of political\nmethod.\n\nWill this council be directly elected? That, I think, may be found to be\nessential. And upon a very broad franchise. Because, _firstly_, it is\nbefore all things important that every adult in the world should feel a\ndirect and personal contact between himself and the World State, and\nthat he is an assenting and participating citizen of the world; and\n_secondly_, because if your council is appointed by any intermediate\nbody, all sorts of local and national considerations, essential in the\nbusiness of the subordinate body, will get in the way of a simple and\ndirect regard for the world commonweal.\n\nAnd as to this council: Will it have great debates and wonderful scenes\nand crises and so forth--the sort of thing that looks well in a large\nhistorical painting? There again we may be easily misled by analogy. One\nconsideration that bars the way to anything of that sort is that its\nmembers will have no common language which they will be all able to\nspeak with the facility necessary for eloquence. Eloquence is far more\nadapted to the conditions of a Red Indian pow-wow than to the ordering\nof large and complicated affairs. The World Council may be a very\ntaciturn assembly. It may even meet infrequently. Its members may\ncommunicate their views largely by _notes_ which may have to be very\nclear and explicit, because they will have to stand translation, and\nshort--to escape neglect.\n\nAnd what will be the chief organs and organizations and works and\nmethods with which this Council of the World State will be concerned?\n\nThere will be a Supreme Court determining _not_ International Law, but\nWorld Law. There will be a growing Code of World Law.\n\nThere will be a world currency.\n\nThere will be a ministry of posts, transport and communications\ngenerally.\n\nThere will be a ministry of trade in staple products and for the\nconservation and development of the natural resources of the earth.\n\nThere will be a ministry of social and labour conditions.\n\nThere will be a ministry of world health.\n\nThere will be a ministry, the most important ministry of all, watching\nand supplementing national educational work and taking up the care and\nstimulation of backward communities.\n\nAnd instead of a War Office and Naval and Military departments, there\nwill be a _Peace Ministry_ studying the belligerent possibilities of\nevery new invention, watching for armed disturbances everywhere, and\nhaving complete control of every armed force that remains in the world.\nAll these world ministries will be working in co-operation with local\nauthorities who will apply world-wide general principles to local\nconditions.\n\nThese items probably comprehend everything that the government of a\nWorld State would have to do. Much of its activity would be merely the\nco-ordination and adjustment of activities already very thoroughly\ndiscussed and prepared for it by local and national discussions. I think\nit will be a mistake for us to assume that the work of a world\ngovernment will be vaster and more complex than that of such governments\nas those of the United States or the British Empire. In many respects it\nwill have an enormously simplified task. There will be no foreign enemy,\nno foreign competition, no tariffs, so far as it is concerned, or tariff\nwars. It will be keeping order; it will not be carrying on a contest.\nThere will be no necessity for secrecy; it will not be necessary to have\na Cabinet plotting and planning behind closed doors; there will be no\ngeneral policy except a steady attention to the common welfare. Even the\nprimary origin of a World Council must necessarily be different from\nthat of any national government. Every existing government owes its\nbeginnings to force and is in its fundamental nature militant. It is an\noffensive-defensive organ. This fact saturates our legal and social\ntradition more than one realizes at first. There is, about civil law\neverywhere, a faint flavour of a relaxed state of siege. But a world\ngovernment will arise out of different motives and realize a different\nideal. It will be primarily an organ for keeping the peace.\n\nAnd now perhaps we may look at this project of a World State mirrored in\nthe circumstances of the life of one individual citizen. Let us consider\nvery briefly the life of an ordinary young man living in a World State\nand consider how it would differ from a commonplace life to-day.\n\nHe will have been born in some one of the United States of the World--in\nNew York or California, or Ontario or New Zealand, or Portugal or France\nor Bengal or Shan-si; but wherever his lot may fall, the first history\nhe will learn will be the wonderful history of mankind, from its nearly\nanimal beginnings, a few score thousand years ago, with no tools, but\nimplements of chipped stone and hacked wood, up to the power and\nknowledge of our own time. His education will trace for him the\nbeginnings of speech, of writing, of cultivation and settlement.\n\nHe will learn of the peoples and nations of the past, and how each one\nhas brought its peculiar gifts and its distinctive contribution to the\naccumulating inheritance of our race.\n\nHe will know, perhaps, less of wars, battles, conquests, massacres,\nkings and the like unpleasant invasions of human dignity and welfare,\nand he will know more of explorers, discoverers and stout outspoken men\nthan our contemporary citizen.\n\nWhile he is still a little boy, he will have the great outlines of the\nhuman adventure brought home to his mind by all sorts of vivid methods\nof presentation, such as the poor poverty-struck schools of our own time\ncannot dream of employing.\n\nAnd on this broad foundation he will build up his knowledge of his own\nparticular state and nation and people, learning not tales of ancient\ngrievances and triumphs and revenges, but what his particular race and\ncountryside have given and what it gives and may be expected to give to\nthe common welfare of the world. On such foundations his social\nconsciousness will be built.\n\nHe will learn an outline of all that mankind knows and of the\nfascinating realms of half knowledge in which man is still struggling to\nknow. His curiosity and his imagination will be roused and developed.\n\nHe will probably be educated continuously at least until he is eighteen\nor nineteen, and perhaps until he is two or three and twenty. For a\nworld that wastes none of its resources upon armaments or soldiering,\nand which produces whatever it wants in the regions best adapted to that\nproduction, and delivers them to the consumer by the directest route,\nwill be rich enough not only to spare the first quarter of everybody's\nlife for education entirely, but to keep on with some education\nthroughout the whole lifetime.\n\nOf course the school to which our young citizen of the world will go\nwill be very different from the rough and tumble schools of to-day,\nunderstaffed with underpaid assistants, and having bare walls. It will\nhave benefited by some of the intelligence and wealth we lavish to-day\non range-finders and submarines.\n\nEven a village school will be in a beautiful little building costing as\nmuch perhaps as a big naval gun or a bombing-aeroplane costs to-day. I\nknow this will sound like shocking extravagance to many contemporary\nhearers, but in the World State the standards will be different.\n\nI don't know whether any of us really grasp what we are saying when we\ntalk of greater educational efficiency in the future. That means--if it\nmeans anything--teaching more with much less trouble. It will mean, for\ninstance, that most people will have three or four languages properly\nlearnt; that they will think about things mathematical with a quickness\nand clearness that puzzles us; that about all sorts of things their\nminds will move in daylight where ours move in a haze of ignorance or in\nan emotional fog.\n\nThis clear-headed, broad-thinking young citizen of the World State will\nnot be given up after his educational years to a life of toil--there\nwill be very little toil left in the world. Mankind will have machines\nand power enough to do most of the toil for it. Why, between 1914 and\n1918 we blew away enough energy and destroyed enough machinery and\nturned enough good grey matter into stinking filth to release hundreds\nof millions of toilers from toil for ever!\n\nOur young citizen will choose some sort of interesting work--perhaps\ncreative work. And he will be free to travel about the whole world\nwithout a passport or visa, without a change of money; everywhere will\nbe his country; he will find people everywhere who will be endlessly\ndifferent, but none suspicious or hostile. Everywhere he will find\nbeautiful and distinctive cities, freely expressive of the spirit of the\nland in which they have arisen. Strange and yet friendly cities.\n\nThe world will be a far healthier place than it is now--for mankind as a\nwhole will still carry on organized wars--no longer wars of men against\nmen, but of men against malarias and diseases and infections. Probably\nhe will never know what a cold is, or a headache. He will be able to go\nthrough the great forests of the tropics without shivering with fever\nand without saturating himself with preventive drugs. He will go freely\namong great mountains; he will fly to the Poles of the earth if he\nchooses, and dive into the cold, now hidden, deep places of the sea.\n\nBut it is very difficult to fill in the picture of his adult life so\nthat it will seem real to our experience. It is hard to conceive and\nstill more difficult to convey. We live in this congested, bickering,\nelbowing, shoving world, and it has soaked into our natures and made us\na part of itself. Hardly any of us know what it is to be properly\neducated, and hardly any what it is to be in constant general good\nhealth.\n\nTo talk of what the world may be to most of us is like talking of baths\nand leisure and happy things to some poor hopeless, gin-soaked drudge in\na slum. The creature is so devitalized; the dirt is so ingrained, so\nmuch a second nature, that a bath really isn't attractive. Clean and\nbeautiful clothes sound like a mockery or priggishness. To talk of\nspacious and beautiful places only arouses a violent desire in the poor\nthing to get away somewhere and hide. In squalor and misery, quarrelling\nand fighting make a sort of nervous relief. To multitudes of slum-bred\npeople the prospect of no more fighting is a disagreeable prospect, a\ndull outlook.\n\nWell, all this world of ours may seem a slum to the people of a happier\nage. They will feel about our world just as we feel about the ninth or\ntenth century, when we read of its brigands and its insecurities, its\npestilences, its miserable housing, its abstinence from ablutions.\n\nBut our young citizen will not have been inured to our base world. He\nwill have little of our ingrained dirt in his mind and heart. He will\nlove. He will love beautifully. As most of us once hoped to do in our\nmore romantic moments. He will have ambitions--for the world state will\ngive great scope to ambition. He will work skilfully and brilliantly, or\nhe will administer public services, or he will be an able teacher, or a\nmental or physical physician, or he will be an interpretative or\ncreative artist; he may be a writer or a scientific investigator, he may\nbe a statesman in his state, or even a world statesman. If he is a\nstatesman he may be going up perhaps to the federal world congress. In\nthe year 2020 there will still be politics, but they will be great\npolitics. Instead of the world's affairs being managed in a score of\nforeign offices, all scheming meanly and cunningly against each other,\nall planning to thwart and injure each other, they will be managed under\nthe direction of an educated and organized common intelligence intent\nonly upon the common good.\n\nDear! Dear! Dear! Does it sound like rubbish to you? I suppose it does.\nYou think I am talking of a dreamland, of an unattainable Utopia?\nPerhaps I am! This dear, jolly old world of dirt, war, bankruptcy,\nmurder and malice, thwarted lives, wasted lives, tormented lives,\ngeneral ill health and a social decadence that spreads and deepens\ntowards a universal smash--how can we hope to turn it back from its\ncourse? How priggish and impracticable! How impertinent! How\npreposterous! I seem to hear a distant hooting....\n\nSometimes it seems to me that the barriers that separate man and man are\nnearly insurmountable and invincible, that we who talk of a world state\nnow are only the pioneers of a vast uphill struggle in the minds and\nhearts of men that may need to be waged for centuries--that may fail in\nthe end.\n\nSometimes again, in other moods, it seems to me that these barriers and\nnationalities and separations are so illogical, so much a matter of\ntradition, so plainly mischievous and cruel, that at any time we may\nfind the common sense of our race dissolving them away....\n\nWho can see into that darkest of all mysteries, the hearts and wills of\nmankind? It may be that it is well for us not to know of the many\ngenerations who will have to sustain this conflict.\n\nYes, that is one mood, and there is the other. Perhaps we fear too much.\nEven before our lives run out we may feel the dawn of a greater age\nperceptible among the black shadows and artificial glares of these\nunhappy years.\n\n\n\n\nIV\n\nTHE BIBLE OF CIVILIZATION\n\nPART ONE\n\n\nSec. 1\n\nIn my next two papers I am going to discuss and--what shall I\nsay?--experiment with an old but neglected idea, an idea that was first\nbroached I believe about the time when the State of Connecticut was\ncoming into existence and while New York was still the Dutch city of New\nAmsterdam.\n\nThe man who propounded this idea was a certain great Bohemian, Komensky,\nwho is perhaps better known in our western world by his Latinized name\nComenius. He professed himself the pupil of Bacon. He was the friend of\nMilton. He travelled from one European country to another with his\npolitical and educational ideas. For a time he thought of coming to\nAmerica. It is a great pity that he never came. And his idea, the\nparticular idea of his we are going to discuss, was the idea of a common\nbook, a book of history, science and wisdom, which should form the basis\nand framework for the thoughts and imaginations of every citizen in the\nworld.\n\nIn many ways the thinkers and writers of the early seventeenth century\nseem more akin to us and more sympathetic with the world of to-day, than\nany intervening group of literary figures. They strike us as having a\nlonger vision than the men of the eighteenth century, and as being\nbolder--and, how shall I put it?--more desperate in their thinking than\nthe nineteenth century minds. And this closer affinity to our own time\narises, I should think, directly and naturally, out of the closer\nresemblance of their circumstances. Between 1640 and 1650, just as in\nour present age, the world was tremendously unsettled and distressed. A\ncentury and more of expansion and prosperity had given place to a phase\nof conflict, exhaustion and entire political unsettlement. Britain was\ninvolved in the bitter political struggle that culminated in the\nexecution of King Charles I. Ireland was a land of massacre and\ncounter-massacre. The Thirty Years War in Central Europe was in its\nclosing, most dreadful stages of famine and plunder. In France the crown\nand the nobles were striving desperately for ascendancy in the War of\nthe Fronde. The Turk threatened Vienna. Nowhere in Western Europe did\nthere remain any secure and settled political arrangements. Everywhere\nthere was disorder, everywhere it seemed that anything might happen, and\nit is just those disordered and indeterminate times that are most\nfruitful of bold religious and social and political and educational\nspeculations and initiatives.\n\nThis was the period that produced the Quakers and a number of the most\nvigorous developments of Puritanism, in which the foundations of modern\nrepublicanism were laid, and in which the project of a world league of\nnations--or rather of a world state--received wide attention. And the\nstudent of Comenius will find in him an active and sensitive mind\nresponding with a most interesting similarity to our own responses, to\nthe similar conditions of his time. He has been distressed and\ndismayed--as most of us have been distressed and dismayed--by a rapid\ndevelopment of violence, by a great release of cruelty and suffering in\nhuman affairs. He felt none of the security that was felt in the\neighteenth and nineteenth centuries of the _certainty_ of progress. He\nrealized as we do that the outlook for humanity is a very dark and\nuncertain one unless human effort is stimulated and organized. He traced\nthe evils of his time to human discords and divisions, to our political\ndivisions, and the mutual misconceptions due to our diversity of\nlanguages and leading ideas. In all that he might be writing and\nthinking in 1921. And his proposed remedies find an echo in a number of\nour contemporary movements. He wanted to bring all nations to form one\nsingle state. He wanted to have a universal language as the common\nmedium of instruction and discussion, and he wanted to create a common\nBook of Necessary Knowledge, a sort of common basis of wisdom, for all\neducated men in the world.\n\nNow this last is the idea I would like to develop now. I would like to\ndiscuss whether our education--which nowadays in our modern states\nreaches everyone--whether our education can include and ought to include\nsuch a Book of Necessary Knowledge and Wisdom; and (having attempted to\nanswer that enquiry in the affirmative) I shall then attempt a sketch of\nsuch a book.\n\nBut to begin with perhaps I may meet an objection that is likely to\narise. I have called this hypothetical book of ours the Bible of\nCivilization, and it may be that someone will say: Yes, but you have a\nsufficient book of that sort already; you have the Bible itself and that\nis all you need. Well, I am taking the Bible as my model. I am taking it\nbecause twice in history--first as the Old Testament and then again as\nthe Old and New Testament together--it has formed a culture, and unified\nand kept together through many generations great masses of people. It\nhas been the basis of the Jewish and Christian civilizations alike. And\neven in the New World the State of Connecticut did, I believe, in its\nearliest beginnings take the Bible as its only law. Nevertheless, I hope\nI shall not offend any reader if I point out that the Bible is not all\nthat we need to-day, and that also in some respects it is redundant. Its\nvery virtues created its limitations. It served men so well that they\nmade a Canon of it and refused to alter it further. Throughout the most\nvital phases of Hebrew history, throughout the most living years of\nChristian development the Bible changed and grew. Then its growth ceased\nand its text became fixed. But the world went on growing and discovering\nnew needs and new necessities.\n\nLet me deal first with its redundancy. So far as redundancy goes, a\ngreat deal of the Book of Leviticus, for example, seems not vitally\nnecessary for the ordinary citizen of to-day; there are long explicit\ndirections for temple worship and sacrificial procedure. There is again,\nso far as the latter day citizen is concerned, an excess of information\nabout the minor Kings of Israel and Judah. And there is more light than\nmost of us feel we require nowadays upon the foreign policies of Assyria\nand Egypt. It stirs our pulses feebly, it helps us only very indirectly\nto learn that Attai begat Nathan and Nathan begat Zabad, or that Obed\nbegat Jehu and Jehu begat Azariah, and so on for two or three hundred\nverses.\n\nAnd so far as deficiencies go, there is a great multitude of modern\nproblems--problems that enter intimately into the moral life of all of\nus, with which the Bible does not deal, the establishment of American\nIndependence, for example, and the age-long feud of Russia and Poland\nthat has gone on with varying fortunes for four centuries. That is much\nmore important to our modern world than the ancient conflict of Assyria\nand Egypt which plays so large a part in the old Bible record. And there\nare all sorts of moral problems arising out of modern conditions on\nwhich the Bible sheds little or no direct light: the duties of a citizen\nat an election, or the duties of a shareholder to the labour employed by\nhis company, for example. For these things we need at least a\nsupplement, if we are still to keep our community upon one general basis\nof understanding, upon one unifying standard of thought and behaviour.\n\nWe are so brought up upon the Bible, we are so used to it long before we\nbegin to think hard about it, that all sorts of things that are really\nvery striking about it, the facts that the history of Judah and Israel\nis told twice over and that the gospel narrative is repeated four times\nover for example, do not seem at all odd to us. How else, we ask, could\nyou have it? Yet these are very odd features if we are to regard the\nBible as the compactest and most perfect statement of essential truth\nand wisdom.\n\nAnd still more remarkable, it seems to me, is it that the Bible breaks\noff. One could understand very well if the Bible broke off with the\nfoundation of Christianity. Now this event has happened, it might say,\nnothing else matters. It is the culmination. But the Bible does not do\nthat. It goes on to a fairly detailed account of the beginnings and\nearly politics of the Christian Church. It gives the opening literature\nof theological exposition. And then, with that strange and doubtful\nbook, the Revelation of St. John the Divine, it comes to an end. As I\nsay, it leaves off. It leaves off in the middle of Roman imperial and\nsocial conflicts. But the world has gone on and goes on--elaborating its\nproblems, encountering fresh problems--until now there is a gulf of\nupwards of eighteen hundred years between us and the concluding\nexpression of the thought of that ancient time.\n\nI make these observations in no spirit of detraction. If anything, these\npeculiarities of the Bible add to the wonder of its influence over the\nlives and minds of men. It has been The Book that has held together the\nfabric of western civilization. It has been the handbook of life to\ncountless millions of men and women. The civilization we possess could\nnot have come into existence and could not have been sustained without\nit. It has explained the world to the mass of our people, and it has\ngiven them moral standards and a form into which their consciences could\nwork. But does it do that to-day? Frankly, I do not think it does. I\nthink that during the last century the Bible has lost much of its former\nhold. It no longer grips the community. And I think it has lost hold\nbecause of those sundering eighteen centuries, to which every fresh year\nadds itself, because of profound changes in the methods and mechanisms\nof life, and because of the vast extension of our ideas by the\ndevelopment of science in the last century or so.\n\nIt has lost hold, but nothing has arisen to take its place. That is the\ngravest aspect of this matter. It was the cement with which our western\ncommunities were built and by which they were held together. And the\nweathering of these centuries and the acids of these later years have\neaten into its social and personal influence. It is no longer a\nsufficient cement. And--this is the essence of what I am driving\nat--_our modern communities are no longer cemented_, they lack organized\nsolidarity, they are not prepared to stand shocks and strains, they have\nbecome dangerously loose mentally and morally. That, I believe, is the\nclue to a great proportion of the present social and political troubles\nof the world. We need to get back to a cement. We want a Bible. We want\na Bible so badly that we cannot afford to put the old Bible on a\npinnacle out of daily use. We want it re-adapted for use. If it is true\nthat the old Bible falls short in its history and does not apply closely\nto many modern problems, then we need a revised and enlarged Bible in\nour schools and homes to restore a common ground of ideas and\ninterpretations if our civilization is to hold together.\n\nNow let us see what the Bible gave a man in the days when it could\nreally grip and hold and contain him; and let us ask if it is impossible\nto restore and reconstruct a Bible for the needs of these great and\ndangerous days in which we are living. Can we re-cement our increasingly\nunstable civilization? I will not ask now whether there is still time\nleft for us to do anything of the sort.\n\nThe first thing the Bible gave a man was a Cosmogony. It gave him an\naccount of the world in which he found himself and of his place in it.\nAnd then it went on to a general history of mankind. It did not tell him\nthat history as a string of facts and dates, but as a moving and\ninteresting story into which he himself finally came, a story of\npromises made and destinies to be fulfilled. It gave him a dramatic\nrelationship to the schemes of things. It linked him to all mankind with\na conception of relationships and duties. It gave him a place in the\nworld and put a meaning into his life. It explained him to himself and\nto other people, and it explained other people to him. In other words,\nout of the individual it made a citizen with a code of duties and\nexpectations.\n\nNow I take it that both from the point of view of individual happiness\nand from the point of view of the general welfare, this development of\nthe citizenship of a man, this placing of a man in his own world, is of\nprimary importance. It is the necessary basis of all right education; it\nis the fundamental purpose of the school, and I do not believe an\nindividual can be happy or a community be prosperous without it. The\nBible and the religions based on it gave that idea of a place in the\nworld to the people it taught. But do we provide that idea of a place in\nthe world for our people to-day? I suggest that we do not. We do not\ngive them a clear vision of the universe in which they live, and we do\nnot give them a history that invests their lives with meaning and\ndignity.\n\nThe cosmogony of the Bible has lost grip and conviction upon men's\nminds, and the ever-widening gulf of years makes its history and its\npolitical teaching more and more remote and unhelpful amidst the great\nneeds of to-day. Nothing has been done to fill up these widening gaps.\nWe have so great a respect for the letter of the Bible that we ignore\nits spirit and its proper use. We do not rewrite and retell Genesis in\nthe light and language of modern knowledge, and we do not revise and\nbring its history up to date and so apply it to the problems of our own\ntime. So we have allowed the Bible to become antiquated and remote,\nvenerable and unhelpful.\n\nThere has been a great extension of what we call education in the past\nhundred years, but while we have spread education widely, there has been\na sort of shrinkage and enfeeblement of its aims. Education in the past\nset out to make a Christian and a citizen and afterwards a gentleman out\nof the crude, vulgar, self-seeking individual. Does education even\npretend to do as much to-day? It does nothing of the sort. Our young\npeople are taught to read and write. They are taught bookkeeping and\nlanguages that are likely to be useful to them. They are given a certain\nmeasure of technical education, and _they are taught to shove_. And\nthen we turn them out into the world to get on. Our test of a college\neducation is--Does it make a successful business man?\n\nWell, this, I take it, is the absolute degradation of education. It is a\nmodern error that education exists for the individual. Education exists\nfor the community and the race; it exists to subdue the individual for\nthe good of the world and his own ultimate happiness.\n\nBut we have been letting the essentials of education slip back into a\nsecondary place in our pursuit of mere equipment, and we see the results\nto-day throughout all the modern states of the world, in a loss of\ncohesion, discipline and co-operation. Men will not co-operate except to\nraise prices on the consumer or wages on the employer, and everyone\nscrambles for a front place and a good time. And they do so, partly no\ndoubt by virtue of an ineradicable factor in them known as Original Sin,\nbut also very largely because the vision of life that was built up in\ntheir minds at school and in their homes was fragmentary and\nuninspiring; it had no commanding appeal for their imaginations, and no\nimperatives for their lives.\n\nSo I put it, that for the opening books of our Bible of Civilization,\nour Bible translated into terms of modern knowledge, and as the basis of\nall our culture, we shall follow the old Bible precedent exactly. We\nshall tell to every citizen of our community, as plainly, simply and\nbeautifully as we can, the New Story of Genesis, the tremendous\nspectacle of the Universe that science has opened to us, the flaming\nbeginnings of our world, the vast ages of its making and the astounding\nunfolding, age after age, of Life. We shall tell of the changing\nclimates of this spinning globe and the coming and going of great floras\nand faunas, mighty races of living things, until out of the vast, slow\nprocess our own kind emerged. And we shall tell the story of our race.\nHow through hundreds of thousands of years it won power over nature,\nhunted and presently sowed and reaped. How it learnt the secrets of the\nmetals, mastered the riddle of the seasons, and took to the seas. That\nstory of our common inheritance and of our slow upward struggle has to\nbe taught throughout our entire community, in the city slums and in the\nout-of-the-way farmsteads most of all. By teaching it, we restore again\nto our people the lost basis of a community, a common idea of their\nplace in space and time.\n\nThen, still following the Bible precedent, we must tell a universal\nhistory of man. And though on the surface it may seem to be a very\ndifferent history from the Bible story, in substance it will really be\nvery much the same history, only robbed of ancient trappings and\nsymbols, and made real and fresh again for our present ideas. It will\nstill be a story of conditional promises, the promises of human\npossibility, a record of sins and blunders and lost opportunities, of\nmen who walked not in the ways of righteousness, of stiff-necked\ngenerations, and of merciful renewals of hope. It will still point our\nlives to a common future which will be the reward and judgment of our\npresent lives.\n\nYou may say that no such book exists--which is perfectly true--and that\nno such book could be written. But there I think you underrate the\ncapacity of our English-speaking people. It would be quite possible to\nget together a committee that would give us the compact and clear\ncosmogony of history that is needed. Some of the greatest, most\ninspiring books and documents in the world have been produced by\nCommittees: Magna Carta, the Declaration of Independence, the English\nTranslation of the Bible, and the Prayer Book of the English Church are\nall the productions of committees, and they are all fine and inspiring\ncompilations. For the last three years I have been experimenting with\nthis particular task, and, with the help of six other people, I have\nsketched out and published an outline of our world's origins and history\nto show the sort of thing I mean. That _Outline_ is, of course, a\ncorrupting mass of faults and minor inaccuracies, but it does\ndemonstrate the possibility of doing what is required. And its reception\nboth in America and England has shown how ready, how greedy many people\nare, on account of themselves and on account of their children, for an\nordered general account of the existing knowledge of our place in space\nand time. For want of anything better they have taken my _Outline_ very\neagerly. Far more eagerly would they have taken a finer, sounder and\nmore authoritative work.\n\nIn England this _Outline_ was almost the first experiment of the kind\nthat has been made--the only other I know of in England, was a very\ncompact General History of the World by Mr. Oscar Browning published in\n1913. But there are several educationists in America who have been at\nwork on the same task. In this matter of a more generalized history\nteaching, the New World is decidedly leading the Old. The particular\nproblems of a population of mixed origins have forced it upon teachers\nin the United States.\n\nMy friend--I am very happy to be able to call him my friend--Professor\nBreasted, in conjunction with that very able teacher Professor Robinson,\nhas produced two books, _Ancient Times_ and _Mediaeval and Modern Times_,\nwhich together make a very complete history of civilized man. They do\nnot, however, give a history of life before man, nor very much of human\npre-history. Another admirable American summary of history is Doctor\nHutton Webster's _History of the Ancient World_ together with his\n_Mediaeval and Modern History_. This again is very sparing of the story\nof primitive man.\n\nBut the work of these gentlemen confirms my own experience that it is\nquite possible to tell in a comprehensible and inspiring outline the\nwhole history of life and mankind in the compass of a couple of\nmanageable volumes. Neither Browning nor Breasted and Robinson, nor\nHutton Webster, nor my own effort are very much longer than twice the\nlength of Dickens' novel of _Bleak House_. So there you have it. There\nis the thing shown to be possible. If it is possible for us isolated\nworkers to do as much then why should not the thing be done in a big and\nauthoritative manner? Why should we not have a great educational\nconference of teachers, scientific men and historians from all the\ncivilized peoples of the world, and why should they not draft out a\nstandard World History for general use in the world's schools? Why\nshould that draft not be revised by scores of specialists? Discussed and\nre-discussed? Polished and finished, and made the opening part of a new\nBible of Civilization, a new common basis for a world culture?\n\nAt intervals it would need to be revised, and it could be revised and\nbrought up to date in the same manner.\n\nNow such a book and such a book alone would put the people of the world\nupon an absolutely new footing with regard to social and international\naffairs. They would be told a history coming right up to the Daily\nNewspaper. They would see themselves and the news of to-day as part of\none great development. It would give their lives significance and\ndignity. It would give the events of the current day significance and\ndignity. It would lift their imaginations up to a new level. I say\nlift, but I mean restore their imaginations to a former level. Because\nif you look back into the lives of the Pilgrim Fathers, let us say, or\ninto those of the great soldiers and statesmen of Cromwellian England,\nyou will find that these men had a sense of personal significance, a\nsense of destiny, such as no one in politics or literature seems to\npossess to-day. They were still in touch with the old Bible. To-day if\nlife seems adventurous and fragmentary and generally aimless it is\nlargely because of this one thing. We have lost touch with history. We\nhave ceased to see human affairs as one great epic unfolding. And only\nby the universal teaching of Universal History can that epic quality be\nrestored.\n\nYou see then the first part of my project for a Bible of Civilization, a\nrewriting of Genesis and Exodus and Judges and Chronicles in terms of\nWorld History. It would be a quite possible thing to do....\n\nIs it worth doing?\n\nAnd let me add here that when we do get our New Genesis and our new\nhistorical books, they will have a great number of illustrations as a\nliving and necessary part of them. For nowadays we can not only have a\ncanonical text, but canonical maps and illustrations. The old Hebrew\nBible was merely the written word. Indeed it was not even that, for it\nwas written without vowels. That was not a merit, nor a precedent for\nus; it was an unavoidable limitation in those days; but under modern\nconditions there is no reason whatever why we should confine our Bible\nto words when a drawing or a map can better express the thing we wish to\nconvey. It is one of the great advantages of the modern book over the\nancient book that because of printing it can use pictures as well as\nwords. When books had to be reproduced by copyists the use of pictures\nwas impossible. They would have varied with each copying until they\nbecame hopelessly distorted....\n\n\nSec. 2\n\nBut the cosmological and historical part of the old Bible was merely the\nopening, the groundwork upon which the rest was built. Let us now\nconsider what else the Bible gave a man and a community, and what would\nbe the modern form of the things it gave.\n\nThe next thing in order that the Bible gave a man and the community to\nwhich he belonged was the Law. Rules of Life. Rules of Health.\nPrescriptions--often very detailed and intimate--of permissible and\nunpermissible conduct. This also the modern citizen needs and should\nhave: he and she need a book of personal wisdom.\n\nFirst as to Health. One of the first duties of a citizen is to keep\nhimself in mental and bodily health in order to be fit for the rest of\nhis duties. Now the real Bible, our model, is extremely explicit upon a\nnumber of points, upon what constitutes cleanness or uncleanness, upon\nablutions, upon what a man or woman may eat and what may not be eaten,\nupon a number of such points. It was for its times and circumstances a\ndirectory of healthy practice. Well, I do not see why the Bible of a\nModern Civilization should not contain a book of similarly clear\ninjunctions and warnings--why we should not tell every one of our people\nwhat is to be known about self-care.\n\nAnd closely connected with the care of one's mental and bodily health is\nsexual morality, upon which again Deuteronomy and Leviticus are most\nexplicit, leaving very little to the imagination. I am all for imitating\nthe wholesome frankness of the ancient book. Where there are no dark\ncorners there is very little fermentation, there is very little foulness\nor infection. But in nearly every detail and in method and manner, the\nBible of our Civilization needs to be fuller and different from its\nprototype upon these matters. The real Bible dealt with an oriental\npopulation living under much cruder conditions than our own, engaged\nmainly in agriculture, and with a far less various dietary than ours.\nThey had fermented but not distilled liquors; they had no preserved nor\nrefrigerated foods; they married at adolescence; many grave diseases\nthat prevail to-day were unknown to them, and their sanitary problems\nwere entirely different. Generally our New Leviticus will have to be\nmuch fuller. It must deal with exercise--which came naturally to those\nHebrew shepherds. It must deal with the preservation of energy under\nconditions of enervation of which the prophets knew nothing. On the\nother hand our New Leviticus can afford to give much less attention to\nleprosy--which almost dominates the health instructions of the ancient\nlaw-giver.\n\nI do not know anything very much about the movements in America that aim\nat the improvement of the public health and at the removal of public\nignorance upon vital things. In Britain we have a number of powerful\norganizations active in disseminating knowledge to counteract the spread\nof this or that infectious or contagious disease. The War has made us in\nEurope much more outspoken and fearless in dealing with lurking hideous\nevils. We believe much more than we did in the curative value of light\nand knowledge. And we have a very considerable literature of books\non--what shall I call it? on Sex Wisdom, which aim to prevent some of\nthat great volume of misery, deprivation and nervous disease due to the\nprevailing ignorance and secrecy in these matters. For in these matters\ngreat multitudes of modern people still live in an ignorance that would\nhave been inconceivable to an ancient Hebrew. In England now the books\nof such a writer as Dr. Marie Stopes are enormously read, and--though\nthey are by no means perfect works--do much to mitigate the hidden\ndisappointments, discontents, stresses and cruelties of married life.\nNow I believe that it would be possible to compile a modern Leviticus\nand Deuteronomy to tell our whole modern community decently and\nplainly--just as plainly as the old Hebrew Bible instructed its Hebrew\npopulation--what was to be known and what had to be done, and what had\nnot to be done in these intimate matters.\n\nBut Health and Sex do not exhaust the problems of conduct. There are\nalso the problems of Property and Trade and Labour. Upon these also the\nold Bible did not hesitate to be explicit. For example, it insisted\nmeticulously upon the right of labour to glean and upon the seller\ngiving a \"full measure brimming over,\" and it prohibited usury. But here\nagain the Bible is extraordinarily unhelpful when we come to modern\nissues, because its rules and regulations were framed for a community\nand for an economic system altogether cruder, more limited and less\ncomplicated than our own. Much of the Old Testament we have to remember\nwas already in existence before the free use of coined metal. The vast\ncredit system of our days, joint-stock company enterprise and the like,\nwere beyond the imagination of that time. So too was any anticipation of\nmodern industrialism. And accordingly we live to-day in a world in which\nneither property nor employment have ever been properly moralized. The\nbulk of our present social and economic troubles is due very largely to\nthat.\n\nIn no matter is this muddled civilization of ours more hopelessly at\nsixes and sevens than in this matter of the rights and duties of\nproperty. Manifestly property is a trust for the community varying in\nits responsibilities with the nature of the property. The property one\nhas in one's toothbrush is different from the property one has in ten\nthousand acres of land; the property one has in a photograph of a friend\nis different from the property one has in some irreplaceable masterpiece\nof portraiture. The former one may destroy with a good conscience, but\nnot the latter. At least so it seems to me.\n\nBut opinions vary enormously on these matters because we have never\nreally worked them out. On the one hand, in this matter of property, we\nhave the extreme individualist who declares that a man has an unlimited\nright to do what he likes with his own--so that a man who owns a coal\nmine may just burn it out to please himself or spite the world, or raise\nthe price of coal generally--and on the other hand we have the extreme\ncommunist who denies all property and in practice--so far as I can\nunderstand his practice--goes on the principle that everything belongs\nto somebody else or that one is entitled to exercise proprietary rights\nover everything that does not belong to oneself. (I confess that\ncommunistic practice is a little difficult to formulate.) Between these\nextremists you can find every variety of idea about what one may do and\nabout what one may not do with money and credit and property generally.\nIs it an offence to gamble? Is it an offence to speculate? Is it an\noffence to hold fertile fields and not cultivate them? Is it an offence\nto hold fertile fields and undercultivate them? Is it an offence to use\nyour invested money merely to live pleasantly without working? Is it an\noffence to spend your money on yourself and refuse your wife more than\nbare necessities? Is it an offence to spend exorbitant sums that might\notherwise go in reproductive investments, to gratify the whims and\nvanities of your wife? You will find different people answering any of\nthese questions with Yes or No. But it cannot be both Yes and No. There\nmust be a definable Right or Wrong upon all these issues.\n\nAlmost all the labour trouble in the world springs directly from our\nlack of an effective detailed moral code about property. The freedom\nthat is claimed for all sorts of property and exercised by all sorts of\nproperty to waste or withhold is the clue to that savage resentment\nwhich flares out nowadays in every great labour conflict. Labour is a\nrebel because property is a libertine.\n\nNow this untilled field of conduct, this moral wilderness of the rights\nand duties and limitations of property, the Books of the Law in a modern\nBible could clear up in the most lucid and satisfying way. I want to get\nthose parts of Deuteronomy and Leviticus written again, more urgently\nthan any other part of the modern Bible. I want to see it at work in the\nschools and in the law-courts. I admit that it would be a most difficult\nbook to write and that we should raise controversial storms over every\nverse. But what an excellent thing to have it out, once for all, with\nsome of these rankling problems! What an excellent thing if we could get\ntogether a choice group of representative men--strictly rationed as to\npaper--and get them to set down clearly and exactly just what classes of\nproperty they recognized and what limitations the community was entitled\nto impose upon each sort.\n\nEvery country in the world does impose limitations. In Italy you may not\nexport an ancient work of art, although it is your own. In England you\nmay not maltreat your own dog or cat. In the United States, I am told,\nyou may not use your dollars to buy alcohol. Why should we not make all\nthis classification of property and the restraints upon each class of\nproperty, systematic and world-wide? If we could so moralize the use of\nproperty, if we could arrive at a clear idea of just what use an owner\ncould make of his machinery, or a financier could make of his credit,\nwould there be much left of the incessant labour conflicts of the\npresent time? For if you will look into it, you will find there is\nhardly ever a labour conflict into which some unsettled question of\nprinciple, some unsettled question of the permissible use of property,\ndoes not enter as the final and essential dispute.\n\n\n\n\nV\n\nTHE BIBLE OF CIVILIZATION\n\nPART TWO\n\n\nSec. 3\n\nIn the preceding sections we have discussed Genesis and the Historical\nBooks generally as they would appear in a modernized Bible, and we have\ndealt with the Law. But these are only the foundations and openings of\nthe Bible as we know it. We come now to the Psalms and Proverbs, the\nSong of Songs, the Book of Job--and the Prophets. What are the modern\nequivalents of these books?\n\nWell, what were they?\n\nThey were the entire Hebrew literature down to about the time of Ezra;\nthey include sacred songs, love songs, a dramatic dialogue, a sort of\nnovel in the Books of Ruth and Esther, and so forth. What would be our\nequivalent of this part of the Bible to-day? What would be the\nequivalent for the Bible of a world civilization?\n\nI suppose that it would be the whole world literature.\n\nThat, I admit, is a rather tremendous proposition. Are we to\ncontemplate the prospect of a modern Bible in twenty or thirty thousand\nvolumes? Such a vast Bible would defeat its own end. We want a Bible\nthat everyone will know, which will be grasped by the mind of everyone.\nThat is essential to our idea of a Bible as a social cement.\n\nFortunately our model Bible, as we have it to-day, gives us a lead in\nthis matter. Its contents are classified. We have first of all the\ncanonical books, which are treated as the vitally important books; they\nare the books, to quote the phrase used in the English prayer book,\nwhich are \"necessary to salvation.\" And then we have a collection of\nother books, the Apocrypha, the books set aside, books often admirable\nand beautiful, but not essential, good to be read for \"example of life\nand instruction of manners,\" yet books that everyone need not read and\nknow. Let us take this lead and let us ask whether we can--with the\nwhole accumulated literature of the world as our material--select a\nbookful or so of matter, of such exceptional value that it would be well\nfor all mankind to read it and know it. This will be our equivalent for\nthe canonical Books. I will return to that in a moment.\n\nAnd outside this canonical Book or Books, shall we leave all the rest of\nliterature in a limitless Apocrypha? I am doubtful about that. I would\nsuggest that we make a second intermediate class between the canonical\nbooks that everyone in our civilization ought to read and the outer\nApocrypha that you may read or not as you choose. This intermediate\nclass I would call the Great Books of the World. It would not be a part\nof our Bible, but it would come next to our Bible. It would not be what\none must read but only what it is desirable the people should read.\n\nNow this canonical literature we are discussing is to be the third vital\npart of our modern Bible. I conceive of it as something that would go\ninto the hands of every man and woman in that coming great civilization\nwhich is the dream of our race. Together with the Book of World History\nand the Book of Law and Righteousness and Wisdom that I have sketched\nout to you, and another Book of which I shall have something to say\nlater, this canonical literature will constitute the intellectual and\nmoral cement of the World Society, that intellectual and moral cement\nfor the want of which our world falls into political and social\nconfusion and disaster to-day. Upon such a basis, upon a common body of\nideas, a common moral teaching and the world-wide assimilation of the\nsame emotional and aesthetic material, it may still be possible to build\nup humanity into one co-operative various and understanding community.\n\nNow if we bear this idea of a cementing function firmly in mind, we\nshall have a criterion by which to judge what shall be omitted from and\nwhat shall be included in the Books of Literature in this modern Bible\nof ours. We shall begin, of course, by levying toll upon the Old and\nNew Testaments. I do not think I need justify that step. I suppose that\nthere will be no doubt of the inclusion of many of the Psalms--but I\nquestion if we should include them all--and of a number of splendid\npassages from the Prophets. Should we include the Song of Songs? I am\ninclined to think that the compilers of a new Bible would hesitate at\nthat. Should we include the Book of Job? That I think would be a very\ndifficult question indeed for our compilers. The Book of Job is a very\nwonderful and beautiful discussion of the profound problem of evil in\nthe world. It is a tremendous exercise to read and understand, but is it\nuniversally necessary? I am disposed to think that the Book of Job,\npossibly with the illustrations of Blake, would not make a part of our\nCanon but would rank among our Great Books. It is a part of a very large\nliterature of discussion, of which I shall have more to say in a moment.\nSo too I question if we should make the story of Ruth or the story of\nEsther fundamental teaching for our world civilization. Daniel, again, I\nimagine relegated to the Apocrypha. But to this I will return later.\n\nThe story of the Gospels would, of course, have been incorporated in our\nHistorical Book, but in addition as part of our first canon, each of the\nfour gospels--with the possible omission of the genealogies--would have\na place, for the sake of their matchless directness, simplicity and\nbeauty. They give a picture, they convey an atmosphere of supreme value\nto us all, incommunicable in any other form or language. Again there is\na great wealth of material in the Epistles. It is, for example,\ninconceivable that such a passage as that of St. Paul's Epistle to the\nCorinthians--\"Though I speak with the tongues of men and angels and have\nnot charity I am become as sounding brass or a tinkling cymbal\"--the\nwhole of that wonderful chapter--should ever pass out of the common\nheritage of mankind.\n\nSo much from the Ancient Bible for our modern Bible, all its inspiration\nand beauty and fire. And now what else?\n\nSpeaking in English to an English-speaking audience one name comes close\nupon the Bible, Shakespear. What are we going to do about Shakespear? If\nyou were to waylay almost any Englishman or American and put this\nproject of a modern Bible before him, and then begin your list of\ningredients with the Bible and the whole of Shakespear, he would almost\ncertainly say, \"Yes, Yes.\"\n\nBut would he be right?\n\nOn reflection he might perhaps recede and say \"Not the whole of\nShakespear,\" but well, _Hamlet_, _The Tempest_, _Romeo and Juliet_, _A\nMidsummer-Night's Dream_. But even these! Are they \"generally necessary\nto salvation\"? We run our minds through the treasures of Shakespear as\nwe might run our fingers through the contents of a box of very precious\nand beautiful jewels--before equipping a youth for battle.\n\nNo. These things are for ornament and joy. I doubt if we could have a\nsingle play--a single scene of Shakespear's in our Canon. He goes\naltogether into the Great Books, all of him; he joins the aristocracy of\nthe Apocrypha. And, I believe, nearly all the great plays of the world\nwould have to join him there. Euripides and Sophocles, Schiller and\nIbsen. Perhaps some speeches and such-like passages might be quoted in\nthe Canon, but that is all.\n\nOur Canon, remember, is to be the essential cementing stuff of our\ncommunity and nothing more. If once we admit merely beautiful and\ndelightful things, then I see an overwhelming inrush of jewels and\nflowers. If we admit _A Midsummer-Night's Dream_, then I must insist\nthat we also admit such lovely nonsense as\n\n  In Xanadu did Kubla Khan\n    A stately pleasure dome decree,\n  Where Alph the sacred river ran\n  Through caverns measureless to man\n    Down to a sunless sea....\n\nOur Canon I am afraid cannot take in such things, and with the plays we\nmust banish also all the novels; the greater books of such writers as\nCervantes, Defoe, Dickens, Fielding, Tolstoi, Hardy, Hamsun, that great\nsuccession of writers--they are all good for \"example of life and\ninstruction of manners,\" and to the Apocrypha they must go. And so it\nis that since I would banish _Romeo and Juliet_, I would also banish the\nSong of Songs, and since I must put away _Vanity Fair_ and the _Shabby\nGenteel Story_, I would also put away _Esther_ and _Ruth_. And I find\nmyself most reluctant to exclude not any novels written in English, but\none or two great sweeping books by non-English writers. It seems to me\nthat Tolstoi's _War and Peace_ and Hamsun's _Growth of the Soil_ are\nbooks on an almost Biblical scale, that they deal with life so greatly\nas to come nearest to the idea of a universally inspiring and\nilluminating literature which underlies the idea of our Canon. If we put\nin any whole novels into the Canon I would plead for these. But I will\nnot plead now even for these. I do not think any novels at all can go\ninto our modern Bible, as whole works. The possibility of long passages\ngoing in, is of course, quite a different matter.\n\nAnd passing now from great plays and great novels and romances, we come\nto the still more difficult problem of great philosophical and critical\nworks. Take _Gulliver's Travels_--an intense, dark, stirring criticism\nof life and social order--and the _Dialogues of Plato_, full of light\nand inspiration. In these latter we might quarry for beautiful passages\nfor our Canon, but I do not think we could take them in as wholes, and\nif we do not take them in as complete books, then I think that Semitic\nparallel to these Greek dialogues, The Book of Job, must stand not in\nour Canon, but in the Great Book section of our Apocrypha.\n\nAnd next we have to consider all the great Epics in the world. There\nagain I am for exclusion. This Bible we are considering must be\nuniversally available. If it is too bulky for universal use it loses its\nprimary function of a moral cement. We cannot include the _Iliad_, the\nNorse Sagas, the _AEneid_ or _Paradise Lost_ in our Canon. Let them swell\nthe great sack of our Apocrypha, and let the children read them if they\nwill.\n\nWhen one glances in this fashion over the accumulated literary resources\nof mankind it becomes plain that our canonical books of literature in\nthis modern Bible of ours can be little more than an Anthology or a\ngroup of Anthologies. Perhaps they might be gathered under separate\nheads, as the 'Book of Freedom,' the 'Book of Justice,' the 'Book of\nCharity.' And now having done nothing as yet but reject, let me begin to\naccept. Let me quote a few samples of the kind of thing that I imagine\nwould best serve the purpose of our Bible and that should certainly be\nincluded.\n\nHere are words that every American knows by heart already--I would like\nevery man in the world to know them by heart and to repeat them. It is\nLincoln's Gettysburg Address and I will not spare you a word of it:\n\n\"Fourscore and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this\ncontinent a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the\nproposition that all men are created equal. Now we are engaged in a\ngreat civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived\nand so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battlefield of\nthat war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final\nresting-place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might\nlive. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this. But in\na larger sense, we cannot dedicate--we cannot consecrate--we cannot\nhallow--this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here,\nhave consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The\nworld will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can\nnever forget what they did here. It is for us, the living, rather, to be\ndedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have\nthus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to\nthe great task remaining before us--that from these honored dead we take\nincreased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full\nmeasure of devotion. That we here highly resolve that these dead shall\nnot have died in vain--that this nation, under God, shall have a new\nbirth of freedom--and that government of the people, by the people, for\nthe people, shall not perish from the earth.\"\n\nAnd here is something that might perhaps make another short chapter in\nthe same Book of Freedom--but it deals with Freedom of a different sort:\n\n  Out of the night that covers me\n    Black as the pit from pole to pole,\n  I thank whatever gods may be\n    For my unconquerable soul.\n  In the fell clutch of circumstance\n    I have not winced nor cried aloud,\n  Under the bludgeonings of Chance,\n    My head is bloody but unbowed.\n\n  Beyond this Place of wrath and tears,\n    Looms but the Horror of the Shade,\n  And yet the Menace of the years\n    Finds and shall find me Unafraid.\n  It matters not how strait the gate,\n    How charged with punishments the scroll,\n  I am the Master of my Fate,\n    I am the Captain of my Soul.\n\nThat, as you know, was Henley's, and as I turned up his volume of poems\nto copy out that poem I came again on these familiar lines:\n\n  The ways of Death are soothing and serene,\n    And all the words of Death are grave and sweet,\n    From camp and church, the fireside and the street,\n  She beckons forth--and strife and song have been.\n\n  A summer's night descending cool and green,\n    And dark on daytime's dust and stress and heat,\n  The ways of Death are soothing and serene,\n    And all the words of Death are grave and sweet.\n\nThere seems something in that also which I could spare only very\nreluctantly from a new Bible in the world. Yet I tender those lines very\ndoubtfully. For I am not a very cultivated and well-read person, and\nnote only the things that have struck upon my mind; but I quite\nunderstand that there must be many things of the same sort, but better,\nthat I have never encountered, or that I have not heard or read under\ncircumstances that were favourable to their proper appreciation. I would\nrather say about what I am quoting in this section, not positively \"this\nthing,\" but merely \"this sort of thing.\"\n\nAnd in the vein of \"this sort of thing\" let me quote you--again for the\nBook of Freedom--a passage from Milton, defending the ancient English\ntradition of free speech and free decision and praising London and\nEngland. This London and England of which he boasts have broadened out\nas the idea of Jerusalem has broadened out, to world-wide\ncomprehensions. Let no false modesty blind us to our great tradition;\nyou and I are still thinking in Milton's city; we continue, however\nunworthily, the great inheritance of the world-wide responsibility and\nservice, of His Englishmen. Here is my passage:\n\n     \"Now once again by all concurrence of signs, and by the general\n     instinct of holy and devout men, as they daily and solemnly\n     express their thoughts, God is decreeing to begin some new and\n     great period in His Church, even to the reforming of\n     reformation itself; what does He then but reveal Himself to His\n     servants, and as His manner is, first to His Englishmen? I say,\n     as His manner is, first to us, though we mark not the method of\n     His counsels, and are unworthy. Behold now this vast city, a\n     city of refuge, the mansion-house of liberty, encompassed and\n     surrounded with His protection; the shop of war hath not there\n     more anvils and hammers working, to fashion out the plates and\n     instruments of armed justice in defence of beleaguered truth,\n     than there be pens and heads there, sitting by their studious\n     lamps, musing, searching, revolving new notions and ideas\n     wherewith to present, as with their homage and their fealty,\n     the approaching reformation: others as fast reading, trying all\n     things, assenting to the force of reason and convincement.\n\n     \"What could a man require more from a nation so pliant and so\n     prone to seek after knowledge? What wants there to such a\n     towardly and pregnant soil, but wise and faithful labourers, to\n     make a knowing people, a nation of prophets, of sages, and of\n     worthies? We reckon more than five months yet to harvest; there\n     need not be five weeks, had we but eyes to lift up, the fields\n     are white already. Where there is much desire to learn, there\n     of necessity will be much arguing, much writing, many opinions;\n     for opinion in good men is but knowledge in the making. Under\n     these fantastic terrors of sect and schism, we wrong the\n     earnest and zealous thirst after knowledge and understanding,\n     which God hath stirred up in this city. What some lament of, we\n     rather should rejoice at, should rather praise this pious\n     forwardness among men, to reassume the ill-deputed care of\n     their religion into their own hands again. A little generous\n     prudence, a little forbearance of one another, and some grain\n     of charity might win all these diligencies to join and unite\n     into one general and brotherly search after truth; could we but\n     forego this prelatical tradition of crowding free consciences\n     and Christian liberties into canons and precepts of men. I\n     doubt not, if some great and worthy stranger should come among\n     us, wise to discern the mould and temper of a people, and how\n     to govern it, observing the high hopes and aims, the diligent\n     alacrity of our extended thoughts and reasonings in the\n     pursuance of truth and freedom, but that he would cry out as\n     Pyrrhus did, admiring the Roman docility and courage: 'If such\n     were my Epirots, I would not despair the greatest design that\n     could be attempted to make a church or kingdom happy.'\n\n     \"Yet these are the men cried out against for schismatics and\n     sectaries, as if, while the temple of the Lord was building,\n     some cutting, some squaring the marble, others hewing the\n     cedars, there should be a sort of irrational men, who could not\n     consider there must be many schisms and many dissections made\n     in the quarry and in the timber ere the house of God can be\n     built. And when every stone is laid artfully together, it\n     cannot be united into a continuity, it can but be contiguous in\n     this world: neither can every piece of the building be of one\n     form; nay, rather the perfection consists in this, that out of\n     many moderate varieties and brotherly dissimilitudes that are\n     not vastly disproportional, arises the goodly and the graceful\n     symmetry that commends the whole pile and structure.\"\n\nBut I will not go on turning over the pages of books and reciting prose\nand poetry to you. I cannot even begin to remind you of the immense\ntreasure of noble and ennobling prose and verse that this world has\naccumulated in the past three thousand years. Not one soul in ten\nthousand that is born into this world even tastes from that store. For\nmost of mankind now that treasure is as if it had never been. Is it too\nmuch to suggest that we should make some organized attempt to gather up\nthe quintessence of literature now, and make it accessible to the masses\nof our race? Why should we not on a large scale with a certain breadth\nand dignity set about compiling the Poetic Books, the Books of\nInspiration for a renewed Bible, for a Bible of Civilization? It seems\nto me that such a Book made universally accessible, made a basis of\nteaching everywhere could set the key of the whole world's thought.\n\n\nSec. 4 Today\n\nThere remains one other element if we are to complete the parallelism of\nthe old Bible and the new. The Christian Bible ends with a forecast, the\nBook of Revelation; the Hebrew Bible ended also with forecasts, the\nProphets. To that the old Bible owed much of its magic power over men's\nimaginations and the inspiration it gave them. It was not a dead record,\nnot an accumulation of things finished and of songs sung. It pointed\nsteadily and plainly to the Days to Come as the end and explanation of\nall that went before. So too our Modern Bible, if it is to hold and rule\nthe imagination of men, must close I think with a _Book of Forecasts_.\nWe want to make our world think more than it does about the consequences\nof the lives it leads and the political deeds that it does and that it\npermits to be done. We want to turn the human imagination round again\ntowards the future which our lives create. We want a collection and\ndigest of forecasts and warnings to complete this modern Bible of ours.\nNow here I think you will say--and I admit with perfect reason--that I\nam floating away from any reasonable possibility at all. How can we have\nforecasts and prophecies of things that are happening now? Well, I will\nmake a clean breast of it, and admit that I am asking for something that\nmay be impossible. Nevertheless it is something that is very necessary\nif men are to remain indeed intelligent co-operating communities. In the\npast you will find where there have been orderly and successful\ncommunities the men in them had an idea of a Destiny, of some object,\nsomething that would amount to a criterion and judgment upon their\ncollective conduct. Well, I believe that we have to get back to\nsomething of that sort.\n\nWe have statesmen and politicians who profess to guide our destinies.\nWhither are they guiding our destinies?\n\nSurely they have some idea. The great American statesmen and the great\nEuropean statesmen are making To-morrow. What is the To-morrow they are\nmaking?\n\nThey must have some idea of it. Otherwise they must be imposters. I am\nloth to believe them imposters, mere adventurers who have blundered into\npositions of power and honour with no idea of what they are doing to the\nworld. But if they have an idea of what they are doing to the world,\nthey foresee and intend a Future. That, I take it, is sound reasoning\nand the inference is plain.\n\nThey ought to write down their ideas of this Future before us. It would\nbe helpful to all of us. It might be a very helpful exercise for them.\nIt is, I think, reasonable for Americans to ask the great political\npersonages of America, the president and so forth, for example: whether\nthey think the United States will stand alone in twenty-five years'\ntime as they stand alone now? Or whether they think that there will be a\ngreater United States--of all America--or of all the world? They must\nknow their own will about that. And it is equally reasonable to ask the\ngreat political personages of the British Empire: what will Ireland be\nin twenty-five years' time? What will India be? There must be a plan, an\nintended thing. Otherwise these men have no intentions; otherwise they\nmust be, in two words, dangerous fools. The sooner we substitute a type\nof man with a sufficient foresight and capable of articulate speech in\nthe matter, the better for our race.\n\nAnd again every statesman and every politician throughout the world says\nthat the relations of industrial enterprise to the labour it employs are\nunsatisfactory. Yes. But how are those relations going to develop? How\ndo they mean them to develop?\n\nAre we just drifting into an unknown darkness in all these matters with\nblind leaders of our blindness? Or cannot a lot of these things be\nfigured out by able and intelligent people? I put it to you that they\ncan. That it is a reasonable and proper thing to ask our statesmen and\npoliticians: what is going to happen to the world? What sort of better\nsocial order are you making for? What sort of world order are you\ncreating? Let them open their minds to us, let them put upon permanent\nrecord the significance of all their intrigues and manoeuvres. Then as\nthey go on we can check their capacity and good faith. We can establish\na control at last that will rule presidents and kings.\n\nNow the answer to these questions for statesmen is what I mean by a\n_Book of Forecasts_. Such a book I believe is urgently needed to help\nour civilization. It is a book we ought all to possess and read. I know\nyou will say that such a _Book of Forecasts_ will be at first a\npreposterously insufficient book--that every year will show it up and\nmake it more absurd. I quite agree. The first _Book of Forecasts_ will\nbe a poor thing. Miserably poor. So poor that people will presently\nclamour to have it thoroughly revised.\n\nThe revised _Book of Forecasts_ will not be quite so bad. It will have\nbeen tested against realities. It will form the basis of a vast amount\nof criticism and discussion.\n\nWhen again it comes to be revised, it will be much nearer possible\nrealities.\n\nI put it to you that the psychology, the mentality of a community that\nhas a _Book of Forecasts_ in hand and under watchful revision will be\naltogether steadier and stronger and clearer than that of a community\nwhich lives as we do to-day, mere adventurers, without foresight, in a\nworld of catastrophies and accidents and unexpected things. We shall be\nliving again in a plan. Our lives will be shaped to certain defined\nends. We shall fall into place in a great scheme of activities. We shall\nrecover again some or all of the steadfastness and dignity of the old\nreligious life.\n\n\nSec. 5 Today\n\nLet me with this _Book of Forecasts_ round off my fantasy. I would\npicture to you this modern Bible, perhaps two or three times as bulky as\nthe old Bible, and consisting first of\n\n  The Historical Books with maps and the like;\n  The Books of Conduct and Wisdom;\n  The Anthologies of Poetry and Literature; and finally the\n  Book of Forecasts, taking the place of the Prophets and Revelations.\n\nI would picture this revivified Bible to you as most carefully done and\nprinted and made accessible to all, the basis of education in every\nschool, the common platform of all discussion--just as in the past the\nold Bible used to be. I would ask you to imagine it translated into\nevery language, a common material of understanding throughout all the\nworld.\n\nAnd furthermore, I imagine something else about this--quite unlike the\nold Bible--I imagine all of it periodically revised. The historical\nbooks would need to be revised and brought up to date, there would be\nnew lights on health and conduct, there would be fresh additions to the\nanthologies, and there would be Forecasts that would have to be struck\nout because they were realized or because they were shown to be hopeless\nor undesirable, and fresh Forecasts would be added to replace them. It\nwould be a Bible moving forward and changing and gaining with human\nexperience and human destiny....\n\nWell, that is my dream of a Bible of Civilization. Have I in any way\ncarried my vision out to you of this little row of four or five volumes\nin every house, in every life, throughout the world, holding the lives\nand ideas and imaginations of men together in a net of common familiar\nphrases and common established hopes?\n\nAnd is this a mere fantastic talk, or is this a thing that could be done\nand that ought to be done?\n\nI do not know how it will appear to you, but to me it seems that this\nbook I have been talking about, the Bible of to-day's civilization, is\nnot simply a conceivable possibility, it is a great and urgent need. Our\neducation is, I think, pointless without it, a shell without a core. Our\nsocial life is aimless without it, we are a crowd without a common\nunderstanding. Only by means of some such unifying instrument, I\nbelieve, can we hope to lift human life out of its present dangerous\ndrift towards confusion and disaster.\n\nIt is, I think therefore, an urgently desirable undertaking.\n\nIt is also a very practicable one. The creation of such a Bible, its\nprinting and its translation, and a propaganda that would carry it into\nthe homes and schools of most of the world, could I think all be\nachieved by a few hundred resolute and capable people at a cost of\nthirty or forty million dollars. That is a less sum than that the United\nStates--in a time when they have no enemy to fear in all the world--are\nprepared to spend upon the building of what is for them an entirely\nsuperfluous and extravagant toy, a great navy.\n\nYou may, you probably will, differ very widely upon much that I have\nhere put before you. Let me ask you not to let any of the details of my\nsketching set you against the fundamental idea, that old creative idea\nof the Bohemian educationist who was the pupil of Bacon and the friend\nof Milton, the idea of Komensky, the idea of creating and using a common\nbook, a book of knowledge and wisdom, as the necessary foundation for\nany enduring human unanimity.\n\n\n\n\nVI\n\nTHE SCHOOLING OF THE WORLD\n\n\nAnd now I am going on to a review of the broad facts of the educational\norganization of our present world.\n\nI am myself a very under-educated person. It is a constant trouble to\nme. Like seeks like in this world. I propose to ask the question whether\nthe whole world is not under-educated, and I warn you in advance that I\nam going to answer in the affirmative.\n\nI am going to discuss the possibility of raising the general educational\nlevel very considerably, and I am going to consider what such a raising\nof the educational level would mean in human life.\n\nI propose to adopt rather a vulgar, business-like tone about all this. I\nam going to apply to the human community much the same sort of tests\nthat a manufacturer applies to his factory. His factory has some\ndistinctive product, and when he looks into his affairs he tries to find\nout whether he gets the utmost quantity of the product, whether he gets\nthe best possible quality of the product, whether he gets it as\nefficiently and inexpensively as possible, and constantly how he can\nimprove his factory and his processes in all these matters.\n\nNow the human community may be regarded as a concern engaged in the\nproduction of human life. And it may be judged very largely by the\nquestion whether the human life it produces is abundant and full and\nintense and beautiful.\n\nMost of the tests that we apply to a state or a city or a period or a\nnation resolve themselves, you will find, into these questions:--\n\n  What was the life it produced?\n  What is the life it produces?\n\nNow I will further assume that as yet the community has little or no\ncontrol over the raw product, over the life, that is to say, that comes\ninto it. I admit that from at least the time of Plato onward the\npossibility has been discussed of _breeding_ human beings as we do\nhorses and dogs. There is an enormous amount of what is called eugenic\nliterature and discussion to-day. But I will set all that sort of thing\naside from our present discussion because I do not think anything of the\nkind is practicable at the present time.\n\nQuite apart from any other considerations, one has to remember one\nentire difference between the possible breeding of human beings and the\nactual breeding of dogs and horses. We breed dogs and horses for\nuniformity, for certain very limited specified _points_--speed, scent\nand the like. But human beings we should have to breed for variety: we\ncannot specify any particular _points_ we want. We want statesmen and\npoets and musicians and philosophers and swift men and strong men and\ndelicate men and brave men. The qualities of one would be the weaknesses\nof another.\n\nIt is really a false analogy, that between the breeding of men and the\nbreeding of horses and dogs. In the case of human beings we want much\nmore subtle and delicate combinations of qualities. For any practical\npurposes we do not know what we want nor do we know how to get it. So\nlet us rule that theme out of our present discussion altogether.\n\nAnd I also propose to rule out another set of topics from this\ndiscussion--simply because if we don't do so we shall have more matter\nthan we can handle conveniently in the time at our disposal. I propose\nto leave out all questions of health and physical welfare. There is, as\nyou know, a vast literature now in existence, concerned with the health\nand welfare of children before and after birth, concerned with infantile\nlife, with social conditions and social work directed to the production\nof a vigorous population. I am going to assume here that all that sort\nof thing is seen to--that it is all right, that somebody is doing that,\nthat we need not trouble for the present about any of those things.\n\nThis leaves us with the mental life only of our community and its\nindividuals to consider. On that I propose to concentrate this\ndiscussion.\n\nNow the human mind in its opening stages in a civilized community passes\nthrough a process which may best be named as _schooling_. And under\nschooling I would include not only the sort of things that we do to a\nprospective citizen in the school and the infant school but also\nanything in the nature of a school-like lesson that is done by the\nmother or nurse or tutor at home, or by playmates and companions\nanywhere. Out of this schooling arises the general mental life. It is\nthe structural ground-stuff of all education and thought.\n\nNow what is this _schooling_ to do--what is it doing to the new human\nbeing?\n\nLet us recall what our own schooling was.\n\nIt fell into two pretty clearly defined parts. We learnt reading and\nwriting, we made a certain study of grammar, the method of language,\nperhaps we learnt the beginnings of some other language than our own; we\nlearnt some arithmetic and perhaps a little geometry and algebra; we did\nsome drawing. All these things were ways of expression, means of\nexpressing ourselves, means of comprehending our thoughts in terms of\nother people's minds, and of understanding the expressions of others.\nThat was the basis and substance of our schooling; a training in mental\nelucidation and in communication with other minds. But also as our\nschooling went on there was something more; we learnt a little history,\nsome geography, the beginnings of science. This second part of education\nwas not so much expression as _wisdom_. We learnt what was generally\nknown of the world about us and of its past. We entered into the common\nknowledge and common ideas of the world.\n\nNow, obviously, this _schooling_ is merely a specialization and\nexpansion of a parental function.\n\nIn the primitive ages of our race the parent, and particularly the\nmother, out of an instinctive impulse and practical necessity,\nrestrained and showed and taught, and the child, with an instinctive\nimitativeness and docility, obeyed and learnt. And as the primitive\nfamily grew into a tribe, as functions specialized and the range of\nknowledge widened, this primitive schooling by the mother was\nsupplemented and extended by the showing of things by companions and by\nthe maxims and initiations of old men.\n\nIt was only with the development of early civilizations, as the\nmysteries of writing and reading began to be important in life, that the\nschool, _qua_ school, became a thing in itself. And as the community\nexpanded, the scope of instruction expanded with it. Schooling is, in\nfact, and always has been, the expansion and development of the\nprimitive savage mind, which is still all that we inherit, to adapt it\nto the needs of a larger community. It makes out of the savage raw\nmaterial which is our basal mental stuff, a citizen. It is a necessary\nprocess of fusion if a civilized community is to keep in being. Without\nat least a network of schooled persons, able to communicate its common\nideas and act in intelligent co-operation, no community beyond a mere\nfamily group can ever hold together.\n\nAs the human community expands, therefore, the range of schooling must\nexpand to keep pace with it.\n\nI want to base my inquiry upon that proposition. If it is sound, certain\nvery interesting conclusions follow.\n\nI have already shown in the preceding discussions that the _range_ of\nthe modern state has increased at least ten times in the past century,\nand that the scale of our community of intercourse has increased\ncorrespondingly. I want now to ask if there has been any corresponding\nenlargement of the scope of the schooling--either of the community as a\nwhole or of any special governing classes in the community--to keep pace\nwith this tremendous extension of range. I am going to argue that there\nhas not been such an enlargement, and that a large factor in our present\ntroubles is the failure of education and educational method to keep pace\nwith the new demands made upon them.\n\nNow I will first ask what would one like one's son or daughter to get at\nschool to make him or her a full living citizen of this modern world.\nAnd at first I will not take into consideration the question of expense\nor any such practical difficulties. I will suppose that for the\neducation of this fortunate young citizen whose case we are considering\nwe have limitless means, the best possible tutors, the best apparatus\nand absolutely the most favourable conditions. The only limits to the\nteaching of this young citizen are his or her own limitations. We\nsuppose a pupil of fair average intelligence only.\n\nNow first we shall want our pupil to understand, speak, read and write\nthe mother tongue well. To do this thoroughly in English involves a\nfairly sound knowledge of Latin grammar and at least some slight\nknowledge of the elements of Greek. Latin and Greek, which are\ndisappearing as distinct and separate subjects from many school\ncurricula, are returning as necessary parts of the English course.\n\nBut nowadays a full life is not to be lived with a single language. The\nworld becomes polyglot. Even if we do not want to live among foreigners,\nwe want to read their books and newspapers and understand and follow\ntheir thought. Few of us there are who would not gladly read and speak\nseveral more languages if we had the chance of doing so. I would\ntherefore set down as a desirable part of this ideal education we are\nplanning, two or three other languages in addition to the mother tongue\nlearnt early and thoroughly. These additional languages can be acquired\neasily if they are learnt in the right way. The easiest way to learn a\nlanguage is to learn it when you are quite young. Many prosperous people\nin Europe nowadays contrive to bring up their children with two or three\nforeign languages, by employing foreign nurses and nursery governesses\nwho never speak to the children except in the foreign languages. In\nmany cases what is known as the alternate week system prevails. The\ngoverness is Swiss and for one week she talks nothing but French and for\nanother nothing but German. In this way the children at the age of eight\nor nine can be made to talk all three languages with a perfect accent\nand an easy idiom.\n\nNow, if this can be done for some children it could be done for all\nchildren--provided we could find the nurses and governesses or some\nequivalent for the nurses and governesses, and if we can organize the\nbusiness efficiently. That point I will defer. I note here simply that\nthe thing is possible, if not practicable.\n\nChildren, however, who have made this much start with languages are\nunable, in England and America at least, to go on properly with the\nlearning of languages when they pass into a school. Our schools are so\nbadly organized that it is rare to find even French well taught, and\nthere is rarely any teaching at all of modern languages other than\nFrench or German. Often the two foreign languages are taught by\ndifferent teachers employing different methods, and both employing a\ndifferent grammatical nomenclature from that used in studying the mother\ntongue. The classes are encumbered with belated beginners. The child who\nhas got languages from its governess, therefore, marks time--that is to\nsay, wastes time in these subjects at school. The child well grounded\nin some foreign tongue is often a source of irritation to the teacher,\nand gets into trouble because it uses idiomatic expressions with which\nthe teacher is unfamiliar, or seems to reflect upon the teacher's\naccent. These are the limitations of the school and not the limitations\nof the pupil. _Given facilities_, there is no reason why there should\nnot be a rapid expansion of the language syllabus at thirteen or\nfourteen, and why language generally should not be studied. Some\nSlavonic language could be taken up--Russian or Czech--and a beginning\nmade with some non-Aryan tongue--Arabic, for example.\n\nThe object of language teaching in a civilized state is twofold: to give\na thorough, intimate, usable knowledge of the mother tongue and of\ncertain key languages. But if teaching were systematic and no time were\nwasted, if schooling joined on and were continuous instead of being\ncatastrophically disconnected, there is another side of language\nteaching altogether--now entirely disregarded--and that is the\nacquisition _in skeleton_ of quite a number of languages clustering\nround the key languages. If at the end of his schooling a boy knows\nEnglish, French and German very well and nothing more, he is still a\nhelpless foreigner in relation to large parts of the world. But if, in\naddition, he has an outline knowledge of Russian and Arabic or Turkish\nor Hindustani--it need only be a quite bare outline--and if he has had a\nterm or so of Spanish in relation to his French, or Swedish in relation\nto his German, then he has the key in his hands for almost any language\nhe may want. If he has not the language in his head, he has it very\nconveniently on call--he needs but a sensible conversation dictionary\nand in a little while he can possess himself of it.\n\nYou may think this a large order; you may think I am demanding\nlinguistic prodigies; but remember that I am upon my own ground here; I\nam a trained teacher and a student of pedagogic science, and I am a\nwatchful parent; I know how time and opportunity are wasted in school,\nand particularly in language teaching. Languages are not things that\nexist in water-tight compartments; each one illuminates the other\nand--unless it is taught with stupefying stupidity--leads on to others.\nA child can acquire the polyglot habit almost unawares. This widening\ngrasp of languages is or was within the capacity of nearly everyone born\ninto the world--given the facilities.\n\nI ask you to note that qualification--\"given the facilities.\"\n\nAnd now let us turn from the language side to the rest of schooling. A\nsecond main division of our schooling was mathematical instruction of a\nsort. It fell into the three more or less isolated subjects of\narithmetic, algebra and Euclid. We carried on in these closed cells what\nwas, I now perceive, a needlessly laborious and needlessly muddled\nstruggle to comprehend quantity, series and form.\n\nIn all these matters, looking back upon what I was taught, comparing it\nwith what I now know, and comparing my mind with the minds of more\nfortunate individuals, I cannot resist the persuasion that I was very\nbadly done indeed in this section. And it is small consolation to me to\nnote that most people's minds seem to be no better done than mine.\n\nMy arithmetic, for instance, is mediocre. It is pervaded by inaccuracy.\nYou may say that this is probably want of aptitude. Partly, no doubt,\nbut not altogether. What is want of aptitude? Bad as my arithmetic is\nnow it is not so bad as it was when I left school. When I was about\ntwenty I held a sort of inquest upon it and found out a number of\nthings. I found that I had been allowed to acquire certain bad habits\nand besetting sins--most people do. For instance, when I ran up a column\nof figures to add them I would pass from nine to seven quite surely and\nsay sixteen; but if I went from seven to nine I had a vicious\ndisposition to make it eighteen. Endless additions went wrong through\nthat one error. I had fumbled into this vice and--this is my point--my\nschool had no apparatus, and no system of checks, to discover that this\nhad occurred. I used to get my addition wrong and I used to be\npunished--stupidly--by keeping me in from exercise. Time after time this\nhappened; there was no investigation and no improvement. Nobody ever put\nme through a series of test sums that would have analysed my errors and\ndiscovered these besetting sins of mine that led to my inaccurate\narithmetic.\n\nAnd another thing that made my arithmetic wrong was a defect in\neyesight. My two eyes haven't quite the same focal length and this often\nputs me out of the straight with a column of figures. But there was\nnothing in my school to discover that, and my school never did discover\nit.\n\nMy geometrical faculties are also very poor and undeveloped. Euclid's\nelements, indeed, I have always found simple and straightforward, but\nwhen it comes to anything in solid geometry--the intersection of a\nsphere by a cone, let us say, or something of that sort--I am hopelessly\nat sea. Deep-seated habits of faulting and fogging, which were actually\ndeveloped by my schooling, prevent my forming any conception of the\nsurfaces involved.\n\nHere again, just as with the language teaching, hardly any of us are\nreally fully educated. We suffer, nearly all of us, from a lack of\nquantitative grasp and from an imperfect grasp of form. Few of us have\nacquired such a grasp. Few of us ever made a proper use of models, and\nnearly all of us have miserably trained hands. _Given proper\nfacilities_--and here again I ask you to note that proviso--given proper\neducational facilities, most of us would not only be able to talk with\nmost people in the world but we should also have a conception of form\nand quantity far more subtle than that possessed by any but a few\nmathematicians and mechanical geniuses to-day.\n\nLet me now come to a third main division of what we call _schooling_. In\nour schooling there was an attempt to give us a view of the world about\nus and a view of our place in it, under the headings of History and\nGeography.\n\nIt would be impossible to imagine a feebler attempt. The History and\nGeography I had was perhaps, in one respect, the next best thing to a\ngood course. It was so thoroughly and hopelessly bad that it left me\nwith a vivid sense of ignorance. I read, therefore, with great avidity\nduring my adolescence.\n\nIn English schools now I doubt if the teaching of history is much better\nthan it was in my time, but geography has grown and improved--largely\nthrough the vigorous initiative of Professor Huxley, who replaced the\nold dreary topography by a vivid description of the world and mingled\nwith it a sort of _general elementary science_ under the name of\nPhysiography. This subject, with the addition of some elementary Biology\nand Physiology does now serve to give many young people in Great Britain\nsomething like a general view of the world as a whole. We need now to\nmake a parallel push with the teaching of history. Upon this matter of\nthe teaching of history I am a fanatic. I cannot think of an education\nas even half done until there has been a fairly sound review of the\nwhole of the known past, from the beginnings of the geological record\nup to our own time. Until that is done, the pupil has not been _placed_\nin the world. He is incapable of understanding his relationship to and\nhis role in the scheme of things. He is, whatever else he may have\nlearnt, essentially an ignorant person.\n\nAnd now let me recapitulate these demands I have made upon the process\nof schooling--this process of teaching that begins in the nursery and\nends about the age of sixteen or seventeen. I have asked that it should\ninvolve a practical mastery of three or four languages, including the\nmother tongue, and that perhaps four or five other additional languages\nshall have been studied, so to speak, in skeleton. I have added\nmathematics carried much higher and farther than most of our schools do\nto-day. I have demanded a sound knowledge of universal history, a\nknowledge of general physical and general biological science, and I have\nthrown in, with scarcely a word of apology, a good training of the eyes\nand hands in drawing and manual work.\n\nSo far as the pupil goes, I submit this is an entirely practicable\nproposal. It can be done, I am convinced, with any ordinary pupil of\naverage all-round ability, given--what is now almost universally\nwanting--the proper educational facilities. And now I will go on to\nexamine the question of why these facilities are wanting. I want to ask\nwhy a large class, if not the whole of our population, is not educated\nup to the level of wide understanding and fully developed capacity such\na schooling as I have sketched out implies.\n\nWell, the first fact obvious to every parent who has ever enquired\nclosely into the educational outlook of his offspring, the first fact we\nhave to face is this: there are not enough properly equipped schools\nand, still more, not enough good teachers, to do the job. It is\nproclaiming no very profound secret to declare that there is hardly such\na thing in the world to-day as a fully equipped school, that is to say a\nschool having all the possible material and apparatus and staffed\nsufficiently with a bright and able teacher, a really live and alert\neducationist, in every necessary subject, such as would be needed to\ngive this ideal education. That is the great primary obstacle, that is\nthe core of our present problem. We cannot get our modern community\neducated to anything like its full possibilities as yet because we have\nneither the teachers nor the schools.\n\nNow is this a final limitation?\n\nFor a moment I will leave the question of the possibilities of more and\nbetter equipped schools on one side. I will deal with the supply of\nteachers. At present we do not even attempt to get good teachers; we do\nnot offer any approach to a tolerable life for an ordinary teacher; we\ncompel them to lead mean and restricted lives; we underpay them\nshockingly; we do not deserve nearly such good teachers as we get. But\neven supposing we were to offer reasonable wages for teachers; an\naverage all-round wage of L1,000 a year or so, and respect and dignity;\nit does not follow that we should get as many as we should need--using\nthe methods that are in use to-day--to provide this ideal schooling for\nmost of our population, or, indeed, for any large section of our\npopulation.\n\nYou will note a new proviso creeping in at this point--\"using the\nmethods that are used to-day.\"\n\nBecause you must remember it is not simply a matter of payment that\nmakes the teacher. Teachers are born and not made. Good teaching\nrequires a peculiar temperament and distinctive aptitudes. I doubt very\nmuch, even if you could secure the services of every human being who had\nthe natural gifts needed in a good teacher, if you could disregard every\nquestion of cost and payment, I doubt whether even then you would\ncommand the services of more than one passable teacher for a hundred\nchildren and of more than one really inspired and inspiring teacher for\nfive hundred children. No doubt you could get _a sort of teacher_ for\nevery score or even for every dozen children, a commonplace person who\ncould be trained to do a few simple educational things, but I am\nspeaking now of good teachers who have the mental subtlety, the sympathy\nand the devotion necessary for efficient teaching by the individualistic\nmethods in use to-day. And since, _using the methods that are used\nto-day_, you can only hope to secure fully satisfactory results with one\nteacher to every score of pupils, or fewer, and since it is unlikely we\nshall ever be able to command the services of more than a tithe of the\npeople who could teach well, it seems that we come up here against an\ninsurmountable obstacle to an educated population.\n\nNow I want to press home the idea of that difficulty. I am an old and\nseasoned educationist; most of my earliest writings are concealed in the\nanonymity of the London educational papers of a quarter of a century\nago, and my knowledge of educational literature is fairly extensive. I\nknow in particular the literature of educational reform. And I do not\nrecall that I have ever encountered any recognition of this fundamental\ndifficulty in the way of educational development. The literature of\neducational reform is always assuming parents of limitless intelligence,\nsympathy and means, employing teachers of limitless energy and capacity.\nAnd that to an extreme degree is what we haven't got and what we can\nnever hope to have.\n\nEducational reformers seem always to be looking at education from the\npoint of view of the individual scholastic enterprise and of the\nindividual pupil, and hardly ever from the point of view of a public\ntask dealing with the community as a whole. For all practical purposes\nthis makes waste paper of a considerable proportion of educational\nliterature. This literature, the reader will find, is pervaded by\ncertain fixed ideas. There is a sort of standing objection to any\n_machining_ of education. There is, we are constantly told, to be no\nsyllabus of instruction, no examinations and no controls, no prescribed\ntext-books or diagrams because these things limit the genius of the\nteacher. And this goes on with a blissful invincible disregard of the\nfact that in nine hundred and ninety-nine cases out of the thousand the\ngenius of the teacher isn't and can't be there. And also of the fact\nthat this affair of elementary education has in its essentials been done\nover and over and over again for thousands of millions of times. There\nought to be as much scope left for genius and originality in ordinary\nteaching as there is for genius and originality in a hen laying an\nordinary egg.\n\nThese educational idealists are always disregarding the fundamental\nproblem of educational organization altogether, the problem of economy,\neconomy of the most precious thing of all, _teaching power_. It is the\nproblem of stretching the competent teacher over the maximum number of\npupils, and that can be done only by the same methods of economy that\nare practised in every other large-scale production--by the\nstandardization of everything that can be standardized, and by the use\nof every possible time and labour-saving device and every possible\nreplacement of human effort, not in order to dispense with originality\nand initiative but in order to conserve them for application at their\npoints of maximum efficiency.\n\nI have said that a disregard of the possibilities of wide organization\nand its associated economy of effort is characteristic of most\n\"advanced\" educational literature. You will, if you will examine them,\nfind that disregard working out to its natural consequences in what are\ncalled the \"advanced\" schools that appeal to educationally anxious\nparents nowadays. You will find that these places, often very\npicturesque and pleasing-looking places, are rarely prosperous enough to\nmaintain more than one or two good teachers. The rest of the staff\nshrinks from scrutiny. You will find these schools adorned with\nattractive diagrams drawn by the teachers, and strikingly original\nmodels and apparatus made by the teachers, and if you look closely into\nthe matter or consult an intelligent pupil, you will find there are\nnever enough diagrams and apparatus to see a course through. If you\npress that matter you will find that they haven't had time to make them\nso far. And they will never get so far. No school, however rich and\nprosperous and however enthusiastically run, can hope to make for itself\nall the plant and diagrams and apparatus needed for a fully efficient\nmodern education such as we have sketched out. As well might a busy man\nhope to array himself, by his own efforts, with hats, suits and boots\nmade by himself out of wool and raw hides.\n\nBut now I think you will begin to see what I am driving at. It is this:\nthat if the general level of education is to be raised in our modern\ncommunity, and if that better education is to be spread over most of our\ncommunity, it is necessary to reorganize education in the world upon\nentirely bolder, more efficient, and more economical lines. We are\ninexorably limited as to the number of good teachers we can get into the\neducational organization, and we are limited as inexorably as to the\nquality of the rank and file of our teaching profession; but we are not\nlimited in the equipment and systematic organization of teaching methods\nand apparatus. That is what I want particularly to enlarge upon now.\n\nThink of the ordinary schoolhouse--a mere empty brick building with a\nfew hat-pegs, a stale map or so, half a dozen plaster casts, a few\nhundred tattered books, a blackboard, and some broken chemical\napparatus: think of it as the dingy insufficiency it is! In such a place\nthe best teacher must needs waste three-fourths of his energies. In such\na place staff and pupils meet chiefly to waste each other's time. This\nis the first and principal point at which we can stanch the wastage of\nteaching energy that now goes on. Everywhere about the world nowadays,\nthe schoolhouse is set up and equipped by a private person or a local\nauthority in more or less complete ignorance of educational\npossibilities, in more or less complete disconnectedness, without any of\nthe help or any of the economy that comes from a centralized mass\nproduction. Let us now consider what we might have in the place of this\ntypical schoolhouse of to-day.\n\nLet me first suggest that every school should have a complete library\nof very full and explicit lesson notes, properly sorted and classified.\nAll the ordinary subjects in schools have been taught over and over\nagain millions and millions of times. Few people, I think, realize that,\nand fewer still realize the reasonable consequences of that. Human minds\nare very much the same everywhere, and the best way of teaching every\nordinary school subject, the best possible lesson and the best possible\nsuccession of lessons, ought to have been worked out to the last point,\nand the courses ought to have been stereotyped long ago. Yet if you go\ninto any school to-day, in ninety-nine cases out of the hundred you will\nfind an inexpert and ill-prepared young teacher giving a clumsy,\nvamped-up lesson as though it had never been given before. He or she\nwill have no proper notes and no proper diagrams, and a halting and\nfaulty discourse will be eked out by feeble scratchings with chalk on a\nblackboard, by querulous questioning of the pupils, and irrelevancies.\nThe thing is preposterous.\n\nAnd linked up with this complete equipment of proper lesson notes upon\nwhich the teacher will give the lessons, there should be a thing which\ndoes not exist at present in any school and which ought to exist in\nevery school, a collection of some hundreds of thousands of pictures and\ndiagrams, properly and compactly filed; a copious supply of maps, views\nof scenery, pictures of towns, and so forth for teaching geography,\ndiagrams and tables for scientific subjects, and so on and so on. You\nmust remember that if the schools of the world were thought of as a\nwhole and dealt with as a whole, these things could be produced\nwholesale at a cost out of comparison cheaper than they are made to-day.\nThere is no reason whatever why school equipment should not be a world\nmarket. A lesson upon the geography of Sweden needs precisely the same\nmaps, the same pictures of scenery, types of people, animals, cities,\nand so forth, whether that lesson is given in China or Peru or Morocco\nor London. There is no reason why these pictures and maps should not be\nprinted from the same blocks and distributed from the same centre for\nthe schools of all mankind. If the government of any large country had\nthe vigour and intelligence to go right ahead and manufacture a proper\nequipment of notes and diagrams for its own use in all its own schools,\nit would probably be able to recoup itself for most of the outlay by\ndominating the map and diagram markets of the rest of the world.\n\nAnd next to this full and manageable collection of pictures and\ndiagrams, which the teacher would whip out, with the appropriate notes,\nfive minutes before his lesson began, the modern school would have quite\na considerable number of gramophones. These would be used not only to\nsupply music for drill and so forth, and for the analytical study of\nmusic, but for the language teaching. Instead of the teacher having to\npretend, as he usually pretends now, to a complete knowledge of the\nforeign language he can really only smatter, he would become the honest\nassistant of the real teaching instrument--the gramophone. Here, again,\nit is a case for big methods or none--a case for mass production. A mass\nproduction of gramophone records for language teaching throughout the\nworld would so reduce the cost that every school could quite easily be\nequipped with a big repertory of language records. For the first year of\nany language study, at any rate, the work would go always to the\naccompaniment of the proper accent and intonation. And all over the\nworld each language would be taught with the same accent and quantities\nand idioms--a very desirable thing indeed.\n\nAnd now let me pass on to another requirement for an efficient school\nthat our educational organization has still to discover--the method of\nusing the cinematograph. I ask for half a dozen projectors or so in\nevery school, and for a well-stocked storehouse of films. The\npossibilities of certain branches of teaching have been altogether\nrevolutionized by the cinematograph. In nearly every school nowadays you\nwill find a lot of more or less worn and damaged scientific apparatus\nwhich is supposed to be used for demonstrating the elementary facts of\nchemistry, physics and the like. There is a belief that the science\nteachers--and they do their best with the time and skill and material at\ntheir disposal--rig up experimental displays of the more illuminating\nexperimental facts with this damaged litter. Many of us can recall the\nrealities of the sort of demonstration I mean. The performance took two\nor three hours to prepare, an hour to deliver and an hour or so to clear\naway; it was difficult to follow, impossible to repeat, it usually went\nwrong, and almost invariably the teacher lost his temper. These\npractical demonstrations occurred usually in the opening enthusiasm of\nthe term. As the weeks wore on, the pretence of practical teaching was\nquietly dropped, and we crammed our science out of the text-book.\n\nNow that is the sort of thing that still goes on. But it ought to be\nentirely out of date. All that scientific bric-a-brac in the cupboard\nhad far better be thrown away. All the demonstration experiments that\nscience teachers will require in the future can be performed once for\nall--before a cinematograph. They can be done _finally_; they need never\nbe done again. You can get the best and most dexterous teacher in the\nworld--he can do what has to be done with the best apparatus, in the\nbest light; anything that is very minute or subtle you can magnify or\nrepeat from another point of view; anything that is intricate you can\nrecord with extreme slowness; you can show the facts a mile off or six\ninches off, and all that your actual class teacher need do now is to\nspend five minutes on getting out the films he wants, ten minutes in\nreading over the corresponding lecture notes, and then he can run the\nfilm, give the lesson, question his class upon it, note what they miss\nand how they take it, run the film again for a second scrutiny, and get\nout for the subsequent study of the class the ample supply of diagrams\nand pictures needed to fix the lesson. Can there be any comparison\nbetween the educational efficiency of the two methods?\n\nSo I put it to you, that it is possible now to make--and that the world\nneeds badly that we should make--a new sort of school, a standardized\nschool, a school richly equipped with modern apparatus and economizing\nthe labour of teaching to an extent at present undreamt of, in which,\nall over the world, the same stereotyped lessons, leading the youth of\nthe whole world through a parallel course of schooling, can be\ndelivered.\n\nI know that in putting this before you I challenge some of the most\npopular affectations of cultivated people. I know that many people will\nbe already writhing with a genteel horror at the idea of the same lesson\nbeing given in identical terms to everybody in turn throughout the\nworld. It sounds monotonous. It will rob the world of variety--and so on\nand so on. But indeed it will not be monotonous at all. That lesson will\nbe new and fresh and good to every pupil who receives it. And remember\nit is by our hypothesis the best possible form and arrangement of that\nlesson. It is to take the place of a sham lesson or no lesson at all.\nThere is an eternal freshness in learning as in all the other main\nthings in life. It will be no more monotonous than having one's seventh\nbirthday or falling in love for the first time.\n\nAnd as for variety, I for one do not care how soon every possible\nvariety of ignorance and misconception is banished from the world. The\nsun shines on the whole world and it is the same sun. I have still to be\npersuaded that our planet would be more various and interesting if it\nwere lit by two or three thousand uncertain, spasmodic and differently\ncoloured searchlights directed upon it from every direction. I am\npleading for a clear white light of education that shall go like the sun\nround the whole world.\n\nYou see that in all this I am driving at--what shall I call\nit?--syndicated schools, syndicated lesson notes, and, so far as\nequipment goes, mass production. I want to see the sort of thing\nhappening to schools that has already happened to many sorts of retail\nshops. In the place of little ill-equipped schools, each run by its own\nteacher and buying its own books and diagrams and material and so forth\nin small quantities at high prices, I want to see a great central\norganization, employing teachers of genius, working in consultation and\nco-operation and producing lesson notes, diagrams, films, phonograph\nrecords, cheaply, abundantly, on a big scale for a nation, or a group of\nnations, or, if you like, for all the world, just as America produces\nwatches and alarum clocks and cheap automobiles for all the world. And I\nwant to see the schools of the world being run, so far as the\nintellectual training goes, not by local committees but by that _central\norganization_.\n\nIt is only by this reorganization of schooling upon the lines of big\nproduction that we can hope to get a civilized community in the world at\nan educational level very markedly higher than the existing educational\nlevel.\n\nBut if we could so economize teaching energy--if we made our really\ngreat teachers, by the use of modern appliances, teachers not of\nhandfuls but of millions; if we insisted upon a universal application of\nthe best and most effective methods of teaching, just as we insist upon\nthe best and most effective methods of street traction and town\nlighting--then I believe it would be possible to build the civilization\nof the years to come on a foundation of mental preparation incomparably\nsounder and higher than anything we know of to-day.\n\n\n\n\nVII\n\nCOLLEGE, NEWSPAPER AND BOOK\n\n\nAnd now let us go on to the next stages of education.\n\nThe schooling process is a natural phase in human development--it is our\nelaboration of the natural learning of boyhood and girlhood and of\nadolescence. There was schooling before schools; there was schooling\nbefore humanity. I have watched a cat schooling her kittens. Schooling\nis a part of being young. And we grow up. So there comes a time when\nschooling is over, when the process of equipment gives place to an\nincreasing share in the activities and decisions of adult life.\n\nNevertheless for us education must still go on.\n\nI suppose that the savage or the barbarian or the peasant in any part of\nthe world or the uneducated man anywhere would laugh if you told him\nthat the adult must still learn. But in our modern world--I mean the\nmore or less civilized world of the last twenty-five centuries or\nso--there has grown up a new idea--new, I mean, in the sense that it\nruns counter to the life scheme of primitive humanity and of most other\nliving things--and that is _the idea that one can go on learning right\nup to the end of life_. It marks off modern man from all animals, that\nin his adult life he can display a sense that there remains something\nstill to be investigated and wisdom still to be acquired.\n\nI do not know enough history to tell you with any confidence when adult\nmen, instead of just going about the business of life after they had\ngrown up, continued to devote themselves to learning, to a deliberate\nprolongation of what is for all other animals an adolescent phase. But\nby the time of Buddha in India and Confucius in China and the schools of\nthe philosophers in the Greek world the thing was in full progress. That\nwas twenty-six centuries ago or more.\n\nSomething of the sort may have been going on in the temples of Egypt or\nSamaria a score of centuries before. I do not know. You must ask some\nsuch great authority as Professor Breasted about that. It may be fifty\nor a hundred centuries since men, although they were fully grown up,\nstill went on trying to learn.\n\nThe idea of adult learning has spread ever since. To-day I suppose most\neducated people would agree that so long as we live we learn and ought\nto learn--that we ought to develop our ideas and enlarge, correct and\nchange our ideas.\n\nBut even to-day you will find people who have not yet acquired this\nview. You will find even teachers and doctors and business men who are\npersuaded that they had learnt all that there was to learn by\ntwenty-five or thirty. It is only quite recently that this idea has\npassed beyond a special class and pervaded the world generally--the idea\nof everyone being a life-long student and of the whole world becoming,\nas it were, a university for those who have passed beyond the schooling\nstage.\n\nIt has spread recently because in recent years the world has changed so\nrapidly that the idea of settling down for life has passed out of our\nminds, has given place to a new realization of the need of continuous\nadaptation to the very end of our days. It is no good settling down in a\nworld that, on its part, refuses to do anything of the sort.\n\nBut hitherto, before these new ideas began to spread in our community,\nthe mass of men and women definitely _settled down_. At twelve, or\nfifteen, or sixteen, or twenty it was decided that they should stop\nlearning. It has only been a rare and exceptional class hitherto that\nhas gone on learning throughout life. The scene and field of that\nlearning hitherto has been, in our Western communities, the University.\nEssentially the University is and has been an organization of adult\nlearning as distinguished from preparatory and adolescent learning.\n\nBut between the phase of schooling and the phase of adult learning there\nis an intermediate stage.\n\nIn Scotland and America that is distinguished and thought of clearly as\nthe _college stage_. But in England, where we do not think so clearly,\nthis college stage is mixed up with and done partly at school and partly\nin the University. It is not marked off so definitely from the stage of\ngeneral preparation that precedes it or from the stage of free\nintellectual enterprise that follows it.\n\nNow what should college give the young citizen, male or female, upon the\nfoundation of schooling we have already sketched out? In practice we\nfind a good deal of technical study comes into the college stage. The\nbudding lawyer begins to read law, the doctor starts his professional\nstudies, the future engineer becomes technical, and the young merchant\nsets to work, or should do, to study the great movements of commerce and\nbusiness method and organization.\n\nAs the college stage of those who do not, as a matter of fact, go to\ncollege, we have now in every civilized country the evening continuation\nschool, the evening technical school and the works school.\n\nBut important as these things are from the point of view of service,\nthey are not the _soul_--not the real meaning of the college stage.\n\nThe soul of the college stage, the most important value about it, is\nthat in it is a sort of preparatory pause and inspection of the whole\narena of life. It is the educational concomitant of the stage of\nadolescence.\n\nThe young man and the young woman begin to think for themselves, and the\ncollege education is essentially the supply of stimulus and material\nfor that process.\n\nIt was in the college stage that most of us made out our religion and\nmade it real for ourselves. It was then we really took hold of social\nand political ideas, when we became alive to literature and art, when we\nbegan the delightful and distressful enterprise of finding ourselves.\n\nAnd I think most of us will agree when we look back that the most real\nthing in our college life was not the lecturing and the lessons--very\nmuch of that stuff could very well have been done in the schooling\nstage--but the arguments of the debating society, the discussions that\nbroke out in the classroom or laboratory, the talks in one's rooms about\nGod and religion, about the state and freedom, about art, about every\npossible and impossible social relationship.\n\nNow in addition to that I had something else in my own college\ncourse--something of the same sort of thing but better.\n\nI have spoken of myself as under-educated. My schooling was shocking\nbut, as a blessed compensation, my college stage was rather\nexceptionally good. My schooling ended when I was thirteen. My father,\nwho was a professional cricketer, was smashed up by an accident, and I\nhad three horrible years in employment in shops. Then my luck changed\nand I found myself under one of the very greatest teachers of his time,\nProfessor Huxley. I worked at the Royal College of Science in London\nfor one year under him in his great course in zoology, and for a year\nand a half under a very good but rather uninspiring teacher, Professor\nJudd, the geologist. I did also physics and astronomy. Altogether I had\nthree full years of science study. And the teaching of biology at that\ntime, as Huxley had planned it, was a continuing, systematic,\nilluminating study of life, of the forms and appearances of life, of the\nway of life, of the interplay of life, of the past of life and the\npresent prospect of life. It was a tremendous training in the sifting of\nevidence and the examination of appearances.\n\nEvery man is likely to be biassed, I suppose, in favour of his own\neducational course. Yet it seems to me that those three years of work\nwere educational--that they gave a vision of the universe as a whole and\na discipline and a power such as no other course, no classical or\nmathematical course I have ever had a chance of testing, could do.\n\nI am so far a believer in a biological backbone for the college phase of\neducation that I have secured it for my sons and I have done all I can\nto extend it in England. Nevertheless, important as that formal college\nwork was to me, it still seems to me that the informal part of our\ncollege life--the talk, the debates, the discussion, the scampering\nabout London to attend great political meetings, to hear William Morris\non Socialism, Auberon Herbert on Individualism, Gladstone on Home Rule,\nor Bradlaugh on Atheism--for those were the lights of my remote student\ndays--was about equally important.\n\nIf schooling is a training in expression and communication, college is\nessentially the establishment of broad convictions. And in order that\nthey may be established firmly and clearly, it is necessary that the\ndeveloping young man or woman should hear all possible views and see the\nmedal of truth not only from the obverse but from the reverse side.\n\nNow here again I want to put the same sort of questions I have put about\nschooling.\n\nIs the college stage of our present educational system anywhere near its\nmaximum possible efficiency? And could it not be extended from its\npresent limited range until it reached practically the whole adolescent\ncommunity?\n\nLet me deal with the first of these questions first.\n\nCould we not do much more than we do to make the broad issues of various\ncurrent questions plain and accessible to our students in the college\nstage?\n\nFor example, there is a vast discussion afoot upon the questions that\ncentre upon Property, its rights and its limitations. There is a great\nliterature of Collectivist Socialism and Guild Socialism and Communism.\nAbout these things our young people must know. They are very urgent\nquestions; our sons and daughters will have to begin to deal with them\nfrom the moment they leave college. Upon them they must form working\nopinions, and they must know not only what they themselves believe but,\nif our public affairs are not to degenerate into the squalid, obstinate,\nhopeless conflicts of prejudiced adherents, they must know also what is\nbelieved by other people whose convictions are different from theirs.\n\nYou may want to hush these matters up. Many elderly people do. You will\nfail.\n\nAll our intelligent students will insist upon learning what they can of\nthese discussions and forming opinions for themselves. And if the\ncollege will not give them the representative books, a fair statement of\nthe facts and views, and some guidance through the maze of these\nquestions, it means merely that they will get a few books in a defiant\nor underhand way and form one-sided and impassioned opinions.\n\nAnother great set of questions upon which the adolescent want to judge\nfor themselves, and ought to judge for themselves, are the religious\nquestions.\n\nAnd a third group are those that determine the principles of sexual\nconduct.\n\nI know that in all these matters, on both sides of the Atlantic, a great\nbattle rages between dogma and concealment on the one hand and open\nventilation on the other.\n\nUpon the issue I have no doubt. I find it hard even to imagine the case\nfor the former side.\n\nSo long as _schooling_ goes on, the youngster is immature, needs to be\nprotected, is not called upon for judgments and initiatives, and may\nwell be kept under mental limitations. I do not care very much how you\ncensor or select the reading and talking and thinking of the schoolboy\nor schoolgirl. But it seems to me that with adolescence comes the right\nto knowledge and the right of judgment. And that it is the _task and\nduty_ of the college to give matters of opinion in the solid--to let the\nstudent walk round and see them from every side.\n\nNow how is this to be done?\n\nI suggest that to begin with we open wide our colleges to propaganda of\nevery sort. There is still a general tendency in universities on both\nsides of the Atlantic to treat propaganda as infection. For the\nadolescent it is not--it is a stimulating drug.\n\nLet me instance my own case. I am a man of Protestant origins and with a\nProtestant habit of mind. But it is a matter of great regret to me that\nthere is no good Roman Catholic propaganda available for my sons in\ntheir college life. I would like to have the old Mother Church giving my\nboys an account of herself and of the part she has played in the history\nof the world, telling them what she stands for and claims to be, giving\nher own account of the Mass. These things are interwoven with our past;\nthey are part of us. I do not like them to go into a church and stare\nlike foreigners and strangers at the altar.\n\nAnd side by side with that Catholic propaganda I would like them to hear\nan interpretation of religious origins and church history by some\nnon-catholic or sceptical ethnologist. He, too, should be free to tell\nhis story and drive his conclusions home.\n\nBut you will find most colleges and most college societies bar religious\ninstruction and discussion. What do they think they are training? Some\nsort of genteel recluse--or men and women?\n\nSo, too, with the discussion of Bolshevism. I do not know how things are\nin America but in England there has been a ridiculous attempt to\nsuppress Bolshevik propaganda. I have seen a lot of Bolshevik propaganda\nand it is not very convincing stuff. But by suppressing it, by police\nseizures of books and papers and the like, it has been invested with a\nquality of romantic mystery and enormous significance. Our boys and\ngirls, especially the brighter and more imaginative, naturally enough\nthink it must be tremendous stuff to agitate the authorities in this\nfashion.\n\nAt our universities, moreover, the more loutish types of student have\nbeen incited to attack and smash up the youths suspected of such\nreading. This gives it the glamour of high intellectual quality.\n\nThe result is that every youngster in the British colleges with a spark\nof mental enterprise and self-respect is anxious to be convinced of\nBolshevik doctrine. He believes in Lenin--because he has been prevented\nfrom reading him. Sober collectivists like myself haven't a chance with\nhim.\n\nBut you see my conception of the college course? Its backbone should be\nthe study of biology and its substance should be the threshing out of\nthe burning questions of our day.\n\nYou may object to this that I am proposing the final rejection of that\ndiscipline in classical philosophy which is still claimed as the highest\nform of college education in the world----the sort of course that the\nmen take in what is called _Greats_ at Oxford. You will accuse me of\nwanting to bury and forget Aristotle and Plato, Heraclitus and\nLucretius, and so forth and so on.\n\nBut I don't want to do that--_so far as their thought is still alive_.\nSo far as their thought is still alive these men will come into the\ndiscussion of living questions now. If they are Ancients and dead then\nlet them be buried and left to the archaeological excavator. If they are\nstill Moderns and alive, I defy you to bury them if you are discussing\nliving questions in a full and honest way. But don't go hunting after\nthem, there are still modern Immortals in the darkness of a forgotten\nlanguage. Don't make a superstition of them. Let them come hunting after\nyou. Either they are unavoidable if your living questions are fully\ndiscussed, or they are irrelevant and they do not matter. That there is\na wisdom and beauty in the classics which is incommunicable in any\nmodern language, which obviously neither ennobles nor empowers, but\nwhich is nevertheless supremely precious, is a kind of nonsense dear to\nthe second-rate classical don, but it has nothing endearing about it\nfor any other human beings. I will not bother you further with that sort\nof affectation here.\n\nAnd this college course I have sketched should, in the modern state,\npass insensibly into adult mental activities.\n\nConcurrently with it there will be going on, as I have said, a man's\nspecial technical training. He will be preparing himself for a life of\nindustrialism, commerce, engineering, agriculture, medicine,\nadministration, education or what not. And as with the man, so with the\nwoman. That, too, is a process which in this changing new world of ours\ncan never be completed. Neither of these college activities will ever\nreally leave off. All through his life a man or woman should be\nconfirming, fixing or modifying his or her general opinions; and all the\ntime his or her technical knowledge and power should be consciously\nincreased.\n\nAnd now let me come to the second problem we opened up in connection\nwith college education--the problem of its extension.\n\nCan we extend it over most or all of a modern population?\n\nI don't think we can, if we are to see it in terms of college buildings,\nclass rooms, tutors, professors and the like. Here again, just as in the\ncase of schooling, we have to raise the neglected problem--neglected so\nfar as education goes--of economy of effort; and we have to look once\nmore at the new facilities that our educational institutions have so\nfar refused to utilize. Our European colleges and universities have a\nlong and honourable tradition that again owes much to the educational\nmethods of the Roman Empire and the Hellenic world. This tradition was\nalready highly developed before the days of printing from movable type,\nand long before the days when maps or illustrations were printed. The\nhigher education, therefore, was still, as it was in the Stone Age,\nlargely vocal. And the absence of paper and so forth, rendering\nnotebooks costly and rare, made a large amount of memorizing necessary.\nFor that reason the mediaeval university teacher was always dividing his\nsubject into firstly and secondly and fourthly and sixthly and so on, so\nthat the student could afterwards tick off and reproduce the points on\nhis fingers--a sort of thumb and finger method of thought--still to be\nfound in perfection in the discourses of that eminent Catholic\napologist, Mr. Hilaire Belloc. It is a method that destroys all sense of\nproportion between the headings; main considerations and secondary and\ntertiary points get all catalogued off as equivalent numbers, but it was\na mnemonic necessity of those vanished days.\n\nAnd they have by no means completely vanished. We still use the lecture\nas the normal basis of instruction in our colleges, we still hear\ndiscourses in the firstly, secondly and thirdly form, and we still\nprefer even a second-rate professor on the spot to the printed word of\nthe ablest teacher at a distance. Most of us who have been through\ncollege courses can recall the distress of hearing a dull and inadequate\nview of a subject being laboriously unfolded in a long series of tedious\nlectures, in spite of the existence of full and competent text-books.\nAnd here again it would seem that the time has come to centralize our\nbest teaching, to create a new sort of wide teaching professor who will\nteach not in one college but in many, and to direct the local professor\nto the more suitable task of ensuring by a commentary, by organized\ncritical work, and so forth, that the text-book is duly read, discussed\nand compared with the kindred books in the college library.\n\nThis means that the great teaching professors will not lecture, or that\nthey will lecture only to try over their treatment of a subject before\nan intelligent audience as a prelude to publication. They may perhaps\nvisit the colleges under their influence, but their basis instrument of\ninstruction will be not a course of lectures but a book. They will carry\nout the dictum of Carlyle that the modern university is a university of\nbooks.\n\nNow the frank recognition of the book and not the lecture as the\nsubstantial basis of instruction opens up a large and interesting range\nof possibilities. It releases the process of learning from its old\nservitude to place and to time. It is no longer necessary for the\nstudent to go to a particular room, at a particular hour, to hear the\ngolden words drop from the lips of a particular teacher. The young man\nwho reads at eleven o'clock in the morning in luxurious rooms in\nTrinity College, Cambridge, will have no very marked advantage over\nanother young man, employed during the day, who reads at eleven o'clock\nat night in a bed-sitting-room in Glasgow. The former, you will say, may\nget commentary and discussion, but there is no particular reason why the\nlatter should not form some sort of reading society with his fellows,\nand discuss the question with them in the dinner hour and on the way to\nthe works. Nor is there any reason why he should not get tutorial help\nas a university extension from the general educational organization, as\ngood in quality as any other tutorial help.\n\nAnd this release of the essentials of a college education from\nlimitations of locality and time brought about by modern conditions, not\nonly makes it unnecessary for a man to come \"up\" to college to be\neducated, but abolishes the idea that his educational effort comes to an\nend when he goes \"down.\" Attendance at college no longer justifies a\nclaim to education; inability to enter a college is no longer an excuse\nfor illiteracy.\n\nI do not think that our educational and university authorities realize\nhow far the college stage of education has already escaped from the\nlocal limitations of colleges; they do not understand what a great and\ngrowing volume of adolescent learning and thought, of college education\nin the highest and best sense of the word, goes on outside the walls of\ncolleges altogether; and on the other they do not grasp the significant\nfact that, thanks to the high organization of sports and amusements and\nsocial life in our more prosperous universities, a great proportion of\nthe youngsters who come in to their colleges never get the realities of\na college education at all, and go out into the world again as shallow\nand uneducated as they came in. And this failure to grasp the great\nchange in educational conditions brought about, for the most part, in\nthe last half-century, accounts for the fact that when we think of any\nextension of higher education in the modern community we are all too apt\nto think of it as a great proliferation of expensive, pretentious\ncollege buildings and a great multiplication of little teaching\nprofessorships, and a further segregation of so many hundreds or\nthousands of our adolescents from the general community, when as a\nmatter of fact the reality of education has ceased to lie in that\ndirection at all. The modern task is not to multiply teachers _but to\nexalt and intensify exceptionally good teachers_, to recognize their\nclose relationship with the work of university research--which it is\ntheir business to digest and interpret--and to secure the production and\nwide distribution of books throughout the community.\n\nI am inclined to think that the type of adolescent education, very much\nsegregated in out-of-the-way colleges and aristocratic in spirit, such\nas goes on now at Oxford, Cambridge, Yale, Holloway, Wellesley and the\nlike, has probably reached and passed its maximum development. I doubt\nif the modern community can afford to continue it; it certainly cannot\nafford to extend it very widely.\n\nBut as I have pointed out, there has always been a second strand to\ncollege education--the technical side, the professional training or\napprenticeship. Here there are sound reasons that the student should go\nto a particular place, to the special museums and laboratories, to the\ninstitutes of research, to the hospitals, factories, works, ports,\nindustrial centres and the like where the realities he studies are to be\nfound, or to the studios or workshops or theatres where they practise\nthe art to which he aspires. Here it seems we have natural centres of\naggregation in relation to which the college stage of a civilized\ncommunity, the general adolescent education, the vision of the world as\na whole and the realization of the individual place in it, can be\norganized most conveniently.\n\nYou see that what I am suggesting here is in effect that we should take\nour colleges, so far as they are segregations of young people for\ngeneral adolescent education, and break them as a cook breaks eggs--and\nstir them up again into the general intellectual life of the community.\n\nCoupled with that there should, of course, be a proposal to restrict the\nhours of industrial work or specialized technical study up to the age of\ntwenty, at least, in order to leave time for this college stage in the\ngeneral education of every citizen of the world.\n\nThe idea has already been broached that men and women in the modern\ncommunity are no longer inclined to consider themselves as ever\ncompletely adult and finished; there is a growing disposition and a\ngrowing necessity to keep on learning throughout life. In the worlds of\nresearch, of literature and art and economic enterprise, that adult\nlearning takes highly specialized forms which I will not discuss now;\nbut in the general modern community the process of continuing education\nafter the college stage is still evidently only at a primitive level of\ndevelopment. There are a certain number of literary societies and\nsocieties for the study of particular subjects; the pulpit still\nperforms an educational function; there are public lectures and in\nAmerica there are the hopeful germs of what may become later on a very\nconsiderable organization of adult study in the Lyceum Chautauqua\nsystem; but for the generality of people the daily newspaper, the Sunday\nnewspaper, the magazine and the book constitute the only methods of\nmental revision and enlargement after the school or college stage is\npast.\n\nNow we have to remember that the bulk of this great organization of\nnewspapers and periodicals and all the wide distribution of books that\ngoes on to-day are extremely recent things. This new nexus of print has\ngrown up in the lifetime of four or five generations, and it is\nundergoing constant changes. We are apt to forget its extreme newness in\nhistory and to disregard the profound difference in mental conditions it\nmakes between our own times and any former period. It is impossible to\nbelieve that thus far it is anything but a sketch and intimation of what\nit will presently be. It has grown. No man foresaw it; no one planned\nit. We of this generation have grown up with it and are in the habit of\nbehaving as though this nexus had always been with us and as though it\nwould certainly remain with us. The latter conclusion is almost wilder\nthan the former.\n\nBy what we can only consider a series of fortunate accidents, the press\nand the book world have provided and do provide a necessary organ in the\nmodern world state, an organ for swift general information upon matters\nof fact and for the rapid promulgation and diffusion of ideas and\ninterpretations. The newspaper grew, as we know, out of the news-letter\nwhich in a manuscript form existed before the Roman Empire; it owes its\nlater developments largely to the advertisement possibilities that came\nwith the expansion of the range of trading as the railways and suchlike\nmeans of communication developed. Modern newspapers have been described,\nnot altogether inaptly, as sheets of advertisements with news and\ndiscussions printed on the back. The extension of book reading from a\nsmall class, chiefly of men, to the whole community has also been\nlargely a response to new facilities; though it owes something also to\nthe religious disputes of the last three centuries. The population of\nEurope, one may say with a certain truth, first learnt to read the\nBible, and only afterwards to read books in general. A large proportion\nof the book publishing in the English language in the seventeenth and\neighteenth centuries still consisted of sermons and controversial\ntheological works.\n\nBoth newspaper and book production began in a small way as the\nenterprise of free individuals, without anyone realizing the dimensions\nto which the thing would grow. Our modern press and book trade, in spite\nof many efforts to centralize and control it, in spite of Defence of the\nRealm Acts and the like, is still the production of an unorganized\nmultitude of persons. It is not centralized; it is not controlled. To\nthis fact the nexus of print owes what is still its most valuable\nquality. Thoughts and ideas of the most varied and conflicting sort\narise and are developed and worked out and fought out in this nexus,\njust as they do in a freely thinking vigorous mind.\n\nI am not, you will note, saying that this freedom is perfect or that the\nthought process of the print nexus could not go very much better than it\ndoes, but I am saying that it has a very considerable freedom and vigour\nand that so far as it has these qualities it is a very fine thing\nindeed.\n\nNow many people think that we are moving in the direction of world\nsocialism to-day. Collectivism is perhaps a better, more definite word\nthan socialism, and, so far as keeping the peace goes, and in matters of\ntransport and communication, trade, currency, elementary education, the\nproduction and distribution of staples and the conservation of the\nnatural resources of the world go, I believe that the world and the\ncommon sense of mankind move steadily towards a world collectivism. But\nthe more co-operation we have in our common interests, the more\nnecessary is it to guard very jealously the freedom of the mind, that is\nto say, the liberty of discussion and suggestion.\n\nIt is here that the Communist regime in Russia has encountered its most\nfatal difficulty. A catastrophic unqualified abolition of private\nproperty has necessarily resulted in all the paper, all the printing\nmachinery, all the libraries, all the news-stalls and book shops,\nbecoming Government property. It is impossible to print anything without\nthe consent of the Government. One cannot buy a book or newspaper; one\nmust take what the Government distributes. Free discussion--never a very\nfree thing in Russia--has now on any general scale become quite\nimpossible. It was a difficulty foreseen long ago in Socialist\ndiscussions, but never completely met by the thorough-paced Communist.\nAt one blow the active mental life of Russia has been ended, and so long\nas Russia remains completely and consistently communist it cannot be\nresumed. It can only be resumed by some surrender of paper, printing and\nbook distribution from absolute Government ownership to free individual\ncontrol. That can only be done by an abandonment of the full rigours of\ncommunist theory.\n\nIn our western communities the dangers to the intellectual nexus lie\nrather on the other side. The war period produced considerable efforts\nat Government control and as a consequence considerable annoyance to\nwriters, much concealment and some interference with the expression of\nopinion; but on the whole both newspapers and books held their own.\nThere is to-day probably as much freedom of publishing as ever there\nwas. It is not from the western governments that mischief is likely to\ncome to free intellectual activity in the western communities but from\nthe undisciplined individual, and from the incitements to mob violence\nby propagandist religions and cults against free discussion.\n\nAbout the American press I know and can say little. I will speak only of\nthings with which I am familiar. I am inclined to think that there has\nbeen a considerable increase of deliberate lying in the British press\nsince 1914, and a marked loss of journalistic self-respect. Particular\ninterests have secured control of large groups of papers and pushed\ntheir particular schemes in entire disregard of the general mental\nwell-being. For instance, there has recently been a remarkable boycott\nin the London press of a very able collectivist book, Sir Leo Money's\n_Triumph of Nationalization_, because it would have interfered with the\noperation of very large groups which were concerned in getting back\npublic property into private hands on terms advantageous to the latter.\nIt is a book not only important as a statement of a peculiar economic\nview, but because of the statesmanlike gravity and clearness of its\nexposition. I do not think it would have been possible to stand between\nthe public and a writer in this way in the years before 1914. A\nconsiderable proportion of the industrial and commercial news is now\nwritten to an end. The British press has also suffered greatly from the\noutbreak of social and nationalist rancour arising out of the great war,\nthe inability of the European mind to grasp the Bolshevik issue, and the\nclumsy blunderings of the Versailles settlement. Quite half the news\nfrom Eastern Europe that appears in the London press is now deliberate\nfabrication, and a considerable proportion of the rest is rephrased and\nmutilated to give a misleading impression to the reader.\n\nBut people cannot be continuously deceived in this way, and the\nconsequence of this press demoralization has been a great loss of\ninfluence for the daily paper. A diminishing number of people now\nbelieve the news as it is given them, and fewer still take the unsigned\nportions of the newspaper as written in good faith. And there has been a\nconsequent enhancement of the importance of signed journalism. Men of\nmanifest honesty, men with names to keep clean, have built up\nreputations and influence upon the ruins of editorial prestige. The\nexploitation of newspapers by the adventurers of \"private enterprise\" in\nbusiness, has carried with it this immense depreciation in the power and\nhonour of the newspaper.\n\nI am inclined to think that this swamping of a large part of the world's\npress by calculated falsehood and partisan propaganda is a temporary\nphase in the development of the print nexus: nevertheless, it is a very\ngreat inconvenience and danger to the world. It stands very much in the\nway of that universal adult education which is our present concern.\nReality is horribly distorted. Men cannot see the world clearly and they\ncannot, therefore, begin to think about it rightly.\n\nWe need a much better and more trustworthy press than we possess. We\ncannot get on to a new and better world without it. The remedy is to be\nfound not, I believe, in any sort of Government control, but in a legal\ncampaign against the one thing harmful--the lie. It would be in the\ninterests of most big advertisers, for most big advertisement is honest;\nit would be, in the long run, in the interests of the Press; and it\nwould mean an enormous step forward in the general mental clarity of the\nworld if a deliberate lie, whether in an advertisement or in the news or\nother columns of the press, was punishable--punishable whether it did or\ndid not involve anything that is now an actionable damage. And it would\nstill further strengthen the print nexus and clear the mind of the world\nif it were compulsory to correct untrue statements in the periodical\npress, whether they had been made in good faith or not, at least as\nconspicuously and lengthily as the original statement. I can see no\nimpossibility in the realization of either of these proposals, and no\nobjection that a really honest newspaper proprietor or advertiser could\noffer to them. It would make everyone careful, of course, but I fail to\nsee any grievance in that. The sanitary effect upon the festering\ndisputes of our time would be incalculably great. It would be like\nopening the windows upon a stuffy, overcrowded and unventilated room of\ndisputing people.\n\nGiven adequate laws to prevent the cornering of paper or the partisan\ncontrol of the means of distribution of books and printed matter, I\nbelieve that the present freedoms and the unhampered individualism of\nthe world of thought, discussion and literary expression are and must\nremain conditions essential to the proper growth and activity of a\ncommon world mind. On the basis of that sounder education I have\nsketched in a preceding paper, there is possible such an extension of\nunderstanding, such an increase of intelligent co-operations and such a\nclarification of wills as to dissolve away half the difficulties and\nconflicts of the present time and to provide for the other half such a\npower of solution as we, in the heats, entanglements and limitations of\nour present ignorance, doubt and misinformation can scarcely begin to\nimagine.\n\nI do not know how far I have conveyed to you in the last two papers my\nunderlying idea of an education not merely intensive but extensive,\nplanned so economically and so ably as to reach every man and woman in\nthe world.\n\nIt is a dream not of _individuals educated_--we have thought too much of\nthe individual educated _for_ the individual--but of a _world educated_\nto a pitch of understanding and co-operation far beyond anything we know\nof to-day, for the sake of all mankind.\n\nI have tried to show that, given organization, given the will for it,\nsuch a world-wide education is possible.\n\nI wish I had the gift of eloquence so that I could touch your wills in\nthis matter. I do not know how this world of to-day strikes upon you. I\nam not ungrateful for the gift of life. While there is life and a human\nmind, it seems to me there must always be excitements and beauty, even\nif the excitements are fierce and the beauty terrible and tragic.\nNevertheless, this world of mankind to-day seems to me to be a very\nsinister and dreadful world. It has come to this--that I open my\nnewspaper every morning with a sinking heart, and usually I find little\nto console me. Every day there is a new tale of silly bloodshed. Every\nday I read of anger and hate, oppression and misery and want--stupid\nanger and oppression, needless misery and want--the insults and\nsuspicions of ignorant men, and the inane and horrible self-satisfaction\nof the well-to-do. It is a vile world because it is an under-educated\nworld, unreasonable, suspicious, base and ferocious. The air of our\nlives is a close and wrathful air; it has the closeness of a\nprison--the indescribable offence of crowded and restricted humanity.\n\nAnd yet I know that there is a way out.\n\nUp certain steps there is a door to this dark prison of ignorance,\nprejudice and passion in which we live--and that door is only locked on\nthe inside. It is within our power, given the will for it, given the\ncourage for it--it is within our power to go out. The key to all our\nhuman disorder is organized education, comprehensive and universal. The\nwatchword of conduct that will clear up all our difficulties is, the\n_plain truth_. Rely upon that watchword, use that key with courage and\nwe can go out of the prison in which we live; we can go right out of the\nconditions of war, shortage, angry scrambling, mutual thwarting and\nmalaise and disease in which we live; we and our kind can go out into\nsunlight, into a sweet air of understanding, into confident freedoms and\na full creative life--for ever.\n\nI do not know--I do not dare to believe--that I shall live to hear that\nkey grating in the lock. It may be our children and our children's\nchildren will still be living in this jail. But a day will surely come\nwhen that door will open wide and all our race will pass out from this\nmagic prison of ignorance, suspicion and indiscipline in which we now\nall suffer together.\n\n\n\n\nVIII\n\nTHE ENVOY\n\n\nIn the preceding papers I have, with some repetition and much stumbling,\nset out a fairly complete theory of what men and women have to do at the\npresent time if human life is to go on hopefully to any great happiness\nand achievement in the days to come. Much of this material was first\nprepared to be delivered to a lecture audience, and I regret that\nill-health has prevented a complete re-writing of these portions. There\nis more of the uplifted forefinger and the reiterated point than I\nshould have allowed myself in an essay. But this is a loss of grace\nrather than of clearness. And since I am stating a case and not offering\nthe reader anything professing to be a literary work, I shall not\napologise for finally summing up and underlining the chief points of\nthis book.\n\nThey are, firstly: that a great change in human conditions has been\nbrought about during the past century, and secondly that a vast task of\nadaptation, which must be, initially and fundamentally, _mental_\nadaptation, has to be undertaken by our race. It is a task which\npoliticians, who live from day to day, and statesmen, who live from\nevent to event, may hinder or aid very greatly, but which they cannot\nbe expected to conduct or control. Politicians and statesmen perforce\nlive and work in the scheme of ideas they find about them; the\nconditions of their activities are made for them. They can be compelled\nby the weight of public opinion to help it, but the driving force for\nthis great task must come not from official sources but from the\nsteadfast educational pressure of a great and growing multitude of\nconvinced people. In times of fluctuation and dissolving landmarks, the\nimportance of the teacher--using the word in its widest sense--rises\nwith the progressive dissolution of the established order.\n\nThe creative responsibility for the world to-day passes steadily into\nthe hands of writers and school teachers, students of social and\neconomic science, professors and poets, editors and journalists,\npublishers and newspaper proprietors, preachers, every sort of\npropagandist and every sort of disinterested person who can give time\nand energy to the reconstruction of the social idea. Human life will\ncontinue to be more and more dangerously chaotic until a world social\nidea crystallizes out. That--and no existing institution and no current\nissue--is the primary concern of the present age.\n\nWe need, therefore, before all other sorts of organization, educational\norganizations; we need, before any other sort of work, work of education\nand enlightenment; we need everywhere active societies pressing for a\nbetter, more efficient conduct of public schooling, for a wider, more\nenlightening school curriculum, for a world-wide linking-up of\neducational systems, for a ruthless subordination of naval, military and\ncourt expenditure to educational needs, and for a systematic\ndiscouragement of mischief-making between nation and nation and race and\nrace and class and class. I could wish to see Educational Societies,\norganized as such, springing up everywhere, watching local bodies in\norder to divert economies from the educational starvation of a district\nto other less harmful saving; watching for obscurantism and reaction and\nmischievous nationalist teaching in the local schools and colleges and\nin the local press; watching members of parliament and congressmen for\nevidences of educational good-will or malignity; watching and getting\ncontrol of the administration of public libraries; assisting, when\nnecessary, in the supply of sound literature in their districts; raising\nfunds for invigorating educational propaganda in poor countries like\nChina and in atrociously educated countries like Ireland, and\ncorresponding with kindred societies throughout the world. I believe\nsuch societies would speedily become much more influential than the\nordinary political party clubs and associations that now use up so much\nhuman energy in the western communities. Subordinating all vulgar\npolitical considerations to educational development as the supreme need\nin the world's affairs, even quite small societies could exercise a\npowerful decisive voice in a great number of political contests. And an\neducational movement is more tenacious than any other sort of social or\npolitical movement whatever. It trains its adherents. What it wins it\nholds.\n\nI know that in thus putting all the importance upon educational needs at\nthe present time I shall seem to many readers to be ignoring quite\nexcessively the profound racial, social and economic conflicts that are\nin progress. I do. I believe we shall never get on with human affairs\nuntil we do ignore them. I offer no suggestion whatever as to what sides\npeople should take in such an issue as that between France and Germany\nor between Sinn Fein and the British Government, or in the class war. I\noffer no such suggestion because I believe that all these conflicts and\nall such current conflicts are so irrational and destructive that it is\nimpossible for a sane man who wishes to serve the world to identify\nhimself with either side in any of them. These conflicts are mere\naspects of the gross and passionate stupidity and ignorance and\nsectionalism of our present world. The class war, the push for and the\nresistance to some vague reorganization called the Social\nRevolution--such things are the natural inevitable result of the sordid\nmoral and intellectual muddle of our common ideas about property. The\ncapitalist, the employer, the property-owning class, as a class, have\nneither the intelligence nor the conscience to comprehend any moral\nlimitations, any limitations whatever but the strong arm of the law,\nupon what they do with their property. Their black and obstinate\nignorance, the clumsy adventurousness they call private enterprise,\ntheir unconscious insolence to poor people, their stupidly conspicuous\nself-indulgence, produce as a necessary result the black hatred of the\nemployed and the expropriated. On one side we have greed, insensibility\nand incapacity, on the other envy and suffering stung to vindictive\nrevolt: on neither side light nor generosity nor creative will. Neither\nside has any power to give us any reality we need. Neither side is more\nthan a hate and an aggression. How can one take sides between them?\n\nThe present system, _unless it can develop a better intelligence and a\nbetter heart_, is manifestly destined to foster fresh wars and to\ncontinue wasting what is left of the substance of mankind, until\nabsolute social disaster overtakes us all. And manifestly the\nrevolutionary communist, _at his present level of education_, has\nneither the plans nor the capacity to substitute any more efficient\nsystem for this crazy edifice of ill-disciplined private enterprise that\nis now blundering to destruction. But at a higher level of intelligence,\nat a level at which it is possible to define the limitations of private\nproperty clearly and to ensure a really loyal and effectual co-operation\nbetween individual and state, this issue--this wholly destructive\nconflict between the property manipulator and the communist fanatic\nwhich is now rapidly wrecking our world--disappears. It disappears as\ncompletely as the causes of a murderous conflict between two drunken\nmen will disappear when they are separated and put under a stream of\nclear cold water.\n\nSo it is that, in spite of their apparent urgency, I ask the reader to\ndetach himself from these present conflicts of national politics, of\npolitical parties and of the class war as completely as he can; or, if\nhe cannot detach himself completely, then to play such a part in them,\nregardless of any other consideration, as may be most conducive to a\nwide-thinking, wide-ranging education upon which we can base a new world\norder. A resolute push for quite a short period now might reconstruct\nthe entire basis of our collective human life.\n\nIn this book I have tried to show what form that push should take, to\nshow that it has a reasonable hope of an ultimate success, and that\nunless it is made, the outlook for mankind is likely to become an\nentirely dismal prospect. I put these theses before the reader for his\nconsideration. They are not discursive criticisms of life, not haphazard\ngrumblings at our present discontents, they are offered as the\nfundamental propositions of an ordered constructive project in which he\ncan easily find a part to play commensurate with his ability and\nopportunities.\n\n\n\n\nINDEX\n\n\n  Adult learning, spread of, 167\n\n  Aircraft as a means of quick travel, 48\n    in future wars, 9\n\n  Air transport a problem for Europe, 58\n    possibilities of future, 66\n\n  \"All-red air routes,\" 67\n\n  America and the League of Nations, 15, 28, 47\n    generalized history teaching in, 108\n    her part in European reconstruction, 62\n    locomotion in, 49, 52\n    political unity of, 60\n    (_see also_ United States)\n\n  American social system, comparisons, 2\n\n  Americans, patriotism of, 69\n\n  Anthology and a modernized Bible, 125\n\n  Apocrypha, the, and a modernized Bible, 119 _et seq._\n\n  Arithmetic, a wrong way of teaching, 149\n\n  Austria after the war, 44\n\n\n  Belloc, Hilaire, 178\n\n  Bible, the, a criticism of, 98 _et seq._\n    and the theory of origin, 103\n    English translation of, 107\n    its effect upon civilization, 101\n    redundancy in, 99\n    rules of health in, 111\n    why it has lost hold on the people, 101\n\n  Bible of Civilization, the, 95 _et seq._\n    need for frequent revision, 136\n    what it will contain, 105 _et seq._\n\n  Biology, Huxley's system of, 171\n    study of, 151, 152\n\n  Bolshevik propaganda, suppression of, 175\n\n  Bolshevism and the overthrow of Russia, 44\n\n  Books and mentality, 183\n\n  Boundary question in Europe, 54, 59, 61, 62\n\n  Bradlaugh, Charles, lectures of, 171\n\n  Breasted, Professor, works of, 108\n\n  Breeding, points required in, 140\n\n  Britain, national egotism of, 72\n\n  British Civil Air Transport Committee, 48, 66\n\n  British Empire, the, a prime necessity for security of, 65\n    a wrong conception of, 64\n    an ocean state, 65\n    its failure with reconstruction, 28-9\n\n  British monarchy, the, lost opportunities of, 29\n\n  Browning, Oscar, 108\n\n\n  Canonical books and the Bible of Civilization, 119\n\n  Chinese discovery of gunpowder, 6\n\n  Christianity, 23\n    spread of, in Western Europe, 78\n\n\n  Cinematograph, the, as an aid to teaching, 80, 161\n\n  Civilization, adjustment of political ideas necessary for, 46\n    effect of the Bible on, 101\n    impotence of, 1\n    the Bible of, 95 _et seq._\n    the war and, 43 _et seq._\n\n  College stage of education, 168\n    changed conditions of, 180\n    how it could be improved, 172\n    problem of its extension, 177\n\n  Comenius, political and educational ideas of, 95, 97, 138\n\n  Committees, good work by, 107\n\n  Communism and property, 115\n\n  Communists, Russian, and the Press, 186\n\n  Connecticut, State of, the Bible as its only law, 98\n\n  Conscience the basis of moral life, 20\n\n  Contemporary problems, complexity of, 3\n\n  Cosmogony of the Bible, the, 103-4\n\n  Customs, the, and European travel, 56\n\n\n  Declaration of Independence, 63, 107\n\n  Denmark, present-day conditions in, 45\n\n  Disarmament, ineffectual movements for, 13\n\n  Discovery, the age of, 6\n\n\n  Education a fundamental difficulty, 155\n    chief end of, 25\n    degradation of, 105\n    in the world state, 20, 90\n    necessary basis of, 103\n    neglect of language teaching, 145\n    past and present, 79, 104\n    primary obstacle to, 153\n    progressive character of, 166, 183\n    reorganization of, needed, 158, 165\n\n  Educational organization, a review of, 139\n    need of, 194\n\n  England before and after the war, 45\n\n  Epics and a modernized Bible, 125\n\n  Eugenic literature, 140, 141\n\n  Europe, and the League of Nations, 47\n    boundary question of, 54, 59, 61, 62\n    in the seventeenth century, 96\n    problem of air transport, 58\n    propaganda of patriotism in, 72\n    results of political disunion, 54\n    slow economic recovery of, 59\n\n  European travel, preparations needed for, 55\n\n  Evening continuation and technical schools, 169\n\n  Exchange, fluctuating nature of, 56, 57\n\n\n  Federal World State, an approaching reality, 80\n\n  Forecasts, a Book of, and the modernized Bible, 132\n\n  Foresight, need of, 133\n\n  France, national egotism of, 72\n    post-war decadence in, 45\n\n  Frontiers and the possibility of war, 59\n\n\n  Geography, improved method of teaching, 151\n\n  Germany, ebb in civilization in, 45\n    intensive nationalist education in, 72\n\n  Gladstone, Mr., a speech by, 171\n\n  Gramophones as aids to school teaching, 160\n\n  Gunpowder, discovery of, 6\n\n\n  Hamsun's _Growth of the Soil_, 124\n\n  Health and the citizen, 111\n\n  Hebrew Bible, the, 110\n\n  Henley, a poem by, 127\n\n  Herbert, Auberon, lectures by, 171\n\n  Higher education, a false conception of, 181\n\n  Historical books, value of illustrations and maps in, 110\n\n  History, and national egotism, 73\n    cardinal experiences in, 1\n\n  _History of the Ancient World_, 108\n\n  History teaching in schools, unsatisfactory nature of, 151\n\n  Holland, post-war condition of, 45\n\n  Human brotherhood, gospel of, 24\n\n  Human disorder, the key to, 192\n\n  Human outlook, the, 1\n\n  Human society, ancient and modern, 5\n    needs reconstruction, 11\n\n  Human unity and a world state, 75\n\n  Hungary, post-war desolation in, 44\n\n  Huxley, Professor, author's tribute to, 170\n    his system of teaching geography, 151\n\n\n  Illustrations, need of, in books, 110\n\n  Independent nationality, need for, 76\n\n  Individualists and property, 115\n\n  Industrialism, modern, 114\n\n  Intellectuals, their estimate of man, 14\n\n  International mind, an, 73\n\n  International problem of to-day, 46\n\n  Ireland, after-effects of war in, 45\n    condition of (1640-1650), 96\n\n\n  Islam, lasting unity of, 79\n    spread of, in seventh century, 23\n\n  Italy, after the war, 45\n    forbids export of works of art, 117\n\n\n  Judd, Professor, 171\n\n  Kipling, Rudyard, 15\n\n  Komensky (_see_ Comenius)\n\n\n  Labour problems, the Bible and, 114\n\n  Labour trouble, and from what it springs, 116, 117\n\n  Language teaching, a necessary part of education, 145\n    suggested use of gramophones for, 160\n    twofold object of, 147\n\n  League of Nations, the, 13, 17\n    and the boundary question, 62\n    educational value of its propaganda, 75\n    ineffectiveness of, 5, 37, 41, 47, 76\n    President Wilson and, 15, 28\n\n  Lectures as basis of instruction, 178\n\n  Lenin and Russia, 44\n\n  Lincoln's Gettysburg Address, 126\n\n  Locomotion and methods of communication, 48, 52, 53\n\n\n  Machinery, in a world state, 91\n\n  Magna Carta, 107\n\n  Man, his plain duty, 38\n    social nature of, 19\n\n  Mankind, influence of surroundings on, 18\n    probable future of, 1 _et seq._\n\n  Mathematics, teaching of, 149\n\n  _Mediaeval and Modern History_, 108\n\n  _Mediaeval and Modern Times_, 108\n\n  Mental life, schooling and the, 142\n\n  Mesopotamia, irrigation system of, 6\n\n  Military class, mischief of a, 29\n\n  Milton's defence of free speech, 128\n\n  Missouri, establishment of, 49\n\n  Money, Sir Leo, his _Triumph of Nationalization_, 187\n\n  Morris, William, lectures by, 171\n\n\n  Napoleon's retreat from Moscow, 48\n\n  National independence, meaning of, 59\n\n  Newspapers, 183\n    evolution of, 184\n    journalistic demoralization, 187, 188\n\n  Novels, and a modernized Bible, 123\n\n\n  Ocean transport, importance of, 65\n\n  Organized education, the key to human disorder, 192\n\n  Organized solidarity and modern communities, 102\n\n  Original Sin, the factor of, 105\n\n  _Outline of History_, Wells's, 107, 108\n\n\n  Passports, delays attendant on, 55\n\n  Patriotism, a unity-destroying propaganda of, 72\n    aggressive, dangers of, 39\n    American, 69\n    true and false conceptions of, 68, 69\n\n  Peace Ministry, functions of a, 87\n\n  Philosophical works and a modernized Bible, 124\n\n  Physiography, Huxley and, 151\n\n  Physiology, value of study of, 151\n\n  Pilgrim Fathers, the, and the Bible, 110\n\n  Plays and a modernized Bible, 123\n\n  Political reconstruction, accompaniments of, 25\n\n  Politicians, their need of foresight, 133\n\n  Politics in a world state, 81, 93\n\n  Prayer Book, the, 107\n\n  Press, the, demoralization of, 187-8\n    freedom of, 185\n    Government control of, 186, 187\n\n  Printing and the community, 7\n\n  Progress, arrest of, 1\n\n  Property, class war and, 196\n    labour trouble and, 116, 117\n    problems of, 114\n    rights and duties of, 115\n\n  Puritanism in the seventeenth century, 97\n\n\n  Quakers, the, foundation of, 97\n\n\n  Radiogram, the, and its results, 6\n\n  Railways, American, 49 _et seq._, 65\n\n  Readjustment of political ideas, 46 _et seq._, 68\n\n  Religion and the political and social outlook, 23, 79\n    universalist in theory, 81\n\n  Religious instruction and discussion barred by colleges, 175\n\n  Revolutions and how produced, 27\n\n  Robinson, Professor, 108\n\n  Roman Empire, the, rise and fall of, 53\n\n  Russia, Bolshevism in, 44\n    the Press in, 186\n    vexatious delays in a journey to, 56 _et seq._\n\n\n  St. Petersburg before and after the war, 43, 44\n\n  Schoolhouse, an ordinary, and an ideal, 158-9\n\n  Schooling of the world, the, 139 _et seq._\n    and what should be taught, 143\n    why so often a failure, 153\n\n  Schools and the development of education, 25\n    of a world state, 90\n\n  Science teaching under difficulties and a suggested remedy, 161\n\n  Scotland after the war, 45\n\n  Sea power and the submarine, 66\n\n  Semaphores, 48\n\n  Sexual morality, need for, 112\n\n  Shakespear and the Bible of Civilization, 122\n\n  Social nature of man, 19\n\n  Sovereign states, incoherent nature of, 31\n\n  Steamboats, American, 49, 65\n\n  Stopes, Dr. Marie, 113\n\n  Submarine, the, and sea power, 66\n\n  Sweden, before and after the war, 45\n\n\n  Teachers, lack of, and the reason, 153\n\n  Teaching and the future of mankind, 37\n\n  Teaching power and how it might be economized, 156 _et seq._\n\n  Technical study, specialized, 182\n\n  Telegraphy, development of, 6, 48\n\n  Thirty Years War, the, 96\n\n  Tolstoi's _War and Peace_, 124\n\n  Trade problems, the Bible and, 114\n\n  Transport and the international problem, 46\n\n  Travel, inconveniences of European, 55 _et seq._\n\n\n  United States, the government of, 47, 83\n    growth of, 49-50\n    political system of, 27\n    (_see also_ America)\n\n  University, the, and adult learning, 168\n\n\n  Vienna threatened by the Turk, 96\n\n\n  Wales, Prince of, world tour of, 29, 84\n\n  War, a ruling and constructive idea, 4\n    abolition of, and what it means, 5\n    frequent recurrence of, 3\n    military science in, 8\n\n  Washington, George, and his successors, 83\n\n  Webster, Dr. Hutton, historical summaries of, 108\n\n  Wells, H. G., as educationist, 155\n    college life of, 170\n    his _Outline of History_, 107, 108\n    ideals of, 42\n    serves on British Civil Air Transport Committee, 48, 66\n    views on teaching of history, 151\n\n  Wilson, President, and the League of Nations, 15, 28\n\n  World control, and what it means, 14, 17\n\n  World History, a suggested, 109\n\n  World peace, American and European view of, 61\n\n  World state, the, cult of, 35\n    enlargement of patriotism to, 68\n    fundamental ideas of, 37\n    government of, 82 _et seq._\n    life in, 88 _et seq._\n    meaning of, 82\n    project of, 42 _et seq._\n    the Council and its functions, 85\n\n  World, the, as a university, 168\n\n\nPRINTED BY CASSELL & COMPANY, LIMITED, LA BELLE SAUVAGE, LONDON, E.C.4\n\n\n\n\nERRATUM.\n\n\n  _Page 176, line 20_,\n\n      there are still modern Immortals in the darkness\n  _should read_,\n\n      if they are still modern Immortals, in the darkness\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\n\n\n\nMr. WELLS has also written the following novels:\n\n  LOVE AND MR. LEWISHAM\n  KIPPS\n  MR. POLLY\n  THE WHEELS OF CHANCE\n  THE NEW MACHIAVELLI\n  ANN VERONICA\n  TONO BUNGAY\n  MARRIAGE\n  BEALBY\n  THE PASSIONATE FRIENDS\n  THE WIFE OF SIR ISAAC HARMAN\n  THE RESEARCH MAGNIFICENT\n  MR. BRITLING SEES IT THROUGH\n  THE SOUL OF A BISHOP\n  JOAN AND PETER\n  THE UNDYING FIRE\n\nThe following fantastic and imaginative romances:\n\n  THE WAR OF THE WORLDS\n  THE TIME MACHINE\n  THE WONDERFUL VISIT\n  THE ISLAND OF DR. MOREAU\n  THE SEA LADY\n  THE SLEEPER AWAKES\n  THE FOOD OF THE GODS\n  THE WAR IN THE AIR\n  THE FIRST MEN IN THE MOON\n  IN THE DAYS OF THE COMET\n  THE WORLD SET FREE\n\nAnd numerous Short Stories now collected in One Volume under the title\nof THE COUNTRY OF THE BLIND\n\nA Series of books upon Social, Religious and Political questions:\n\n  ANTICIPATIONS (1900)\n  MANKIND IN THE MAKING\n  FIRST AND LAST THINGS\n  NEW WORLDS FOR OLD\n  A MODERN UTOPIA\n  THE FUTURE IN AMERICA\n  AN ENGLISHMAN LOOKS AT THE WORLD\n  WHAT IS COMING?\n  WAR AND THE FUTURE\n  IN THE FOURTH YEAR\n  GOD THE INVISIBLE KING\n  THE OUTLINE OF HISTORY\n  RUSSIA IN THE SHADOWS\n\nAnd two little books about children's play, called:\n\n  FLOOR GAMES and LITTLE WARS","title":"The Salvaging of Civilization","tradition":"philosophy-ethics","translated_text":null,"word_count":50861}