OforncU Hnioetattg SItbrarg 3ti(aca, iStf ^ork BOUGHT WITH THE rNCOME OF THE SAGE ENDOWMENT FUND THE GIFT OF HENRY W. SAGE 1891 Cornell University Library B945.R89 H7 olin 3 1924 029 067 713 Cornell University Library The original of this book is in the Cornell University Library. There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924029067713 THE HOPE OF THE GREAT COMMUNITY THE MACMILLAN COMPANY NKW YORK • BOSTON ■ CHICAGO • DALLAS ATLANTA ■ SAN FRANCISCO MACMILLAN & CO.. Limited LONDON • BOMBAY • CALCUTTA MELBOURNE THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, Ltd. TORONTO 1914 ^axioPL THE HOPE OF THE GREAT COMMUNITY BY JOSIAH ROYCE LATE ALPOED PKOFESSOR OP NATtTKAL EEUGION MOKAL PHILOSOPHY AND CIVIL POLITY AT HAEVAKD UNIVEESITT THEiMACMILLAN COMPANY 1916 All rights reserved COPYBIGHT, 1916, By the MACMILLAN COMPANY. Set up and electrotypcd. Published November, 1916. NatinooD $teea J. 8. CuBhing Co. — Berwlok & Smith Co. Norwood, Mass., U.S.A. PREFATORY NOTE /^N September fourteenth 1916 Josiah Royce died, in his sixty-first year. The essays composing the present volume were written during the last year of his life and, thus representing his latest phases of thought, and being in the press at the time of his death, they become, in some sort, a memorial vol- ume. The very title seems almost prophetic. Some of Professor Royce's friends have thought that no more fitting tribute to his memory could be foimd than the memorial verses of Miss Laura Simmons already pub- lished in the Boston Herald and the New York Times. Miss Simmons graciously permits their repetition here. KATHAEINE ROYCE. JOSIAH ROYCE 1855-1916 Lord, grant him still some task for heart and brain — A man's rich day of usefulness again ! Eager, yet all imhurried — poised to meet All Fate holds forth of triumph or defeat. O God most Wise — who deftly takes away The tools and playthings of our Httle day. Take Youth, and hope, and dreams surpassing fair. But not the work we love ! Somehow, somewhere. The master-mind moves toward the goal it sought ! Spare him his splendid quest — his crystal thought — His vision sure, that was oiu* all-delight Till dusk enwrapped him, and the long, long night. The scene — where shifted ? Where at Thy behest That hoard of priceless lore made manifest ? What service for the restless hand and heart. So lavish of the wealth they could impart? Surely Thy blessed vineyard cannot spare Such craftsman, but must hold him dear and rare ! Some day, in Thy good time, shall we once more About him press, and marvel as before ? Shall we of lesser mold behold him still On Thy high tasks intent — dauntless of will, And in his work the old-time matchless skill ? LAURA SIMMONS. vii CONTENTS I. The Duties of Americans in the Pres- ent War 1 II. The Destruction of the Lusitania . 14 m. The Hope of the Great Community . 25 rV. The Possibility of International In- surance 71 V. The First Anniversary of the Sinking OF THE Lusitania, May 7th, 1916 . 93 VI. Words of Professor Royce at the Walton Hotel at Philadelphia, December 29, 1915 . , . .122 jx THE HOPE OF THE GREAT COMMUNITY CHAPTER I THE DUTIES OF AMERICANS IN THE PRESENT WAR T FULLY agree with those who believe that men can reasonably define their rights only in terms of their duties. I have moral rights only in so far as I also have duties. I have a right to my life because it gives me my sole opportunity to do my duty. I have a right to happiness solely because a certain measure of happiness is needed to adapt me to do the work of a man. I have a right to possess some opportunity to fulfil the office of a man ; that is, I have a right to get some chance to do my duty. This is, in fact, my sole inalienable right. This doctrine that rights and duties are correlative is an old teaching. It is also a THE HOPE OF THE GREAT COMMUNITY dry and somewhat abstractly worded bit of wisdom, unwelcome to our more flippant as well as to our more vehement moods, and of late unpopular. I am not here to expound it. I mention it only because I rejoice that we are here to-day to consider what we have deliberately chosen to name the duties of Americans in the present war. I doubt not that we Americans have also our rights in the world crisis through which we are pass- ing. I was glad and eager to sign the recent memorial, addressed to the President of the United States, and issued by the " Com- mittee on American Rights." But I signed that memorial with enthusiasm just because I believe not only that the American rights in question are genuine, but that they cor- respond with our duties as Americans, and with the duty which our country now owes to mankind. It is of our duties that I now rejoice to speak to you. Two things have made clear to many of us Americans since the outset of the present war — and to some of us with a constantly 2 DUTIES OF AMERICANS increasing definiteness of vision — what our duty is. First the fact that, in this war, there is constantly before our eyes the pain- fully tragic and sublime vision of one nation that, through all its undeserved and seem- ingly overwhelming agonies, has remained un- mistakably true to its duty — that is, to its international duty, to its honor, to its treaties, to the cause, to the freedom, and to the future union of mankind. That nation is Belgium. In the heart of every true American this consciousness ought therefore to be kept awake (and, in many of our minds this con- sciousness is glowingly and radiantly active and wakeful), — the desire, the longing, the resolution: "Let us, let our dear republic, do our duty as Belgium and the Belgian people have done theirs. Let us, with all our might, with whatever moral influence we possess, with our own honor, with our lives if necessary, be ready, if ever and when- ever the call comes to our people, to sacrifice for mankind as Belgium has sacrificed ; to hazard all, as Belgium has hazarded all, for 3 THE HOPE OF THE GREAT COMMUNITY the truer union of mankind and for the future of human brotherhood." That vi- sion of Belgium's noble and unsparing self- sacrifice for international honor is one of the two things that to-day constantly remind us of what international duty is, and so what our own American duty is. The second thing which constantly keeps wide awake, in the minds of many of us here in America, the knowledge of what our duty is, is the rooral attitude jwhich_ia§._ been deliberately and openly assumed by Germany since the outset of the^war. This attitude gives us what will remain until the end of human history, one great classic example of the rejection, by a great and highly intelligent nation, of the first prin- ciples of international morality, — the . te- jection of international duty, the assertion that for its own subjects, the State is the supreme moral authority, and that there is no moral authority on earth which ranks superior to the will of the State. The assertion has often been made that 4 DUTIES OF AMERICANS we Americans have believed the lies of Ger- many's enemies, and have thus been igno- rantly and wofuUy deceived. Countless German attempts have been made to tell us through books, pictures, newspapers, — sometimes through other documents, — what Germany's real motives are. I am sure that I sp»eak the minds of many of you, my countrymen and fellow citizens, when I say that, next to the vision of bleeding and devoted Belgium, — that suffering servant of the great commimity of mankind, — no picture more convincingly instructs us re- garding our duty, than the picture that comes before our minds whenever we remember Germany's summons at the gates of Li^ge, or recall von Jagow's answer to one of President Wilson's early Lusitania notes, or when, more recently, we read the first Austrian note in answer to President Wilson's peremptory demand about the case of the Ancona. No, not Germany*3gaemies. but Germany herself, her prince, her ministers, her sub- marine commanders, have given us our prin- 5 THE HOPE OF THE GREAT COMMUNITY cipal pictu re of what the militant Germany of the moiment is,^and of .wha,t„,Jiejmany means for the future of international morality. This "picture constitutes the second of the two great sources of our instruction about what our American duty in this war is. We are all accustomed to "look on this picture, and th^n on this." The first of the two pictures is now familiar, — inexpressibly sad and dear to us. Belgians are amongst us as friends or as colleagues; Belgian re- lief is one of the principal good causes of American charity. Belgian wrongs — but also Belgian heroism and Belgian unswerving dutifulness — are before our eyes as inspir- ing admonitions of what is the duty of Americans in the present war. That con- stitutes the one picture. The other, — well, Germany has chosen to set before us this second picture. That, in its turn, has now become too familiar. But since our memory for diplomatic notes easily and early begins to fail, that second picture often tends to fade out amongst us. And since we all long for 6 DUTIES OF AMERICANS peace to come, and since some faint hearts forget that it is as immoral to make light of grave wrongs, and merely to condone them, as it is irrationally to cry out with lust of vengeance, — since these things are so, there are Americans who forget the second pic- ture, and forget that Germany has done as much as Belgium to set before us what our international duty, as individuals and as a nation, really is. What that second picture means, what spirit it expresses, what view of the nature of each nation's obligations to mankind it sets before us, we have not been left to learn from the enemies of Germanv. The chief ally of Germany, whose submarine policy was "made in Germany," and whose will in this matter is the will of Germany, lately explained the matter to us in unmistakable terms. I refer to the Ancona case. Presi- dent Wilson accepting, not any so-called "lies" of the enemies of Germany, but the official statement of the submarine com- mander who sank the Ancona after that 7 THE HOPE OF THE GREAT COMMUNITY vessel had ceased to make her efiFort to escape, and while h(^r passengers were still in danger of drowning in case their vessel was sunk, — President Wilson addressed to Austria a note in which he plainly and accurately said that the officially reported act of the submarine commander was in principle barbarous and abhorrent to all civilized nations. Austria in its reply very courteously, ironically, and cynically thanked our Government for the "esteemed favor" of its communication, and expressed its entire ignorance of what law, of what principle of international morality, there might be which the submarine com- mander was supposed, by the American Government, to have violated. Now this Austrian reply, — widely praised by the inspired German press as a master- piece of diplomatic skill, and received with "quiet joy" by the official lovers and defend- ers of the German submarine policy, — was precisely in the spirit of Cain's reply when he was challenged from overhead regarding the results of his late unpleasantness with his 8 DUTIES OF AMERICANS brother Abel. For Cain, while his brother's blood was crying from the ground, received a somewhat stern diplomatic communica- tion from a moral power, demanding : "Where is thy brother?" And Cain in substance begged to acknowledge the esteemed favor of this communication from on high, and seems at first to have taken a certain stilles Vergniigen in begging to represent first that, so far as he knew, he was not his brother's keeper ; whUe, for the rest, he desired most respectfully, and in the friendliest spirit, to inquire what law of God or man he was supposed to have broken. Now this is the spirit of international im- morality, — this is the sort of enmity to man- kind, — which the German submarine policy, its official allies and defenders, have expressed and justified. Upon this second picture, then, with its lurid contrast to the picture of Belgium, we have to look when we think of our duty as Americans. For deliberate national deeds cannot be undone, nor can their official justifications be lightly con- 9 THE HOPE DF THE GREAT COMMUNITY doned by reason of later diplomatic trifling, and by reason of speciously well-written notes of apology and withdrawal. The deed stays. Its official justification reveals motives, and confesses a national spirit, whose moral mean- ing is as irrevocable as death. We Ameri- cans know what the Lusitania outrage meant, and to what spirit it gave expression. That spirit has the "primal eldest curse upon it, — a brother's murder." For the young men, the women, the babies, who went down with the Lusitania were our dead. At least I know — some of whose pupils were amoii,gst the victims of the Lusitania — that they were my dead. And the mark of Cain lasts while Cain lives. Such facts determine the duty of Ameri- cans in this war. Our duty is to be and to remain the outspoken moral opponents of the present German policy, and of the Ger- man state, so long as it holds this present policy, and carries on its present war. In the service of mankind, we owe an unswerv- ing sympathy not to one or another, but to 10 DUTIES OF AMERICANS all of the present allied enemies of Germany. We owe to those allies whatever moral sup- port and whatever ^ancial assistance it is in the power of this nation to give. As to munitions of war : it is not merely a so-called American right that our munition-makers should be free to sell their wares to the ene- mies of Germany. It is our duty to en- courage them to do so, since we are not at the moment in a position to serve mankind by more direct and eflFective means. For the violation of Belgium, and the submarine pohcy of Germany and of her ally — a policy deliberately and boastfully avowed as long as the central powers deemed such avowal advantageous — this violation and this pol- icy together suffice to keep clearly before our eyes the fact that Germany, as at present disposed, is the wilful and deliberate enemy of the human race. It is open to any man to be a pro-German who shares this en- mity. But with these two pictures before our eyes, itv is as impossible for any rea- sonable man to be in his heart and mind 11 THE HOPE OF THE GREAT COMMUNITY neutral, as it was for the good cherubs in heaven to remain neutral when they first looked out from their rosy glowing clouds, and saw the angels fall. Neutral, in heart or in mind, the dutiful American, when once he has carefully looked upon this picture, and then on this, wUl not and cannot be. He must take sides. And if he takes sides as I do, he will say : "Let us do all that we as Americans can do, to express our hearty, and, so far as we can, our efifective sympathy with the united friends of Belgium, who are the foes of those German enemies of mankind. Whenever the war is over, if it ends in the defeat and consequent moral reform of Germany, then in due time let Charity have its perfect work. For we in America have long loved and studied German civilization, and would be loving it stiU but for its recent crimes. But now, while the war lasts, and Belgium bleeds, and mankind mourns, let us aid the allied enemies of Ger- many with sympathy, since the cause of the allied enemies of Germany is the cause of man- 12 DUTIES OF AMERICANS kind; let us enthusiastically approve of sup- plying the enemies of Germany with financial aid and with munitions of war, let us resist with all our moral strength a^id influence those who would place an embargo upon munitions, let us bear patiently and un- complainingly the transient restrictions of our commerce which the war entails, let us be ashamed of om-selves that we cannot even now stand beside Belgium, and suffer with her for our duty and for mankind, and while we wait for peace let us do what we can to lift up the hearts that the Germany of to-day has wantonly chosen to wound, to betray, and to make desolate. Let us do what we can to bring about at least a rup- ture of all diplomatic relations between otir own republic and those foes of mankind, and let us fearlessly await whatever dangers this our duty as Americans may entail upon us, upon our land and upon our posterity. We shall not thus escape suffering. But we shall begin to endure, as Belgium to-day endures, for honor, for duty, for mankind." 13 CHAPTER II THE DESTRUCTION OF THE LUSITANIA» TN my last letter I believe that I laid some stress to you upon the necessity, both patri- otic and academic, of my trying to preserve a formally strict neutrality of expression, not merely because the community of man- kind as a total community is my highest interest, as it is yours, but because our Presi- dent's advice to the nation, and our mani- fold relations to foreigners, both in academic life and in the world at large, limit our right, or have limited our right, to express ourselves regarding matters of the war and of current controversy. It is now a relief to be able to say with heartiness, that one result at least ' The text of this chapter consists of extracts from a letter written by Prptessor Royce to Professor L. P. Jacks, and published by the latter in the Hibbert Journal for October 1915. With the exception of two passages, the extracts were published in the London Morn- ing Post of July 5, 1915. 14 THE DESTRUCTION OF THE LUSITANIA of the Lusitania atrocity has been and will be to make it both necessary and advisable to speak out plainly many things which an American professor in my position has long felt a desire to say upon occasions when he still supposed it to be his duty not to say them. Thus, for instance, immediately after the Lusitania incident, and before Wilson's first letter addressed to Berlin, I quite delib- erately told my own principal class in meta- physics that, and why, I should no longer endeavor to assume a neutral attitude about the moral questions which the Lusitania incident brought to the minds of all of us. That friends of mine, and that former pupils of mine, near to me as the students whom I was addressing are near to me, were on the Lusitania — this, as I said to my class, makes it right for me to say, "Among these dead of the Lusitania are my own dead." And so, I went on to say, "I cannot longer leave you to suppose it possible that I have any agree- ment with the views which a German col- league of mine, a teacher at Harvard, recently 15 THE HOPE OF THE GREAT COMMUNITY maintained, when he predicted what he called 'the spiritual triumph of Germany.' It makes very little difference to anybody else what I happen to think, but to you, as my pupils, it is my duty to say that henceforth, whatever the fortunes of war may be, 'the spiritual triumph of Germany' is quite im- possible, so far as this conflict is concerned. I freely admit that Germany may triumph in the visible conflict, although my judgment about such matters is quite worthless. But to my German friends and colleagues, if they chance to want to know what I think, I can and do henceforth only say this : 'You may triumph in the visible world, but at the banquet where you celebrate your triumph there will be present the ghosts of my dead slain on the Lusitania.'" I insisted to my class that just now the especially significant side of this matter is contained simply in the deliberately chosen facts which the enemy of mankind has chosen to bring into being in these newest expressions of the infamies of Prussian warfare. I should 16 THE DESTRUCTION OF THE LUSITANIA be a poor professor of philosophy, and in particular of moral philosophy, if I left my class in the least doubt as to how to view such things. And that, then, was my imme- diate reaction on the Lusitania situation. Of course, one still has to live with his German colleagues in the midst of this situa- tion. I am glad to know at least one such German colleague, and, I believe, a thor- oughly good patriot — who views the Lusi- tania atrocity precisely as any honest and humane man must view it, unless wholly blinded by the present personal and social atmosphere of ferocity and confusion in which so many Germans live. I do not en- deavor to have unnecessary controversy — with these colleagues, or with anybody else, and have spoken of the matter both to col- leagues and to students precisely as much and as little as the situation seemed to me to permit and require. But it might interest you to know that, in my opinion, the Lusi- tania incident has aflfected and will affect om- national sentiment — and what has been c 17 THE HOPE OF THE GREAT COMM.UNITY 5 our desire for a genuine neutrality — in a I very profound and practical way. Of tlie political consequences of the incident up to this date, you will have, I hope, a suflS- ciently definite ground for judgment. For-- tune is fickle; and war is a sadly chaotic series of changes. But this I warmly hope : henceforth, may the genuine consciousness of brotherhood between your people and mine become more and more clearly warm, and conscious, and practically effective upon f the course of events. The Lusitania affair I I makes us here, all of us, clearer. A deeply I unified and national indignation, coupled I with a strong sense of our duty towards all humanity, has already resulted from this new experiment upon human nature, which has been "made in Germany" and then ap- plied to the task of testing what American sentiment really is. I do not know how often the changing fortunes of war, or the difficul- ties about neutral commerce, will bring to light causes of friction or of tension between our two peoples. But I cordially hope that 18 THE DESTRUCTION OF THE LUSITANIA we shall find ourselves, henceforth, nearer and nearer together in conscious sentiment, and in the sort of sympathy which can find effec- tive expression. It is a great thing to feel that Wilson, in his last two notes to Ger- many, has been speaking the word both for his nation and for all hmnanity. I am sure that he has spoken the word for a new sort of imification of our own national con- sciousness. Unless Germany substantially meets these demands, I am sure that she will find all our foreign populations more united than ever through their common resentment in the presence of international outrages, and through their common con- sciousness that om- unity and active co-oper- ation must have an important bearing upon the future of all that makes human life pre- cious to any of us. In so far as our German- American fellow-citizens fail to appreciate the call of humanity in respect of such mat- ters as this, they have further lessons to learn which America will teach them, — peace- ably if we can, but authoritatively if we must, 19 THE HOPE OF THE GREAT COMMUNITY whenever an effort is made to carry dissen- sions into our national life for the sake of any German purpose. As a fact, I believe that unless Germany meets the essential demands of President Wilson, our German-American population will be wholly united with us, as never before, in the interests of humanity and of freedom. In brief, the Lusitania affair, and its consequences, give one further tiny example of that utter ignorance of hu- man nature and of its workings which the German propaganda, the German diplomacy, and the German policy have shown from the outset of the War. Submarines these people may understand, certainly not souls. I do not love the words of hate, even now, or even when uttered over the bodies of those who were slain on the Lusitania. It is not hate, but longing and sorrow for stricken humanity, which is with me, as I am sure it is with you, the ruling sentiment. I have no fondness for useless publicity. Never- theless, it is fair to say that the words which I have just written down may not only have 20 THE DESTRUCTION OF THE LUSITANIA a little friendly interest to you as expressing a certain change in my own attitude towards those problems about neutrality which I mentioned to you before, but may conceiv- ably suggest to you some way in which a more public expression of mine might be of real service to some cause which you, or which other of my English friends, hold dear. The controversial literature of the war is, as you know, and as you yourself have said, a cup which seems to be over full. Yet I now no longer feel that any duty or desire makes me hesitant concerning the expression of whatever plain speech and worthily strong sentiment might be able to contribute to a good cause. You wUl see from the way in which I spoke to my class, after long dutifully preserving a deliberate reticence in the class- room regarding the war, — you will see that my mouth is now open enough, if only any words that could be of use for the cause of true peace, or against the deeds and the motives of the declared enemies of mankind, could be uttered by me. It is a relief to have 21 THE HOPE OF THE GREAT COMMUNITY in such matters not only a free soul, but i perfectly free right of speech, so long as one'i speech promises to contribute anything, how- ever little, to the cause of mankind which such bitter and cruel enemies are now assail- ing in the sight of us all. So do with this letter, or with any part of it, precisely as you think best, — not indeed making it seem as if I were at all fond of notoriety, but merely using the right which I give you as my friend to let anybody know where I stand. I am no longer neutral, even in form. The German Prince is now the de- clared and proclaimed enemy of mankind, declared to be such not by any "lies" of his enemies, or by any "envious" comments of other people, but by his own quite deliberate choice to carry on war by the merciless destruc- tion of innocent, non-combatant passengers. The single deed is indeed only a comparatively petty event when compared with the stu- pendous crimes which fill this war. But the sinking of the Lusiiania has the advan- tage of being a deed which not only cannot be THE DESTRUCTION OF THE LUSITANIA denied, but which has been proudly pro- claimed as expressing the appeal that Ger- many now makes to all humanity. About that appeal I am not neutral. I know that that appeal expresses utter contempt for everything which makes the common life of humanity tolerable or possible. I know that if the principle of that appeal is accepted, whatever makes home or country or family or friends, or any form of loyalty, worthily dear, is made an object of a perfectly de- liberate and merciless assault. About such policies and their principles, about such appeals, and about the Prince who makes them, and about his underlings who serve him, I have no longer any neutrality to keep. And without the faintest authority in any political matter, without the faintest wish for any sort of notoriety, I am perfectly will- ing to let this utterance receive any sort of publicity that, in its utter unworthiness to express adequately or effectively the nature of the crimes and of the infamy which it at- tempts to characterize, it may by chance get, 23 THE HOPE OF THE GREAT COMMUNITY should you or anybody else wish to make use of it. Of course, I need not tell you that a Harvard professor speaks only for himself, and commits none of his colleagues to any- thing that chances to be in his mind or on his tongue. 24 CHAPTER III THE HOPE OF THE GREAT COMMUNITY rriHESE words are written at a moment when the issues of the great war are still undecided. They are founded upon no fore- sight of the course which the world's political and military fortunes are to follow. They therefore refer wholly to ideals, to duties, to hopes, and to the interests of humanity. There are moments when the lover of man- kind, in these days, seems to catch a glimpse of a wonderful dawn light. If this dawn soon gives place to the coming day, an era of inspiring promise for the best hopes of all human ages will begin. If the clouds per- sistently gather again, as at some moments they do ; if the night returns, as, for all that the present writer can know, it may return, — then the world must wait again for centuries, and 25 THE HOPE OF THE GREAT COMMUNITY must wait in sorrow, for that which the wise and the faithful of many generations have longingly expected. "More than they that watch for the morn- ing," the true lovers of mankind now watch to see whether the seeming promise of the dawn is to be, in any genuine sense, fulfilled. More than the spoilers of mankind ever be- fore scoffed at the hope of humanity, power- ful enemies of the good now confidently look for the triumph of Satan. The outcome of the present struggle between good and ill remains still a mystery. All that one can hope to do at such a mo- ment, is to try to clarify his ideas about what ought to be — wholly powerless as the lover of the ideal is to determine, through any skilfully devised engines of destruc- tion, or through any efiiciency of the general staff of any national army, what shall be. All that one can now utter must be called at best "A Song before Sunrise." We do not know whether the sun for which the genuine lovers of mankind and of the ideal long, will 26 THE HOPE OF THE GREAT COMMUNITY ever rise in any future which we human be- ings can foresee for our own race. Every idealist believes himself to have rational grounds for the faith that somewhere, and in some world, and at some time, the ideal will triumph, so that a survey, a divine synop- sis of all time, somehow reveals the lesson of all sorrow, the meaning of all tragedy, the triumph of the spirit. But it is not ours to say, in the world in which we at present have to live from one day to another, and to fol- low the fortunes of man from one newspaper to another, — when and how the true reve- lation of the world's meaning is faced and found. We often do our best when we fix our mind on the thought which Kant ex- pressed in the words : "If justice meets utter wreck, then there is no worth whatever in the continued existence of human life in this world." That word, at least, relieves us from the requirement of trying to prove that justice in mortal affairs will escape total wreck. Perhaps the time will come when, indeed, 27 THE HOPE OF THE GREAT COMMUNITY there will be no further worth in the con- tinued existence of men on this planet. If the purposes and deeds which some of the powerful enemies of mankind now boastfully attempt to make successful ever become permanently triumphant, then in truth there will be no further worth in the continued existence of human beings. As a matter of fact, this planet has seen its "Age of Reptiles." The sabre-toothed tiger has also had its day. Perhaps the ideals of those who defend and praise the destruction of mothers and of their babes on the "Lusitania" represent the sort of humanity that is henceforth, for an in- definite time, to win possession of the powers which are to control the fortunes of human civilization. About such matters a genuine idealist has no philosophical right, just as he has no scientific right, to make any particu- lar prediction. His business is with the jus- tice whose nature is such that if here on earth it is permanently wrecked, then the life of man becomes utterly worthless. There are to-day boastful powers, as hopeful of their 28 THE- HOPE OF THE GREAT COMMUNITY own success as Milton's fallen angels were when . . . Satan exalted sat, By merit raised to that bad eminence, on his throne before them, and made prepa- rations for a sort of submarine campaign against the salvation of man. The lover of ideals has no more right to make predic- tions about the hopes of these boastful powers, than Milton's good angels would have had to make predictions about the results of Satan's subsequent search for this little earth, and about what his visits to the Garden of Eden would accomplish. In Milton's tale these visits accomplished the Fall of Man. The good and the bad angels have been struggling for the final possession of man ever since. The struggle continues to-day. And there can be no doubt that the evil powers are prodigiously eflScient, and that the servants of ill are devotedly loyal to their diabolical cause. As for humanity, man, like the sabre-toothed tiger, may ere long have had his day and may have ceased 29 THE HOPE OF THE GREAT COMMUNITY to be. The lover of ideals can make no predictions as to such results. He can only "watch for the morning" until, for him and for some of his human fellows, the darkness has indeed settled down. It remains, how- ever, still worth while to tell what hopes one's "Song before Sunrise" would express if one were permitted not merely to watch and sometimes to hope for the morning, but to tell what the sun would show us if it had already risen for humanity, or will show us whenever for humanity it does rise, if indeed on this planet it ever is to rise. In order rightly to estimate the ideal issues which are at stake in the present crisis of humanity, it is first necessary to make clear a matter concerning which there is a good deal of confusion in recent discussion. Some of this confusion is benevolent and well- meaning; some of it is due to wilful disre- gard of certain ethical issues which ought to be as obvious as they are deep. The mat- 30 THE HOPE OF THE GREAT COMMUNITY ter to which I refer can best be brought nearer to clearness by contrasting two views of the world's present moral situation which fre- quently appear in recent expressions concern- ing the morals of the war. According to one of these views, the present war is essentially a conflict between nations and between na- tional ideals. The essence of this doctrine is, that just as the conflicting powers are nations, so the main moral concern ought to be ex- pressed in hopes that this or that nation will obtain a deserved success. Opposed to this view is a second and very different view of the moral situation of the world and of the meaning of the war. Ac- cording to this view, the present war is a conflict more conscious, more explicit, and for that very reason more dangerous than any we have ever had before, a conflict between the community of mankind and the particu- lar interests of individual nations. Conse- quently, no nation engaged in this war is, or can be, right in its cause, except in so far as it is explicitly aiming towards the triumph 31 THE HOPE OF THE GREAT COMMUNITY of the community of mankind. As a fact, the various warring nations are at present acting with a decidedly various degree of clearness about their relation to the unified interests of humanity ; that is, to what I call the cause of the community of mankind. Hence the various nations differ in the degree to which, at any stage of the conflict, their cause is just. In certain respects and with regard to certain of their enterprises, they may be, and are, explicitly aware that they intend to serve the community of man- kind ; while in other respects, or in re- gard to other matters, they may act with a more or less explicitly deliberate hostility to the cause of the community of mankind. Their moral position may, therefore, vary accordingly. But owing to the vastness and to the definiteness of many of the special international passions and issues concerned in the present conflict, the outcome of the war promises to be either a victory or a defeat, not for any one of the warring nations nearly so much as for humanity in its wholeness, 32 THE HOPE OP THE GREAT COMMUNITY and hence for what I shall venture also to call the church universal. It is important, therefore, to indicate as clearly as possible what in this discussion I mean by the com- munity of mankind, and what by the church universal. Ancient Israel somewhat early reached a religious ideal which it expressed in the doc- trine of some of its Prophets, that the re- deemed and transformed Jerusalem of the future was to be the centre of a redeemed humanity, the spiritual ruler of a kingdom which should have no end. In reaching this ideal, the religion of the Prophets did not look forward merely to a poUtical conquest of the rest of the world by the future people of Israel. The ideal of the transformed hu- manity of the future had, indeed, in case of the religion of the Prophets, its poUtical meta- phors and inevitably its poUtical coloring. The subsequent results when the ideal reU- gion of the Prophets degenerated into the formaUties of later Judaism, were in many ways disastrous both for the morals and for 33 THE HOPE OF THE GREAT COMMUNITY the religion of Judaism. But the ideal city of Zion, the centre of a new heaven and earth, passed over as an ideal into the possession of the early Christian church. The Apostle Paul gave to its inner life the character which he called "charity," and which he expounded to the Corinthians in one of the greatest documents of Christian literature. The often misunderstood heart and essence of the Pauline vision of charity is that it is a virtue belonging to a community, a com- munity which Paul conceives as finding its future home in a heaven where the Divine Spirit both informs it and fulfils its life and its desire. Charity does not mean mere love of individuals for individuals ; since if, ac- cording to Paul, I gave all my goods to feed the poor, and my body to be burned, I might still be without charity, and then be as a sounding brass or as a tinkling cymbal. Char- ity, for Paul, is not a merely mystical power to prophesy, nor does it consist in any other form of merely individual efficiency or profi- ciency. It is a virtue which Paul recom- 34 THE HOPE OF THE GREAT COMMUNITY mends to his Corinthians as to an united community who, in the bonds of the spirit, are one body despite the multitude of the members. Charity never faileth, and out- lasts all earthly vicissitudes in its own heav- enly world, because there we know even as we are known, and our mutual relations are those of a perfected spiritual community. Paul viewed the salvation of humanity as consisting in the triumph of the Christian church. This triumph was for him something miraculous, catastrophic, and future ; and his expectations regarding the triumph and end of humanity were obviously quite mythi- cal. But this triumph of humanity, this hope of all the faithful, this salvation of a community through an universally significant human transformation, without which no salvEftion of an individual man would be possible, this idea, in terms of which the Apostle Paul imiversalized the ideal Jeru- salem of the early Prophets, this became the most essential and characteristic idea of the Christian church. 35 THE HOPE OF THE GREAT COMMUNITY The historical church has never been true to it and has seldom understood it. Most Christians suppose that the salvation of men is an affair involving the distinct, and in many ways the isolated, spiritual for- tunes of individual men. Such Christians, however, have not understood what the vision of the New Jerusalem was in which the seer of the Apocalypse gloried. What the tree of life bears for the healing of the nations, such Christians have never rightly com- prehended. What the farewell address of the Logos of the Fourth Gospel meant, when the departing Lord prayed to the Father, "That those whom Thou hast given me may be One as We are One," such individualistic Christianity (which has been only too popu- lar in the various Protestant sects) has neg- lected, if not forgotten. But however ill- comprehended, the "sign" in which and by which Christianity conquered the world was the sign of an ideal community of all the faithful, which was to become the commu- nity of all mankind, and which was to become 36 THE HOPE OF THE GREAT COMMUNITY some day the possessor of all the earth, the exponent of true charity, at once the spirit and the ruler of the humanity of the future. Such is a bare suggestion of that ideal of the community of mankind which it was the historical mission of Christianity to introduce into the world, to keep alive through cen- turies of human crimes, oppressions, rebel- lions, and hatreds, and to hold before the world for the healing of the nations. The present situation of humanity depends upon the fact that for good reasons, which have to do not merely with the sentimental and ro- mantic aspirations of humanity, but also with the most serious business in which men are engaged, the idea of the community of mankind has become more concrete, more closely related to the affairs of daily life, has become more practicable than ever before. At this very moment the material aspect of civilization favors, as never before, the natu- ral conditions upon which the community of mankind, if it were reasonably successful, would depend for its prosperity. The growth 37 THE HOPE OF THE GREAT COMMUNITY of the natural sciences as well as of the techni- cal industries of mankind also makes possible and comprehensive forms and grades of coop- eration which men have never before known. Some motives which tend to render the gen- uine Pauline charity, the genuine love of the unity of the great community to which all civilized men may, when enlightened, con- sciously belong, — such motives, I say, have been furthered by the arts, the industries, the sciences, and the social developments of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, as thou- sands of years of previous human activity have never furthered them. The brilliant coloring, the luxuriant images with which the fancy of the seer of the Apocalypse adorned his New Jerusalem, readily suggest themselves to the imagination of the lover of human kind, who dwells on some of the more benign aspects of our recent civilization, and who considers how far-reaching the abundant powers of human life are tending to become under the influence of those humane arts and sciences which of late have so successfully 38 THE HOPE OF THE GREAT COMMUNITY combated disease, and have brought together nations and races of men who once could not in the least feel their brotherhood, or mutually understand the tongues which they spoke. These benevolent and benign influences do not, indeed, of themselves constitute the true Pauline charity ; but within the last two centuries we have for the first time seen glimpses of how, under perfectly human conditions, they could become a basis for a charity which might transform our society in many of its most significant features into a social order worthy both of a new heaven and of a new earth. In brief, the last two centuries have given us a right to hope for the unity of mankind, a right of which we had only mythical glimpses and mystical visions before. This right we gained through the recent development both of our natural sciences and of our modern humanities. The idea of the human community has tended of late to win a certain clearness which it never could possess until now. Paul could believe in his vision of the re- 39 THE HOPE OF THE GREAT COMMUNITY deemed humanity of the future, because he had his own perfectly concrete and human, if to him unsatisfactory, experiences of the apparently miraculous life which was present in his enthusiastic little churches. When he talked of the redeemed humanity in heaven, and had his vision of the charity that never faileth, he could say to his brethren: "Thus the Spirit manifests itself amongst you." When, in an unquestionably more fantastic manner and language, the author of the Fourth Gospel made the speaker of the fare- well addresses characterize the present life and the future life of his little company of disciples, whom "having loved them, he loved them to the end," the writer of this Gospel could use his concrete, although historically idealized, portrait of the last meeting be- tween the Lord and his disciples as the basis and background of this vision of the salva- tion of mankind. In our day this vision of the salvation of mankind, while indeed far enough away from us to cause constant and grave concern, 40 THE HOPE OF THE GREAT COMMUNITY and to demand endless labor, has been for a long time becoming clearer than ever, while both science and industry have tended to bring men together in new fashions of coopera- tion, in new opportunities and exercises that involve an expressed charity in its true form, as a devotion not merely to individuals but to the united life of the commimity. The belief that mankind can be and in the end shall be one, has thus for a long time had an in- creased concreteness, definiteness, practical applicability, and despite all the vast evils of our modern social order, a genuine hope- fulness. What has to be borne in mind is, that in former centuries, and above all in ancient times, the community of mankind was hindered from becoming an object either of experience or of reasonable hope by the confusions of men's tongues, by the mutual hostilities of nations, of religions, and of sects, and by the absence of means whereby men might learn to work together. Since the beginning of the modem world, not only have the sciences and the arts helped us to 41 THE HOPE OF THE GREAT COMMUNITY work together in a material way and to un- derstand one another regarding our various ideas, but very many of our modern intellec- tual and practical modes of progress have possessed a significance not only material, but deeply spiritual and, what is more to the point in our present discussion, wisely inter- national. The modern world has become in many ways more and more an international world. And this, I insist, has been true not merely as to its technical and material ties, but as to its spiritual union. It has been this vision upon which a recent international crime has so violently intruded. The hope of the community lies in trying to keep before us a vision of what the community of mankind may yet become despite this tragic calamity. II In speaking at such a moment of the com- munity of mankind viewed simply as an ideal of the future, there are two matters which, as I believe, we ought to bear in mind. First, its members wiU not be merely individual 42 THE HOPE OF THE GREAT COMMUNITY human beings, nor yet mere collections or masses of human beings, however vast, but commiuiities of some sort, communities such as, at any stage of civilization in which the great community is to be raised to some higher level of organization, already exist. Ethical individualism has been, in the past, one great foe of the great community. Ethical individualism, whether it takes the form of democracy or of the irresponsible search on the part of individuals for private happiness or for any other merely individual good, will never save mankind. Equally useless, however, for the attainment of hu- manity's great end would be any form of mere ethical collectivism, that is, any view which regarded the good of mankind as something which masses or crowds or disorganized col- lections of men should win. For this reason Bentham's utilitarianism, in the form which he gave to it, and which the English political Liberals of the middle of the nineteenth century emphasized, does not express what the community of mankind 43 THE HOPE OF THE GREAT COMMUNITY needs for its existence and for its general welfare. That is why mere philanthropy, merely seeking for the greatest happiness for the greatest number, merely endeavor- ing to alleviate the pains of individual men or of collections of men, will never bring about the end for which mankind has always been seeking, and for the sake of which our individ- ual life is worth living. That, too, is the reason why at the present time many humane people, despite their former horror of war, in view of its sorrows and of the misery which it causes, find to their surprise that, as Mr. Robert Herrick has said in a recent number of "The New Republic," war seems to them now no longer as great an evil as it used to seem ; for in each of the warring peoples the war has brought about a new consciousness of unity, a new willingness to surrender pri- vate good to the welfare of the community, q, new sense of the sacredness of duty, a new readiness to sacrifice. Such converts to the doctrine that war is good ascribe their sudden conversion to the 44 THE HOPE OF THE GREAT COMMUNITY wonder and reverence which have been aroused in them by the sight of France re- generated through the very dangers which the invader has brought with him, awakened to a new sense that the value of Hfe Hes not in what individuals get out of it, but in what the exertions and the perils of war call out and illustrate, namely, the supreme and super-individual value of loyalty. Loyalty, the devotion of the seK to the interests of the community, is indeed the form which the highest life of humanity must take, whether in a political unity, such as in a nation, or in the church universal, such as Paul foresaw. Without loyalty, there is no salvation. Therefore loyalty can never completely ex- press itself in the search for individual happi- ness, whether the happiness that is in ques- tion be that of the individual who teaches, or that of the mere collections of masses of individuals for whom some philanthropist seeks happiness. Therefore it is indeed true that, if the only alternative for mankind were either to con- 45 THE HOPE OF THE GREAT COMMUNITY tinue the arts of war or to lose its vision of high attainment in the form of a mere search for happiness, then it would be better that war should rage, with all its horrors, so long as humanity lasts, rather than that what Emerson called "hearts in sloth and ease" should live in an endlessly dissatisfied search for pleasures which deceive and which fade in the enjoyment, and for a happiness which no human individual can possibly attaia, unless indeed he is viewed as a member of the community. The detached individual is an essentially lost being. That ethical truth lies at the basis of the Pauline doctrine of original sin. It lies also at the basis of the pessimism with which the ancient southern Buddhism of the original founder of that faith, Gotama Bud- dha, viewed the life of man. The essence of the life of the detached individual is, as Gotama Buddha said, an unquenchable desire for bliss, a desire which "hastens to enjoy- ment, and in enjoyment pines to feel desire." Train such a detached individual by some form 46 THE HOPE OF THE GKEAT COMMUNITY of highly civilized cultivation, and you merely show him what Paul called "the law." The law thus shown he hereupon finds to be in opposition to his self-will. Sin, as the Pauline phrase has it, "revives." The individual, brought by his very cul- tivation to a clearer consciousness of the con- flict between his self-will and the social laws which tradition inflicts upon him, finds a war going on in his own members. His life hereupon becomes only a sort of destruction of what is dearest to him. For as a social being, he has to recognize both the might of his social order and the dignity of its de- mands. But as a detached individual, he naturally hates restraint; that is, as Paul says, he hates the law. However correct his outward conduct may be, he inwardly says: "Oh, wretched man that I am, "who shall deliver me from the body of this death ?" Such is the picture of the essentially dis- astrous life of the detached individual which you find in the much misunderstood, and in our day comparatively unpopular seventh 47 THE HOPE OF THE GREAT COMMUNITY chapter of the Epistle to the Romans. In the following chapter, Paul characterizes the only mode of salvation which can be offered with any hope to such a detached individual. Gotama Buddha sought the salvation of the detached individual through an act of resig- nation whereby all desires are finally aban- doned. Paul describes what is essentially salvation through loyalty, salvation through the willing service of a community, the sal- vation of those whom he characterizes by the words : "They are in Christ Jesus, and walk not after the flesh, but after the spirit." But for Paul the being whom he called Christ Jesus was in essence the spirit of the universal community. The lesson with regard to which both Bud- dhism and Christianity agree, is the lesson that for the detached individual there is no salvation. Since, therefore, you can never make the detached individual securely and steadily happy, it is useless to try to save him, or any mere crowd or collection of detached individuals, by mere philanthropy. Since 48 THE HOPE OF THE GREAT COMMUNITY the detached individual is essentially a lost being, you cannot save masses of lost individ- uals through the triumph of mere democracy. Masses of lost individuals do not become genuine freemen merely because they all have votes. The suffrage can show the way of salvation only to those who are already loyal, who already, according to their lights, live in the spirit, and are directed not by a mere disposition to give good things to every- body, or to give all their goods to feed the poor, or to give their body to be burned, but by a genuinely Pauline charity. Since, then, it is only the consciously united community — that which is in essence a Pauline church — which can offer salvation to distracted humanity and can calm the otherwise insatiable greed and longing of the natural individual man, the salvation of the world will be found, if at all, through uniting the already existing communities of man- kind into higher communities, and not through merely freeing the peoples from their oppres- sors, or through giving them a more popular E 49 THE HOPE OF THE GREAT COMMUNITY government, unless popular government al- ways takes the form of government by the united community, through the united com- munity, and for the united community. Therefore, while the great community of the future will unquestionably be interna- tional by virtue of the ties which will bind its various nationalities together, it will find no place for that sort of internationalism which despises the individual variety of nations, and which tries to substitute for the vices of those who at present seek merely to con- quer mankind, the equally worthless desire of those who hope to see us in future as "men without a country." Whatever that form of loyalty which is now patriotism expresses, must be in spirit preserved by the great com- munity of the future. That unity within the national growth which the observers of the war watch with such fascination, when they see how each people is better knit and more serious, more conscious of the sacredness of its national life than it was before the great peril, that unity will not, and must not, 50 THE HOPE OF THE GREAT COMMUNITY be lost when the new international life comes into existence. There can be no true inter- national life unless the nations remain to possess it. There can never be a spiritual body unless that body, like the ideal Pauline church, has its many members. The citi- zens of the world of the future will not lose their distinct countries. What will pass away will be that insistent mutual hostility which gives to the nations of to-day, even in times of peace, so many of the hateful and distracting characters of a detached individual man. In case of human individuals, the sort of in- dividualism which is opposed to the spirit of loyalty, is what I have already called the individualism of the detached individual, the individualism of the man who belongs to no community which he loves and to which he can devote himseH with all his heart, and his soul, and his mind, and his strength. In so far as liberty and democracy, and independ- ence of soul, mean that sort of individualism, they never have saved men and never can save men. For mere detachment, mere seK- 51 THE HOPE OF THE GREAT COMMUNITY will, can never be satisfied with itself, can never win its goal. What saves us on any level of human social life is union. And when Webster said, in his familiar reply to Hayne, that what alone could save this country must be described as "Liberty and Union, now and forever, one and inseparable ! " — Webster expressed in fine phrase, and with special reference to this country, the true doctrine of the church universal. Liberty alone never saves us. Democracy alone never saves us. Our political freedom is but vanity unless it is a means through which we come to realize and practise charity, in the Pauline sense of that word. Hence the community of mankind will be inter- national in the sense that it will ignore no rational and genuinely self-conscious nation. It will find the way to respect the liberty of the individual nations without destroying their genuine spiritual freedom. Its liberty and union, when attained, will be "now and forever, one and inseparable." 52 THE HOPE OF THE GREAT COMMUNITY III I have now mentioned one character which, as I believe, must belong to the interna- tional community of the future. Hereupon I must turn to a second character, which seems to me of equal importance with the first, al- though reformers and the creators of Utopias have almost uniformly neglected, or mis- understood this second character. The distinct national unities must remain intact, each with its own internal motives for loyalty and with its modes of expression whereby the loyalty of its individual citizens will be won and sustained in the community of mankind, which the ideal future must con- tain if humanity is to be really saved. In the far-off future, as in The past, humanity will include amongst its number nations whose citizens belong not merely to various national types but to distinct races. No dream of universal conquest, if it were carried out, could ever lead to anything but to a more or less universal community of hate, 53 THE HOPE OF THE GREAT COMMUNITY to a social world essentially distracted, much as the world of the Gentiles, depicted by Paul at the outset of the Epistle to the Romans, was distracted. In and for such a community, no man, still less a nation, could deeply feel or long retain any genuine loyalty. Neither the pan-Germanists nor the pan-Slavists, neither the partisans of the white race nor those who hope for the supremacy of the yel- low race, have any true conception of what the community of mankind is intended to be or of what the spirit of loyalty demands that it shall be. Both the nations and the races are needed for the future of mankind. The problem of humanity is to see that their liberty and their union shall remain "for- ever one and inseparable." But what the lovers of national rivalries, who look forward to an endless strife of peoples, as well as the makers of the Utopias of universal peace, have equally failed to see is that amongst the many social functions of a nation ory for that matter, of any human community, the political functions of such 54 THE HOPE OF THE GREAT COMMUNITY a community, at any rate, as they have been conceived and carried out up to the present tinrie, are ethically amongst the least impor- tant. Greece never attained political unity. To- day it rules the world, as Germany will never rule it, though its inventions and its efficiency should continue and grow for a thousand years. Greece rules a spiritual world, and rules it spiritually. No modern nation that has won political power has ever expressed its best contribution to humanity through this polit- ical power, or has ever made a contribution to the community of mankind which is nearly equal to the contribution made by Greece, and made by a nation which proved wholly incapable of political unity. The greatest rival which Greece has ever possessed as a contributor to the cause of the community of mankind is the nation Israel — by which I mean, not the Israel whose history was re- written from the point of view of later Juda- ism and was so misrepresented in what we call the Old Testament. The Israel of which 55 THE HOPE OF THE GREAT COMMUNITY I speak is the I^ael of the great formative period of the prophetic reUgion, the Israel whose religious beginnings are sketched for us in that brief and impressive fragment of poetry called the Song of Deborah — the Israel whose maturer consciousness found its voice in Amos and Isaiah, and in the records of the prophetic literature. Even after its formative period was past, and after Judaism had nearly quenched the spiritual fire which had burned in the religion of the Prophets, Israel still gave us the Psalms, still expressed, in the great speeches which an unknown mas- ter put into the mouth of Job, ideas and problems which are with us to-day, and which will record some of the great problems of human destiny for all coming ages of man- kind, just as the great Greek tragedians of the formative period of the Hellenic mind have spoken for all time. But Israel, like Greece, never won, and from the nature of the case could not win, a lasting political unity. When we remember how all the highest products of the German mind have so far 56 THE HOPE OF THE GREAT COMMUNITY been the products of times when the national unity in a political sense was not yet attained, while the mightiest accomplishment of Prus- sian domination has thus far been that, like the base Indian of Othello's last words, this Prussian domination, in dealing with the magnificent ideal legacy of the Germanic mind, has simply "thrown a pearl away, richer than all his tribe"; and when we remember how an analogous rule holds in case of several other European nations, we are reminded that, on the whole, there seems to be some opposition between the political power of a nation and its power to contribute to the ideal goods of the community of man- kind. The political contributions of nations either to the unity or to the life of the great com- munity are by no means their only or, on the whole, their principal contributions. For that very reason it is not wise to hope that when the Holy City of the community of mankind descends from heaven to earth, it will come in political form. According to a well-known 57 THE HOPE OF THE GREAT COMMUNITY tradition, the Master said: "My kingdom is not of this world, else would my servants fight." I do not think that this reported word of the Master represents what the ideal course of human progress ought to be. The ideal comniunity of mankind, whenever it really descends from heaven to earth, will indeed appear in a definitely worldly fashion. If the ideal is approximately realized, the kingdom will be in this world, yet its servants will not fight, simply because they will be loyally engrossed in much better business than fighting. That upon which I here in- sist is, that in learning such business they will not principally be guided by political arts and motives. IV But if the great community is not to win its loyal consciousness through inventing new political forms and through depending upon political institutions for its principal advances, must it then be confined to "the empire of the air".? Must it always be de- pendent upon its poets and its prophets.'' 58 THE HOPE OP THE GREAT COMMUNITY or upon their brethren, the great scientific discoverers, the genuinely inventive leaders of thought? Must its kingdom be a wholly ideal kingdom? Must its fortunes be those which, in a somewhat disheartening sequence of faiths and of practices, have so far con- stituted the history of religion ? I do not believe this. I believe that the future will invent, and will in due time begin very actively and productively to practise, forms of international activity which will be at once ideal in their significance and busi- ness-like in their methods, so that we shall no longer be dependent upon the extremely rare and precious beings called prophets or poets, to show us the way towards the united life of the great community. I have recently ventured to point out certain ways in which international business is already approaching a stage wherein, if the spoilers do not indeed too seriously wreck or too deeply impair our progress, we may actively begin to further international unity, without in the least interfering with the free internal 59 THE HOPE OF THE GREAT COMMUNITY development of the social orders of individual nations. It is not at all necessary to look towards the triumph of Socialism or of any other equally revolutionary social tendency, whether political or non-political, in order to foresee possible modes of international uni- fication, which, if they were once tried, if a fair beginning of some such international activity were made, would almost certainly prove to be self-sustaining as well as condu- cive to a mutual understanding amongst the nations. There is, for instance, a type of business which has been invented only within a little more than a century. In origin it is due to no poet and to no prophet. It has already transformed the civilization of the principal nations of Europe. The transformation in question is nowhere, except by accident, very closely bound up with political changes. The social transformations which it has al- ready wrought within the communities of single nations, are not due to the spread of socialistic doctrines or to any notable political 60 THE HOPE OF THE GREAT COMMUNITY tensions or strifes within the communities which have thus been influenced. The form of business which I have in mind is the form known as insurance. Within the hfe of a single civihzed people, it is capable of accomplishing an immense variety of types of social service. The internal organization of Germany itself has been prodigiously fur- thered, the social unity and the impressive eflSciency of the German people have been in recent decades very vastly furthered by the use which Bismarck and those who followed him were led to make of various forms of "state insurance" and of "social insurance," largely as means of meeting the demands which the socialistic movement was already making upon the state in general. What has been proved is that the type of business called insurance is so plastic and has such vast direct as well as indirect eflfects, that, within a single nation, if the purpose is to give a community such unity and such organiza- tion as naturally hold the attention and win the practical loyalty of the members of the 61 THE HOPE OF THE GREAT COMMUNITY community, the insurance type of organiza- tion is the best type invented for the pur- pose in question. This is no place to speak of the details of recent social insurance which Germany has so largely and so successfully used. It is enough to say that the business of insurance depends upon devices which are, so to speak, essentially unifying, essentially reconciling, essentially such as to exemplify a type of social community to which in a re- cent book of my own I have ventured to give a name, not, as I hope, too technical. An insuring financial organization, whether it be an ordinary corporation or, as in Ger- many's case, a state or a government, has what I may call a mediating, a reconciling, a unifying function. If you regard the in- surer as an individual man — and such in special cases he may be, — he mediates be- tween the interests of two persons whose con- cerns, apart from th.e work of the insurer, are subject to an often painful conflict. These two persons may be called "the adventurer" and "the beneficiary." The adventurer is 62 THE HOPE OF THE GREAT COMMUNITY somebody who takes a risk, a practically- significant risk. Like all risks, this one does not affect the fortunes of the adventurer alone. For the adventurer has, or at some time in the future will have, heirs or suc- cessors, or a family or other co-adventurers, who may, or who xinder certain conditions will benefit iimu of The Philosophy of Loyalty ^ JOSIAS ROrCB, Ph.D., LL.IX. Professor of the Historv of ThiUxsoiJiv, Har\-.\n! I'nivvrsiiy ; autlioi of "Outlines of iSivolioloiix-," ""iho ConkYpiiou of Cjod," "The \\'orM an J the h>aividiK>l," cto. tV.V*. rjwo, ^o"' " The ethical value of loN^vlty needed vliscussion, esixx-ially ;»s so mudt so-called lo>->,ilty is mere self-ilolusion. To be loyal in iworx- woixls. or nosn- tiwly. to the shell of an outworn ^.vnvention is not to Ih^ 1o\.\1 a\ all, or wise. Mort\"*wr, true lo^-iilty must express itself piiiotioallv. in tlie \v;»v v'>f a m;ui's life, in his deeds. Cherislieii without ix-asonmi;, and to no iv,\lly practicsU purjwse, it ;n-ails nothing. The drift of cireumstanoes that may m;Uce a man of high and suviis; personal qualities a powx-r for lastinj; good in a oon\nuii\ity, or dowlop him as a hannfiil influence to sooioty. does not escape Professvtr Royco's attention. The present signiticatuv of his lK'»ok, tlicrefore, is evident. . . . The author disolaints the idea of making a text- book or sm elaborately tedmical work of phiUwopltiCiU research. The appeal of the book is to all readers." — .\>.o Yoti Timts. BY THE SAMS AUTHOR War and Insurance Cloth, itmo, $j,oo Starting with some of the conclusions which he reached in his " Philosopliy of LoiTdty," Dr. Royxv develops a plan for insuring ix-aet-. The book is not pliilosophiciU in character, but simple, tmtecltnical and of very pn-scnt significance. The program wliioh is deduced front metaphysical principles is very workable, and wltile philosophei"s will t\nd in it much to interest them, it is intended primarily for the avcr.t^e man who is looking for prac- tical suggestions as to means by which war may be prevented. THE MACMILLAN COMPANY PuUisliers 64-66 Fifth Avenue New York "■MnVPIWaW«>HPBMIfM«