Chapter XIII: Part SIX: The New Education (4)

Upon these ideas there must now be grafted the concept of mutation and the observations of Hugo de Vries.--If this living substance which is common to all humanity should, at any time and owing to any influence, have acquired the capacity for changing[66] after a certain lapse of time, for instance a thousand years, then all those beings which have in them a share of this substance may suddenly undergo identical changes. It is well known that Hugo de Vries has observed such sudden variations in plants.[67] After centuries of stability in the characteristics of a species, quite suddenly, in a great number of individuals belonging to this species, there will one year occur a modification, the leaves becoming longer, or shorter, etc. Thenceforward this modification will be propagated as a constant feature, so that, by the following year, a new species will have come into existence.--The same thing happens among human beings, especially in the human brain; for, as far as man is concerned, the most striking instances of variation are found in the psychic domain. In each year, certain human beings present brain variations. Such abnormal individuals are sometimes regarded as madmen and sometimes as men of genius. They herald the coming variations of the species, variations of which they are the forerunners. At due date, the same peculiarities will suddenly manifest themselves throughout the species. Experience shows that transformations, or moral and social discoveries, appear at the same moment in the most widely separated and the most various countries. I have myself often been struck by this fact, both when studying history and when observing the men of my own day. Contemporary societies, at a great distance one from another and having no means of rapid intercommunication, will simultaneously exhibit the same moral and social phenomena. Hardly ever is a discovery born in the brain of a single inventor. At the same instant, other inventors happen upon it, anticipate it, or are hot upon the trail. The popular phrase runs, "the idea is in the air." When an idea is in the air, a mutation is about to occur in the human brain. We are, says Nicolai, on the eve of a "mutation of war." Moltke and Tolstoi represent the two great contrasted variations in human thought. Moltke extolled the ethical value of war; Tolstoi passed unqualified condemnation on war. Which of these two minds represents the variation of genius and which the variation of madness? In the light of contemporary events, most people would be inclined to give the palm to Moltke. But when an organism is about to undergo mutation, the change is often preluded by frequent and extensive variations. Of these divergent variations, those only persist which are best suited to the conditions of existence. Thus, in Nicolai's view, the ideas of Moltke and his disciples are a favourable presage that mutation is imminent.

* * * * *

Whatever we may think of this hope that within the near future a mutation will occur leading to the formation of a humanity radically opposed to war, it is enough to watch the biological development of the extant world to acquire the belief that a new organisation, vaster and more peaceful, is at hand. In proportion as humanity evolves, communications between men are multiplied. During the last century there occurred a sudden and enormous improvement in the technical means for the exchange of ideas. To give one example only. In former days the circulation of letters throughout the whole world did not exceed one hundred thousand a year. To-day, the postal correspondence in Germany amounts to a milliard letters a year (15 per head), whereas formerly the number was 1 per 1,000 of the population. About forty years ago, in the countries which now form parts of the postal union, three milliards of letters, etc., were posted annually. By the year 1906 the number had increased to thirty-five milliards; and by 1914, to fifty milliards. (In Germany, 1 per head every 10 days; in Great Britain, 1 per head every 3 days.) We have further to consider the increased speed of communication. Distance no longer exists for the telegraph; "the entire civilised world has become a large room in which we can all talk with one another."

Such changes cannot fail to influence social life. In earlier times, any thought of union or federation between the various states of Europe remained utopian, were it only on account of the difficulty and slowness of communications. As Nicolai says, a state cannot extend to infinite proportions; it must be able to act promptly upon the different parts of its organism. To a certain extent, therefore, its size is a function of the rapidity of communications. In prehistoric times, a traveller could cover only about 12 miles a day; when wheeled traffic became established, the daily postal journey extended to 60 miles, and in the later days of mail-coach development, this distance was more than doubled; towards 1850, the railway service was able to cover 375 miles a day; modern trains range to 1,250 miles a day; an express service covering 6,000 miles or more a day is already within the scope of technical possibilities. For barbarians, the country was limited to a mountain valley. The states that existed at the close of the middle ages, states which have not greatly varied down to our times, were adapted in size to the possibilities of the mail coach. Now, such petty states are far too small. The modern man will no longer consent to be restricted in this way. He is continually crossing frontiers. He wants vast states, like those of America, Australia, Russia, or South Africa. We look forward to the days when, be it only for material reasons like the foregoing, the whole world will be a single state. Nothing that we can do will check this evolution; the change will come whether we like it or not. We can now understand that all earlier attempts to unite the nations of Europe, all those initiated in the middle ages and continued down to the nineteenth century, were rendered impossible of achievement by the lack of suitable material conditions. With the best will in the world, their realisation was impossible. But the requisite conditions exist to-day, and we may say that the organisation of contemporary Europe no longer corresponds to its biological development. Willy-nilly, Europe will have to adapt itself to the new conditions. The days of European unity have come. And the days of world-wide unity are at hand.[68]

The new body of humanity, the "corpus magnum" of which Seneca spoke, needs a soul, and it needs a new faith. This faith, while retaining the absolute character of the old religions, must be wider and more plastic than they; it must not merely be adapted to the existing needs of the human mind, but must take into account the possibilities of future development. All previous religions, rooted in tradition and wishing to bind man to the past, were encased in dogmatism; and they one and all, as time passed, became hindrances to natural evolution. Where can we find a basis for faith and morals which shall be simultaneously absolute and mutable; shall be above man, and none the less human; shall be ideal, and none the less real?--We shall find what we want, says Nicolai, in humanity itself. For us, humanity is a reality which develops throughout the ages, but which at every moment represents for us an absolute entity. It evolves in a direction which may be fortuitous, but which, once taken, cannot be changed. It simultaneously embraces the past, the present, and the future. It is a unity in time, a vast synthesis of which we are but fragments. To be human, means to understand this development, to love it, to trust one's hopes to it, and to endeavour to participate in it consciously. Herein we find an ethical system, which Nicolai sums up as follows:

1. The community of mankind is the divine upon earth, and is the foundation of morals.

2. To be a man is to feel within one's self the reality of humanity at large. It is to feel, like a living law, that we are elements of that greater organism, in which (to quote Saint Paul's admirable intuition) we are all parts of one body and every one members one of another.

3. The love of our neighbour is a feeling of good health. A general love for humanity is the feeling of organic health in humanity at large, reflected in one of its members. Therefore we should love and honour the human community and everything which sustains and fortifies it--work, truth, good and sound instincts.

4. Fight everything which injures it. Above all, fight bad traditions, instincts that have become useless or harmful.

* * * * *

"Scio et volo me esse hominem," writes Nicolai at the close of his book. "I know that I am a man, and I wish to be one."

Man--he understands by this a being aware of the ties which attach him to the great human family, and aware of the evolution which carries him along with it--a spirit which understands and loves these ties and these laws, and which, submitting to them with delight, thereby becomes free and creative.[69] Man--the term applies to Nicolai himself in the sense of the character in Terence's play who said, "Homo sum; humani nihil a me alienum puto." Herein lies the great merit of his work; and herein, too, we find its defect. In his eagerness to include everything, he has attempted the impossible. He speaks in one place with an unjust contempt, and with a contempt which he above all should have been slow to express, of the "Vielwisser," the polyhistor.[70] But he himself is a Vielwisser, one of the finest specimens of this genus, too rare in our day. In all domains, art, science, history, religion, and politics, his insight is penetrating, but at the same time rapid and incisive. Everywhere his opinions are lively, often original, and often debatable. The wealth of his glimpses "de omni re scibili," the abundance of his intuitions and his reasonings, have a brilliant and at times a venturesome character. The historical chapters are not above reproach. Unquestionably the lack of books accounts for certain insufficiencies, but I think the peculiarities of the author's own genius are partly responsible. He is headlong and impulsive. These qualities give charm to his writing, but they are dangerous. What he loves, he sees beautifully. But woe to what he does not love! Take, for instance, his disdainful and hasty judgments upon the recent imaginative writers of Germany--judgments passed wholesale.[71]

It is a remarkable fact that this German biologist resembles no one living or dead so much as he resembles one of our French encyclopedists of the eighteenth century. I know no one in contemporary France who can, to the same degree, be compared with him. Diderot and Dalembert would have opened their arms to this man of science, who humanises science, who boldly limns a picture instinct with life, a brilliant synthesis of the human mind, of its evolution, of its manifold activities, and of the results it has achieved; who throws wide the doors of his laboratory to intelligent men of the world; and who deliberately wishes to make of science an instrument of struggle and emancipation in the war of the nations on behalf of liberty. Like Dalembert and Diderot, he is "in the thick of the fight." He marches in the vanguard of modern thought, but he does not go further ahead than the due distance between a leader and his followers; he is never isolated, as were those great forerunners who remained throughout life cloistered in prophetic visions, centuries away from realisation; his ideals are no more than a day in advance of those cherished by his contemporaries.

A German republican, he looks no higher for the moment than the political ideals of Young America, the America of 1917, in which (according to Nicolai) "we can see, not merely what this new, so to speak, cosmopolitan, patriotism means, but also the limits which must still be imposed on it.... The day for the brotherhood of man has not yet come [we quote Nicolai, remember]; the time is not yet ripe. There is still too profound a cleavage between White, Yellow, and Black. It is in America that European patriotism has awakened, the sentiment which will undoubtedly be the patriotism of the near future, and whose heralds we would fain be.... The new Europe is already born, though not in Europe."[72]

In these lines we discern Nicolai's limitations, which any eighteenth century cosmopolitan would have over-stepped. In the practical domain, our author is essentially, uniquely, but absolutely, a European. It was to Europeans that he addressed his Manifesto of October, 1914, and his book of 1915.

"It seems to us necessary before everything else," he writes, "that there should be a union of all who are in any way attached to European civilisation, that is to say, who are what Goethe once almost prophetically called 'good Europeans.'" And in a note he adds: "By European civilisation I mean every endeavour, in the broadest sense of the word, throughout the world, the origin of which can ultimately be traced back to Europe."

Much might be said concerning this curtailment. For my own part, I consider it neither right nor useful that humanity should draw a line of demarcation between civilisation of European origin and the lofty civilisations of Asia. In my view, the harmonious realisation of humanity can be secured in no other way than by the union of these great complementary forces. Nay more; I believe that the European soul, unaided, impoverished and scorched by centuries of spendthrift existence, would be likely to flicker and even to go out, unless regenerated by an influx of the thought of other races.--But to each day its own task. Nicolai, at once thinker and man of action, turns to the most immediate duty. Concentrating all his energies upon a single aim, he accelerates the moment of attainment. "Just as certain of our forefathers, in advance of their time, enthusiastically advocated a united Germany, even so do we mean to fight for a united Europe. That is the hope inspiring this book."[73]--Nor does he merely hope for the victory of this cause. He already enjoys the victory, by anticipation. Immured in Graudenz fortress, near the room where Fritz Reuter, the German patriot, spent years in captivity because he believed in Germany, Nicolai notes that the Reuter room has been converted into a sanctuary by his erstwhile gaolers, "which is a living instance of the fact that reaction cannot endure for ever." His mind reverting to his own case, he declares: "We may be quite sure that the very same persons who to-day still continue to decry as high treason Goethe's conception of the citizen of Europe, will in a few years' time themselves subscribe to it."

This confidence radiates from every page of the book. It is Nicolai's faith in the future which influences us even more than the writer's ideas. That faith is a stimulant and a moral tonic. It awakens us and sets us free. Those of kindred spirit group themselves round him because, in the dark places of the earth where they wander chilled and with faltering steps, he is a focus of joy and fervid optimism. This prisoner, this man under sentence, smiles as he contemplates the force which thinks it has conquered him, the force of reaction let loose, and of unreason, overthrowing that which he knows to be right and true. Precisely because his faith is violated, he desires to proclaim it. "Precisely because war is in progress, I wish to write a book of peace." Thinking of his brothers in the faith, weaker and more broken, he dedicates to them this book "to assure them that the war is but a passing phase; that we must be careful not to attach too much importance to it." He speaks, he tells us, "to inspire fair-minded and right-thinking men with my own triumphant assurance."[74]

May he be a model to us! May the small and persecuted band of those who refuse to share the general hatred, and whom therefore hate persecutes, be ever warmed by this inward joy! Nothing can deprive them of it. Nothing can harm them. For, amid the horror and the shames of the present, they are the contemporaries of the future.

_October 15, 1917._

"demain," Geneva, November, 1917.

XXI

REFLECTIONS ON READING AUGUSTE FOREL

The name of Auguste Forel is renowned in the world of European science, but within the confines of his own land his writings are perhaps less well known than they should be. Every one is familiar with the social activities of this splendid personality, of this man whose indefatigable energies and ardent convictions have not been affected either by his age or by ill-health. But Latin Switzerland, which justly admires the writings of the naturalist J. H. Fabre, hardly seems to realise that in Forel it is fortunate enough to possess an observer of nature whose insight is no less keen than that of Fabre, and whose scientific endowments are perchance even richer and more unerring. I have recently been reading some of Auguste Forel's studies of ant life, and I have been profoundly impressed by the wide scope of his experimental researches, carried on for a whole lifetime.[75] While patiently observing and faithfully describing the life of these insects, day by day, hour by hour, and year after year, his thoughts have been simultaneously directed towards the ultimate recesses of nature, so that he has been able from time to time to raise for a moment a corner of that veil of mystery which covers our own instincts.

Here is a strange fact. J. H. Fabre believes in providence, "le bon Dieu"; Auguste Forel is a monist, a psycho-physicist. Nevertheless, Forel's observations suggest to the reader a conception of nature which is far less crushing than that suggested by the observations of Fabre. The latter, untroubled by anxieties concerning the human soul, sees in the little insects he is studying nothing more than marvellous machines. But Forel discerns here and there sparks of reflective consciousness, germs of individual will. These are no more than widely separated luminous points, piercing the darkness. But the phenomenon is all the more impressive for its rarity. I have amused myself by selecting from out this wealth of observations a group of facts wherein are displayed the secular instincts, the "anagke," of the species--oppugned, shattered, vanquished. Wherefore should a combat of this sort be less dramatic when waged by these humble ants than when it is waged by the Atrides in _Orestes_? In all cases alike, we have the same waves of force, blind or conscious; the same interplay of light and shade. And the analogy of certain social phenomena, as we observe them among these myriads of tiny beings, and as we observe them among ourselves, may help us to understand ourselves--and perhaps to achieve self-command.

I shall be content, here, to cull from the vast experimental repertory of Auguste Forel, those of his observations which bear upon certain psychopathological collective states, and those which bear upon the formidable problem which faces us to-day, the problem of war.

* * * * *

Ants, says Forel, are to other insects what man is to other mammals. Their brain surpasses that of all other insects in its relative size and in the complexity of its structure. Even if they fail to attain the level of individual intelligence characteristic of the higher mammals, nevertheless they excel all animals without exception in the development of their social instincts. It is not surprising therefore, that in many respects their social life should resemble that of the human species. Like the most advanced human communities, the ant societies are democracies, fighting democracies. Let us contemplate them at work.

The Ant State is not restricted to the single ant-hill; it has its territory, its domain, its colonies. Like our colonising powers, it has its ports of call, its revictualling stations. The territory is a single meadow, a few trees, or a hedge. The domain of exploitation consists of the ground and the subsoil, together with the aphis-bearing trees whence the ants take the aphides they keep under domestication. Their colonies are detached nests more or less distant from the metropolis and more or less numerous (there may be as many as two hundred), communicating with the primary nest by open roads or by underground passages. The depots are small nests or dug-outs for the use of ants on long expeditions, ants that require a rest or those that are overtaken by bad weather.

Naturally these communities tend to grow, and they thus come into conflict one with another. "Territorial disputes, along the frontier between two great ant communities, are the usual cause of embittered struggles. The aphis-bearing shrubs are the most fiercely contested. But, in the case of certain species, subterranean domains (the roots of plants) are likewise the region of savage warfare." Some species live solely by war and plunder. Polyergus rufescens (Huber's "amazon") disdains work, and has indeed lost the power. The members of this species live as slave-owners, served, tended, fed, by troops of slaves, the latter being recruited (in the larval or pupal stage) by slave raids upon neighbouring ant-hills.

Thus war is endemic, and every citizen of these democracies, every worker ant, has to take part in the fighting. In certain species (Pheidole pallidula), the military caste is distinct from the working caste. The soldier takes no part in domestic work, but idles away the days in barracks, with nothing to do save at the times when life has to be staked for the defence of the community.[76] There are no leaders, or at any rate no permanent leaders. We see neither kings nor generals. The expeditionary armies of Polyergus rufescens, which may vary from one hundred thousand to two hundred thousand ants, act in obedience to streams of influence which appear to emanate from small and scattered groups, sometimes in the van and sometimes in the rear. When the army is on the march, the entire column will suddenly halt, remaining indecisive and motionless, as if paralysed. Of a sudden, the initiative will be taken by some small group of ants whose members rush about among the others, striking these on the head; then the temporary leaders start off, and the whole army is in motion once more.

Formica sanguinea is an able tactician. Forel follows Huber in his description of the fighting methods of this species. The insects do not advance in close formation, à la Hindenburg, but in platoons, communicating one with another by orderlies. They do not make a frontal attack; but, after watching the enemy's movements, attempt to take him by surprise on the flank. Their aim, like that of Napoleon, is to concentrate upon a given point at a particular time, to secure there and then the advantage of numbers. Like Napoleon, too, they know how to lower the adversary's morale. Seizing the psychological moment when the enemy's courage or confidence flags, they hurl themselves upon him with irresistible fury, now recking nought of numbers, for they know that at such a time one fighter on their own side is worth a hundred on the other, where panic is rife. Moreover, like good soldiers, their aim is not to kill, so much as to gain the victory and to harvest its fruits. When the battle is won they post a guard at each exit of the conquered nest. The members of this guard allow the enemy ants to escape, provided these carry nothing away. The victors pillage to the uttermost, but do as little killing as possible.

Between species of equal strength, fighting for frontiers, war is not perennial. After many days of battle and glorious hecatombs, the rival states would appear to recognise that their respective ambitions are unattainable. As if by common consent, the armies withdraw within either side of a frontier, which is accepted by both parties with or without treaty. This frontier is respected much more perfectly than among men, bound merely by "scraps of paper." The citizen ants of the two communities always keep strictly within their borders.

* * * * *

A matter of even greater interest is to note how this war-making instinct originates among our brothers the insects; to study how it develops; and to ascertain whether it is fixed or modifiable. Here Forel's observations and experiments lead to the most remarkable deductions.

J. H. Fabre, in a famous passage of _Insect Life_,[77] tells us that "brigandage is the law in the struggle among living beings.... In nature, murder is universal. Everywhere we encounter a hook, a dagger, a spear, a tooth, nippers, pincers, a saw, horrible clamps, ..." But he exaggerates. He has a keen eye for the facts of mutual slaughter and mutual devouring, but he fails to see the facts of mutual aid and associated effort. Kropotkin has devoted an admirable book to the study of phenomena of the latter class, as manifested throughout nature.[78] Furthermore, the careful observations of Forel show that in ants the instincts of war and plunder may be modified or overcome by instincts of a contrary character.

First of all, Forel proves that the war-making instinct is not fundamental. This instinct does not exist in the early stages of ant life. Putting together newly hatched ants belonging to three different species, Forel obtained a mixed ant community whose members lived in perfect harmony. The only primitive instinct of newly hatched ants is that for domestic work and the care of larvae. "Not until later do ants learn to distinguish between friend and foe; not until later do they realise that they are members of a single ant community on behalf of which they have to fight."[79]

Forel next presents the fact, even more surprising, that the intensity of the warrior instinct is directly proportional to the size of the collectivity. Two ants of enemy species meeting at a distance from their respective nests or from their own folk, will avoid one another and run away in opposite directions. Even if you come across the armies in full combat, and you remove from the ranks an ant belonging to either side and shut the two by themselves in a small box, they will do one another no harm. If, instead of taking merely two, you shut up a moderate number from either side within a narrow space, they will fight half-heartedly for a while, but soon cease to struggle, and often end by making friends. In such circumstances, says Forel, they will never resume the struggle. But put these same ants back among the fighting forces of their respective sides, and separate them by a reasonable distance, so that they might live at peace, and you will see them return to the attack; the individuals which a moment before were avoiding one another with repugnance or fear, will now furiously engage in mutual slaughter.[80] It thus appears that the combative instinct is a collective contagion.

Sometimes this epidemic assumes unmistakably morbid attributes.[81] In proportion as it extends and in proportion as the struggle is prolonged, the fighting rage becomes a positive frenzy. The very same ant, which at the outset was timid, will now be affected with a paroxysm of furious madness. She no longer knows what she is about. She throws herself upon her own companions, kills the slaves that are endeavouring to calm her, bites everything she touches, bites fragments of wood, can no longer find her way. Other members of the community, slaves as a rule, have to surround such a frenzied worker by twos and threes; they seize her by the legs and caress her with their antennae until she comes to herself, has recovered as I might say "her reason." Why not? Had she not lost it?

We have hitherto been dealing exclusively with general phenomena, those which obey fairly rigid laws. Now we are faced with special phenomena wherein initiative conflicts in the most peculiar way with the instinct of the species, and, which is yet more curious, in the end causes instinct to stray from its appointed path, and even to die out altogether.

Forel places in a jar some ants of enemy species, the sanguinea and the pratensis. After a few days of warfare, followed by a sullen armistice, he introduces a newly hatched pratensis which is very hungry. She runs to those of her own species begging them to feed her. The pratenses fob her off. Then the poor innocent appeals to the enemies of her species, the sanguineae, and, after the manner of ants, she licks the mouth of two among them. The two sanguineae are so touched by this gesture, which turns their instinct topsy-turvy, that they disgorge their honeyed store and feed the young enemy. Thenceforward all is well. An offensive and defensive alliance is formed between the little pratensis and the sanguineae against the ants of the young one's own species. The alliance becomes irrevocable.

Let me adduce another example; the results of a common danger. Forel places in a bag a nest of sanguineae and another of pratenses. He shakes them together, and leaves them in the bag for an hour. Thereafter he opens the bag and places it in direct contact with an artificial nest. At first we witness a general state of confusion, a delirium of fear. The ants cannot recognise one another apart; they show their mandibles, and then sidle away in a panic. But by degrees calm is restored. The sanguineae begin by removing the pupae, taking indifferently those of both species. Some of the pratenses follow their example. From time to time fights take place, but these are merely single combats, and they grow less and less fierce. From the next day onwards, all work together. In four days the pact is sealed; the pratenses disgorge food to the sanguineae. At the end of a week, Forel transports them to the neighbourhood of an abandoned ant-hill. They settle in, helping one another in the house-moving, carrying one another, and so forth. No more than a few isolated individuals of the respective species, irreconcilable nationalists no doubt, keep up their sacred enmity, and end by killing one another. A fortnight later, the mixed community is flourishing; perfect concord prevails. The summit of the ant-hill, which at ordinary times is covered with pratenses for the most part, reddens with the martial sanguineae directly danger threatens the common state. Next month, Forel, carrying the experiment a stage further, went to the old nest for a number of the pratenses and put them down just outside the hill of the mixed community. The newcomers promptly fell upon the sanguineae. But these latter defended themselves without animosity, merely knocking the aggressors head over heels, and then letting them alone. The pratenses could not make it out. As for the other pratenses, those belonging to the mixed community, they avoided their sometime sisters, would not fight with them, but carried the pupae into the nest. The hostility was all on the side of the newcomers. Next day some of them had been admitted as members of the mixed community, and ere long relations were permanently established on a peace footing. Not in a single instance did the pratenses of the mixed community join with the newcomers to attack the sanguineae. The alliance between pratenses and sanguineae was stronger than the racial brotherhood of the pratenses; the enmity between the two hostile species had been permanently overcome.[82]

* * * * *

Such examples suffice to show how grave is the mistake of those who believe that instincts are quasi-sacred, and who, after they have included the fighting instinct in this category, regard it as imposed by fate upon all living animals from the lowest to the highest. For, in the first place, instinct varies greatly in its cogency. We find it to be non-modifiable or modifiable, absolute or relative, permanent or transient, not merely as we pass from one genus to another, but within the same genus as we pass from species to species,[83] and within the same species as we pass from group to group. Instinct is not a starting point, but is itself a product of evolution. Like evolution in general, it is progressive. The most ingrained instinct is merely an instinct of great antiquity. The observations quoted above suffice to show that the war-making instinct is less ingrained, less primitive, than people are apt to suppose, for even among the most combative species of ants, it can be resisted, modified, and restrained. If these humble insects are able to react against it, if they can modify their natures, if they can replace wars of conquest by peaceful cooperation, if they can substitute allied states (or, yet more remarkable, mixed and united states) for enemy states--should man be willing to avow himself more enslaved than they by his worst instincts, and less able than they to master these instincts? It is sometimes said that war lowers us to the level of beasts. War reduces us below that level, if we show ourselves less capable of freeing ourselves from the fighting spirit than are certain animal societies. It would be rather humiliating to be compelled to admit their superiority. Chi lo sa?... For my part I am far from certain that man is, as he is said to be, the lord of creation; more often, man is the destructive tyrant. I am sure that in many things he could learn wisdom from these animal societies, older than his own and infinitely diversified.

I do not propose to prophesy whether humanity will succeed (any more than the ant communities) in gaining the mastery over blind instinct. But what strikes me, as I read Auguste Forel, is the conviction that no more in man than in the ants is such a victory radically impossible. To recognize that a particular advance is not impracticable even though we should fail to realise that advance, seems to me more encouraging than the belief that, whatever we attempt, we shall run our heads against a stone wall. The window is closed. It is thick with grime. Perhaps we shall never be able to open it. But between us and the sunlit air there is nothing but a pane of glass, which we can break if we will.[84]

_June 1, 1918._

"Revue Mensuelle," Geneva, August, 1918.

XXII

ON BEHALF OF THE INTERNATIONAL OF THE MIND

This chapter relates to the plan for an Institute of the Nations,
suggested by Gerhard Gran, professor at the University of
Christiania, writing in the "Revue Politique Internationale" of
Lausanne. My reply was first published in the same periodical,
under the title "Pour une culture universelle" (On behalf of a
universal civilisation).

Gerhard Gran's broad-minded appeal cannot fail to arouse echoes. I have read it with lively sympathy. He displays the virtue of modesty, so rare in our day. At a time when all the nations are making an arrogant parade of a superior mission of order or justice, organisation or liberty, a mission which authorises them to impose on other nations their own hallowed individuality (for each looks upon itself as the chosen people), we draw a breath of relief when we hear one of them, by the voice of Gerhard Gran, speaking not of its rights, but of its "debts." How noble, too, are his tones of frankness and gratitude!

"Among all the nations, ours is perhaps the one which has the greatest duty to perform, for our nation owes most to the others. What we have gained from international science is incalculable.... Our debts are manifest in all directions.... When we draw up our scientific balance-sheet in account with the rest of the world, the credit side is meagre. In this respect we have to speak chiefly of our passive advantages, and our modesty forbids us to refer to our active contributions."

How refreshing is such modesty! How refreshing is it in this world-crisis of delirious vanity! Nevertheless Ibsen's fellow-countrymen are entitled to hold their heads high among their European brethren; for more than any other writer the great Norwegian recluse has stamped with his seal both the drama and modern thought. The eyes of Young France turned towards him; the writer of these lines asked counsel of him.

All the nations are debtors one to another. Let us pool our debts and our possessions.

If there are any to-day for whom modesty is befitting, it is the intellectuals. The part they have played in this war has been abominable, unpardonable. Not merely did they do nothing to lessen the mutual lack of understanding, to limit the spread of hatred; with rare exceptions, they did everything in their power to disseminate hatred and to envenom it. To a considerable extent, this war was their war. Thousands of brains were poisoned by their murderous ideologies. Overweeningly self-confident, proud, implacable, they sacrificed millions of young lives to the triumph of the phantoms of their imagination. History will not forget.

Gerhard Gran expresses the fear that personal cooperation between intellectuals of the belligerent lands may prove impossible for many years. If he is thinking of the generation of those who are over fifty, of those who stayed at home and waged a war of words in the learned societies, the universities, and the editorial offices, I fancy that the Norwegian writer is not mistaken. There is little chance that these intellectuals will ever join hands. I should say that none of them will do so, were I not familiar with the brain's astounding faculty for forgetting, were I not familiar with this pitiful and yet salutary weakness, by which the mind is not deceived, but which is essential to its continued existence. But in the present case, oblivion will be difficult. The intellectuals have burned their boats. At the outset of the war it was still possible to hope that some of those who had been carried away by the blind passion of the opening days, would be able within a few months frankly to admit their mistake. They would not do so. Not one of them has done so on either side of the frontier. It was even possible to note that in proportion as the disastrous consequences to European civilisation became apparent, those whose mission it was to act as guardians of that civilisation, those upon whose shoulders part of the responsibility weighed, instead of admitting their mistake, did all they could to increase their own infatuation. How, then, can we hope, when the war is over, and when the disasters to which it will have led will have become unmistakable, that the intellectuals will curb their pride and will constrain themselves to say, "We were wrong"?--To ask this would be to ask too much. The older generation, I fear, will have to endure to the last its sickness of mind and its obstinacy. On this side there is little hope. We can only wait until the older generation has died out.

Those who wish to reknit the relations among the peoples, must turn their hopes towards the other generation, that of those who bleed in the armies. May they be preserved! They have been ruthlessly thinned out by the sickle of war. They might even be annihilated if the war should be prolonged and extended, as may happen, for all things are possible. Mankind stands, like Hercules, at the parting of the ways. One of these ways leads (if Asia takes a hand in the game, and accentuates yet further the characteristics of hideous destruction in which Germany has set an example inevitably followed by the other combatants) to the suicide of Europe.--But at the present hour we have still the right to hope that the young men of Europe, now enrolled in the armies, will survive in sufficient numbers to fulfil the mission that will devolve on them after the war, the mission of reconciling the thoughts of the enemy nations. In either camp, I know a number of independent spirits, who look forward, when peace is signed, to realising this intellectual communion. They propose to except from this communion none but those who, be it in their own or be it in the other camp, have prostituted thought to the work of hatred. When I reflect on these young men, I am firmly convinced (and herein I differ from Gerhard Gran) that after the war the minds of all lands will inter-penetrate one another far more effectively than they have ever done before. The nations which knew nothing of one another, or which saw one another only in the form of contemptuous caricatures, have learned during the last four years, in the mud of the trenches, and at grips with death, that they are the same suffering flesh. All are enduring the same ordeal, and in it they become brothers. This sentiment continues to grow. For when we attempt to foresee the changes which, after the war, will occur in the relationships between the nations, we do not sufficiently realise the extent to which the war will lead to other upheavals, which may well modify the very essence of the nations. Whatever may be the immediate upshot of happenings in Russia, the example of the New Russia will not fail to have its influence upon the other peoples. An intimate unity is becoming established in the soul of the peoples. It is as if they were connected by gigantic roots, spreading underground regardless of frontiers.--As for the intellectuals who, sitting apart from the common people, are not directly swept along by this social current, they none the less feel its influence by intuition and sympathy. Notwithstanding the efforts which, during these four years, have been made to break off all contact between the writers in the two camps, I know that in both, on the morrow of the peace, international magazines and other publications will be founded. I have first-hand information concerning such schemes, initiated by young writers, soldiers at the front, men permeated with the European spirit. Among those of my own generation, there are a few who will give wholehearted assistance to their younger brethren. In our view, we shall in this way serve, not merely the cause of mankind, but the cause of our own land, far better than that cause will be served by the evil counsellors who preach armed isolation. Every country which shuts itself apart pronounces its own death-sentence. Gone for ever are the days when the young and tumultuous energies of the European nations needed, for their clarification, to be surrounded by partition walls.--Let me quote a few words uttered by Jean Christophe in his riper age:

"I neither admire nor dread the nationalism of the present time. It will pass away with the present time; it is passing, it has already passed. It is but a rung in the ladder. Climb to the top.... Every nation felt [before the war] the imperious necessity of gathering its forces and making up its balance-sheet. For the last hundred years all the nations have been transformed by their mutual intercourse and the immense contributions of all the brains of the universe, building up new morality, new knowledge, new faith. Every man must examine his conscience, and know exactly what he is and what he has, before he can enter with the rest into the new age. A new age is coming. Humanity is on the point of signing a new lease of life. Society is on the point of springing into vigour with new laws. It is Sunday to-morrow. We are all balancing our accounts for the week, setting our houses in order, making them clean and tidy, so that, joining together, we may go into the presence of our common God and enter into a new covenant with Him."

The war will prove (even against our will) to have been the anvil upon which will have been forged the unity of the European soul.

It is my hope that this intellectual communion will not be restricted to the European peninsula, but will extend to Asia, to the two Americas, and to the great islets of civilisation spread over the rest of the globe. It is absurd that the nations of western Europe should pride themselves upon the discovery of profound differences, at the very time when they have never resembled one another more closely in merits and defects; at a time when their thought and their literature are least notable for distinctive characteristics; when everywhere there becomes sensible a monotonous levelling of intelligence; when on all hands we discern individualities that are dishevelled, threadbare, limp. I will venture to say that all of them, with their united efforts, are incompetent to give us the hope of that mental renovation to which the world is entitled after this formidable convulsion. We must go to Russia, which has doors thrown wide open towards the eastern world, for there only will our faces be freshened by the new currents which are blowing in every department of thought.

Let us widen the concept of humanism, dear to our forefathers, though its meaning has been narrowed down to the signification of Greek and Latin manuals. In every age, states, universities, academies, all the conservative forces of the mind, have endeavoured to make humanism in this narrower sense a dike against the onslaughts of the new spirit, in philosophy, in morals, in aesthetics. The dike has burst. The framework of a privileged culture has been broken. To-day we have to accept humanism in its widest signification, embracing all the spiritual forces of the whole world. What we need is, panhumanism.

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It is our hope that this ideal, formulated here and there by a few leading minds, or heralded by the foundation while the war is yet in progress of centres for the study of universal civilisation,[85] shall be boldly adopted as its ensign by the international academy, in the foundation of which I hope (with Gerhard Gran) that Norway will take the initiative.

I note that Gerhard Gran seems, like Professor Fredrik Stang, to limit his ambitions to the foundation of an institute for scientific research, for in his view science is in its essence more international than art and letters. He writes:

"In art and literature we may, in case of need, discuss the advantages and disadvantages resulting from the isolation of one nation from the rest, or from the antagonism of human groups. In science, such a discussion is absurd. The kingdom of science is the whole world.... The atmosphere indispensable to science has nothing whatever to do with national conflicts."

I think that this distinction is not so well founded as it may seem. No domain of mental activity has been more disastrously involved in the war than the domain of science. Whereas art and letters have only too often been accessory stimulants of the crime, science furnished the war with its weapons, did its utmost to render them more atrocious, to widen the bounds of suffering and cruelty. I may add that even in time of peace I have always been struck by the bitterness of national sentiment displayed by men of science. Those of every nation are fond of accusing their foreign colleagues of stealing their best discoveries and forgetting to acknowledge the source. In a word, science shares in the evil passions which corrode art and letters.

On the other hand, if science needs the collaboration of all the nations, to art and letters to-day it is no less advantageous that they should abandon a position of "splendid isolation." Without speaking of the technical advances which, in painting and music, have during the course of the nineteenth century and of the one which has begun so badly brought such sudden and enormous enrichment to the aesthetics of sight and hearing--apart from such considerations--the influence of one philosopher, one thinker, one writer, can modify the whole literature of an epoch, switching the mind on to a new road in psychological, moral, aesthetic, or social research. If any one wish to be isolated, isolated let him be! But the republic of the mind tends to enlarge its frontiers day by day. The greatest men are those who know how to embrace and fuse in a single vigorous personality the wealth that is dispersed or latent in the soul of all mankind.

Let us refrain, therefore, from limiting the idea of internationalism to the field of science. Let us give the fullest possible amplitude to the scheme. Let us form a world-wide Institute of Art, Letters and Science.

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Moreover, I do not think that this foundation could continue isolated. No longer, to-day, can the internationalism of culture remain the luxury of a few privileged persons. The practical value of an Institute of Nations would be small, unless the masters were associated with their disciples in the same stream, unless all the levels of culture were permeated with the same spirit.

That is why I greet, as a fruitful initiative and a happy symptom, the recent foundation in Zurich, by the university students of that city, of an International Association of Students (Internationaler Studentenbund). Let me quote from its program.

"Painfully affected by the great ordeal of the war, academic youth has realised the peculiar social responsibilities enjoined by the privileges of a studious life, and desires to find a remedy for the deeper causes of the evil.... The Association will endeavour to bring together those of all countries who are in close touch with university life, to unite them in a common faith in the advantages of the free development of the mind. It groups them for the struggle against the growing empery of mechanism and militarism in all the manifestations of life.... It hopes to realise the ideal of universities which shall remain centres of higher culture, in the service of truth alone, unsullied shrines of scientific research, absolutely independent in matters of opinion, paying no attention to selfish aims or to class interests."

This demand for the freedom of scientific research and for independence of thought, this organisation of young intellectuals for the defence of a right so essential and hitherto so incessantly violated, seem to me matters of primary necessity. If you desire that the cooperation between the teachers in different countries should not remain purely speculative, it is not enough that the teachers should associate their efforts. It is further essential that their thoughts shall be able to spread freely and to fructify in the minds of the young intellectuals throughout the world. Let us have no more of these barriers erected by the states between the two classes, between the two ages, of those who are engaged in the search for truth--teachers and students.

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My dream goes further. I should like the seed of universal culture to be scattered, from the very beginning of education, among the pupils of the primary and secondary schools. Above all let me suggest that throughout the countries of Europe an international language should be one of the compulsory subjects of study. Such international languages (Esperanto, Ido) have already attained something very near perfection; and with the minimum of effort the international language could be mastered by all the children of the civilised world. Not merely would this language be of unrivalled practical value throughout life. It would further serve as an introduction to the study of foreign languages and of their own national tongue; for it would make them realise, far better than any express instruction, the common elements in the European languages and the unity of European thought.