OSMIC 
 
 COMMONWEALTH 
 
 EDMOND HOLMES 
 
 giilillMt'ftiVrfer 
 
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Digitized by the Internet Archive 
 
 in 2007 with funding from 
 
 IVIicrosoft Corporation 
 
 httpV/www.acchive.org/details/cosmiccommonwealOOholmrich 
 
THE COSMIC COMMONWEALTH 
 
BT THE SAME AUTHOR 
 
 WHAT IS AND WHAT MIGHT BE 
 
 IN DEFENCE OF WHAT MIGHT BE 
 
 THE TRAGEDY OF EDUCATION 
 
 THE NEMESIS OF DOCILITY 
 
 THE PROBLEM OF THE SOUL 
 
 THE SECRET OF THE CROSS 
 
 THE SECRET OF HAPPINESS 
 
 THE CREED OF MY HEART 
 
 And Othkr Poems 
 
THE COSMIC 
 COMMONWEALTH 
 
 BY 
 
 EDMOND HOLMES 
 
 LONDON 
 
 CONSTABLE & COMPANY LTD, 
 
 1920 
 

 The author wishes to thank the Editors of the 
 " Nineteenth Century and After " and the 
 ^* Hibbert Journal" for permission to reprint 
 articles which he contributed to their respective 
 periodicals. 
 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER 
 
 I. Our Need of an Ideal 
 
 II. A Word to the Orthodox 
 
 III. The Philosophy of the Supernatural 
 
 IV. The Autocrat of the Universe 
 V. The Feudal Overlord 
 
 VI. The Apotheosis of Selfishness 
 
 VII. A Secular Age . 
 
 VIII. Human Equality 
 
 IX. Divine Immanence 
 
 X. The Living Whole . 
 
 XI. The Kingdom of God 
 
 XII. Each for All . 
 
 XIII. All for Each . 
 
 XIV. The Antidote to Anarchy 
 XV. The Human Commonvv^ealth 
 
 XVI. Education for Cosmic Service 
 
 XVII. Possibilities 
 
 PAGE 
 
 I 
 5 
 
 10 
 
 15 
 23 
 33 
 40 
 
 45 
 55 
 
 61 
 
 67 
 73 
 79 
 93 
 
 99 
 106 
 
 "3 
 
 425971 
 
The Cosmic Commonwealth 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 OUR NEED OF AN IDEAL 
 
 THE Great War has revealed to us the hollowness 
 of the materialistic civilization on which we had 
 prided ourselves. The social order which our armies 
 and police forces had maintained is breaking up. In 
 many lands settled government is giving place to anarchy, 
 and the semblance of prosperity to the reality of misery 
 and want. Even in those which are more fortunate the 
 turmoil is great, and there is a growing sense of insecurity 
 and a vague foreboding of disaster. We are being borne 
 hither and thither by swirling cross-currents of hatred, 
 jealousy, greed, ambition and self-will. There are other 
 currents than these — larger, deeper, saner, purer. But 
 in this world-wide crisis the more turbulent currents 
 have risen to the surface ; and human society has become 
 a veritable Maelstrom, strewn with the wreckage of many 
 institutions and traditions, and threatening shipwreck to 
 many more. 
 
 No wonder that the idea of social reconstruction is in 
 the forefront of our thoughts. The theme is one which 
 touches all interests, and attracts all classes and all types 
 
2 /.\: r.^H3&.Cd3MiC' COMMONWEALTH 
 
 of mind. Those who have suffered under the old order 
 of things clamour for a new order. Those who have 
 profited by the old order are beginning to realize that 
 things cannot remain as they were, and that their own 
 tenure of " the good things of life " is, to say the least, 
 insecure. Politicians promise us a better and a happier 
 world. Statesmen are busy with schemes of practical 
 reform. Each clique, each party, each group of en- 
 thusiasts or faddists — ^Trade Unionists, State Socialists, 
 Guild Socialists, Syndicalists, Anarchists, Individualists, 
 Teetotallers, Tariff Reformers, Currency Reformers, 
 Land Reformers — ^has its own formula for reconstruction. 
 Opinions and proposals are many and various ; and such 
 features as they have in common are negative rather than 
 positive. In particular, there are two factors in the great 
 problem which all the builders seem to have agreed to 
 ignore — ^Education and Religion (the essentials of each, 
 not the externals). Yet to reconstruct society without 
 regard to education is to build without laying founda- 
 tions ; and to reconstruct without regard to religion is 
 to build without a plan. 
 
 How can we best repair these vital omissions ? Let us 
 begin with religion. Religion controls all things, in- 
 cluding education. Without a ground-plan of our pro- 
 posed edifice we cannot so much as stake out its founda- 
 tions. When I speak of building without a plan, I am 
 thinking of an architect's plan, not of a speculative 
 builder's. The speculative builder works to a plan, no 
 doubt ; but his plan is planless. His aim, in running up 
 a house, is to sell it at a profit as soon as possible, and 
 then forget all about it. The plan, as such, has no interest 
 for him. What does interest him is to get a quick return 
 
OUR NEED OF AN IDEAL 3 
 
 for his money. For the architect, on the other hand, if 
 and so far as he is an artist, the plan is everything. His 
 aim, in designing a house, is to realize an ideal — an ideal 
 of comfort, convenience, durability, inward harmony, 
 outward beauty. If our reconstruction of society is to 
 be successful, we must work as architects, not as specula- 
 tive builders. We must not be content to meet immediate 
 demands, to satisfy conflicting claims, to provide this 
 thing here and that thing there. We must try to embody 
 an ideal in our social structure — a spiritual ideal, a dream 
 of a perfect world. 
 
 Now our architectonic ideals are all in .the keeping of 
 religion. For what is religion ? From one point of view, 
 a struggling science. From another, a struggling art. 
 The subject matter of religion, as a science, is supreme 
 reality, the popular name for which is God. When man's 
 vision of supreme reality becomes the object of desire 
 rather than of thought, it transforms itself into his 
 ultimate ideal. And to realize ultimate ideals is the 
 function of religion, as an art. 
 
 Religion, then, whether we accept or reject it, whether 
 we reckon with it or ignore it, is in command of the whole 
 situation. If, and so far as, our religion is false, our vision 
 of supreme reality will be defective, our ultimate ideal 
 will be inadequate, and the structure of our social life 
 will be badly planned. But the structure will be still 
 worse planned if we do what we are now intent on doing, 
 — ^if we ignore religion in our attempts at social recon- 
 struction, and think to dispense with its inspiration and 
 guidance. For then we shall be building without a plan, 
 — building as speculative builders, not as architects. And 
 the result of our labour will be an ill-built, inconvenient, 
 
4 THE COSMIC COMMONWEALTH 
 
 insanitary, perishable structure, not the realization of a 
 high ideal, not an enduring monument of vision and 
 forethought and skill. 
 
 That the existing social structure was badly planned, 
 that it embodies an inadequate ideal, is proved by its 
 present collapse. If the ideal which it embodies is in- 
 adequate, the architect's vision of supreme reality must 
 have been defective, and the central conceptions of his 
 religion must have been at fault. These considerations 
 point to one momentous conclusion, ^he reconstruction 
 of religion must both precede and accompany the recon- 
 struction of society. 
 
 What form will the reconstruction of religion take ? 
 We must go back to first principles. We have been the 
 victims of an unworthy conception of God. We have 
 thought of God as the supernatural Creator and there- 
 fore as the autocratic Ruler of the Universe. And we 
 have gone on to think of him as the fountain-head of 
 irresponsible authority ; as the Overlord of a feudal 
 hierarchy which is secular as well as spiritual ; as the 
 guarantor of the " divine rights " of kings and princes — 
 and multi-millionaires ; as the arbitrary dispenser of 
 property, power, position, and privilege, and all the other 
 " good things " which the feudal magnates and their 
 modern successors have claimed for themselves and denied 
 to their f ellowmen. The social structure which embodied 
 this vision of supreme reality, after having long shown 
 ominous cracks and other signs of decay, is now tumbling 
 to pieces. What course, then, is open to us, if we are to 
 build a better structure, but to revise our conception of 
 God? 
 
CHAPTER II 
 
 A WORD TO THE ORTHODOX 
 
 WHAT course is open to us, if we are to rebuild 
 society as architects — ^that is, as artists and 
 idealists — but to revise our conception of God ? We 
 have too long thought of God as the autocratic Overlord 
 of the Universe. Has not the time come for us to think 
 of him as the symbol and centre of Cosmic unity, as the 
 Presiding Genius or President (if we are to continue to 
 use the notation of political life) of the Cosmic Common- 
 wealth ? 
 
 I mean by God what is supremely and ultimately real — 
 what is supreme in man's vision of reality, what is ulti- 
 mate in man's search for reality. Those whose inter- 
 pretation of the root-idea of God differs materially 
 from this will do well to read no further, for I shall be 
 using a language which they will not understand. 
 
 Those who accept this definition of God, but who still 
 cling to the conception of God which I am asking men 
 to abandon, the conception of an omnipotent autocrat, 
 who governs the world from without instead of directing 
 its vital processes from within, may read this book if 
 they please — indeed it is my earnest desire that they 
 should do so — but I warn them at the outset that they 
 will almost certainly approach the study of it with postu- 
 
6 THE COSMIC COMMONWEALTH 
 
 lates which I cannot grant, and that it will therefore be 
 very difficult for us to meet on the same platform of 
 thought. 
 
 For high thinking is necessarily circular. The con- 
 clusions of the thinker are latent in his primary assump- 
 tions. If they were not, he would have undermined his 
 own foundations in the course of constructing his so- 
 called system of thought. The outcome of his thought 
 will be a particular conception of life and destiny, which 
 will be the realization in consciousness of a particular way 
 of looking at things, a way which has always been his. 
 And that way of looking at things will have both furnished 
 him with the data for the solution of his problem and 
 determined his whole line of approach. 
 
 It is the same, mutatis mutandis^ with those whose con- 
 clusions have been dictated to them by " authority." 
 When their beliefs are called in question, they will bring 
 those beliefs with them, as fundamental assumptions, to 
 the study of the arguments of their critics. The " ortho- 
 dox " believer, for example, will assume at the outset 
 that the truth of things has been supernaturally com- 
 municated by God to man, and therefore that scepticism 
 is the outcome, not of an honest search for truth, but 
 of wilful rebellion against God ; and his analysis of the 
 sceptic's arguments will be controlled by this instinctive 
 assumption. It will be difficult for him to realize that 
 the idea of a supernatural revelation is one of the postu- 
 lates which the sceptic has found cause to reject. 
 
 From first to last, then, I, who plead for a revision of 
 our conception of God, and those of my readers who 
 believe that the current or orthodox conception of God 
 has been dictated to us by God himself, will be moving 
 
A WORD TO THE ORTHODOX 7 
 
 along different lines of thought. And they will be even 
 less able to enter into my line of thought than I into 
 theirs. For their point of view is familiar to me. From 
 my earliest days I was taught to look at things from it ; 
 and I did so for many years, not as a child only, but also 
 as an adolescent and even as an adult. Before I finally 
 abandoned it I passed through many stages of perplexity 
 and doubt. But because the process of my conversion 
 (or perversion, as they would call it) was slow and painful, 
 the outcome of it, when I had gone through with it, was 
 final. I cannot, by any effort of mind or heart or soul, 
 go back to the orthodox point of view. I have aban- 
 doned it for ever. Yet I can understand and sympathize 
 with it as one understands and sympathizes with one's 
 own past life. It is otherwise with those who stand where 
 I once stood, whose faith (as they call it) is still unshaken. 
 They cannot understand my point of view, and their 
 attitude towards it can scarcely fail to be one of indignant 
 protest. Therefore, while I ask them to hear what I 
 have to say, I warn them that it will be easy for them to 
 make nonsense of it ; and if this warning will not deter 
 them, I will ask them to realize, or try to realize, that of 
 the things which they take for granted there are many — 
 and they the most important — ^which I can no longer 
 grant. 
 
 For example, to those who take the orthodox view of 
 revelation, who hold, in all seriousness, that religious 
 faith should be based on " theological information," the 
 suggestion that man should now revise his conception of 
 God may seem to savour of blasphemy. Yet it is in a 
 spirit of reverence that I make it, and out of the depths 
 of my faith in God. For, if we mean by God what is 
 
8 THE COSMIC COMMONWEALTH 
 
 supremely and ultimately real, then we must regard the 
 Universe (if its being is a life) as the self-revelation of 
 God. And inasmuch as growth is the counterpart of 
 life, we must regard the Universe (if its being is a life) 
 as still in proces'' of development, and must therefore 
 think of Creation and Revelation as alternative names 
 for the same evolutionary movement. It follows that 
 the ever-changing conception which man, in the dawning 
 light of his consciousness, forms of God — ^the conception 
 which makes and unmakes his " thousand creeds " — is 
 the self-revelation of God to the mind of man ; and it 
 follows further that whoever will take the trouble to 
 think, honestly, freely, and adventurously, about God, 
 is an instrument both of God's gradual unveiling of his 
 essential nature, and of his creative will. And so, when I 
 say that the time has come for us to make a revolutionary 
 change in our conception of God, I mean that a revolu- 
 tionary change is taking place in the communal life — 
 and therefore in the inward and spiiitual life — of man, 
 and that in that change we are witnessing a new phase 
 in the process of God's creative self-revelation, a phase 
 which we shall help to bring about by becoming con- 
 scious of its advent, and which will present itself to our 
 consciousness, if we will keep our minds open and ex- 
 pectant, as a new conception of God. 
 
 I need not shrink, then, from asking men to change 
 their conception of God. For, in the first place, I shall 
 be asking them, not to learn of me or any other teacher, 
 but to become aware of a change in their own inner 
 consciousness, which has long been in progress. And, 
 in the second place, if they do change their conception 
 of God, it will not be they who have accomplished so 
 
A WORD TO THE ORTHODOX 9 
 
 great a revolution, but " the grace of God which is in 
 them." 
 
 Let us now see what are the leading features of the 
 conception of God which has swayed the hearts and minds 
 of men for so many centuries, and from which, as it 
 seems to me, they are now beginning to turn away. 
 
CHAPTER III 
 
 THE PHILOSOPHY OF THE SUPERNATURAL 
 
 1HAVE based my own theory of revelation on the 
 assumption that the being of the Universe is a life. 
 This is my starting point in the adventure of thinking. 
 It is also, as it happens, the goal of my thoughts. Have 
 I not done well, then, to remind myself and my readers 
 that those who exercise themselves in great matters are 
 predestined to move in (logically) vicious circles, and 
 that " where there is no common measure of minds 
 there is no common measure of arguments." What is 
 to me a self-evident truth — ^that the Universe is a living 
 whole — the religion which I am supposed to profess 
 implicitly denies. For the orthodox theory of revelation 
 bases itself on the assumption that the being of the 
 Universe is not a life, or even a process, but a state, or 
 at best a succession of states. 
 
 Have I misinterpreted the teaching of Christianity ? 
 I do not think so. When I use the word " Christianity," 
 I am thinking, not so much of the formularies of the 
 Church or the theories of theologians, as of what the 
 people, the rank and file of the faithful, have made of 
 the religious instruction that they have received and 
 the religious atmosphere that they breathe. " In the 
 beginning God created the heaven and the earth." This 
 
 10 
 
PHILOSOPHY OF THE SUPERNATURAL ii 
 
 is the first sentence in our sacred Scripture. What hap- 
 pened before the beginning we are not told. But it 
 seems to be taken for granted that God dwelt in a 
 state of self-centred perfection and glory. Why did he 
 create the Universe ? We are not told. Perhaps he felt 
 lonely. Perhaps he wished to see how his handiwork 
 would behave. What we are told is that when he had 
 created the Universe, he placed it, in the person of 
 Man, in a state of probation, and that it will remain in 
 that state till the Day of Judgment, when its framework 
 will pass away, and Man, in whose being it centres, will 
 enter into one of two alternative states, salvation or per- 
 dition. Heaven or Hell. In fine, popular religion, in 
 presenting to us the drama of existence, divides it, not 
 into Acts and sub-Acts but into three States — a state of 
 divine solitude before the first day, a state of probation 
 between the first and the last day,i and a state of everlast- 
 ing salvation (or perdition) after the last day. It is true 
 that the act of Creation (with its predestined sequel, the 
 Fall) comes between the first and the second states, and 
 that the act of Judgment will come between the second 
 and the third states. But the duration of those acts is 
 so brief as to be almost timeless, whereas the first state 
 occupies the whole of" from everlasting," the third state 
 the whole of " to everlasting," and the middle state the 
 whole course of time. 
 
 ^ The state of probation may be divided into two sub- 
 states — (i) A state of innocence, or potential salvation, with the 
 possibility of perdition through disobedience. This ended 
 with the Fall. (2) A state of wrath, or potential perdition, with 
 the possibility of salvation through obedience. This will last 
 till the Day of Judgment. 
 
12 THE COSMIC COMMONWEALTH 
 
 It is to this tendency to think statically, rather than 
 dynamically, about the world in which he finds himself, 
 that man owes that conception of God as an omnipotent 
 and irresponsible autocrat which has so long satisfied him, 
 but is now ceasing to respond to his vital needs. Or 
 perhaps it would be more correct to say that the static 
 view of the Universe and the orthodox conception of 
 God are so intimately related that each may be regarded 
 as being at once the cause and the effect of the other. 
 If this is so, they must both have sprung from the 
 same root. What is that root ? Let us try to go back to 
 first principles. 
 
 Of systems of philosophy there are many. Of phil- 
 osophies, of ways of looking at things, there are, in the 
 last resort, only two. There is the philosophy of man's 
 conscious thought. And there is the philosophy of his 
 sub-conscious vision. We call the former materialism. 
 We ought to call the latter spiritualis?n ; but the word 
 has contracted other associations, and idealism has taken 
 its place. The basis of materialism is acceptance 
 of the outward or material world as intrinsically 
 real. The basis of idealism is acceptance of the 
 inward and spiritual world, the world of soul-life, as 
 intrinsically real. If matter is intrinsically real, then the 
 deeper we descend into it, the nearer we are to ultimate 
 reality. If soul-life is intrinsically real, then the more 
 spiritual, the more complex, the more highly organized 
 the life, the nearer we are to ultimate reality. In order 
 to descend into matter we must follow the path of 
 analysis, of disintegration. We must break things up 
 into their constituent elements. In order to ascend to 
 higher levels of soul-life, we must follow the path of 
 
PHILOSOPHY OF THE SUPERNATURAL 13 
 
 synthesis, of integration. We must build things up by 
 the process of our own growth, or by the grasp of our 
 thought, or by the sweep of our vision, into complex 
 wholes. In the last — the very last — resort our choice lies 
 between ascribing reality to what is ultimate in analysis, 
 and ascribing it to what is ultimate in synthesis, between 
 deifying the atom, or the electron, or whatever else may 
 seem for the moment to be unanalysable and ultimate, 
 and deifying the living Whole. 
 
 There are few men who are not both materialists and 
 idealists, — ^materialists on the surface of the mind, 
 idealists in the depth of the heart. Torn asunder 
 between these conflicting philosophies, man has tried to 
 reconcile them by inventing a third. The third philo- 
 sophy, the philosophy which mediates between material- 
 ism and idealism, is supernaturalism. Believing, as he 
 does in his heart of hearts, that life, soul-life, the life of 
 which he is dimly conscious in himself, is supremely real, 
 man must somehow or other reconcile thio sub-conscious 
 conviction with his conscious acceptance of the intrinsic 
 reality of the outward world. There is only one way in 
 which he can do this. He must think of the outward 
 world — Nature, as he calls it — as having been created, 
 called into its present state of being out of the void of 
 nothingness, by a Spirit akin to his own, but a Spirit 
 which is above and beyond Nature, and dwells apart 
 from it, enfolded in its own transcendent glory, inacces- 
 sible to human imagination and thought. In other 
 words, he must divide the Universe into Nature and the 
 Supernatural world, and must place between them an 
 unfathomable and impassable gulf. As the source of 
 Nature's life, the dynamic principle of its being, is on 
 
14 THE COSMIC COMMONWEALTH 
 
 the far side of the gulf of separation, Nature itself be- 
 comes, under this conception of its origin, a finite state 
 instead of an infinite process, a manufactured product 
 instead of an eternally self-evolving life. The material 
 world is real, but only because God has made it so. 
 It is in itself what it seems to be, but only because God 
 has willed that it should be so. The source of its reality 
 is the will of the supernatural God ; and the supernatural 
 God is the projection into an invisible and immaterial 
 medium of the spirit of man. Thus there are two kinds 
 of reality in the Universe, the delegated reality of the 
 natural or outward world and the self-dependent reality 
 of the spirit of God. 
 
 Let us see what this attempt to reconcile the material- 
 ism of the mind with the idealism of the heart involves. 
 In other words, let m try to follow the philosophy of the 
 supernatural into some of its necessary consequences. 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 
 THE AUTOCRAT OF THE UNIVERSE 
 
 FROM the supernatural Creator o£ the Universe to 
 the autocratic Ruler there is less than a single step. 
 The former conception carries the latter with it. The 
 world which God has made is at his mercy. He can do 
 with it what he pleases. The consequences of the 
 worship of an autocratic Deity — spiritual, moral, political, 
 social — ^are momentous and far-reaching. The ideal 
 attitude of each of us towards the order of things in 
 which he finds himself is, in any case, one of loyal sub- 
 mission. " In his will is our peace." But there is a 
 profound difference between the will which declares 
 itself in and through the evolution of Nature in general 
 and human nature in particular, and the will which is 
 communicated to man by a supernaturally accredited 
 envoy and imposed upon him from without. The pres- 
 sure of the former will is freedom, and submission to it 
 is life. The pressure of the latter will is despotism, pure 
 and simple, and submission to it may well prove to be 
 living death. 
 
 Let us first distinguish between the being of Nature 
 (in the popular interpretation of the word) and the being 
 of Man. Below the level of human life Nature is left 
 in the main to its own devices. Freedom of choice having 
 
 15 
 
i6 THE COSMIC COMMONWEALTH 
 
 been denied to it, it is a complex of automatic machinery 
 rather than a living whole. Its Creator endowed it with 
 a fund of energy which will neither increase nor decrease 
 till he chooses to withdraw it, and with a system of laws 
 which he and his chosen delegates alone have the right 
 to suspend. Born into maturity, it will never grow up, 
 it will never grow old. Such as Nature — ^the outward 
 world, the framework of the Universe — ^was when the 
 process of creation was over, such it is now, such it will 
 be to the end of time. Its being is static, not dynamic. 
 
 " The world's unwithered countenance 
 Is bright as at Creation's day." 
 
 The world of which this could be said, exists, but it 
 does not live.^ When the Last Day comes, its existence 
 will be cancelled, and it will melt away into nothingness. 
 
 " Nature " is the stage on which man plays his part 
 while he is in a state of probation. Interference on God's 
 part with the course of Nature is very rare and is always 
 subordinated to God's purposes in dealing with man. 
 What God does interfere with is the moral life of man ; 
 and the manner of his interference is such that it neces- 
 sarily affects the whole of man's inner life. He regulates 
 man's conduct either by a supernaturally communicated 
 Law, or by a supernaturally commissioned Church ; and 
 he calls upon man to obey his will as revealed to him 
 through those channels. In doing this he deprives him 
 of freedom, which is the essential principle of what I 
 
 P^i If the " world's countenance " is (and always will be) 
 " unwithered," the real reason is that " Creation's day " has 
 never reached, and will never reach, its meridian. Immortal 
 youth is the counterpart of never-ending growth. 
 
THE AUTOCRAT OF THE UNIVERSE 17 
 
 may call spiritual vitality, and which therefore differen- 
 tiates man from the rest of living things. It is true that 
 man is free to choose between obedience and disobedi- 
 ence to God's will. But what are the motives which 
 determine his choice ? Bribes and threats. Hope of 
 reward and fear of punishment. Blessing and cursing. 
 Heaven and Hell. The freedom which takes the form of 
 a choice between obedience and disobedience to certain 
 formulated commands, 
 
 " under pain 
 Of everlasting penalties, if broke," 
 
 and w^hich is limited to that choice, is the mockery, not 
 the reality, of freedom. 
 
 If a man bade me sign a certain document, which I 
 might or might not have read, and stood over me with a 
 pistol till I signed it, it could scarcely be said that I had 
 been a free agent in the matter, that my self^ my real 
 self, was behind my signature. Freedom to know, to 
 understand, to desire, to purpose, to plan,^ — ^this and 
 nothing less than this is the freedom which is the counter- 
 part of spiritual life. 
 
 The forcible curtailment of freedom by autocratic 
 authority will have grave consequences. When morality 
 takes the form of submission to the will of an autocrat, 
 obedience becomes the first and last of virtues. Let us 
 see what this involves. Obedience to one's own higher 
 self, with the infinite demands which it makes upon 
 one, is indeed the first and last of virtues. But it 
 is not obedience of this kind which supernaturalism 
 glorifies. It is obedience to external authority, 
 to a formulated will, to a series of commands, 
 
i8 THE COSMIC COMMONWEALTH 
 
 whether set out in a dead Law or issued by a living 
 Church. And it is compulsory obedience, obedience 
 which you withhold at your peril. As such, it must 
 needs direct itself towards the letter, not towards the 
 spirit, of what is commanded. For, apart from the fact 
 that when morality is a matter of bargaining, neither 
 party to the bargain can be expected to go beyond the 
 terms of his contract, literal obedience is the only kind 
 of obedience which the passive recipient of formulated 
 directions can safely venture to give. To interpret, or 
 try to interpret, the spirit of his instructions is the work 
 of a free man, of one who is in the confidence of his 
 master. But the autocratic demand for obedience 
 reduces its victim to the status of a slave. It is possible 
 to transgress the letter of a commandment in one's very 
 zeal for the spirit of it ; and he who does this lays 
 himself open to the charge of having broken the Law. 
 In the eyes of the Pharisees who accused Christ of break- 
 ing the Fourth Commandment, the rejoinder " The 
 sabbath was made for man, not man for the sabbath," 
 was no excuse. Nor is this the only reason why correct- 
 ness of outward action is regaided as all-important. 
 Under the autocratic control of morals only two motives 
 to action are recognized — ^the fear of external punishment 
 and the hope of external reward. The inward motive, 
 which really determines the worth of moral action, but 
 which happens to be variable and incalculable, counts 
 under this regime for nothing. 
 
 Devotion to the letter of a law tends to de-idealize 
 man's life. The ideal is the object of man's highest and 
 purest desire and of his most far-reaching and penetrative 
 vision. Where obedience is the beginning and end of 
 
THE AUTOCRAT OF THE UNIVERSE 19 
 
 virtue, aspiration, spiritual desire, recedes into the back- 
 ground, and the selfish desire to enjoy a reward and 
 escape a punishment takes its place. It is not because 
 the heart of man turns towards the ends which are set 
 before him, that he obeys the commands of his Lord and 
 Master, but because obedience will be rewarded and 
 disobedience chastised. The ideal does not admit of 
 being formulated, or the way to it accurately mapped 
 out. There is an element of mystery, of infinitude in it, 
 which at once bafiles calculation and attracts desire. 
 When the way of life is set out in a series of commands, 
 each of which is to be obeyed because it has been " so 
 commanded," the true end of life has, we may be sure, 
 been lost sight of. For if the true end of life was behind 
 those commands, their attractive force would be so great 
 that the autocratic demand for obedience would become 
 unnecessary, and bribes would be spurned and threats 
 despised by the adventurous soul. The profound dis- 
 trust of Nature which underlies supernaturalism, and 
 which has found doctrinal expression in the story of the 
 Fall and the theory of Original Sin, leads of inner 
 necessity to the assumption that it is not in man to 
 desire good, to respond to its magnetic appeal. 
 
 This assumption readily transforms itself into another 
 — ^that it is not in man to think out, that it is not for man 
 to exercise himself in, the master problems of life. I 
 have said that the ideal is the object of vision as well 
 as of desire. There are two elements in vision, each of 
 which should, for its own sake, balance and be balanced 
 by the other — reason and intuition, the critical and the 
 imaginative tendencies of thought. In the atmosphere 
 of supernaturalism both these sovereign faculties are 
 
20 THE COSMIC COMMONWEALTH 
 
 doomed to wither, for the plain reason that neither is 
 allowed to function. When the way of life is accurately 
 mapped out by high authority, there is no need and no 
 opportunity for one either to see into the heart of things 
 or to meditate on their inner meaning. Even now, in 
 the twentieth century, the orthodox Christian will settle 
 momentous questions, such as that of divorce, or the 
 after life of the soul, by reference to the letter of a text. 
 He will count it impiety to bring either his reason or 
 his intuition to bear on the problems that confront him.^ 
 
 1 A preacher in an Anglican church recently told his audience 
 that if they did not communicate fasting they would go to 
 Hell. The preacher no doubt believed that he was declaring 
 to his audience the authentic will of God But if to, what an 
 insanely whimsical deity he worshipped ! To doom a man to 
 eternal punishment for having broken his fast before communi- 
 cating would be an act of grotesque injustice, repugnant alike 
 to right reason, to common sense and to the moral judgment. 
 " But God's ways are not our ways,*' the preacher would answer, 
 " and we cannot go behind his revelation of his will." This 
 is the favourite argument of the orthodox apologist. It is at 
 once the logical working out and the reductio ad absurdum of 
 the first principles of supernaturalism. For it resolves itself 
 into the assumption that where conduct is regulated by divine 
 authority, bhnd, literal, mechanical obedience is the only thing 
 that matters, and that the higher faculties which we sum up 
 under the heads of reason and intuition do not count and have 
 no part to play. But why have those " talents " been entrusted 
 to man if he is not to use them ? And how can he do full 
 justice to them if he may not use them in what is presumably 
 the highest field of their activity ? And if they have not been 
 trained by appropriate exercise, how can they tell him whether 
 an alleged communication from God is genuine or spurious ? 
 That there is something in man which can recognize and respond 
 to the Divine is the only rational basis of belief in a supernatural 
 
THE AUTOCRAT OF THE UNIVERSE 21 
 
 Forbidden to energize in the sphere o£ high thinking 
 these sovereign faculties have sought out other fields of 
 activity. Reason has devoted itself to the investigation 
 of physical phenomena, the field in which it is freest 
 from ecclesiastical interference, and in which, as it 
 happens, it has least need of the co-operation of intuition. 
 Intuition, deserted by reason, has evaded the control of 
 " authority " by plunging deep into the innermost 
 mysteries of things, where it can work beyond the reach 
 of the theologian's inquisitorial eye and beyond the grasp 
 of his commonplace mind. Thus in forbidding reason 
 and intuition to work in the sphere in which each has 
 most need of the other, supernaturalism has driven them 
 apart, as it were, and sowed misunderstanding between 
 them. And so, when they return to the investigation of 
 ultimate questions, instead of combining their forces 
 for the greatest of all tasks, they continue to work 
 separately, and in a spirit of mutual antipathy and mis- 
 trust, reason giving us a one-sided interpretation of things 
 which it calls rationalism, and intuition an equally one- 
 sided interpretation of things which it calls mysticism, 
 while the truth of things lies somewhere between these 
 two, or rather is in itself the resultant of their respective 
 tendencies. 
 
 If autocratic control can produce such fatal results in 
 the sphere of high thinking and deep feeling, its action 
 in the sphere of conduct proper will be at least equally 
 harmful. Here the cult of the letter will make for 
 hypocrisy, for evasion, for casuistical hair-splitting, for 
 
 revelation. To ask that something to accept or reject a revela- 
 tion as a whole, while forbidding it to criticize its details, is an 
 illogical absurdity which does not admit of serious defence. 
 
22 THE COSMIC COMMONWEALTH 
 
 dishonest quibbling, for censoriousness, for self-right- 
 eousness, for all those vicious tendencies which external- 
 ism in morals necessarily tends to generate, and which 
 we sum up under the general head of Pharisaism. And 
 the authoritative debasement of the dominant motive to 
 action from the high level of aspiration and love to the 
 low level of cupidity and fear, will make for selfishness, 
 for individualism, for materialism, for a general lowering 
 of the plane of man's life. 
 
 Rightly conceived, the higher life of man is perpetual 
 self-transcendence. In other words, it is an adventure 
 into the infinite. By substituting for this' high adventure 
 the deliberate and systematic cult of finality, by laying 
 itself out to satisfy the demand for formulated concep- 
 tions of life and codified rules of conduct, supernatural- 
 ism has ever tended, and of inner necessity will ever tend, 
 to arrest the growth of the soul. I use the words " of 
 inner necessity " advisedly. Supernaturalism owes its 
 origin to the ascendency, in the world of ideas, of material- 
 ism over idealism, of the static over the dynamic view of 
 life, — ^in other words, to the soul's feluctance to grow. 
 If it is not to forfeit its charter, it must duly minister to 
 Man's spiritual indolence, to his desire to play for safety, 
 to his reluctance to take up the burden of his own 
 infinitude, of his potential oneness with God. To do 
 this is to arrest his spiritual growth ; and to arrest growth 
 is to starve and sterilize life. 
 
CHAPTER V 
 
 THE FEUDAL OVERLORD 
 
 SO much for the pressure of supernatural authority on 
 the life of the individual. Let us now consider its 
 influence on the communal life of mankind. Man's 
 religious ideas have, on the whole and in the long run, 
 reflected his political experiences. - The idea of a divine 
 autocrat who rules or overrules the Universe arose in 
 the East, where the autocratic rule of a " Great King " 
 was a familiar spectacle. In the West, when it had 
 accepted Christianity, the " Great King " of heaven and 
 earth transformed himself into the Feudal Overlord. 
 This brings us down to the present day. The autocrat 
 of the Universe has been the mainstay of feudalism. 
 And how great has been the power of feudalism and how 
 deeply the iron of it has entered into our souls, is proved 
 by the fact that to its dying convulsions we owe the 
 titanic struggle which for more than four years has deso- 
 lated a large part of the world and profoundly agitated 
 the rest. 
 
 The feudal magnate derived his authority from his 
 own overlord, and through him from the king of kings 
 and only ruler of princes. The divine right of kings and 
 sub-kings was one of the cardinal articles of his faith. 
 He was responsible to his overlords, human and divine, 
 
 23 
 
24 THE COSMIC COMMONWEALTH 
 
 for the way in which he exercised his delegated authority. 
 To the mass of his subjects he recognized no responsibility 
 whatever. Within his own domain his authority was 
 virtually absolute ; and, like the Deity by whose grace 
 he held his fief or sub-kingdom, he combined in his own 
 person the functions of legislator, administrator, judge, 
 and executioner. If he misgoverned his people, they 
 might appeal to his overlord for redress ; and that appeal 
 might or might not be heard. Or they might appeal to 
 God in their prayers ; and their lord, if he was unjust 
 and tyrannical, was well content that they should do 
 so. For his deference to God was a mere formality ; 
 and in effect he held that his right to rule was inherent 
 in his might. By paying the semblance of homage to 
 the divine autocrat, he was able to claim the reality of 
 power for himself. His religion went as far as that, but 
 no further. Against their lord, as their own immediate 
 ruler, the people (apart from the tenants, whose relations 
 with him were contractual) had no means of redress. 
 The rank and file were entirely at his mercy, the serfs 
 being his chattels, while the status of the villein or roturier 
 was but one degree removed from serfdom. Like his 
 horses and his live stock, they came into his possession, 
 so to speak, with the lands which he inherited or acquired ; 
 and he " could do what he pleased with his own." Re- 
 sistance to his tyranny was rebellion against " the Lord's 
 anointed ; " and if it failed it was punished with atrocious 
 severity. 
 
 The feudal system, of which the feudalism of more 
 recent times is the heir-at-law, covered Western Europe 
 with a multitude of petty autocrats, the Feudal Lords 
 or " Barons " of the Middle Ages, and so gave rise to 
 
THE FEUDAL OVERLORD 25 
 
 an aristocracy or ruling caste, which is still with us, 
 becoming, as time passes, less and less dependent on the 
 possession o£ land for its power over others, and more 
 and more dependent on the possession of capital. Where- 
 ever there is a ruling caste which bases its authority and 
 influence on property, arrogance, rapacity, and selfishness 
 may be expected to flourish. In feudal times the ruling 
 caste was deeply infected with those vices, but it had no 
 monopoly of them. On the contrary, they were ever 
 tending to descend, by force of moral gravitation, 
 through all the strata of society. It is but natural that 
 men should imitate, to the best of their ability, those 
 who are high above them, and whom they are compelled 
 to look up to and defer to ; and we cannot wonder that 
 the evil example which was set by the feudal aristocracy 
 was faithfully copied, as far as circumstances permitted, 
 by all the social grades below them down to the rank and 
 file of the people. And as it was in feudal times, so it 
 has been in all the intervening ages, so it is to-day. The 
 assumption that power, position, and property are the 
 " good things of life," the things that are best worth 
 working for and fighting for, has led to a general perver- 
 sion of ideals, from which we are still suffering and must 
 long continue to suffer. 
 
 Nor is this the only injury to morals and character 
 that feudal tyranny has wrought. The denial of freedom 
 does two things to its victims, which act and react on 
 each other and produce evil consequences which are not 
 the less evil because, in their development, they are 
 obscuie, tortuouc, and diflBcult to trace. It represses 
 natural tendency and it atrophies natural faculty. 
 Psychologists are beginning to realize that though natural 
 
26 THE COSMIC COMMONWEALTH 
 
 tendencies can be repressed they cannot be eradicated ; 
 that, on the contrary, they accumulate, when repressed, 
 in the subconscious regions of the soul, and there gener- 
 ate explosive energies which may lead at last to their 
 forcing, at whatever cost, exits for themselves. When 
 the time comes for them to break forth, the fact that 
 faculty has been atrophied, and that therefore they 
 cannot be properly controlled and directed, may lead to 
 great social and moral convulsions. The communal 
 self, mediating as it does between the individual and the 
 ideal self, is an essential element in personality ; and a 
 man must take a share in the government of the com- 
 munity to which he belongs if he is to master the art of 
 governing himself. Therefore to deprive the masses, as 
 feudalism did, of political power and responsibility, is to 
 go far towards incapacitating them for the exercise of 
 self-control. The organized anarchy which is now deso- 
 lating Russia and which threatens to spread to neigh- 
 bouring countries, like the excesses of the French Revolu- 
 tion, is the afteimath of centuries of tyrannical repres- 
 sion ; 1 and such catastrophes in the life of the com- 
 munity have their equivalents, in the life of the individual, 
 in that disruption of personality which too often issues 
 in madness. 
 
 The concentration of power and authority in a few 
 hands has had other consequences. The undue ascen- 
 
 ^ The savagery of the Russian revolutionaries has appalled us. 
 Let us remind ourselves, in extenuation of it, that the arrogance 
 of a ruling caste — whether the caste be feudal, as in pre- 
 Revolutionary France, military, as in Germany, or bureau- 
 cratic, as in Russia — easily degenerates into brutality, and that 
 brutality brutalizes its victims. 
 
THE FEUDAL OVERLORD 27 
 
 dency of the " State " in the spheres of moral and spiritual 
 life is one of these. When the State is, as it ought to be, 
 the whole community, acting through a system of nerve- 
 centres, the spirit of comradeship will be the main- 
 spring of its activity ; and the spirit of comradeship 
 will, sooner or later, transcend the limits of nationality, 
 and the cognate sense of sympathy with and duty to- 
 v/ards one's fellow-citizens will gradually expand into a 
 sense of sympathy with and duty towards one's fellow- 
 men. It is otherwise when the State is embodied in an 
 autocratic monarch, ruling " by divine right," or in an 
 autocratic caste, ruling by its own inherited prestige and 
 power. Then there is a danger lest the rulers should 
 infect with their own arrogance, rapacity, and selfishness, 
 not the lower strata of society only but also the com- 
 munity as an organic whole. There is a danger lest, in 
 their desire to aggrandize themselves through the aggran- 
 dizement of the community, they should hold up the 
 latter to the individual citizen as the supreme end of 
 action and should use the machinery of the State — legisla- 
 tive, administrative, militaiy, educational, ecclesiastical — 
 to dri\e him towards that goal. There is a danger lest 
 they should deliberately inculcate anti-human sentiments 
 under the guise of patriotism, should give duty to the 
 State precedence over duty to God and man, should 
 count wrong as right, criminality as virtue, so long as it 
 served or seemed to serve the interests of the com- 
 munity, thereby completing the perversion of ideals 
 and corruption of morals which their own evil example 
 had already begun. That this is no imaginary danger the 
 history of modern Germany has fully proved. The 
 war which has just ended had been systematically pre- 
 
28 THE COSMIC COMMONWEALTH 
 
 pared for over a long term of years — ^through the un- 
 scrupulous use of all the complicated machinery of an 
 oppressive and inquisitorial government and of all the 
 subtle influences which emanated from the Court and 
 its entourage — ^by the real rulers of Germany, the General 
 Staff. The corruption of the morals of a great people, 
 by the exaltation of false ideals and the appeal to base 
 motives, was but the means to that sinister end. 
 
 The arrogance of the ruling caste in feudal times was, 
 as we have seen, compounded in the main of class selfish- 
 ness and pride of property, place, and power. But there 
 was another element in it which was even more baneful 
 in its ulterior consequences. The ruling caste looked 
 upon the rank and file of the people as dirt beneath their 
 feet. Having degraded them, by their unjust and op- 
 pressive rule, to a level which was but little highei than 
 that of the beasts of the field, they despised them for 
 having sunk to that level, and spoke and thought of them 
 with contempt and disgU5>t. They did worse than this. 
 They assumed that the " lower orders " were an inferior 
 breed to themselves, that they were hy nature base-born, 
 coarse-fibred, slow-witted, foul-mouthed, mere animals 
 in their habits and propensities. The words that they 
 applied to them — ^populace, masses, mob, rabble, canaille 
 — ^were so fully charged with suggestions of social in- 
 feriority and moral degradation that they became, and 
 still remain, terms of derision and abuse. For this con- 
 temptuous attitude of the upper towards the lower 
 orders of society is one of the features of feudalism which 
 have survived to the present day. The educated classes 
 in this and other countries are still apt to assume that the 
 masses — those who send their children to elementary 
 
THE FEUDAL OVERLORD 29 
 
 schools, let us say — ^are a different order of beings from 
 themselves, congenitally inferior in physique, in mentality, 
 in manners, in morals, and all that goes to the making 
 of the soul. And as the despised masses form nine-tenths 
 of the human race, the current underestimate of their 
 powers and possibilities readily transforms itself into a 
 serious underestimate of the powers and possibilities of 
 normal Humanity. The theological doctrine of Original 
 Sin, with its assumption that the natural man is a child 
 of wrath, that the nature of man is corrupt and fallen, 
 that the best of men are miserable sinners, that the grace 
 which redeems and saves comes down from a super- 
 natural source, has reinforced and been reinforced by 
 this quasi-feudal contempt for Humanity, and the effect 
 of their joint action has been to paralyse man's higher 
 activities and blind him to the greatness of his heritage 
 and his destiny 
 
 Feudalism was of two kinds — ^secular and spiritual. 
 So far I have been dealing with the former. I will now 
 say a few words about the latter. As there was a descent 
 of secular authority from the Supreme Overlord, through 
 emperor, king, and baron, to the villein and the serf, so 
 there was a descent of spiritual authority from the same 
 source, through Pope and bishop and priest, to the lay 
 churchman and the catechumen. Priestcraft, like prince- 
 craft, has its characteristic virtues and vices. As there 
 were wise and good rulers, according to their lights, 
 among the feudal magnates, so there were — and are — 
 wise and good teachers and directors in a priesthood. 
 But as the feudal magnates, being (as they believed) a 
 divinely commissioned caste, were exposed to the tempta- 
 tion to hold themselves aloof from the rest of the com- 
 
30 THE COSMIC COMMONWEALTH 
 
 munity, to look down upon them, to brow- beat them, 
 to oppress them, so the priesthood, being (as they believe) 
 a divinely commissioned caste, have been exposed to the 
 temptation to become— in Luther's words — " the proud- 
 est asses under Heaven." 
 
 On this, however, we need not dwell. The evil that 
 spiritual feudalism does lies deeper than this. The real 
 analogue of feudal arrogance is not ecclesiastical piide 
 and pomposity, but priestly dogmatism. We have seen 
 that the pressure of supernatural authority on human 
 life, by depriving men of spiritual freedom, has tended 
 to pervert their ideals, to corrupt their morals, to arrest 
 their growth, to strangle their life. The priesthood has 
 been the appointed channel for the transmission of that 
 pressure. And the more conscientious the priest, the 
 more effectively has he transmitted it. Torquemada was, 
 I believe, an excellent man, according to his lights ; but 
 his lights were a lurid darkness. 
 
 On the whole it may, I think, be said that the piessure 
 of secular feudalism has been felt by the community 
 more than by the individual, and the pressure of spiritual 
 feudalism by the individual more than by the com- 
 munity. But it is as a member of a community that a 
 man lives the larger part of his life, and what he receives 
 from the community he gives back to it. It follows that 
 secular feudalism has affected the community directly 
 and affected the individual through his membership of 
 the community, while spiritual feudalism has affected 
 the individual directly and affected the community 
 through the reaction on it of the individual's ideals and 
 ways and works. ^ It follows, in other words, that the two 
 
 1 Secular feudalism has affected the individual, and spiritual 
 
THE FEUDAL OVERLORD 31 
 
 kinds of feudalism are vitally interconnected, and that 
 their respective streams of tendency are not two, but 
 one. It is true that they move, or seem to move, in 
 separate channels ; but they flow through the same river 
 valley and belong to the same system of drainage. 
 
 Secular feudalism has been dying for centuries, and is 
 now on its deathbed. Its passing is a veritable agonie. 
 Convulsion follows convulsion, and the end is not yet. 
 The Great War has been by far the most violent of all 
 its convulsions ; but it is not the last ; and it is possible 
 that it will be followed by convulsive movements which, 
 if not more violent, will be more protracted and on an 
 even vaster scale. What is it that hinders the passing of 
 the old order of things ? Each of its deathbed convul- 
 sions is the birth-throe of a new order of things. What 
 is it that hinders the new order of things from being 
 born ? " The children are come to the birth, but there 
 is not strength to bring forth." It is difficult to interpret 
 the past and rash to forecast the future. Yet I cannot 
 help thinking that what has delayed the passing of secular 
 feudalism, and delayed the social reconstruction which 
 will follow its passing, is its "vital connexion with spiritual 
 feudalism, and our failure to recognize that the latter 
 too is dying and that the time has come for it to die. 
 
 The only possible successor to secular feudalism is 
 democracy ; and if " the world is to be made safe for 
 democracy " and if our democratic experiments are not 
 to be so many grafts on a feudal stock, we must make 
 an end of spiritual as well as of secular feudalism ; we 
 
 feudalism has affected the community, directly as well as in- 
 directly ; but in each case the direct pressure, though by no 
 means weak, has been less strong than the indirect, 
 
32 THE COSMIC COMMONWEALTH 
 
 must de-£eudalize, not our social life only but our soul- 
 life on all its planes ; we must de-feudalize our first 
 principles, our standards of value, our tests of right and 
 wrong ; we must go to the fountain-head of ideas and 
 ideals ; we must revolutionize our conception of ultimate 
 reality, our vision of God. 
 
CHAPTER VI 
 
 THE APOTHEOSIS OF SELFISHNESS 
 
 THE supernatural autocrat of the Universe is a par- 
 tisan God, a God who takes sides. This he is pre- 
 destined to be. For he exists objectively, so to speak, 
 beyond the confines of Nature ; and from that mysterious 
 world he comes down to earth at his good pleasure, and 
 reveals himself to certain chosen instruments of his will. 
 The recipients of the divine revelation are few — if they 
 were many revelation would be a more or less natural 
 process — but the claimants to the honour of having re- 
 ceived it are innumerable. 
 
 For different races, different peoples, different com- 
 munities, different types of mind form different con- 
 ceptions of the supernatural God ; and each of these 
 will insist that its own conception is the true conception, 
 and that all the others are false. This true conception of 
 God will be personified as " the true God," and all other 
 conceptions will be personified as " false gods." Strictly 
 speaking, the difference between true and false is that 
 " the true God " has revealed himself to his worshippers, 
 whereas the "false gods" are mere inventions of man's 
 mind. But this distinction is not always observed. In 
 their zeal for their own God men are apt to invest his 
 rivals with some measure of objective existence, and to 
 
 ^ 33 
 
34 THE COSMIC COMMONWEALTH 
 
 think o£ them as rebellious claimants to the throne of 
 the Universe. 
 
 To fight for the true God against the false gods and 
 those who worship them is of course the first duty of the 
 " believer " ; and in this fight he naturally expects God 
 — his God — ^to take his side and put his enemies (who are 
 also God's enemies) to confusion. Now it is impossible 
 to give absolutely disinterested service to such a Deity. 
 If you ask God to fight for you against your enemies, 
 who are also his, there is sure to be some taint of self- 
 seeking in your prayer. For in saying that prayer you 
 run two deadly risks. The first is that of identifying 
 your own personal enemies with the enemies of God. 
 The second is that of dedicating your own evil passions 
 and desires — ^the passions and desires which may be 
 summed up under the general heads of uncharitable- 
 ness and selfishness — ^to the service of God. 
 
 As long as religions were tribal or national, the Gods 
 dwelt on earth or in heaven, in mutual tolerance or, at 
 worst, in intermittent hostility. But when men rose 
 to the conception of a Universal God the clash of religions 
 began. And, with the clash of religions, came the clash 
 of selfish passions and selfish ambitions. If in the course 
 of their religious wars and persecutions men had thought 
 only of the honour and glory of their God, those wars 
 and persecutions would have formed a dark enough chap- 
 ter in their history. What made that chapter the darkest 
 of all was that secular ambitions played a large part in 
 the religious wars, and that the horrors of religious per- 
 secution were intensified by private greed and private 
 spite. 
 
 The truth is that the desire to appropriate the Universal 
 
THE APOTHEOSIS OF SELFISHNESS 35 
 
 God, to claim him as one's own, is of all desires the most 
 selfish. Indeed it is the apotheosis of selfishness, the 
 raising of it to the highest imaginable power. We are 
 given a great choice in life. We can try to expand self 
 till it becomes all-embracing, and in doing so inter- 
 mingles itself, in peace and goodwill, with all other 
 expanding selves. Or we can try to draw down all 
 things — including God himself — into the vortex of an 
 ever-narrowing self. The man who seeks to appropriate 
 God to himself will be an egoist in his whole attitude 
 towards life. For to introduce the venom of self-seeking 
 into the head-waters of desire and purpose is to poison 
 the whole stream. 
 
 It is a significant fact that in the late war the nation 
 which had wantonly provoked the war and had waged 
 it with conspicuous inhumanity and^ treachery, was the 
 one nation which openly boasted that God was on its 
 side. The Entente Powers were wisely reticent on this 
 point. But the German Emperor assured his people 
 that God — " the good old German God " — ^was their 
 *' unconditional ally " ; and the Lutheran pastors, 
 inspired by the same perverted faith and true to the 
 logic of its implied assumptions, went so far as to say 
 that God had chosen the German people for the express 
 purpose of " crucifying Humanity," and that they must 
 therefore prove their loyalty to him by perpetrating 
 every conceivable atrocity on their enemies. To take 
 our evil passions and lusts to God and solemnly dedicate 
 them to his service is to sound the lowest depth of spiritual 
 wickedness. In the current theology the autocrat of 
 the Universe has a rebellious rival who is known as the 
 Devil. If Hell is reserved for those who openly serve 
 
36 THE COSMIC COMMONWEALTH 
 
 the Devil, what punishment is due to those who serve 
 the Devil under the pretence of serving God ? 
 
 There is always a taint of selfishness in a man's devo- 
 tion to the divine autocrat. There are traces of it 
 even in the other-worldliness of the saint. Does he 
 serve God for naught ? I doubt it. In " the ages of 
 faith " the main concern of the believer was to secure 
 his own individual salvation. ^ Even the most hardened 
 of sinners looked forward to cheating the Devil on his 
 deathbed by confessing his sins and receiving absolution 
 from the Church. But what of the saint ? Alas ! he 
 could look forward, not merely with equanimity but even 
 
 ^ A secondary but by no means inconsiderable concern was 
 to secure material benefits for himself. Wherever the super- 
 natural God is worshipped, the two kinds of selfishness — the 
 worldly and the other-worldly — coexist in varying proportions. 
 The more superstitious the religion — the more deeply it is 
 impregnated with supernaturalism — the stronger is the demand 
 for divine interference in the ordinary affairs of life. And the 
 demand is predominatingly selfish. In Brittany, for example, 
 God and his deputies are expected to take a lively interest in 
 the ventures of the fisher-folk ; and in addressing prayers to 
 those higher powers each fishing village thinks of itself alone. 
 " With the naive egoism," says the writer of a recent work on 
 Eastern Brittany, *' with which religionists of all creeds fancy 
 themselves the centre of creation, the women-folk of Islandais 
 supplicate northerly winds at the same time that those of 
 Terreneuviers are importuning Providence to send them from 
 the west." The selfishness of these petitions is obvious. Nor 
 does it cease to be selfish because there is woven into it a strand 
 of unselfish love. But the selfishness of the believer who is 
 intent on his own salvation is far more insidious, far more deep- 
 seated, and far more ready to mistake itself for piety than is 
 the naive egoism of those who pray for favouring winds or 
 other mundane blessings. 
 
THE APOTHEOSIS OF SELFISHNESS 37 
 
 with rapture, to being admitted into a Heaven from 
 which the greater part of his fellow-men would be for 
 ever excluded. Nor would their awful fate cast any 
 shadow on his happiness, the sympathetic pity that he 
 might have felt for them being submerged by his blissful 
 assurance that he, for one, would enjoy God for " ever 
 and ever." To win for himself the boon of " salvation " 
 was the end that the believer, whether saint or sinner, 
 set before himself in his religious exercises, in his prayers, 
 in the conduct of his life. That in many cases the devo- 
 tion which he gave to God was, as far as he knew, dis- 
 interested, is possible, and even probable. But in the 
 court of an absolute monarch the. line between loyalty 
 and courtiership, between unselfish and selfish devotion, 
 is all too easily overstepped. And selfishness is never so 
 insidious or so poisonous as when a man believes himself 
 to be giving to another what he is really giving, in part 
 at least, to himself. If this is true when the " other " is 
 his neighbour, how much truer will it be when the 
 " other " is God. 
 
 I have said that secular feudalism is on its deathbed, 
 but will not be able to die till spiritual feudalism dies 
 with it. What hinders the coming of that vast system 
 of social and political changes — ^with their far-reaching 
 social and spiritual consequences — ^which we speak of 
 collectively as democracy, is the selfishness of man's 
 heart. In the ideal democracy, where each lives for all 
 and all for each, there is no place for selfishness. It 
 follows that in a society, which, like that of the feudalized 
 West, is deeply tainted with selfishness, both individual 
 and corporate, in which each member of the community 
 plays for his own hand or combines with others only 
 
38 THE COSMIC COMMONWEALTH 
 
 for the advancement or protection of his own material 
 interests, in which inequality provokes jealousy, injustice 
 rancorous resentment, and class-pride class-hatred — it 
 follows that in such a society democracy cannot begin 
 to be born. The overthrow of absolutism in Russia was 
 followed, after a brief interval, by the establishment of a 
 tyranny far more cruel, oppressive, and unjust than that 
 which had preceded it, a tyranny which was based on 
 the deliberate exploitation of passion and lust, of class- 
 hatred and industrial greed. Superficial observers see 
 in Russia's desperate plight the failure of democracy. 
 What they ought to see in it is the final failure — 
 the consummation of the pre-destined failure — of 
 autocratic repression and bureaucratic selfishness and 
 corruption. 
 
 The triumph of Bolshevism in Russia is a lesson and a 
 warning. If selfishness is to be held in check, so as to 
 make possible the advent of democracy, the constant 
 reinforcement of it from what is supposed to be the 
 highest of all levels — ^the level of religious faith and de- 
 votion — ^must at all costs be stopped. In other words, 
 if we are to reconstruct society on a sound and durable 
 basis, we must revolutionize our spiritual ideals through 
 the radical transformation of our conception of God. 
 We must worship a God in whose Court there are no 
 courtiers, in whose Kingdom (which is his only Court) 
 patriotism is the truest loyalty — a God to whom it is 
 impossible to give any but disinterested service, to offer 
 any but unselfish prayers. So long as we think of God 
 as a supernatural autocrat we shall be tempted to exploit 
 him for more or less selfish purposes of our own. And 
 so long as that temptation besets us, the spirit of com- 
 
THE APOTHEOSIS OF SELFISHNESS 39 
 
 radeship — of which the courtier spirit is the negation, 
 and without which democracy is so much political 
 machinery, the plaything of cliques and caucuses, the 
 happy hunting-ground of wire-pullers and log-rollers — 
 cannot awake in our hearts. 
 
CHAPTER VII 
 
 A SECULAR AGE 
 
 HOW vital a part religion plays in human life is shown 
 by the fact that even in this "irreligious age " it is in 
 command, though we may not know it, of the whole 
 situation. We have seen that secular feudalism is on its 
 deathbed, but cannot die ; and that democracy has 
 come to the birth, but is " still powerless to be born." 
 The reason why secular feudalism cannot die is that 
 spiritual feudalism, its other self, though also dying, is 
 not yet on its deathbed. And the reason w^hy democracy 
 cannot be born is that the religion which is at the heart 
 of it has not yet come to the birth. 
 
 We are passing through an age of religious indifference. 
 The supporters of the old order take but little interest 
 in religion ; and the advocates of the new order — if not 
 openly anti-religious — ^take none. The alliance between 
 the squire and the parson, which is symbolical of the 
 alliance between secular and spiritual feudalism, still 
 continues ; but the squire, though he goes to church, is 
 probably an agnostic, and there may well be a strain of 
 scepticism in the orthodoxy of the parson. Nevertheless 
 the formal alliance between the two does continue ; and 
 so long as it continues it will help to keep feudalism alive. 
 
 On the other hand, the democratic movement, which 
 
 40 
 
A SECULAR AGE 41 
 
 for the time being has identified itself with the Labour 
 movement, is at present frankly secular. It does not 
 even pretend to have any spiritual ideal. The avowed 
 aim of Labour is to secure for itself higher wages and 
 shorter hours of work. Its covert aim is to destroy what 
 it believes to be its arch-enemy, Capitalism. In the 
 latter aim it makes its nearest approach to an ideal, but 
 it is an inverted ideal, an ideal which is negative, not 
 positive ; destructive, not constructive ; the outcome 
 of hatred, not of love. How little there is of spiritual 
 idealism in the Labour movement is proved by the fact 
 that it is to a large extent dominated by a clique of 
 extremists, 1 who, while bribing the " labourers " with 
 promises of short hours and high wages, are working 
 unceasingly for all-round " nationalization," in the hope 
 that when Labour triumphs at the polls, they, as its 
 leaders, will be able, through their command of the 
 main sources of production and distribution, to establish 
 a rigid State-despotism of which the capitalists, great 
 and small, will be the first victims. For patriotism, 
 which is the only avenue to humanism. Labour, so far as 
 it is under the control of this clique, would substitute 
 an internationalism, which is at the opposite pole to the 
 pan-humanism of those who advocate a League of 
 Nations — an internationalism of class-selfishness, class- 
 hatred, and intestine strife. The aim of these " inter- 
 
 ^ The confiscatory programme of these extremists, their open 
 advocacy of " direct action " and their avowed sympathy with 
 the cruel and inquisitorial despotism of the Bolshevist gang 
 in Russia, are suggestive of what might happen if a Labour 
 Government came into being under their auspices in this 
 country. 
 
42 THE COSMIC COMMONWEALTH 
 
 nationalists "is to unite the forces of Labour in hostility 
 to Capital in all countries, and so develop a line of cleavage 
 which will cut across all distinctions of nationality and 
 will end by bolshevizing the world. That this is the 
 true voice of Labour I do not for a moment believe. 
 The labouring masses are still inarticulate ; but it is a 
 significant fact that a clique which is anti-idealistic, 
 anti-humanistic, and even anti-patriotic, should have 
 succeeded in capturing their collective vote.^ 
 
 I do not wish to reproach Labour for its selfishness. 
 For centuries the rich ground the faces of the poor ; 
 and it is but natural that the poor, when union has given 
 them strength, should seek to grind the faces of the rich. 
 " The fathers have eaten sour grapes, and the children's 
 teeth are set on edge." For centuries the upper classes 
 despised and vilified the lower ; and it is but natural 
 that class arrogance should be requited by class hatred, 
 and that the memory of bitter wrongs, of injustice, 
 oppression and cruelty, should generate deep-seated 
 suspicion and even a thirst for revenge. ^ Nor do I 
 think the worse of the Labour movement for being openly 
 non- religious. In one respect indeed its secularism is its 
 salvation. The feudal magnates were selfish and arrogant 
 because they believed that their position, their power, 
 
 1 In the General Election of December, 191 8, this clique was 
 *' snowed under," chiefly, I think, on account of its anti- 
 patriotic bias ; but it seems to have great weight in the councils 
 of Labour, and it is carrying on an active propaganda among 
 the younger members of the various Trade Unions. 
 
 2 In point of fact there is, I believe, more of suspicion and 
 mistrust than of actual vindictiveness in the attitude of the 
 working classes towards the upper classes in general and the 
 employers of labour in particular. 
 
A SECULAR AGE 43 
 
 their possessions and their privileges had been bestowed 
 upon them hy God, and that their title to them was 
 therefore indefeasible. And their " aristocratic " suc- 
 cessors — landowners, capitalists, bureaucrats and the rest 
 — if they have any religious faith, believe that the class- 
 distinctions by which they profit so greatly have been 
 ordained by God. The leaders of the Labour movement 
 have avoided this deadly pitfall. They have not claimed 
 divine sanction for their materialistic ambitions. On 
 the contrary, they carry secularism to the verge of hos- 
 tility to religion, partly because they believe, not without 
 reason, that oflBcial religion has usually allied itself with 
 property and privilege, and that the Feudal Overlord 
 whom they were taught to worship is the God of the rich 
 rather than the poor.^ They mean to seize what they 
 can by force — by the force of organized labour — and 
 they will pay homage for it to no overlord, human or 
 divine. The hypocrisy of those who held " by the 
 grace of God " what they had seized by the might of 
 their arms is not theirs. 
 
 I have no quarrel with the Labour movement, but I 
 wish to look facts in the face. The body of feudalism, 
 
 ^ Pope Pius X, when rebuking the socialism of the Italian 
 Modernists, told them that " it is in conformity with the order 
 established by God that there should be in human society 
 princes and subjects, employers and proletarians, rich and 
 poor, learned and ignorant, nobles and plebeians." The Dutch 
 CathoHc bishops have recently issued a pastoral condemning 
 Socialism as incompatible with Catholic Christianity. " To 
 be a Catholic and a Socialist at the same time is impossible." 
 And a Russian statesman is said to have defended autocracy in 
 Russia on the ground that the Universe is ruled by an autocratic 
 Deity. Labour can scarcely be expected to lend a willing ear 
 to such teaching as this. 
 
44 THE COSMIC COMMONWEALTH 
 
 though worn out, cannot die, because the time has not 
 yet come for the passing of its soul. In the Labour 
 movement, as at present conducted, the converse of 
 this is taking place. The body of democracy is struggling 
 to be born ; but its soul has not yet taken possession of 
 it, and therefore the hour of its deliverance has not yet 
 come. If democracy is to conquer the world it must 
 first find its own soul. It must use spiritual, not material 
 weapons. It must present a high ideal to the mind and 
 heart of man. And that ideal it must find in itself, in 
 the religion which is at the heart of it, in the conception 
 of God which is shaping itself in its subconscious self. 
 
 In a secular age, an age of religious indifference, great 
 convulsions and catastrophes may be expected to take 
 place — ^for such spiritual influences as are at work will 
 be too weak to hold anger, selfishness and rapacity in 
 check — ^but there can be no social revolution which will 
 permanently transform man's life. The reconstruction 
 of religion must both precede and accompany the recon- 
 struction of society. The indifference of the present 
 generation to religion means that the old conception of 
 God, with the ideals which emerged from it, is wearing 
 out. That being so, our efforts to galvanize into the 
 semblance of life the churches and sects, the creeds and 
 codes, of the old regime are a waste of labour. They 
 are worse than a waste of labour, for they tend to per- 
 petuate and intensify the existing confusion. If the 
 protracted struggle which is from one point of view 
 an agony of dissolution, from another an agony of 
 parturition, is to come to an end, a new conception of 
 God, pregnant with new ideals of duty and destiny, must 
 come forth and rule the world. 
 
CHAPTER VIII 
 
 HUMAN EQUALITY 
 
 IF the world Is to be " made safe for democracy," we 
 must do more than destroy militarism ; we must do 
 more than democratize the countries which are still 
 strongholds of feudalism. We must destroy the spiritual 
 headquarters of militarism ; we must democratize our 
 conception of God. 
 
 How is this to be done ? Behind the democratic im- 
 pulse there is a certain spiritual ideal. And behind that 
 spiritual ideal there is a certain conception of God. If 
 we could lift that conception of God into the light of 
 consciousness we should have begun to liberate the soul 
 of democracy. 
 
 What is the spiritual ideal which is behind the demo- 
 cratic impulse ? Equality. Democracy has been defined 
 as " the government of all, by all and for all," and this 
 definition can scarcely be improved upon. What is it 
 that qualifies the " all " for government ? That the 
 rulers of a country should be the best of its citizens — the 
 strongest, the ablest, the wisest, the most unselfish — is a 
 truth too obvious to need demonstration. Now it is 
 certain that we cannot all be the best. But is there any 
 a priori reason why we should not all be equally good ? 
 It is only on the assumption that men are equal that 
 
 45 
 
46 THE COSMIC COMMONWEALTH 
 
 democracy can make good its claim. In the famous 
 formula "liberty, equality, fraternity," equality is 
 rightly placed in the middle. There are many critics of 
 the formula who approve the ideas of liberty and 
 fraternity, but ridicule the idea of equality. This is 
 shallow criticism. It is faith in equality which justifies 
 the demand for liberty and countenances the dream of 
 fraternity. As a political theory, democracy is domin- 
 ated by the idea of equality. As a political dream, as a 
 social sentiment, it is inspired by the ideal of equality. 
 In fine, equality — ^the fundamental equality of all men 
 — whether we regard it as an idea or an ideal, is the real 
 basis of democracy. 
 
 But are men fundamentally equal ? Is it conceivable 
 that they should ever be so ? Is not society based on 
 inequality, on a bewildering diversity of gifts, attain- 
 ments, and achievements, on inequality in material 
 possessions, in social position, in influence, in education, 
 in learning, in culture, in mental ability, in aptitudes, in 
 accomplishments, in moral qualities, in spiritual gifts ? 
 So some of my readers will protest ; and I will say in 
 reply that they have not overstated, and cannot possibly 
 overstate, their case. In what sense, then, do I use 
 the word equality ? In the sense in which Christianity 
 uses it when it teaches us that all men are equal in the 
 sight of God — equal because they have immortal souls 
 to be lost or saved. The notation in which this teaching 
 is set forth may not commend itself to all of us, but the 
 psychology which underlies it is, I think, profoundly 
 true. When we say that all men are equal in the sight 
 of God, we mean, I imagine, that they are intrinsically 
 equal, equal by reference to an absolute and infallible 
 
HUMAN EQUALITY 47 
 
 standard of worth. And they are intrinsically equal 
 because they all have immortal souls to be lost or saved. 
 What does this mean ? It means, I imagine, that in each 
 of us there are infinite potentialities w^aiting to be realized; 
 that so far as we realize these we save our souls, in the 
 sense of finding them ; that so far as we neglect to realize 
 them, we lose our souls, in the sense of failing to find 
 them. By comparison with these infinite potentialities, 
 the actual inequalities in which life abounds, and of 
 which we make so much, shrink to zero, and men are 
 seen to be fundamentally equal. And if men are funda- 
 mentally equal, the right to share in the government of 
 the community to which one belongs, and to that extent 
 to shape one's own destiny, to give effect to one's own 
 ideals, to order one's own goings, is obviously inherent in 
 the right to live one's own life and realize one's own soul. 
 " Infinite potentialities." Am I justified in using 
 these words ? Actually men are unequal in every con- 
 ceivabl i' way. On this point there cannot be two opinions. 
 Their equality then must be potential. And if that 
 potential equality can dwarf to zero all those actual 
 inequalities which bulk so large in our eyes, it must be 
 rooted in the infinite. This is the only possible solution 
 of the problem — half riddle and half paradox — which 
 confronts us. Life is self-realization. Actually we are 
 finite. Potentially we are infinite. We realize self in 
 different directions and different degrees. In respect of 
 these we are unequal. But we haVe limitless reserves of 
 potentiality to draw upon ; and in respect of this we 
 are equal. And this equality, being rooted in the infinite, 
 overpowers and effaces our inequalities, which are always 
 measurable and finite. 
 
48 THE COSMIC COMMONWEALTH 
 
 To prove that man is infinite is beyond the power of 
 human reason. The problem is not amenable to the 
 rules of proof. The infinitude of the soul must prove 
 itself. And this it is ever struggling to do. But, for the 
 process of proof to complete itself, an infinity of time, or 
 perhaps some mysterious transcendence of time, is needed. 
 Meanw^hile, the more freely our minds play round the 
 idea of the infinite, and the more successful we are in 
 freeing ourselves from bondage to our experiences of 
 the finite, the stronger will the attractive force of the 
 idea become. We think too much about the actual 
 man, the man who has hardened in the mould of a par- 
 ticular environment. And we think too little of the 
 possible man, of what the man had it in him to become. 
 Is it a paradox — or is it a truism — ^to say that the 
 normal child at birth has it in him to speak a thousand 
 different languages, to belong to a thousand different 
 communities, to adapt himself to a thousand different 
 enviionments, to play a thousand different parts, to look 
 at life from a thousand different points of view ? Which 
 language the child shall speak, which community he shall 
 belong to, which environment he shall adapt himself to, 
 which part he shall play, from which point of view he 
 shall look at life, will be determined in each case — eithei 
 wholly or in large measure — ^by what we call the accident 
 of his birth. But the accident of his birth is one thing ; 
 his inherent capacity is another. As he grows up, circum- 
 stances will severely restrict his freedom and limit the 
 scope of his activity ; and if he is the victim, as most 
 men are, of a narrow environment, we shall probably 
 take for granted that he is whatever he has become 
 because he was predestined to be so in the hour of his 
 
HUMAN EQUALITY 49 
 
 birth, and that the powers and possibilities which he has 
 not been able to develop were never his. 
 
 Such an assumption would be wholly fallacious. A 
 single concrete case will disprove it. There is^ a school 
 in this country — an elementary school for girls — in which 
 the older pupils have a remarkable love of literature, 
 write charming verses, and do prose compositions of 
 various kinds— -narrative, descriptive, imaginative, drama- 
 tic, and even critical — ^which surprise all who read them. 
 Wherein do these girls differ from girls of the same age 
 in other schools in their own town and elsewhere. 
 Potentially, they do not differ from them in any respect or 
 degree. And yet, if you went into a hundred elementary 
 schools in succession, you would almost certainly find 
 that the pupils cared little or nothing for good literature, 
 that they could not write a line of verse and that their 
 prose compositions were of a meagre, conventional, all- 
 of-one-pattern type. What advantage, then, do these 
 girls possess ? Whatever it is, it is not racial. If it were, 
 if the children in that town had literary proclivities " in 
 their blood," one would expect to find evidences of 
 literary taste and capacity in other schools in their 
 neighbourhood. But one would, I fear, look for such 
 evidences in vain. The girls live in a third-rate manu- 
 facturing town. Their homes are of the type which one 
 usually finds in such towns. Their surroundings are 
 most uninspiring. But they have had one advantage 
 over other girls (and boys). An inspired and gifted 
 teacher (assisted by a staff which she has trained) has 
 brought them into touch with good literature, has helped 
 them to build up a library of books which are worth read- 
 ^ I ought now to say "was." 
 
50 THE COSMIC COMMONWEALTH 
 
 ing, and has encouraged them to express themselves freely 
 in prose and verse. In other words, their literary capacity 
 has been liberated by judicious and sympathetic training. 
 But the capacity was there, waiting to be liberated.^ 
 If it had not been there, the teachers of those girls would 
 have laboured in vain. And if it was latent in each of 
 those girls, waiting for some magician's wand to liberate 
 it, we may be sure that it is latent in nearly every normal 
 child. And not that paiticular capacity only. You will 
 find other schools in which other kinds of capacity have 
 been liberated, with equal skill and success, — artistic 
 capacity in one school, dramatic in another, constructive 
 in a third, and so on. The capacity of the normal child 
 is, in brief, limitless. When I say this I mean that we are 
 not in a position to assign any limits to it. The child's 
 personality is a mine in which there are mysterious and 
 apparently inexhaustible treasures waiting to be explored 
 and developed. To explore and develop those buried 
 treasures, to sink shafts here and drive galleries there, to 
 
 ^ A cultured stranger who paid his first visit to an elementary 
 school of the ordinary type, and found that the pupils, even in 
 the highest class, cared nothing for poetry or any other kind of 
 literature, and could not express themselves in prose or verse 
 (their compositions being of a prescribed and formal type and 
 in no sense their own), would probably jump to the conclusion 
 that their incapacity was congenital and was due to their being 
 made of common clay. But he would be quite wrong. We 
 are all made of common clay, but the clay of those children 
 would not be a whit more common than that of the girls whose 
 literary taste and capacity surprise all who know their school. 
 The only difference between that school and a host of others 
 is that in the latter the teachers, enslaved to a bad tradition, 
 have repressed capacity, whereas in the former an original 
 teacher has liberated it. 
 
HUMAN EQUALITY s^ 
 
 help the child to realize his infinite potentialities, is the 
 function of education. When will it be able to fulfil 
 that function ? Not until men have convinced them- 
 selves that the realization of potentialities is life, and that 
 the aim of the educator should therefore be to liberate 
 not to repress. 
 
 The infinitude of the inheritance w^hich the child 
 brings with him into the world is of many dimensions. 
 The religious phenomenon known as conversion (if I 
 may be allowed to repeat words which I have used else- 
 where)^ with the sudden transition which it sometimes 
 effects from the very worst in a man to the very best ; 
 the winning of V.C.'s and other rewards of courage and 
 devotion by criminals and other " detrimentals " on the 
 field of battle ; the up-surging, in seasons of supreme 
 crisis, of heroism and self-sacrifice from unsuspected 
 abysses in some seemingly commonplace soul ; the sudden 
 melting of a hardened heart in the sunshine of sympathy 
 and kindness ; the transforming influence of the passion 
 of personal love on a man's whole attitude towards life 
 — ^these and other phenomena of a kindred nature, which, 
 though necessarily rare (for only exceptional combina- 
 tions of circumstances can produce them), are not there- 
 fore to be regarded as abnormal, seem to show that the 
 unfathomed depths of man's nature are as illimitable as 
 its lateral range. " It is a wonder," wrote one of our 
 newspaper correspondents during the late War, " that 
 never palls, but is always new : the spirit which these 
 men of ours possess, from no matter what corner of the 
 Empire they may have come. One wonders where the 
 grumblers, the cowards, the mean people whom one 
 1 " The Secret of Happiness." 
 
52 THE COSMIC COMMONWEALTH 
 
 thought one met in ordinary life have gone. They are 
 not here. Or, if they are, they are uplifted and trans- 
 figured. They doubtless, many of them, could not 
 explain or express it, but some wind has blown upon 
 them ; the inspiration of a great cause has come into 
 them, some sense of comradeship and brotherhood 
 inspires them, something has made true soldiers and 
 gallant men of them all." The transfiguration of the 
 " plain average man " which is described in this passage 
 proves conclusively that there are immense reserves of 
 spiritual vitality in his soul, and that though for the 
 most part those forces lie dormant and undreamed of, 
 they can awake and energize whenever some great crisis 
 makes its mute appeal to the man's highest self. 
 
 I have said that the real basis of democracy is the 
 equality of all men in the sight of God. When we say 
 that men are equal in the sight of God, we mean that 
 there is an equalizing principle in them which dwarfs to 
 nothingness all the differences and distinctions to which 
 they cling so fondly. We can now see that this equal- 
 izing principle — ^the immortal soul, the infinite in man — 
 is no metaphysical abstraction, no shadowy mystery, no 
 elusive phantom, but an ever present reality, an inex- 
 haustible fountain of potentiality on which we are always 
 drawing, and in realizing which, as we take it up, little 
 by little, into our conscious being, we carry on all but the 
 purely physical processes of our life ; a fountain from 
 which spring unceasingly all the higher energies which 
 are characteristic of man as man ; a fountain of latent 
 capacity, latent versatility, latent power, latent character, 
 latent will. If men are equal in this sense of the word, 
 democracy, as a principle of government, is founded on 
 
HUMAN EQUALITY 53 
 
 a rock. For the right to share in the government of one's 
 country means the right to control the environment in 
 which a man lives, and into which his children are born : 
 and if every man, without regard to class or position or 
 property or any other source of inequality, had unlimited 
 reserves of potentiality in himself, and if the realization 
 of potentiality is effected through reaction to environ- 
 ment, the claim of the lowliest of men to regulate the 
 affairs of the community to which he happens to belong 
 is as strong as the claim of the mightiest. 
 
 Let us now go back to the democratic formula — 
 Liberty, Equality, Fraternity. The words have been 
 placed in their right order. Equality is the keyword. 
 Apart from equality there is no meaning in liberty, and 
 no hope of fraternity. If men are equal because there 
 are infinite possibilities in each of them, they have the 
 right to demand liberty for the realization of those 
 possibilities ; they have the right to demand release from 
 needless and injurious pressure. The pressure of govern- 
 ment on the individual citizen cannot be dispensed with 
 if social order is to be maintained ; and, with the advance 
 of science and the increasing centralization of social 
 life, it will become more stringent as time goes on. But 
 in the ideal democracy the pressure is less injurious than 
 under any other type of government, because it emanates 
 from all the members of the community ; because it is 
 submitted to by each as being the will of all ; because 
 each citizen, as a member of a self-governing community, 
 has imposed it on himself. Pressure from within is free- 
 dom. This is as true of the life of a community as of the 
 individual soul. Equality, again, is the fountain head of 
 fraternity, of comradeship. For the chief hindrance to 
 
54 THE COSMIC COMMONWEALTH 
 
 the spread of the spirit of comradeship is the existence of 
 those invidious and oppressive distinctions of class and 
 caste, in which selfishness has entrenched itself, and v^hich 
 seem all-important to our purblind eyes. But, by com- 
 parison with the infinite possibilities which are in all 
 men, distinctions of class and caste count for nothing ; 
 and in proportion as men realize their latent possibilities 
 and become aware of their own infinitude, the social 
 and economic barriers between man and man will lose 
 their sinister significance, and the sense of fraternity, of 
 universal comradeship, will begin to possess men's hearts. 
 Then, and not till then, will it become possible for the 
 government of all, by all and for all, to establish itself 
 on earth. 
 
 In conclusion : If liberty is the breath of democracy's 
 being, fraternity is its life-blood. But what of equality, 
 without which there can be neither liberty nor fraternity? 
 Is it not the soul of democracy, its other self ? 
 
CHAPTER IX 
 
 DIVINE IMMANENCE 
 
 THE problem of human equality may be looked at 
 from a somewhat different point of view. The dream 
 of the democrat is that, instead of being in bondage to 
 social and economic distinctions, men of all sorts and 
 conditions should meet on the platform of their common 
 humanity and there work together, first for the good of 
 their respective communities, and then for the good of 
 the whole human race. 
 
 What do we mean by the words " common humanity " ? 
 What is the common element in human nature ? If we 
 took the first hundred numbers and asked what was 
 their greatest common measure (or, as arithmeticians 
 now call it, their highest common factor) the answer 
 would be unity ; and unity is but one degree removed 
 from zero. If we took a hundred sand-heaps, varying 
 in size from a single grain to a sandhill in the desert, 
 and asked what they had in common, the answer would be 
 a single grain of sand. From these examples we see that 
 when we are dealing with abstract or inanimate things 
 the " greatest common measure " is a minimum. When 
 we pass on to things which live and grow, the problem 
 changes its character. If we took a hundred peaches, 
 ranging in size and condition from the minute green 
 
 55 
 
56 THE COSMIC COMMONWEALTH 
 
 knob which has only just set to the fully ripened fruit, 
 and asked what they had in common, the answer would 
 be twofold : actually, nothing or next to nothing ; 
 potentially, the perfection of peach-hood. In the case 
 of living things, what is common to all the members of a 
 given species is the type itself, the ideal perfection which 
 each member is striving to attain. This exists in each 
 member as a possibility, and as such it is their bond of 
 union, the basis of their fellowship in the community to 
 which they belong. It is the same with man. What is 
 common to all men is the ideal of manhood, the perfect 
 man. 
 
 We have seen that all men are equal because there are 
 infinite possibilities in each of them. We can now 
 identify the infinite in man with the ideal of manhood. 
 We can see that if we could lealize all our possibilities, we 
 should have fulfilled our destiny, we should have found 
 the ideal man. Ideals are always, and of inner necessity^ 
 unattainable. Even the ideal peach is still a dream. 
 And what of the ideal man ? Is he not a dream beyond 
 all dreams, beyond all possibilities of dreaming ? Yet 
 he is in each of us as a dream to be realized — ^the paradox 
 is unavoidable ; and because he is in each of us we are 
 all equal in the sight of God. 
 
 For in truth that indwelling ideal, at once nearer to 
 us than breathing and further from us than the farthest 
 star — ^that ever-to-be-realized yet ever unrealizable pei- 
 fection, which weighs and measures and judges all our 
 actualities of development and achievements, — is God. 
 If it is not God, what is it ? And where is God to be 
 found ? The conception of a God who is above and 
 beyond Nature has been tried and found wanting. Its 
 
DIVINE IMMANENCE 57 
 
 practical failure is its final disproof. And if God is not 
 above and beyond Nature, where is he but at the heart 
 of Nature ? And is not the heart of Nature, for us 
 men, the heart of human nature, the heart of man ? 
 
 The conception of a God who is above and beyond 
 Nature has, I say, failed in practice. Does it not also 
 fail as a theory whenever we come to close quarters with 
 it and try to determine what it really means ? The idea 
 of a supernatural revelation bases itself on the assump- 
 tion that it is possible for absolute reality to unveil itself 
 to human eyes. This is an obvious delusion. In enter- 
 ing into relation with man, absolute reality at once 
 ceases to be absolute. What the recipient of the revela- 
 tion sees is not God as he is in himself, but just so much 
 of God as he, being what he is, is able to apprehend. 
 If a supernatural revelation were possible, the words in 
 which the divine message was formulated — ^the text 
 of the sacred scripture, the clauses of the authentic 
 creed — ^would be absolutely valid, intrinsically true. 
 But a message from God is no message if it is not charged 
 with spiritual truth. And spiritual truth appeals to the 
 emotional, imaginative side of a man and therefore has 
 different meanings for different minds and says different 
 things to different hearts. The prophet who took upon 
 himself to say, " The word of the Lord came to me," 
 or " Thus saith the Lord," had no doubt a clearer and 
 deeper insight into reality than ordinary men ; and so 
 far as he had such insight he was the recipient, if we choose 
 to put it so, of a divine revelation. But the revelation 
 came to him from within his own being, not from 
 without the confines of Nature. His thoughts, his 
 visions, his words surged up from the mysterious depths 
 
58 THE COSMIC COMMONWEALTH 
 
 of his buried life. If they came from God — ^and the 
 response that they won guarantees their divine origin — 
 they came from no supernatural deity, but from the 
 God who is at the heart of man. At the heart of man, 
 and therefore at the heart of Nature, at the heart of the 
 Universe. 
 
 This is the immanent or indwelling God. Is he all 
 that there is of God ? I do not say so. No man can see 
 God as he is in himself. Yet some men see far more of 
 God than others ; and there are men who, from the 
 spiritual heights to which they have climbed, see so 
 much that the desire to see more and still more merges 
 itself at last in the dream of seeing all. So many and so 
 great are the variations, within the limits of human 
 experience, in man's vision of reality, ranging as they do 
 from almost total blindness to the highest level of spiritual 
 clairvoyance, that they suggest to us that there may be 
 such a thing as ideal vision — ^the counterpart of ideal 
 being — and that somehow, somewhere, in some timeless 
 moment, it may be possible to see God as he really is. 
 Possible — ^yes, but for God alone. The Universe, the 
 All of Being, seen as it really is, seen by its own all-seeing 
 eye, seen as God sees it, is very God of very God, divine 
 in the ultimate sense of the most ultimate of all words. 
 
 This is the transcendent God. Let us leave him in 
 his transcendence, in his Holy of Holies. The thought 
 of him will always haunt us ; but we must forbear to 
 hold intercourse with it or we shall run the risk of 
 profaning the most sacred of all mysteries. Transcendent 
 though he be, he is no more beyond Nature than he is in 
 Nature. His Holy of Holies is everywhere. It is in the 
 world without us. It is in our hearts. But wherever 
 
DIVINE IMMANENCE 59 
 
 it may be, it is still the Holy of Holies, and we may 
 never enter it. The glory of the transcendent God is 
 for himself alone. If we would see even the reflection 
 of it, we must strive with a lifelong striving to enter 
 into oneness with the source of it, we must strive to 
 become divine. In other words, we must be true, at 
 all costs, to the light that lighteth all men ; for it is 
 through the immanent God that the transcendent God 
 reveals himself to man. 
 
 In Christian belief the immanent God is known as the 
 Holy Spirit. Unfortunately the doctrine of the Holy 
 Spirit has fallen into the hands of theologians, who have 
 dealt with it according to their. wont. They have de- 
 spiritualized and de-vitalized what is really a poetical 
 idea — ^true with the deep truth of the soul's subconscious 
 poetry — and transformed it into a quasi-scientific con- 
 ception. They have presented the Holy Spirit to 
 conscious thought as the Third Person of the Blessed 
 Trinity, and have taken great pains to set forth in a 
 series of propositions his precise relations to the other 
 Persons — ^the Father and the Son.^ And so the faithful, 
 
 1 Official Christianity has always worshipped or tried to 
 worship the transcendent God. It has indeed paid formal 
 homage (as in the doctrine of the Holy Spirit) to the immanent 
 God, but it has not really believed in him. If it had, it would 
 have understood that when Christ said " I and my Father are 
 one," he was speaking for the whole human race. It has left 
 the cult of the immanent God to the mystics, whom it has 
 always regarded with suspicion and mistrust, and whom at 
 times it has denounced and persecuted. The story of Bossuet's 
 persecution of Madame Guyon and Fenelon is familiar to the 
 student of French history. Yet the spirit of Madame Guyon's 
 teaching is summed up in the saying, "It is necessary to love 
 
6o THE COSMIC COMMONWEALTH 
 
 without troubling themselves about those metaphysical 
 details, have thought of the Holy Spirit as a ghostly 
 person, flitting about (in the guise o£ a dove) from man 
 to man, entering into the hearts that are worthy to 
 receive him, withdrawing himself from the wicked and 
 the worldly, directing the affairs of the Church in the 
 absence of its ascended Lord, and performing sundry 
 miracles such as changing the bread and wine of the 
 Lord's Supper into the body and blood of Christ. And 
 all the while the Holy Spirit has been at the heart of 
 the Universe, at the heart of Nature, at the heart of 
 Man. 
 
 For the immanent God is the life of all life and the 
 soul of every soul. He who believes that life is the 
 highest form of energy and that soul-life is the highest 
 form of life, will go on to believe — borne along, as it 
 were, by the impetus of his faith — ^that there is a higher 
 reality which is to soul-life what soul-life is to life, and 
 what life is to energy. And as he means by God supreme 
 reality, he will call that well-spring of his being — and 
 of all being — Divine. And if you question him further 
 as to his faith, he will tell you that the lines of his desire, 
 his hope, his aspiration, his adoration, his life, all con- 
 verge on that central altar, on the One which is the 
 fountain-head of all unity, on the Infinite which is the 
 fountain-head of all infinitude, on the Spirit which is 
 the fountain-head of all spirituality, on the Life which is 
 the fountain-head of soul-life, of life, of energy. 
 
 God for himself alone, inspired neither by hope of eternal 
 happiness nor by dread of eternal pain." Did Bossuet ever say 
 anything as true as this ? 
 
CHAPTER X 
 
 THE LIVING WHOLE 
 
 SUPERNATURALISM is a compromise between the 
 idealism of man's heart and the materialism of his 
 conscious thought. If supernaturalism is rejected we 
 must make our choice between materialism and idealism 
 as rival philosophies and therefore as rival schemes of 
 life. 
 
 The basic assumption of materialism is that what is 
 ultimate in analysis is supremely real. The basic assump- 
 tion of idealism is that what is ultimate in synthesis is 
 supremely real. What is ultimate in analysis is an (at 
 present) unknown infinitesimal.^ What is ultimate in 
 synthesis is the totality of things conceived of as an 
 organic whole. 
 
 To which of these, opposites arc we to ascribe reality ? 
 I do not propose to discuss this question. In the first 
 place, the controversy, as a controversy, is necessarily 
 futile, for the plain reason that the ultimate appeal in 
 it is not to logic but to temperamental or quasi-tempera- 
 mental bias. I have indeed, in the course of communing 
 with myself, tried to think out the problem, but I know 
 
 ^ Or so it seems. But too far east is west ; and it is possible 
 that the path of analysis leads to a different goal from this. 
 This, however, is the goal of materialistic thought. 
 
 6i 
 
62 THE COSMIC COMMONWEALTH 
 
 now that long ago temperamental bias decided the issue 
 of my thinking. In the second place, to take part in the 
 controversy would be beside my present purpose. For 
 my object in writing this book is to plead for a revision 
 of our conception of God. But materialism, so far as it 
 is self-conscious and sincere, rejects the idea of God. 
 Could it do otherwise ? Materialism makes for atomism 
 in thought, and therefore in life as far as it comes under 
 the control of thought ; and atomism is the negation of 
 religion. For the mainspring of religion is the sense of 
 obligation towards what is regarded as ultimately real ; 
 and to deify an unknown infinitesimal, or to feel any 
 sense of obligation towards it, is beyond man's power. 
 Besides, as a matter of experience, the thoroughgoing 
 materialist is always either an avowed atheist or one who 
 conceals his atheism behind the conveniently vague name 
 of agnosticism. He finds, or tries to find, the motives 
 and sanctions and principles of conduct in his relations 
 to his fellow- men ; but he has no commerce with the 
 idea of God. As I have defined his position for him, I 
 cannot do less than define my own. I have taken the 
 validity of the idea of God for granted ; and as the basic 
 assumption of idealism is one of the constituent elements 
 of that idea, I have obviously committed myself to the 
 idealistic view of things. 
 
 In doing this I have but lifted into the light of con- 
 sciousness the subconscious faith of the average man. 
 If I were disposed to argue on behalf of my creed I would 
 appeal to this fact as an unanswerable argument. The 
 materialism of the average man is on the surface only. 
 In his subconscious depths he is an incurable idealist. 
 The supernaturalism which has so long dominated his 
 
THE LIVING WHOLE 63 
 
 life, is, as we have seen, his attempt to set forth idealistic 
 prepossessions and longings in a materialistic notation. 
 As supernaturalism is being discredited by the logic of 
 experience, he must now make his choice between the 
 materialism of his conscious thought and the idealism 
 of his heart, of his subconscious vision. To formulate 
 this choice, to present it to consciousness, is to solve the 
 corresponding problem. When man realizes that he has 
 to choose between materialism and idealism as philo- 
 sophies of life, he will surely choose the latter. Men 
 believe what they do believe, not what they think they 
 believe, still less what they say they believe. The time 
 has come for man to do for himself what I have been 
 trying to do for him. He must become aware of what 
 he does believe. He must lift the idealism of his heart 
 into the light of consciousness and adopt it as his creed. 
 
 Let us return to the immanent God. In the doctiine 
 of divine immanence the dynamic view of the Universe 
 triumphs over the static. The transference of creative 
 activity from Nature to a supernatural Deity had reduced 
 Nature to the level of a state (as opposed to a process). 
 With the recall of God from his exile in the supernatural 
 world. Nature becomes a perennial fountain of creative 
 activity — ^the fountain-head being that innermost reality 
 which we may now call God, — and the being of Nature 
 becomes a life. And because the being of Nature is a 
 life, the world in which we find ourselves, the Universe 
 as we call it, is indeed a universe, — unified by the life 
 which is in it, — an all-embracing organism, a living whole. 
 
 But is the Universe a living whole ? Who can answer 
 this question ? The unity of the Universe is as unde- 
 monstrable as is the infinitude of the soul of man. But if. 
 
64 THE COSMIC COMMONWEALTH 
 
 while rejecting the idea of the supernatural, we retain 
 the idea of the One Supreme God, we commit ourselves 
 to the assumption that the Universe is a living whole. 
 For God, as the fountain-head of life and energy, must 
 needs be the fountain-head of all life and all energy. If 
 he were not, he would be neither One nor Supreme, for 
 he would be exposed to the livalry of other Gods. When 
 proof (in the strict sense of the word, the proof which 
 warrants one in saying " This is so ") is, in the nature 
 of things, impossible, we must be content to approach 
 reality through the medium of our own ideas. But the 
 obligation which our own ideas lay upon us must be 
 accepted. To evade it is to stultify the whole process 
 of our thought. 
 
 From the idea of universal life we pass on to that of 
 universal growth. Wherever there is life there is growth, 
 or the opposite of growth — decay ; and decay, which is 
 the undoing of growth, ends in death. When the 
 organism is finite, its life has an upward curve which we 
 call growth, a turning-point which we call maturity, and 
 a downward curve which we call decay. But if the organ- 
 ism is infinite, its growth must be eternal. The turning- 
 point is never reached. The upward curve is — or at 
 least may be and should be — for ever. 
 
 We have hitherto thought of the Universe as the fin- 
 ished product of a creative will. We must now think of it 
 as the apocalypse of a self-evolving life. We must think 
 of it as being in process of development, as growing to- 
 wards an unattainable maturity. But growth is the 
 realization, or attempted realization, of an ideal. The 
 type, the ideal, is in the seed ; and its effort to realize 
 itself is the efficient principle of the growth and there- 
 
THE LIVING WHOLE 65 
 
 fore of the life of the organism. In the case of plants 
 and animals the pursuit of the ideal, as an ideal, as 
 that which is infinite and unattainable, as the archetype 
 rather than the realizable type, is for the species, not for 
 the individual. The individual arrives at maturity, 
 vv^hich is a partial realization of the ideal, and then decays 
 and dies. The species, if it is not trampled dov^n in the 
 general struggle for existence or starved and stunted by 
 its effort to adapt itself to unfavourable conditions, con- 
 tinues to evolve its latent potentialities, and to move to- 
 wards its archetypal goal.^ The pursuit of the ideal by 
 the species is spoken of as evolution ; the pursuit of it by 
 the individual, as growth. In the case of the Universe, 
 which is presumably infinite and all-embracing, evolu- 
 tion and growth are one. The self-realization of the ideal 
 is an eternal process. There is no turning point, no 
 maturity, no decay. 
 
 So at least it seems to us who are in the midst of the 
 process. For us the ideal is indeed an ideal — ^unattain- 
 able, unapproachable, unimaginable — and yet an ever- 
 present reality, the true life of the whole and theiefore 
 of each one of us, intimately our own, nearer indeed to 
 the heart of a man than is his own self-conscious self. 
 And our name for the ideal is God. 
 
 If these things are so, if the equalizing element in 
 human nature, which is the real basis of communal life, 
 
 ^ When man takes a species in hand and aids its development 
 with judicious breeding and culture, the self-realization of its 
 archetypal ideal makes rapid progress. But the movement, 
 though it may go on for ever, has limits which it may never 
 overpass. It is no more an adventure into the infinite than is 
 the arithmetical series i+J+J+J, which may struggle on. for 
 ever but will never quite attain to 2. 
 
66 THE COSMIC COMMONWEALTH 
 
 is the presence in each of us of the ideal man ; and if 
 the ideal man is the individualization of the immanent 
 God, — ^then it may be possible for the ideal community 
 to evolve itself on earth, but only because — and so far 
 as — it will have at the heart of it, as its tSea or principle 
 of development, the ideal of all communities, the 
 Kingdom of God. 
 
CHAPTER XI 
 
 THE KINGDOM OF GOD 
 
 GOD, the self-realizing ideal of the Universe, works in 
 and through each of us for purposes of his own. It is 
 open to us to make those purposes our own. Indeed it is 
 our destiny to do so. But it is also open to us, if not to 
 defeat that destiny, at least to thwart and retard it. 
 
 When we say that the Universe is in process of develop- 
 ment v/e imply that the work of creation is still going 
 on, and that — since " in no respect to grow is to cease 
 to live " — it will go on for ever. We, as conscious beings, 
 are taking part in it. How shall we best play our parts ? 
 And, to begin with, how are we to think of the Universe ? 
 We are assuming that it is a living whole. To what 
 further conception does this assumption open the way ? 
 
 There are, I believe, men of science who have per- 
 suaded themselves that this little planet of ours is the 
 only world which supports life. There is nothing to be 
 said in defence of this theory except that the precise 
 physical conditions under which life evolves itself in 
 this world are probably not repeated elsewhere. To 
 assume that life cannot evolve itself under any other 
 physical conditions is to carry geocentricity too far. In 
 the Kingdom of God there are surely many mansions, 
 as many perhaps as the sands of the sea. 
 
 67 
 
68 THE COSMIC COMMONWEALTH 
 
 Geocentricity is a particular species of egoism. So is 
 that complacent acceptance of our own positive experi- 
 ences as authoritative and final, which is responsible for 
 the assumption that the physical plane of being is the 
 only plane, and the kindred assumption that man's life 
 in the flesh is his only life. These are assumptions pure 
 and simple. There is nothing that has been or can be 
 said in support of them which is not either mere asser- 
 tion or a flagrant begging of the question. Their claim 
 to control our whole outlook on life, to clip the wings 
 of imagination, to limit the range of our speculative 
 enterprises, may therefore be ignored. 
 
 There is, however, no reason why we should not argue 
 from the actualities of our life on earth to the possi- 
 bilities of the cosmic life. Or rather there is every reason 
 why we should. For every adventure into the unknown 
 a base of operations is needed. If we are to investigate, 
 speculatively and imaginatively, the constitution of the 
 Universe, we must make this planet of ours and our 
 experiences on it our base for the most audacious of all 
 enterprises. This is the right use to make of experience. 
 The wrong use is to fall back upon it, as a defeated 
 general falls back upon his fortified base, and shut our- 
 selves up in it and refuse to look beyond its walls. 
 
 The planet on which we live pulsates with life. This 
 is the first thing that we can say about it. And where it 
 does not pulsate with life, it is built up of energy. The 
 very primordia rerum are dynamic, not static. The 
 " bricks of the Universe," which we once believed our- 
 selves to have discovered, have long since melted away. 
 What seems to us to be dead inert matter is really a 
 storehouse of latent energy. Explosive forces are locked 
 
THE KINGDOM OF GOD 69 
 
 up in it which, like the explosives that are used in war, 
 can either fertilize or desolate the world, — ^forces of such 
 tremendous potentiality that the release of them (if that 
 were possible), according to the way in which it was 
 done and the end that was in view, would either trans- 
 form earth into a garden of Eden or lay it in ruinous 
 heaps. And physical energy is next of kin to physical 
 life, the boundary line between the two being in fact 
 undefinable. And physical life has soul-life at the heart 
 of it. May it not be, then, that the earth, our microcosm, 
 is a living organism, the body of a mighty soul ; and that 
 in this respect it is at once a symbol and a sample of the 
 macrocosm, which we have assumed to be the epiphany 
 of the indwelling spirit of God ? If we must leave this 
 question unanswered, we may at least conjecture that the 
 greater, like the lesser, cosmos is built up of physical 
 energy and pulsates with life. 
 
 Let us now turn to the actualities of life on earth. I 
 am a conscious being and am addressing myself to con- 
 scious beings. It is with conscious life, then, that I am 
 mainly concerned. I find that, with the dawn of con- 
 sciousness, life tends to become communal. The higher 
 organisms come together and form communities, for 
 purposes of mutual help and protection, in such wise 
 that the communal or herd life becomes an integral part 
 of the life of each member of the community. This is 
 true of many beasts and birds — not to speak of bees and 
 ants — the chief exceptions being the carnivora and 
 raptores, the destroyers of life on their own plane, which 
 pair and rear families but otherwise lead solitary lives. ^ 
 
 ^ There are, of course, exceptions to this sub-rule. For 
 example, wolves and jackals hunt in packs. 
 
70 THE COSMIC COMMONWEALTH 
 
 And it is pre-eminently true of man. Here, where we 
 rise to high levels of consciousness, the social instinct is 
 irresistibly strong. And the higher the level of con- 
 sciousness, the more do communities multiply, and the 
 more highly organized do they become, the growing 
 complexity of a community manifesting itself, of inner 
 necessity, in the outgrowth of sub-communities of 
 various grades and sizes, just as in a highly developed 
 organism the nervous system has many centres and sub- 
 centres, the more vital of which are under the control, 
 direct or indirect, of the ruling centre, the brain. In 
 civilized countries each citizen belongs to many com- 
 munities, ranging in size from his own family to his own 
 country, besides belonging sub-consciously to two com- 
 munities which are larger than the largest of these, — the 
 Human Commonwealth and the Cosmic Commonwealth, 
 the Kingdom of Man and the Kingdom of God. 
 
 Then again each individual organism is also a com- 
 munity, an organized society of living beings, a common- 
 wealth. My body, for example, is a commonwealth of 
 living cells. And so is every physical organism. Life is 
 built up of life. What is organized, when an organism 
 is evolved, is living matter, not dead. 
 
 With these facts before us, may we not think of the 
 Universe, the all-embracing organism, as a social com- 
 munity, built up no doubt of many sub-communities, 
 each of which is a world in itself, yet being in some sort 
 the fatherland of us dwellers on earth, in that as conscious 
 beings we are numbered among its citizens and can play 
 our parts accordingly, if we will but rise to the level of 
 our high calling and take up the burden of our infinite 
 responsibility ? 
 
THE KINGDOM OF GOD 71 
 
 Of all the communities to which a man consciously 
 belongs, the one which means most to him and with 
 which his life is most intimately connected is his country. 
 For to his country, if it is well governed, he owes most of 
 the things that make life worth living, — security from 
 hostile action, legal protection, social order, oppor- 
 tunities for self-development, a tradition which he under- 
 stands and loves. What is the relation between his 
 country and himself ? In the ideal community the 
 people are the State. The soul of the people is the real 
 ruling power. It symbolizes itself in King or President ; 
 but it works through the people as a whole, incarnating 
 itself, as it were, in each member of the community, 
 constraining him to identify himself with its aims and 
 plans, its successes and failures, its joys and sorrows, its 
 hopes and fears, — ^to make all these his own, to glow with 
 pride when it does well, to blush with shame when it 
 does ill ; inspiring him to dedicate himself to its service, 
 to live for it, — if need be, to die for it. When the life of 
 the individual is dominated by the sense of oneness 
 with the life of the community, when each citizen feels 
 that he owes all, and that he cannot do less than give alP, 
 to his country, then we have the ideal commonwealth, 
 and the problem which sums up in itself all other social 
 and political problems has been solved. 
 
 May we not conjecture that the Universe is organized 
 in some such fashion as this ; or rather that it is the 
 
 ^ Subject, of course, to the prior claims of the Kingdom of 
 Man and the Kingdom of God. He loves his country best who 
 regards his fellow-citizens as his fellow-men ; and he loves his 
 fellow-men best who regards them as his brethren, as the children 
 of his all-loving Father. 
 
72 THE COSMIC COMMONWEALTH 
 
 archetypal commonwealth, of which the ideal State, 
 when — if ever — it is realized on earth, will prove to be 
 a copy ? May we not conjecture that the soul of it, 
 incarnating itself in each member of the community 
 from the highest to the lowest, is its ruler, in the true 
 sense of the word, — no irresponsible autocrat directing 
 its affairs from without, but a fountain of love and wisdom 
 and power controlling its corporate life and guiding its 
 evolution from within ? And may we not identify this 
 soul of the Universe, — ^this " presiding genius of the 
 Cosmic Commonwealth," this " symbol of its organic 
 unity," this " source and goal of all its vital energies," 
 this " central plexus of all its efferent and afferent nerves," ^ 
 — ^with the All Father, with the Immanent God ? 
 
 1 These are extracts from a passage in " The Secret of the 
 Cross," in which I first outlined the idea of the Cosmic 
 Commonwealth. 
 
CHAPTER XII 
 
 EACH FOR ALL 
 
 HOW can the citizen of the Cosmic Commonwealth 
 best serve the community ? How did the wor- 
 shipper of the autocrat of the Universe bear him- 
 self towards the king of kings .and his all-embracing 
 kingdom ? For the latter he cared little or nothing. 
 The affairs of the Universe were no concern of his. He 
 may have been taught to love his fellowmen. But he 
 was also taught that all who were not of his faith were 
 outside the pale of salvation — the enemies of God, and 
 therefore (if he and his teachers were true to the logic 
 of intolerance) his own hereditary enemies. Even in his 
 own religious community he did not learn the lesson of 
 comradeship, of disinterested devotion to the common 
 weal. To his Church he owed (as he believed) the means 
 of grace and salvation. What did he give it in return ? 
 It was only through membership of it ajad through 
 obedience to its directions that he could hope to b^ saved. 
 Therefore he believed whatever it told him to believe, 
 and did (if the world, the flesh, and the devil were not 
 too strong for him) whatever it told him to do. Further 
 than this his loyalty did not go. The Church was 
 divinely commissioned and was therefore in safe hands. 
 Its salvation was fully provided for. He could thus 
 
 73 
 
74 THE COSMIC COMMONWEALTH 
 
 concentrate all his energies on providing for his own. 
 To secure for himself — ^whatever might happen to others 
 — ^the boon of salvation, to be plucked as a brand from the 
 burning, was his first and last concern. 
 
 It was as a courtier, then, with all the vices of the 
 courtier, not as a patriot, that he approached the throne 
 of God. What form did his service take ? God had 
 given him rules for the conduct of his life. Whether 
 these were elaborated into a Code or interpreted to him 
 by his Church, mattered little. What did matter was 
 that they should be obeyed — obeyed because he had 
 been commanded to obey them, and because obedience 
 would be rewarded and disobedience punished ever- 
 lastingly, not because they appealed to his conscience and 
 his heart. He was to honour his father and his mother, not 
 because he loved them, but because he was commanded 
 to honour them, and because he would be rewarded for 
 doing so. He was to abstain from adultery, not out of 
 regard for his neighbour and his neighbour's wife, but 
 out of regard for the Seventh Commandment and for 
 the penalty attached to the breach of it. And so on. 
 Under this scheme of life obedience to the letter of 
 God's law took the place of devotion to the spirit ; 
 regard for material considerations, of devotion to a spiritual 
 ideal ; regard for one's own individual salvation, of devo- 
 tion to the common weal. The truth is that patriotism, 
 the disinterested surrender of self to the community, 
 presupposes freedom. The worshipper of the Divine 
 Autocrat was a courtier because he was also — and 
 primarily — a slave. 
 
 In the Cosmic Commonwealth there is no place for 
 the courtier. The first and last lesson which the citizen 
 
EACH FOR ALL 75 
 
 has to learn is that of unselfish devotion ; and the ulti- 
 mate object of his devotion is the Commonwealth itself, 
 the Infinite Whole. He will indeed have to go through 
 a long apprenticeship before he will be able to prove his 
 loyalty to the widest of all communities. Yet in each 
 stage in his apprenticeship that seemingly impossible 
 loyalty will, though he may not know it, sustain and guide 
 him. 
 
 He will begin by doing his duty to his neighbour, his 
 fellow-citizen, the fellow-member of this or that com- 
 munity. He will do his duty to him, not because he has 
 been commanded to do so, not because the path of his 
 duty has been accurately prescribed for him, not because 
 he hopes to be rewarded for walking in it or fears to be 
 punished for straying from it, but because the sentiment 
 of comradeship, of fellowship, of loyalty to the com- 
 munity as a whole and therefore to each of its members, is 
 both a constraining force and a guiding light. 
 
 In doing his duty to his neighbour he will be learning 
 to surrender self. Self is his great enemy. Selfishness, the 
 vice which is behind all other vices, is essentially anti- 
 social. It tends to isolate a man from his kind. But what 
 do we mean by self ? As the being of man admits of 
 infinite development, we cannot say what self really is. 
 The true, the ideal self has yet to declare itself. The self 
 which makes us selfish is the actual self claiming to be 
 ideal and therefore seeking to arrest the growth of the 
 soul. To subdue that self and keep on subduing it is at 
 once to serve the community and to save one's own 
 soul alive. 
 
 Our citizen has broken, for good and all, with legalism, 
 the morality of mechanical obedience, the morality of 
 
'^e THE COSMIC COMMONWEALTH 
 
 slaves. But he is no antinomian. He will cheerfully 
 yield to the pressure of tradition, code, and custom, 
 except so far as, in doing so, he is disloyal to a higher law. 
 Nor is he a mere sentimentalist in morals, a creature of 
 mood and whim and impulse. He realizes, for example, 
 that to give alms to the first beggar you meet is an anti- 
 social act. His neighbour is his comrade because, for one 
 thing, he is a member of the same community ; and his 
 attitude towards his neighbour will be controlled, if not 
 determined, by regard for the well-being of the com- 
 munity as a whole. 
 
 Duty to one's neighbour, as a fellow-member of a 
 community, and duty to the community as such may 
 almost be said to coincide. The same may be said of 
 the spirit of comradeship and the spirit of loyalty to the 
 common weal. The citizen of the Cosmic Common 
 wealth who has learnt the lesson of communal devotion 
 will have gone far along the path to his ideal goal. The 
 well-being of this or that community is not, however, 
 an end in itself. If it were, the loyalty of a robber to 
 his gang would be worthy of all praise. Communal 
 devotion may be selfish to the core. A man should be 
 ready to live and die for his country. But he should also 
 be ready, on occasion, to absolve himself from obedience 
 to its orders, and in no case should he allow regard for 
 its interests to determine his outlook on life and his 
 standard of right and wrong. It is the assumption that 
 the claim of the State on the devotion of the citizen is 
 absolute and final which has demoralized Germany and 
 brought about her downfall. A man must serve his 
 neighbour, not only because he is his fellow-citizen, but 
 also because he is his fellow-man ; and he must serve his 
 
EACH FOR ALL ^'] 
 
 country, not only because it is his country, but also 
 because to serve it is the best way, as far as he can see, 
 in which he can serve his kind. 
 
 Does his duty end with service to his kind ? Not if he 
 believes in the Universal God. The assumption that the 
 life on earth is the only life and that the physical plane 
 is the only sphere of man's activity is, as we have seen, 
 assumption and nothing more. The positive evidence 
 for there being other lives and other spheres of life is 
 accumulating fast. But there is other evidence ; and 
 for some of us this other evidence, intangible and im- 
 ponderable though it be, will more than suffice. The 
 call of the Infinite is ever ringing through the soul. The 
 stars of midnight have their message for it. " The 
 Eternities and Immensities " claim it as their own. Man 
 feels, in his heart of hearts, that he has laid hold upon 
 the pillars of the Universe and that nothing can destroy 
 him but the downfall of the whole cosmic temple, — in 
 other words, that if he is unreal there is no such thing as 
 reality. And when, as sometimes happens, the spirit of 
 :. man grows younger as his body grows older, the sense 
 of his own indestructibility overwhelms him, and he 
 laughs the sophistries of sense-bound reason to scorn. 
 
 To look beyond death is to widen indefinitely the sphere 
 of civic duty. If a man is to serve his neighbour, not 
 only because he is his fellow-citizen but also because he 
 is his fellow-man, he must go on to serve him, not only 
 because he is his fellow-man, but also because he is his 
 brother, in a deeper and more intimate sense of the word, 
 because both are sons of the All-Father, the Universal 
 God, and therefore members, through that mystic 
 kinship, of the One all-embracing State. 
 
78 THE COSMIC COMMONWEALTH 
 
 How is a man to prove his loyalty to the Cosmic 
 Commonwealth ? He has some idea as to how he can 
 best serve his neighbour, his country, and his kind. But 
 he has no idea how he can best serve the Universe. He 
 cannot foresee what part will be allotted to him when he 
 has played his part on earth. Nor can he see how the 
 part that he is playing on earth contributes to the wel- 
 fare of the Infinite Whole. There is, however, one 
 thing which he can do while he is waiting and wondering. 
 He can try to Jit himself for service. How ? By develop- 
 ing himself to the uttermost. By transforming self in 
 every possible direction. Above all, by learning, and never 
 ceasing to learn, the great lesson of unselfish devotion. 
 By learning, everywhere and at all times, to live for the 
 universal rather than for the individual self. The supreme 
 choice, the choice between the Universe and self, has 
 been with him from the very beginning, has been present, 
 unknown to him, in every decision that he has ever made. 
 Consciously to surrender self to the Universe will be the 
 last stage in his spiritual development ; and it is a stage 
 which will last for ever. Unconsciously, he has been 
 learning to make that great surrender from the first day 
 on which he subdued self-will. 
 
 When he has made his choice between the Universe 
 and self, when he has responded to the call of the Infinite 
 and the Ideal, the greatest of all adventures will await 
 him. Where shall he look for guidance in that adventure ? 
 To the Inward Light. To the Holy Spirit. To the 
 Immanent God. The soul of the Universe, the soul of 
 the Cosmic Commonwealth, will teach him how best to 
 fit himself for its service. 
 
CHAPTER XIII 
 
 ALL FOR EACH 
 
 THE motto of the ideal commonwealth is "each for 
 all and all for each." In the Cosmic Common- 
 wealth the citizen owes everything to the community, 
 and the good citizen does his best to pay his debt. What 
 is this debt which can never be paid in full ? What does 
 the largest of all communities do for each of its citizens ? 
 It does many things for him. But it does one thing which 
 includes all other things : it brings sanity, perfect health, 
 the health of growth, of everlasting youth, within his 
 reach. This is the best thing that it can do for him. 
 It is also — since perfect health qualifies for perfect 
 service — ^the best thing that it can do for itself. 
 
 What is the secret of sanity ? I have just identified 
 sanity with perfect health. This is the final meaning of 
 the word. Let us begin with its initial meaning. We 
 mean by sanity normal health.^ If we would know what 
 constitutes normality we must study departures from 
 the norm. The more flagrant the departure from the 
 norm the more deeply will it initiate us into the mysteries 
 of normality. In the case of the human psyche, when 
 departures from the norm are flagrant and persistent^ 
 
 ^ In the last resort the initial and the final meanings coincide' 
 See p. 86. 
 
 79 
 
8o THE COSMIC COMMONWEALTH 
 
 we arrive at last at insanity. What, then, is the secret of 
 insanity ? The question is one for psychology. The 
 latest word in psychology is psycho-analysis ; and as it 
 happens, it is to a systematic study of the phenomena 
 of insanity that psycho-analysis owes its origin and the 
 general course of its development. So let us turn to the 
 psycho-analyst for instruction and guidance. 
 
 Insanity takes many forms. One of the commonest 
 of these and, from the point of view of psychology, the 
 most significant, is what is known as " dissociation of 
 consciousness." We are told that *' a vast number of 
 abnormal phenomena ranging from hallucination and 
 delusion to . . . complicated phantasy production . . . 
 are to be regarded as examples of dissociation." ^ What 
 do we mean by dissociation of consciousness ? " We mean 
 that the mind has lost that homogeneity which is the 
 ideal of the normal personality and has become disin- 
 tegrated into more or less independent portions, each 
 pursuing its own course and development without refer- 
 ence to the welfare of the whole." And this disintegra- 
 tion invariably owes its existence to the presence of a 
 conflict. By a conflict is meant an internal conflict, a 
 civil war in the kingdom of the mind. The parties to 
 this internal conflict are, on the one hand the personality 
 as a whole, on the other hand what is known to psych- 
 ology as a complex. 
 
 What is a complex ? One authority defines it as " a 
 system of connected ideas with a strong emotional tone 
 and a tendency to produce action of a definite character." 
 
 1 All the passages quoted in this chapter, with one specified 
 exception, are taken from " The Psychology of Insanity," by 
 Dr. Bernard Hart. 
 
ALL FOR EACH 8i 
 
 Another authority tells us that " when a mass of ideas 
 and emotions collect round a nucleus in the mind a 
 system is formed which will react in a particular way to 
 incoming stimuli," and that " this system is called a 
 complex."^ 
 
 A complex is not a thing to be ashamed of. If we had 
 not, each of us, many complexes, we should be less than 
 human ; or rather, we should fall below the level of 
 organic life. A complex is nothing more nor less than a 
 sub- centre of the soul's life, analogous (within limits) to 
 a nerve-centre in the body, or to a centre of local govern- 
 ment in a well-organized state. A hobby, as psycho- 
 analysts remind us, is a particular variety of complex. 
 So is each of the many sub-selves which each of us is 
 aware of in himself — the domestic self, the social self, 
 the professional self, the commercial self, the artistic 
 self, the religious self, and so on. If a man is deeply 
 interested in a subject of study, a coriesponding complex 
 is formed in his mind. If he takes up a cause with energy 
 and enthusiasm, such as the emancipation of woman, 
 social reform, educational reform, the remedying of an 
 evil or an injustice, a mass of ideas and emotions will 
 collect round this centre of interest, and a complex will 
 be formed. Different men take up different hobbies, 
 different subjects of study, and different causes, and the 
 corresponding complexes are therefore not strictly 
 analogous to the nerve-centres of the body, which are 
 common to all men. This differentiation is due to the 
 fact that the constitution of the soul is far more com- 
 plicated and much farther removed from finality than 
 that of the body and that consciousness extends indef- 
 ^ " Dream Psychology," by Dr. Maurice NicoH. 
 
82 THE COSMIC COMMONWEALTH 
 
 initely the environment of the race, whereas circumstances 
 rigorously limit the environment of the individual, the 
 result being that no two individuals have exactly the same 
 environment or the same opportunities for the formation 
 of complexes. But however great may be the diversity 
 of complexes, however much they may vary from man 
 to man, the fact remains that they are sub-centres of the 
 soul's life. 
 
 How, then, does a complex cause insanity ? By drawing 
 to itself more than its share of the man's thoughts and 
 emotions and so impairing the inward harmony of his 
 soul. More especially is this the case when the complex 
 has a morbid origin, when it has no right to be a sub- 
 centre, as, for example, when a man broods over a wrong 
 which has been done to him or feels remorse for a crime 
 which he has committed. ^ The loss of inward harmony 
 need not amount to insanity. There are few men whose 
 inward harmony is even approximately perfect. Hyper- 
 trophy of a complex is a very common phenomenon. 
 A man may easily ride a harmless hobby to death. His 
 devotion to a worthy cause may amount to fanaticism. 
 He may overdo a good habit (such as economy) till it 
 becomes a bad habit (such as stinginess). He may be- 
 come a monomaniac, a man of one idea, of one absorbing 
 interest, of one cankering grievance. And yet he may 
 be far removed from the insanity which necessitates 
 
 ^ Complexes may perhaps be classified as essential^ desirable, 
 useful, harmless, and morbid. A morbid complex, if not duly 
 controlled, may easily become malignant. Bu' there is no 
 complex which will not, if hypertrophied beyond measure, 
 become first morbid and then malignant, and therefore a menace 
 to the sanity of the soul. 
 
ALL FOR EACH 83 
 
 confinement and restraint. He is, however, on the road 
 to that goal ; and if he does not keep himself in hand 
 he may possibly arrive at it. When hypertrophy of a 
 complex is carried so far that what ought to be (at most) 
 a mere sub-centre of a man's life becomes, whether 
 permanently or temporarily, the centre, or, in its attempt 
 to become the centre, disintegrates the man's personality, 
 then we have insanity, in the strict sense of the word. 
 In other words, when a complex becomes a centre of 
 rebellious and therefore disruptive tendency, when it 
 provokes a civil war which will lead to its dividing with 
 the ruling self the kingdom of the man's life, and may 
 even, in extreme cases, end in its- forcibly usurping the 
 throne, then its victim is said to be insane, and for his 
 own sake, as well as for the sake of his neighbours, he has 
 to be interned. 
 
 According to psycho-analysts, the conflict which pro- 
 duces insanity is, as a rule, one between " primitive 
 instinct "^ and " herd instinct." I doubt if the problem 
 of conflict is quite so simple as this. The soul is a complex 
 of many complexes ; and the civil war which sometimes 
 afflicts it may be expected to have many causes and take 
 many forms. It is not easy to say where primitive 
 instinct ends and herd instinct begins. And it is possible 
 to exaggerate the importance of the part that herd 
 instinct plays in man's life. We are told that " from it 
 (herd instinct) the tendencies generally ascribed to tradi- 
 tion and education derive most of their power." It 
 would, I think, be equally correct to say that from tradi- 
 
 ^ Dr. Freud, the founder of psycho-analysis, resolves all 
 primitive instinct into sex instinct ; but few of his followers go 
 so far as this. 
 
84 THE COSMIC COMMONWEALTH 
 
 / tion and education the tendencies sometimes ascribed to 
 herd instinct derive much of their power. In any case it 
 is well to remember that in our complicated modern 
 society each of us belongs to many herds. There is the 
 family herd, for example, the clan herd, the class herd, 
 the professional herd, the religious herd, the political 
 herd, the national herd, the human herd. And any one 
 of these, if its claims are unduly insistent, may give rise 
 to a complex which will upset the balance of one's life. 
 
 On the whole, then, it is safer to say, in general terms, 
 that the normal cause of insanity is a conflict between a 
 usurping, self-assertive sub-self and the self which ought 
 to rule. Even the enthusiasm of humanity, if the en- 
 thusiast brings too much self into it — if, for example, 
 he insists on reforming the world in his own particular 
 way — may become a rebellious and dissociative complex, 
 and may even in the last resort give rise to actual insanity. 
 So may devotion to God, if it is allowed to degenerate 
 into religious fanaticism or into undue concern for one's 
 own salvation. Selfishness, in the sense of absorption in a 
 narrow and ever-narrowing self, is of the essence of 
 insanity. The rebellious complex, if we may for the 
 moment personify it, thinks only of itself and subordinates 
 to its own imagined interests the well-being of the whole 
 personality. And this inward selfishness, this claim of the 
 subordinate part to dominate the whole of the man's 
 life, has its counterpart in outward selfishness, in callous 
 indifference to the claims and interests of others and to 
 the demands of social life. " The patients in an asylum 
 have lost the gregarious instincts of the normal man, 
 and the sanctions of traditional conduct have no longer 
 any significance for them. In the milder cases this shows 
 
ALL FOR EACH 85 
 
 itself as a loss of interest in the affairs of their fellows, a 
 tendency to be solitary and unsociable, an atrophy of 
 their affections for friends and relations, and an indiffer- 
 ence to the ordinary conventions of society. In the 
 advanced cases the change is much more marked, and 
 the mind is completely withdrawn from participation in 
 the life of the herd. The code of conduct imposed by 
 convention and tradition no longer regulates the patient's 
 behaviour, and he becomes slovenly, filthy, degraded and 
 shameless." 
 
 When the conflict between the rebellious complex or 
 sub-self and the self which ought to rule ends in actual 
 insanity, what has happened ? The ruling self has not 
 been strong enough to enforce its authority. This is 
 the answer which common-sense and psycho-analysis 
 unite in giving. Psycho-analysis sets forth the answer 
 in its own peculiar notation. In cases of insanity " homo- 
 geneity " (which is " the ideal of normal personality ") 
 " has disappeared because the mind contains elements 
 which are incompatible with each other, and dissociation 
 has arisen as a means of avoiding the storm and stress 
 which the warring of these mutually hostile elements 
 would otherwise inevitably produce." Is not this equiva- 
 lent to saying that the ruling self has so far yielded to the 
 pressure of the rebellious sub-self as to consent to divide 
 the kingdom with it, just as in history we sometimes read 
 of a monarch who ended a rebellion by allowing the rebel 
 leader either to share the central authority with him or 
 to become ruler of part of his realm. The monarch who 
 could do this was a weak ruler who had never been firmly 
 seated on the throne ; and the ruling self which allows a 
 rebellious sub-self to usurp its authority, either in part. 
 
86 THE COSMIC COMMONWEALTH 
 
 as in cases of dissociation, or, as sometimes happens, in 
 full, proves its incapacity by its failure to put down the 
 rebellion against its lawful rule. 
 
 The antidote to civil strife in a community is twofold 
 — ^to remove legitimate grievances and to strengthen the 
 central authority. Should it not be the same in the soul ? 
 Should not our aim be to relax the pressure of tradition 
 and convention on primitive instinct or on any other 
 natural instinct, so far as that pressure is injurious and 
 provocative, and at the same time to strengthen the 
 authority of the ruling self ? Psycho-analysts seem to be 
 more concerned with relaxing pressure than with strength- 
 ening authority. Some of them, indeed, go perilously 
 near to suggesting that the only way to prevent insanity 
 is to make concessions to primitive instinct. ^ Yet unless 
 the central authority is concurrently strengthened, the 
 policy of indulging primitive instinct by relaxing the 
 pressure to which traditions and codes have subjected it, 
 can lead to nothing but general demoralization. 
 
 The truth is that when we are dealing with problems 
 of insanity we are too ready to assume that what is not 
 actually or approximately insane is sane, and that if 
 dissociation of personality can be avoided, all is well. 
 I doubt if we shall ever really master the psychology of 
 insanity until we have materially widened the scope 
 of the idea of sanity ; until we have risen to the con- 
 ception of perfect or ideal, as distinguished from normal, 
 sanity ; or rather until we have realized that in the world 
 of life and growth the ideal is the norm. Between actual 
 insanity and perfect sanity, between disintegration of 
 
 1 See in particular " The Psychology of Insanity," by Dr. 
 Bernard Hart, pp. 171, 172. 
 
ALL FOR EACH 87 
 
 personality and perfect homogeneity or inward harmony, 
 there are many intervening stages which partake in vary- 
 ing degrees of disharmony, of want of sanity. If we 
 could find a remedy for all these shortcomings we should 
 have made the best possible provision against the out- 
 break of insanity, which is the natural goal of mental 
 and spiritual disharmony — a goal which the latter may 
 never reach, but towards which it necessarily tends. 
 The problem of securing sanity covers and far overlaps 
 the problem of preventing (and curing) insanity ; and 
 it is to the former problem that the psychologist should 
 give his closest attention and his deepest thought. 
 
 I have said that for the cure of the civil strife which 
 we call insanity two things are needed — ^thc redress of 
 grievances by the removal of injurious pressure, and the 
 strengthening of the central authority. The two 
 remedies are really one. To redress grievances is to 
 strengthen the central authority. What causes the 
 growth of a morbid complex is, as a rule, either illegiti- 
 mate pressure, or legitimate pressure carried too far. 
 In the latter case, which is the more common, the 
 source of the pressure is undue regard for tradition and 
 convention, the authority of which is accepted as full 
 and final instead of as partial and provisional. In other 
 words, the source of the pressure is the weakness of the 
 ruling self, which, led astray by the desire for finality, 
 leans exclusively on tradition and convention, instead of 
 trying to walk, in part at least, by its own inward light. 
 And the effect of the pressure which it exerts is to 
 increase its own weakness. For repression, when carried 
 too far, starves and stunts natural tendency, with the 
 result that if the pressure is evenly distributed, growth is 
 
88 THE COSMIC COMMONWEALTH 
 
 arrested, and if it is unevenly distributed, certain ten- 
 dencies only being selected for repression, growth be- 
 comes inharmonious and one-sided, and balance and 
 symmetry are lost. But whatever tends to arrest or 
 distort the growth of the soul must needs weaken the 
 central authority, for the ruling self is the whole per- 
 sonality, just as in a well-ordered commonwealth the 
 whole community, acting through a hierarchy of nerve 
 centres, is the State. 
 
 If, then, the relaxation of injurious pressure is to be 
 accompanied by the strengthening of the central au- 
 thority, our aim must be, not so much to cure this or that 
 morbid complex, as to secure the well-being of the whole 
 personality by fostering mental and spiritual growth. 
 It is when an organism is making vigorous growth, that 
 the inward harmony of its various vital parts is most 
 nearly perfect ; for then all the parts are functioning 
 ith one end in view, that of furthering the growth of 
 ihe whole organism ; and as they draw to themselves all 
 the rising sap of the organism's life, there is no oppor- 
 tunity for morbid sub-centres to establish themselves 
 at the expense of the health and harmony of the com- 
 munity. It is to the organism as a whole that the various 
 parts owe allegiance. But what is the organism ? The 
 process of growth alone can answer this question. What 
 the organism will be when its process of growth (if healthy 
 and unimpeded) is complete, that it really is. Therefore 
 the parts owe allegiance to the organism, not as it is at 
 the passing moment, but as it will be when it has reached 
 its maturity. In other words, they are sustained and 
 animated and kept in harmony with one another by de- 
 votion to a common ideal. 
 
ALL FOR EACH 89 
 
 It is the same with the human soul. But there is a 
 difference between the growth of the soul and the growth 
 of any physical organism. The organism does ariive at 
 maturity. It has its moment of consummation. But 
 the growth of the soul goes on, or should go on, for ever. 
 The potentialities of the soul are limitless, and the pro- 
 cess of realizing them is a veritable adventure into the 
 infinite. If we would attain to sanity, the sanity of 
 spiritual health, we must pursue that adventure to its 
 limitless limit. We must always, and at all costs, resist the 
 lure of finality. Devotion to an unattainable ideal 
 alone can keep us sane. If we forswear the service of the 
 ideal, and try to content ourselves with finite ends, the 
 worst type of dissociation, dissociation of the actual from 
 the ideal self, may be our doom. 
 
 Let us take the case of a man who is neither a criminal 
 nor a lunatic, but who leads a sordid, selfish, self-in- 
 dulgent, immoral life — an umfaithf ul husband, an unkind 
 father, a churlish neighbour, a grasping and exacting 
 creditor, a shifty and evasive debtor, unsympathetic, 
 uncharitable, recognizing no obligation which is not 
 legally defined, taking no interest whatever in the deeper 
 issues of life. Such a man is sane enough, as the lunacy 
 laws measure sanity. But he is not sane, in the deeper 
 sense of the word. He has not attained to spiritual 
 health. What is wrong with him ? No civil strife mars 
 the harmony of his mean, narrow, ill-spent life. His 
 being, such as it is, is all of a piece. But his very harmony 
 is disharmony. His very sanity is insanity. He has no 
 more attained to wholeness than has a stunted, diseased, 
 misshapen tree. It is true that there is no rebellious, 
 dissociative complex to upset his inward balance. Yet 
 
go THE COSMIC COMMONWEALTH 
 
 that balance has been completely and, as it seems, irre- 
 trievably upset. For his whole personality, or what 
 passes as such, has degenerated into a rebellious, dissocia- 
 tive complex ; and what it is in rebellion against, what 
 it is dissociating itself from, is his own real or ideal self. 
 Or let us take the case of the miser, a familiar figure 
 in the annals of the human race. Here we have a typical 
 example, not of a personality degenerating into a morbid 
 complex so much as of a morbid complex overrunning 
 the entire field of consciousness and becoming, appar- 
 ently, the whole man. The miser is a monomaniac, a 
 man of one ignoble but all-absorbing interest. Yet he 
 seldom qualifies for the madhouse. The explanation of 
 this is that, owing to the completeness of the victory won 
 by the complex over the personality, the former is able 
 to annex and use for its own purposes all the psychical 
 machinery of the latter, including its power of reacting 
 to a social environment. In other words, the sub-self 
 has compelled the man, the ruling self, to identify him- 
 self with it and devote himself to its service. Hence his 
 apparent sanity. Yet, in the deeper sense of the word, 
 he is insane, and insane in the highest degree. For, in 
 the act of absorbing into itself the whole of his normal 
 personality, the miser in him has dissociated itself, and 
 therefore dissociated him, from his real or ideal self. 
 It has seated itself, a lawless usurper, on the throne of 
 his spirit ; and its reign, though orderly to outward 
 view, is really a prolonged riot of insanity. For sanity is 
 health ; and health comes with vigorous and successful 
 growth. But the triumph of a rebellious complex means 
 that all the forces which make for the growth of the soul 
 are diverted into one narrow channel, with the result 
 
ALL FOR EACH 91 
 
 that the progress of growth — ^which is nothing if not 
 harmonious and many-sided — is forcibly arrested, and 
 degenerative insanity takes its place. 
 
 These are extreme cases. Yet something akin to this 
 is happening to each of us when and so far as we succumb 
 to the lure of finality, and give up that adventure into 
 the infinite which is of the essence of spiritual growth. 
 Self-integration, which is the true antidote to insanity, 
 in every sense of that word, is to be achieved only by 
 realizing the limitless possibilities that are wrapped up 
 in the human embryo, by growing into oneness with 
 that soul of all things which is the true self of each of 
 us. The goal is unattainable. Yet to pause in the pur- 
 suit of it is to bring disharmony, or the menace of dis- 
 harmony, into one's life. The infinite in man is the 
 lawful ruler of all his parts and powers and passions ; 
 and it is rebellion against that ruler, it is dissociation of 
 personality, to accept any actual self as the true man. 
 
 The secret of sanity, then, is devotion to the infinite 
 and the ideal. Dissociation — disintegration of person- 
 ality — ^makes for insanity. If we would be sane, we must 
 take the opposite path, the path of self-integration, the 
 path which leads to wholeness of spirit, to inward 
 harmony. If inward harmony is to be achieved, the 
 whole personality must assert its supremacy over each 
 of the subordinate centres, and so prevent the hyper- 
 trophy of any of these, as well as the outgrowth of morbid 
 sub-centres, which cannot establish themselves as long 
 as the legitimate sub-centres are energizing vigorously 
 under the direction and in the service of the whole. 
 
 We can now see that in the Cosmic Commonwealth 
 the community renders one service to each of its mem- 
 
92 THE COSMIC COMMONWEALTH 
 
 bers — a service so great that an eternity of devotion could 
 not repay it. By being infinite, by making demands on 
 us which we can never meet, it makes it possible for us 
 to enjoy the radiant health of never-ending growth. 
 The patriot lives, and is ready to die, for his country, 
 because he has identified himself with it, because he has 
 made, not its interests only but also — in some sort — its 
 very spirit his own ; in other words, because he owes 
 to it an immense expansion of his own being. As it is 
 in a human commonwealth so it is in the Cosmic. The 
 loyal citizen of the Universe lives for his country, loses 
 himself in service to it, because in doing so he widens, 
 and never ceases to widen, the scope of his own life. The 
 master aim of his being, though he may not know it, is 
 to find his true self by growing into oneness with the 
 soul of all things, with the Spirit of God. This aim will 
 take him beyond all horizons, known and unknown, 
 imagined and unimagined, imaginable and unimaginable. 
 He may pursue it through an infinity of lives and in an 
 infinity of worlds ; but it will still lure him on. So long 
 as he pursues it, so long as his quest is its own reward, so 
 long as his soul continues to grow, the subordinate centres 
 of his being will fulfil their several functions in obedience 
 to the will of the self-evolving, self-revealing whole, and 
 therefore in perfect harmony with one another. This is 
 sanity, in the fullest sense of the word, the sanity of 
 organic wholeness, the sanity of immortal youth. And 
 it is because the freedom of the Universe has been 
 conferred upon him, that it is open to him to enjoy 
 that greatest of all blessings, and to enjoy it — if he will — 
 for ever. 
 
CHAPTER XIV 
 
 THE ANTIDOTE TO ANARCHY 
 
 IN the Cosmic Commonwealth the relation between 
 what each does for the All and what the All does for 
 each is one of more than mere reciprocity. The two 
 services may almost be said to coincide. What the 
 community does for the citizen is to allow him to share 
 in its infinitude, and in doing this to make it possible for 
 him to outgrow himself unceasingly and therefore to 
 renew his youth for ever and ever. And what the loyal 
 citizen does for the community is to lose himself in its 
 service, and, by ever renewing his youth through self- 
 loss and self-transcendence, to fit himself for further 
 and ever higher service. 
 
 In a human community loyal service on the part of 
 the citizen has too often been rewarded by ingratitude 
 on the part of the State. In the Cosmic Commonwealth 
 this cannot happen. There the service and the reward, 
 the reward and the service, are one. The boon of 
 up-surging life, of radiant health, of immortal youth, of 
 spiritual joy, is at the call of each of us. It is for us to 
 claim it. And the Giver asks for nothing more than that 
 we should claim it. We cannot better prove our loyalty 
 and our love. To claim the reward of loyal service is to 
 render a yet higher service than that which earned it. 
 
 93 
 
94 THE COSMIC COMMONWEALTH 
 
 For the Kingdom of Heaven is our heritage ; but we 
 must make good our title by enforcing it. We must 
 take the Kingdom by force. Wc must prove that we are 
 citizens of the Universe by making the Universal Will 
 our own. And in order to do this — for paradox leads on 
 to paradox — ^we must surrender our own wills, wholly 
 and without reserve ; we must lose self — and lose it 
 irretrievably — in the All. 
 
 The relation between the citizen and the community 
 in the Cosmic Commonwealth is the archetypal relation, 
 the perfect example of what such relations ought to be. 
 That is why I say that the transformation of religion 
 must in some sort precede and control the transforma- 
 tion of our social and political life. It is in the service 
 of the greater commonwealth that we shall learn how 
 best to serve the lesser. Until we can realize (in the 
 fullest and most intimate sense of the word) that the 
 soul of all things is the true self and the true life of each 
 of us, we shall not be able to master the lesson of dis- 
 interested devotion ; and until we have mastered that 
 lesson our political ventures will all founder, or be in 
 danger of foundering, on the rock of self. 
 
 The old order of things, which was based almost 
 openly on self-assertion, ambition, and greed, is passing 
 away ; but it is leaving a fatal heritage behind it. Men 
 still think that property, position, and power are the 
 good things of life and that the secret of happiness is to 
 acquire these good things and retain them. But it is not 
 the possessions of a man that matter, but the fulness 
 and wideness of his life. It is not what he is reported 
 to be that matters, but what he is in himself and what he 
 is tending to become. And until the instinct to live, 
 
THE ANTIDOTE TO ANARCHY 95 
 
 to renew life, to expand life, to transform life, has tri- 
 umphed over the instinct to grasp and hold and bulk 
 large in purblind eyes, the foundations of democracy 
 will have been laid in vain. Collective selfishness may 
 indeed take the place of individual selfishness. It has 
 already begun to do so. Trade unionism, for example, 
 is stronger and better organized than it has ever been. 
 But what use is it making of its strength ? Is it not 
 trying to hold the whole community up to ransom ? 
 Trade union after trade union is claiming the right to 
 dislocate the life of the community in order to enforce 
 its own demands.^ This is a policy of brigandage, or, 
 at best, of blackmail ; and it is of course the very negation 
 of democracy. The truth is that collective selfishness is 
 only individual selfishness writ large, and that whatever 
 organization, social or economic, may be dominated by 
 the former will always have the latter, as a principle of 
 disintegration, at the heart of it. 
 
 We have reached a grave crisis in the life of mankind. 
 Our vaunted civilization is on trial ; and we are faced 
 with the possibility of a relapse into something worse 
 than barbarism. With the downfall of absolutism, 
 whether autocratic or oligarchic, and the consequent 
 dissolution of government, in Eastern and Central 
 Europe ; with the widespread dislocation of existing 
 conditions and upheaval of hidden forces which the war 
 
 1 In many cases the strikes and threats to strike have been 
 sectional, local unions and sub-unions having set the authority 
 of their own central organizations at defiance. Unselfishness 
 is always a bond of union. A selfish aim or a selfish poHcy may 
 hold men together for a time, but sooner or later it will mako 
 for disintegration and inward strife. 
 
g6 THE COSMIC COMMONWEALTH 
 
 has produced, and which have generated a deep-seated 
 feeling of unrest and expectation ; with the diffusion of 
 social chaos and economic misery (another result of the 
 war) over a large part of the civilized world) — ^there has 
 come a general relaxation of social ties and restraints, a 
 general weakening of the authority of tradition and cus- 
 tom, and a general up-surging of primitive instinct and 
 passion. The consequence is that our familiar ideals 
 and standards and sanctions are going into the melting- 
 pot, and that we are threatened with political, social, and 
 even moral anarchy. Never has the need for the con- 
 trolling and inspiring influence of religion been greater 
 than it is to-day ; and never, since the Christian Era 
 began, have the existing religions been less able to meet 
 that need. The reason of this is that supernaturalism, 
 centring as it does in the worship of an omnipotent 
 autocrat who surrounds himself with sycophant? and 
 courtiers, and tending as it does to foster individualism 
 and egoism, which it has even encouraged us to dedicate 
 to the service of God, has been the mainstay of the old 
 order of things and is now sharing in its downfall and 
 discredit. 
 
 For so desperate a situation heroic measures are needed. 
 No mere tinkering with old forms, old creeds and old 
 institutions will suffice. A new wine, turbid as yet but 
 surely predestined to clarify, is fermenting in our hearts ; 
 and the old bottles cannot contain it. But if we are to 
 have new forms of thought and new schemes of life, we 
 must have new ideals to vitalize and organize them ; 
 and if we are to have new ideals we must remould our 
 conception of God. For self is to-day, what it has ever 
 been, our great enemy — ^the enemy of each and the enemy 
 
THE ANTIDOTE TO ANARCHY 97 
 
 of all — ^the negation of sympathy, of comradeship, of 
 love, the centre and mainspring of resistance to the ex- 
 pansion of life, whether in the individual or the race ; 
 and self is for the moment uncaged and unfettered, and 
 freer than it has ever been to work its evil will. A 
 spiritual ideal alone can subdue it ; and if the spiritual 
 ideal is to be effective it must be the outcome of a new 
 vision of reality, in other words of a new conception 
 of God. 
 
 I have convinced myself, and tried to convince my 
 readers, that the conception of God for which we are 
 waiting is an inward and spiritual conception — ^the con- 
 ception of God as the Soul of the Universe, as dwelling 
 in the heart of Nature and the heart of Man. This 
 conception provides for the subdual and, through the 
 subdual for the transformation, of self, and is therefore 
 an effective antidote to the anarchy with which human 
 society is threatened. For if God is at the heart of man, 
 he must be the true self of each of us, and if we can live 
 to that true self, which we share with all Ccher men, 
 and die to every self which severs us from it and from 
 them, we shall find in oneness with it the reality of self- 
 hood, of life, of health, of wealth, of happiness. Christ 
 taught us this lesson long ago ; but though we have 
 learnt the lesson by rote we have never fathomed its 
 depths of meaning. 
 
 Let us begin to do so. Let us try to join Christ in his 
 selfless love of the All-Father, in his selfless devotion to 
 the all-embracing community which he called the 
 Kingdom of God. 
 
 Then, and not till then, shall we begin to learn what 
 life means and what it has in store for us. And in the 
 
 H 
 
98 THE COSMIC COMMONWEALTH 
 
 light of that knowledge the great ethico-social problems 
 which have so long perplexed us, and which are now 
 pressing for restatement and retreatment, will begin to 
 work themselves out to their ideal solution. 
 
CHAPTER XV 
 
 THE HUMAN COMMONWEALTH 
 
 ANEW day is dawning on the world. Its sun is 
 rising through wild storm clouds, but it may yet 
 climb to a cloudless noon. Never, since history began, 
 have men been so expectant of change or so eager for 
 change as they are to-day. Most of us feel sure that a 
 new social order is about to be built up out of the 
 wreckage of the old. Others go further and believe 
 that a new World-race will arise out of that mingling of 
 all races which is going on in America. Others, again, 
 wait for the advent of a new Prophet, with their faces 
 turned towards India, the land in which men first realized 
 the unity of the Universe and their own oneness with 
 the One Soul and the One Life. 
 
 To prophesy while a revolution is in progress is notori- 
 ously rash. But it is rasher still to deride all prophecy. 
 Men who idealize the actual and are in bondage to the 
 past think that by using the phrase "A league of dreamers " 
 they have laughed the project of a League of Nations 
 out of court. But those who are in bondage to the past 
 cannot interpret the past or apply its lessons. And one 
 of the first lessons which the records of the past have to 
 teach us is that the world's dreamers are also its makers 
 and its menders. In any case, one need not be a prophet 
 
 99 
 
100 THE COSMIC COMMONWEALTH 
 
 or even a dreamer in order to feel assured that if in our 
 interjjtfitional relations co-operation does not take the 
 place of competition, and sympathy and good-will the 
 place of envy and jealousy, the world will have been 
 devastated and desolated to no purpose and rivers of 
 blood will have flowed in vain. 
 
 Those who aim at establishing a League of Nations 
 wish, for one thing, to police the world and so abolish 
 war. There are many reasons why this should be done ; 
 but there is one which is urgent as well as strong. In his 
 mastery of the secrets and command of the forces of 
 material nature man has in recent years gone far ahead 
 of his own moral and social development. To-day he 
 has at his service means of destiuction which greatly 
 exceed in scope and power even the mightiest weapons 
 of ten years ago. -And it is said that he is on the verge 
 of discovering yet deadlier secrets — secrets so deadly 
 that only the pure in heart can safely be entrusted with 
 them. The "atomic bombs" of Mr. H. G. Wells' 
 prophetic vision may yet be invented, and it may yet be 
 possible for a single aeroplane to fly in a few hours to a 
 great city, hundreds or even thousands of miles away, and 
 lay it in ruins. With such weapons at man's command, 
 the next war, if waged on a large scale — and it is probable 
 that in the next war there will be no neutrals — ^would be 
 one of racial suicide. Civilization would be entirely 
 ovei whelmed ; human life would be permanently de- 
 based and impoverished ; and we might even come 
 within measurable distance of the destruction of the 
 human race. The mere possibility of so stupendous a 
 catastrophe is surely an unanswerable argument for the 
 early abolition of war. 
 
THE HUMAN COMMONWEALTH loi 
 
 At the heart of the dream of a League of Nations 
 there is another dream, of which as yet we are scarcely 
 conscious, the dream of constituting the Human or Pan- 
 human Commonwealth. So far I have said much about 
 the Cosmic Commonwealth and little about the Human. 
 The reason is that unless the foundations of the Human 
 Commonwealth are cemented with devotion to the Cosmic, 
 they will not endure ; the structure may last for a while, 
 but when the rain descends and the floods arise, and the 
 winds blow it will fall, and great will be the fall of it. 
 If we would keep a river free from pollution we must 
 purify it at its fountain head. If it is so purified, such 
 influxes of pollution as may invade it lower down will 
 be overwhelmed by the descending stream and swept 
 away. But if it is impure at its source it will be 
 foul and turbid everywhere and to the very end. 
 I have said that devotion to an unattainable ideal 
 alone can keep us sane. This is as true of the 
 community as it is of the citizen, as true of Hu- 
 manity as it is of each individual man. Our inter- 
 course with the ideal may be largely, if not wholly, 
 subconscious. But the ideal must be there, and we 
 must somehow or other be in touch with it. 
 
 If our aim, in constituting the Human Common- 
 wealth, were to provide men with material comforts 
 and improve the conditions under which they lived — 
 if it amounted to this and no more than this, the unity 
 and inward harmony of the commonwealth would 
 gradually be lost. For different peoples would form 
 different conceptions, both of what constituted material 
 comfort and of what was due to them from those 
 who controlled and administered the resources of the 
 
102 THE COSMIC COMMONWEALTH 
 
 world ; and in trying to secure what they desired they 
 would begin to quarrel among themselves and would at 
 last lose sight, in their quarrels, of the end to which they 
 all owed devotion and service — ^the well-being of the 
 Pan-human State. 
 
 And once this process of disintegration had begun it 
 would go far. The community which appeals to the 
 collective selfishness of its citizens calls into being dis- 
 ruptive forces which it may be unable to control. I 
 have said that collective selfishness is only individual 
 selfishness writ large. It is this ; but it is also worse 
 than this. One knows from experience that men who 
 are unselfish in private life, and who as individuals are 
 ready to sacrifice themselves freely to their country or to 
 some great cause, are apt to become selfish when they 
 herd together and begin to work for common ends. 
 
 For this there are two reasons. The first is that the 
 sense of comradeship, of mutual obligation, of working 
 with others for a common end, blinds a man to the fact 
 that if that end is a selfish one, he is really working for 
 his own interests. In the late war individual citizens 
 vied with one another in patriotic devotion and self- 
 sacrifice ; but when they came together in communities 
 of various kinds — ^political parties, trade unions, federa- 
 tions of employers, joint-stock companies, and the like 
 — ^they were apt to think more of the welfare of their 
 respective communities than of the safety of their 
 country, even in the supreme crisis of her life. Could 
 anything, for example, be stronger than the contrast 
 between the heroism and self-devotion of the miners who 
 fought — in their hundreds of thousands — for their 
 country, and the reckless selfishness of the sectional 
 
THE HUMAN COMMONWEALTH 103 
 
 strikes o£ miners which again and again restricted the out- 
 put of coal when the Nation's need of it, both for itself 
 and for its Allies, was most urgent ? So far, indeed, are 
 men from realizing the essential immorality of collective 
 selfishness, that they accept it as inevitable if they do 
 not actually count it a virtue. The economic aspect of 
 social problems is apt to overshadow the ethical ; and 
 men who would appeal to high motives if they were 
 addressing themselves to individuals will come down to 
 an altogether lower level when they are dealing with 
 communities or classes. " The most disquieting feature," 
 says a writer in the " Spectator," " in what is loosely 
 called the democratic advent is that no one, I care not 
 who, ever speaks to the working- classes (as such) in the 
 name of honour or duty or unselfishness, or appeals to 
 anything but self-interest." 
 
 The second reason why men are apt to be more selfish 
 collectively than individually is that the selfishness of a 
 community tends to react upon the characters of its 
 members and infect them with its own poison. In pre- 
 war Germany, for example, the State, which was on 
 principle self-centred, aggressive, rapacious, and indif- 
 ferent to the claims of Humanity, infected the citizens 
 with its own selfishness and went far towards materializ- 
 ing their aims and demoralizing their lives. And it was 
 Germany, the most selfish of all nations, which set the 
 world on fire. Let her fate be our warning. If peace 
 is to prevail on earth, each nation in turn must aim, not 
 only at aggrandizing itself and enriching its people, but 
 also and above all at playing a worthy part in the 
 Human Commonwealth, both by working for the estab- 
 lishment of international law and order, and by training 
 
104 THE COSMIC COMMONWEALTH 
 
 its people for citizenship in the greatest of all earthly 
 communities. 
 
 But if this aim is to be effective, the Human Common- 
 wealth, in its turn, must aim at something beyond itself. 
 What is true of the lesser community is true of the greater. 
 Unless devotion to a community or a cause has devotion 
 to a yet greater community or a yet greater cause at the 
 heart of it, its own tenure of life will at best be precarious. 
 The Human Commonwealth must aim at developing the 
 material resources of the world, with a view to diffusing 
 material well-being among men. But it must also aim 
 at educating its citizens, in the true sense of the former 
 word, at developing to the uttermost their higher powers 
 and capacities, at fitting them to play their parts as 
 citizens of the Universe, at dedicating them to the service 
 of God. And the latter aim must come first, not 
 second. 
 
 If we are to be happy we must learn the lesson of 
 complete self -loss, for if we allow ourselves to be domin- 
 ated by self, life will sooner or later become a burden 
 and a curse. The passion of personal love can teach us 
 this lesson ; but the passion of personal love is both 
 incalculable and transient. The wind bloweth where it 
 listeth ; and the greater its violence the shorter its 
 duration. Where, then, shall we learn the greatest of all 
 lessons ? Where, but in the service of the All ? We know 
 from experience that however far we may travel along 
 the path of self-loss and self-transcendence, self still 
 confronts us. We cannot get away from it. The very 
 word self-loss savours of paradox. What shall we do, 
 then, to be saved ? We must enrol ourselves as members 
 of the one community in which a man becomes self- 
 
THE HUMAN COMMONWEALTH 105 
 
 less, of inner necessity, in the very act o£ living to self, — 
 in which self, as we try to realize it, recedes for ever and 
 ever into the Infinite and the Divine. We must become 
 citizens of the Cosmic Commonwealth, of the Kingdom 
 of God. 
 
CHAPTER XVI 
 
 EDUCATION FOR COSMIC SERVICE 
 
 WE must dedicate ourselves to the service of the 
 Cosmic Commonwealth. And not ourselves 
 only. We must also dedicate our children. Or rather 
 we must make it possible for them to follow the bent 
 of their real nature and dedicate themselves. If the 
 grown-up man finds it hard to enter the Kingdom of 
 God, the reason is that he was not allowed to enter it 
 while he was still a child. 
 
 Devotion to the Cosmic Commonwealth is of inner 
 necessity disinterested. If there is any taint of self- 
 interest in our service, we may be sure that we are not 
 rendering it to the infinite Whole. We cannot serve 
 God and Mammon. Still less can we serve God and self. 
 Absolutely disinterested service is an ideal which we can 
 never hope to realize. In other words, it is a true ideal, 
 an end which we must never cease to pursue. It is in 
 order to learn the lesson of disinterested devotion that 
 we are living our lives on earth ; and we cannot begin 
 to learn the lesson at too tender an age. 
 
 The world is sick of a grave malady, and it is now 
 passing through a dangerous crisis. The symptoms have 
 already been described. They amount to this, that the 
 old ideals are worn out, that the old restraints have lost 
 
 1 06 
 
EDUCATION FOR COSMIC SERVICE 107 
 
 their power, that a flood of selfish desires and lawless 
 passions has been let loose and that we^ are nearer to 
 moral anarchy than we have been for many centuries. 
 For so desperate a disorder there is but one remedy — a 
 new ideal or hierarchy of ideals, a radical change in the 
 inner man. Apart from such a change, our attempts at 
 reform are so much patchwork, and our schemes of 
 reconstruction are the idlest of dreams. We may 
 alleviate symptoms. We cannot cure the disease. But 
 to make such a change — ^the change of being " born 
 again " — ^when one has reached adult life, is a task of 
 almost superhuman difficulty. " Conversion " — ^the 
 sudden transformation of the inner man — is a very rare 
 phenomenon. It presupposes an exceptional combina- 
 tion of circumstances. It is not always a healthy move- 
 ment. It is sometimes hysterical or otherwise morbid. 
 The new life does not always endure, the violent change 
 being sometimes followed by an equally violent reaction. 
 If a change in the inner man is to be permanent and effec- 
 tive, it must be evolutionary rather than revolutionary, 
 the outcome of a secret process of growth rather than 
 of a sudden reversal of the current of one's being. In 
 other words, it must, as a rule, be begun in the nursery 
 and carried on through childhood and adolescence into 
 adult life. 
 
 The cult of the transcendent God has been the evil 
 genius of education in Christendom. The parent and the 
 schoolmaster have played the part of the God whom 
 they worshipped, in the little worlds which they ruled. 
 And they have reproduced in the life of the child, and 
 therefore of the man, all the evils which the tyranny of the 
 omnipotent autocrat has wrought in the life of mankind. 
 
io8 THE COSMIC COMMONWEALTH 
 
 They have applied to the child — ^applied, that is, to the 
 growing man, at the time when his growth ought to 
 have been most vigorous, when the sap of his life was 
 rising most strongly — a steady and relentless pressure 
 which has had behind it a heavy weight of ignorance, 
 prejudice, and " will to power." The result of this 
 pressure has been, in part to arrest, in part to warp his 
 growth ; and as growth, if healthy and harmonious, is 
 the most emancipative of all forces, as it concentrates 
 in itself all emancipative forces, the further result of the 
 pressure of dogmatic education has been to imprison the 
 child in himself. And as the child, animated by the in- 
 stinct to live, has passively resisted this deadly pressure, the 
 autocratic controllers of his destinyihave tried to overcome 
 his resistance by alternating rewards with punishments, 
 bribes with threats. In doing this they have lowered the 
 whole plane of his effort and activity and de-idealized 
 his whole outlook on life. And when bribes and threats 
 have failed them, they have gone further along the path 
 of compulsory demoralization. They have forced the 
 child to compete with his classmates for prizes and other 
 marks of distinction, and have thus tempted him to 
 regard his comrades as rivals and possible enemies, to 
 pride himself on his petty achievements, to look down 
 on those whom he may have happened to surpass. In 
 other words, they have deliberately exploited his selfish- 
 ness, his ambition, and his vanity. They have done more 
 than this. They have made him dependent on them- 
 selves for instruction and guidance, and have thus 
 paralysed his faith in himself. They have weakened his 
 will, partly by trying to break it, partly by giving him 
 no opportunity for the exercise of self-discipline and self- 
 
EDUCATION FOR COSMIC SERVICE 109 
 
 control. They have made him blind, or at least dim of 
 vision, by assuming that he could not see. They have 
 sterilized his intellectual, his artistic, and his constructive 
 capacity by wilfully narrowing the field of his develop- 
 ment ; and when his tastes and powers have died of 
 inanition, they have taken for granted that they never 
 existed, that he was by nature as stupid and helpless as 
 he was vicious and perverse. Above all, they have taught 
 him to look without instead of within for his ideals, his 
 motives, his standards of value, his tests of reality, his 
 proofs of failure or success. And, as the crowning injury, 
 they have tried to make him religious, not by helping 
 him to discern and follow the light which lighteth all 
 men, but by requiring him to take part in ceremonial 
 observances which have no meaning for him, and by 
 forcibly dieting him on their own scriptures and 
 creeds. 
 
 The whole scheme of his education seems to have been 
 framed for the express purpose of turning him out into 
 the world with few or no interests which can take him 
 away from himself, the victim of arrested or at best of 
 one-sided mental and spiritual development, imprisoned 
 in a narrow and conventional morality, dominated by 
 the prejudices of his own social class, absorbed in selfish 
 aims and ambitions, destitute of any sense of human 
 fellowship, a materialist, an individualist, an externalist, 
 asking from life too much of comfort and pleasure, too 
 little of that deeper happiness which is at his service if 
 he will but claim it. There are many lessons which his 
 pastors and masters have omitted to teach him. But 
 there is one which they seem to have deliberately pre- 
 vented him from learning — ^the lesson of disinterested 
 
no THE COSMIC COMMONWEALTH 
 
 devotion, of self-realization through self-forgetfulness, 
 of losing the world that he may find his soul. 
 
 Yet he was ready to learn that lesson before they took 
 him in hand. The pioneers in education who have based 
 their schemes on trust in the natural goodness and the 
 all-round capacity of the average child, have proved this 
 to the full. There are schools in this country which are 
 ideal social communities — schools in which the children, 
 released from needless pressure, allowed to express them- 
 selves freely in many ways, allowed to develop themselves 
 in many directions, have found, in the joy of " unim- 
 peded energy," the sense of oneness with their fellows 
 through partnership in a common life ; schools in which 
 material rewards and punishments are unknown, in which 
 honest effort is its own reward, in which the success of 
 each is a matter of rejoicing for all, in which the spirit 
 of comradeship has killed the spirit of competition, 
 in which the whole atmosphere is electrical with life and 
 happiness and good- will. At present such schools may 
 be counted on one's fingers ; but if the basis of education 
 could be changed they would multiply, and as they 
 multiplied there would be a corresponding change in 
 the basis of our social life. 
 
 The cult of the transcendent God, involving as it does 
 profound distrust of human nature, is, I repeat, the evil 
 genius of education. Let us now base education on the 
 cult of the immanent God, and on the inexhaustible 
 trust in human nature which is at the heart of that cult. 
 It is not for me to suggest how this is to be done. The 
 immanent God " fulfils himself in many ways " ; and in 
 the sphere of education, if in no other, exclusive devotion 
 to any " custom," however " good," will sooner or 
 
EDUCATION FOR COSMIC SERVICE in 
 
 later " corrupt the world." The " orthodox " type of 
 education has been a failure, not only because its aims 
 and ideals have been at fault, but also because of its 
 blind belief in stereotyped methods, which it has forced 
 on the teacher as well as on the child. In this it has 
 been true to its own master principle, for if the immanent 
 God fulfils himself in many ways, the transcendent God 
 reveals himself in only one. Let the new education be 
 equally true to its master principle, the principle which is 
 inherent in its faith in divine immanence. At present 
 the new education is a heresy. Let it take care that it 
 never degenerates into orthodoxy. Let it give freedom 
 and responsibility in generous measure to the teacher, 
 and through the teacher to the child. Its confidence 
 will not be misplaced. What matters it if each of a 
 thousand pioneers in education takes a path of his o-wn ? 
 If they are all animated by reverence for the indwelling 
 Spirit of God, and therefore for the unfolding nature of 
 the child, they will all arrive, in the fulness of time, at 
 the same goal. 
 
 For they will have taught their pupils, or rather they 
 will have helped them to learn for themselves, the great 
 lesson of disinterested devotion, the great lesson of 
 loyalty to the community — ^to an ever-widening com- 
 munity — in and through loyalty to one's own higher self. 
 When this lesson has been widely learnt and practised, 
 the reform of our social life will become something more 
 than a politician's promise or an enthusiast's dream. It 
 is through its action on the child, even more than 
 through its action on the adult, that the cult of the auto- 
 crat of the Universe has corrupted man's nature and 
 demoralized his life. The adult is what his upbringing 
 
112 THE COSMIC COMMONWEALTH 
 
 has made him and it is not easy for him to become any- 
 thing else. But the child may become anything. The 
 Kingdom of Heaven is as open to him as is the prison of 
 self. We have hitherto gone out of our way to drive 
 him into the prison of self. Let us nov^ help him to 
 enrol himself as a citizen of the Kingdom. Then, in the 
 next generation, v^^e shall perhaps have a better and a 
 happier world. 
 
CHAPTER XVII 
 
 POSSIBILITIES 
 
 1ET us new take the wings of imagination and pass 
 J beyond the confines of this world and this life. 
 The triumph of the dynamic over the static conception 
 of life and destiny will revolutionize our eschatology. 
 Official Christianity teaches us that after death comes 
 Judgment, and after Judgment either Heaven (with or 
 without its anteroom, Purgatory) or Hell. Of late years 
 the belief has grown up that men will be judged and 
 sentenced directly they die. The more orthodox viev^ 
 is, I believe, that the dead will have to wait (whether 
 awake or asleep I cannot say) till the Last Day dawns 
 on earth, when they will be clothed again in their earthly 
 bodies and appear before the judgment seat of Christ. 
 Beyond the grave there is neither progress nor deteriora- 
 tion, except, indeed, so far as the former is provided for 
 in the Roman Catholic doctrine of Purgatory. But this 
 exception does not affect the general principle that the 
 destiny of the departing spirit is fixed at the moment 
 of death. The duration of Purgatory is limited and may 
 be materially shortened by the due performance of pur- 
 chased masses. When it is over the saved will enter into 
 a state of perfect happiness and will remain in that state 
 for ever. For the lost there is no equivalent of Purgatory, 
 I 113 
 
114 THE COSMIC COMMONWEALTH 
 
 no place for repentance or amendment of life. When 
 their doom is pronounced they will pass at once into a 
 state of hopeless misery which, like the counter-state of 
 blessedness, will endure for ever. 
 
 Such is the eschatology which has satisfied the wor- 
 shippers of the transcendent God. It rests on the 
 hoUowest of all foundations, on the literal interpretation 
 — ^and therefore the radical misinterpretation — of a 
 Master's words. The Gospel story of the Last Judgment 
 is not a prophetic narrative, not a mine of " theological 
 information," but a parable, which was obviously spoken 
 for no other purpose than that of glorifying unselfish 
 love. The defects of the orthodox eschatology, — its 
 infinite injustice ; its separation of the two worlds or 
 states by a great gulf into which the reality of each un- 
 ceasingly drains away ; its debasement of the supreme 
 motives to action ; its tendency to paralyze spiritual 
 effort by the very vastness of the stakes for which it 
 compels us to play ; its reductio ad absurdum in the easy- 
 going belief, now widely prevalent, that all men will 
 be saved, in the sense of " going to Heaven " when they 
 die, — ^these defects, and others which fall into line with 
 these, are too glaringly obvious to need exposition. 
 
 For those who worship the immanent God the vision 
 of the after-life differs widely from this. As we live by 
 the grace of Nature, so we shall continue to live by it. 
 If we are to realize our limitless potentialities, if we are 
 to exhaust the resources of our cosmic environment, we 
 shall have to pass through many worlds and many planes 
 of being, we shall have to live an infinity of lives. Life 
 is education ; and education is life. Here on earth we 
 are probably in the nursery school of a vast educational 
 
POSSIBILITIES 115 
 
 system. Death may possibly transfer us to a higher 
 school, or af least to a higher class. In any case we shall 
 have to pass on from class to class and from school to 
 school. And while we are continuing our education, two 
 processes will be carried on in our souls — ^two processes 
 which are really one — ^the awakening of consciousness 
 in the hidden depths of our being, and the transcendence 
 of self. The immanent God is at the heart of each of us. 
 In his life we live. In his infinitude we are infinite. In 
 his eternity we are eternal. But he is a hidden God — 
 his light is for us a great darkness. The dawn of con- 
 sciousness in our souls has admitted us to citizenship of 
 the Cosmic Commonwealth. To awaken consciousness 
 in deeper and still deeper strata of our subconscious 
 being is the task that awaits us in this and in all future 
 lives. It is an arduous task and one which will never be 
 completed. The chief resistance to be beaten down 
 comes from self — self which would fain find rest in 
 finality, the actual self claiming to be ideal. Therefore, 
 what is from one point of view the continuous awakening 
 of consciousness, is from another point of view the con- 
 tinuous transcendence of self. The nearer we get, as 
 we awake consciousness in our subconscious depths, to 
 that central core of darkness which is the Infinite Light, 
 the nearer we shall get to the real self. 
 
 The life of self -illumination and self-transcendence will 
 be a life of service and preparation for further service. 
 The affairs of the Cosmic Commonwealth are adminis- 
 tered, we may well believe, by a hierarchy of great in- 
 telligences. To dream of being admitted into a lowly 
 grade of that august hierarchy is a worthy ambition, 
 which opens up infinite vistas to aspiration and love. 
 
Ti6 THE COSMIC COMMONWEALTH 
 
 There is no reason why we should not entertain the 
 dream. But we must not at present look beyond it. 
 
 And what of God and the worship of God ? Is the 
 immanent God a substantial reality ? Or is he merely 
 an idea and a name ? I have already given my answer 
 to this question. 1 Far from being a mere idea or a con- 
 venient name, the immanent God is the innermost core 
 of reality. In an ideal community the soul of the people, 
 symbolizing itself in King or President and working its 
 will through an organized system of administrative 
 nerve-centres, is the true, the only lawful ruler. In like 
 manner the true ruler of the Cosmic Commonwealth is 
 the Soul of the Universe, and our name for the Soul of 
 the Universe is God. 
 
 Does this conception of God content us ? Or do we 
 crave for a more intimate experience of the Divine, for 
 an experience which will partake in some degree of vision? 
 Christ has told us that the pure in heart shall see God. 
 He spoke, we may well believe, from his own sublimely 
 mystical experience. In any case he pointed out to us a 
 path which cannot lead us astray. If we would see God 
 we must puiify the heart till the last dregs of self have 
 been strained away from it, till self has been wholly 
 transcended, wholly lost and wholly found. This 
 purification of the heart, this infinite transcendence of 
 self, will be accompanied by an infinite inward illumina- 
 tion, by the awakening of consciousness in the inmost 
 depths of our being. Then we shall be on the threshold 
 of the Holy of Holies ; the curtain that veils the Real 
 Presence will become strangely luminous, and the Beatific 
 Vision will perhaps be something more than a dream. 
 1 See Chapter IX. 
 
POSSIBILITIES 117 
 
 But I am looking far into a time-transcending future. 
 How shall we worship God while we are still on earth ? 
 The essence of worship is the dedication of the heart 
 to God. The temple of God is everywhere. The worthi- 
 est offering that we can lay on the altar is service. And 
 the medium of communion with God is selfless love. 
 But the externals of worship will always count for much ; 
 and it is possible that cosmic emotion will give us, in due 
 season, nobler temples than any that we have yet built 
 or planned or dreamed of, a mightier sacred music, and a 
 more glorious plastic and pictorial art. The temples, 
 feeding the higher emotions with their own majestic 
 beauty, as well as with the beauty of music and art, would 
 be mostly used for private meditation and prayer. But 
 public services too would be held in them, when a ritual, 
 divorced from dogma and priestcraft, and stately in its 
 very simplicity, would help to unite men in a common 
 aspiration or a common joy. 
 
 And what of prayer ? " We have had ducking and 
 deprecating enough." We have too long mistaken 
 servility for adoration. In prayer, when we pray aright, 
 the waters of life are seeking their own level. But can I 
 . pray to the immanent God with any hope of my prayer 
 being heard ? A poet has well said that 
 
 " Prayer is the soul's sincere desire, 
 Uttered or unexpressed." 
 
 If the desire of the soul is towards God, life will be an 
 unending and self-answering prayer. And if this or that 
 desire of the soul should be so strong and so urgent as 
 to compel one to kneel in prayer and offer up petitions to 
 the Most High, may not one believe that if the petitions 
 
ii8 THE COSMIC COMMONWEALTH 
 
 are disinterested, if they are dictated by unselfish love, 
 they will be caught, like wireless messages, on a sym- 
 pathetic " receiver " and dealt with according to the 
 wisdom of the august recipient ? 
 
 These are possibilities. What is certain is that love of 
 the All- Father is the beginning and end of worship, and 
 that desire to serve him and his children is the beginning 
 and end of prayer. Here we are on safe ground ; and 
 we can remain on it, if we will, for ever. We have seen 
 that devotion to a community must have devotion to a 
 larger community at the heart of it, if it is to be purified 
 from any lingering taint of selfishness, and if its tenure 
 of life is thus to be made secure. But when the com- 
 munity is infinite in all its dimensions, the supreme 
 reward of service is the demand for further service, the 
 " glory of Virtue " is " the glory of going on and still 
 to be," and devotion to the community is therefore an 
 end in itself. The end beyond all ends. Devotion to 
 the Cosmic Commonwealth is at once the fountain-head 
 and the fulfilment — ^from everlasting to everlasting — of 
 duty, of destiny, of life. 
 
 Printed in Great Britain at Tht Mayfloxver Press, Plymouth 
 William Brendon and Son, Ltd. 
 
YB 2 1 955 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY