Jleto tracts for rtje 
 
 NATIONAL IDEALS 
 
 RACE-REGENERATION 
 
 UC-NRLF 
 
 412 
 
flew Utacts tov tfoe Uimes 
 
 NATIONAL IDEALS AND 
 RACE-REGENERATION 
 
NEW TRACTS FOR THE TIMES 
 
 Promoted by the National Council of Public Morals, Holborn 
 Hall, London, W.C. 
 
 TRACTS PUBLISHED 
 
 " The Problem of Race- Regeneration." By Dr. 
 Havelock Ellis (Editor, Contemporary Science 
 Series, etc.). 
 
 "The Methods of Race-Regeneration." By C. W. 
 Saleeby, M.D., F.R.S.E., F.Z.S. (Author of 
 " Parenthood and Race Culture," etc. ) . 
 
 " The Declining Birth-Rate Its National and Inter- 
 national Significance." By A. Newsholme, M.D. 
 
 " Problems of Sex." By Prof. J. Arthur Thomson and 
 
 Prof. P. Geddes. 
 " National Ideals and Race-Regeneration." By Rev. 
 
 R. F. Horton, M.A., D.D. 
 " Womanhood and Race-Regeneration." By Mary 
 
 Scharlieb, M.D., M.S. 
 
 TRACTS IN PREPARATION 
 
 " Literature The Word of Life or of Death." By 
 
 Rev. William Canon Barry, D.D. 
 " Modern Industrialism and Race-Regeneration." By 
 
 C. F. G. Masterman, M.A., M.P. 
 " Religion and Race-Regeneration." By Rev. F. B. 
 
 Meyer, D.D. 
 " Social Environment and Moral Progress." By A. 
 
 Russell Wallace, O.M., LL.D., F.R.S. 
 "The Spiritual Life and Race-Regeneration." By 
 
 the Bishop of Durham. 
 " Education and Race-Regeneration." By Sir John 
 
 Gorst, LL.D., K.C., F.R.S. 
 
IRew ZTracte tot tbe 
 
 NATIONAL IDEALS 
 
 AND 
 
 RACE- REGENERATION 
 
 BY 
 
 The Rev. R. F. HORTON, M.A., D.D. 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 MOFFAT, YARD AND COMPANY 
 1912 
 
GENERAL INTRODUCTION 
 
 By the 
 
 KEY. JAMES MARCHANT 
 
 THESE Tracts might have been called "New Tracts 
 for New Times" since they interpret the signs and 
 prophecies of a new world in the making, demanding 
 :he application of loftier ideals, more widely embracing 
 principles, and surer methods of advance than have 
 hitherto prevailed. They do not merely deplore and 
 combat the manifest evils of the past and the present 
 changing conditions, but reveal the foundations of a 
 richer civilisation. The era of destructive criticism, 
 of improving material environment alone, of lavish 
 care for a short season of the unfit merely to turn them 
 adrift at the critical age, of reliance upon forms and 
 drugs, hospitals and penitentiaries, police and prisons 
 and upon unfettered liberty to correct its own abuses, 
 is mercifully passing away. We are living in a transi- 
 tion period, but nearer the future than the past. The 
 wonderful nineteenth century seems already to have be- 
 come history, and the first decade of the twentieth cen- 
 tury has closed. The new spirit of the age, which ap- 
 peared in wondrous guise on the horizon at the watch of 
 the centuries, is becoming articulate. It is evident to 
 all who possess the historic vision that we are living in 
 the twilight before the dawn. The rapid, ruthless 
 
 259910 
 
New Tracts for the Times 
 
 progress and verily bewildering discoveries and devel- 
 opments of the latter half of the nineteenth century, 
 the opening up of virgin fields of reform and of untrod- 
 den and unsuspected paths of advance, were heralds of 
 a new day, of the nearness of the Kingdom of God. 
 
 These Tracts, small in bulk, but written by eminent 
 authors, deal with these profound and commanding 
 themes from this inspiring outlook. If they revert to 
 outstanding present-day evils, it is because these men- 
 ace the future and are a crime against posterity. Ac- 
 count is taken of the persistent and ominous demand 
 for the divorce of religion from morals and education; 
 of the lowering of the ideal of marriage and the sub- 
 stitution of a temporary contract for that permanent 
 union which is necessary, to take no higher ground, for 
 the nurture and education of the next generation; of 
 the commercial employment of married women, re- 
 sulting, to a serious extent, in the neglect and dis- 
 ruption of family life and the displacement and unem- 
 ployment of men; and of the economic, social, and sel- 
 fish influences which involve late marriages and an ever- 
 falling birth-rate. The writers consider the grave and 
 urgent questions of the wastage of child-life ; the weak- 
 ening and pollution of the link between the generations ; 
 and the uncontrolled multiplication of the degenerate, 
 who threaten to swamp in a few generations the purer 
 elements of our race. They examine the disquieting 
 signs of physical deterioration; the prevalence of vice, 
 the increase of insanity and feeble-mindedness, and 
 their exhaustless drain upon free-flowing charity and 
 
General Introduction 
 
 the national purse; the wide circulation of debasing 
 books and papers which imply the existence, to a de- 
 plorable extent, of low ideals amongst a multitude of 
 readers; and some of the manifold evils of our indus- 
 trial system which cause the hideous congestion of slum- 
 dom with its irreparable loss of the finer sensibilities, 
 of beauty, sweetness and light. These and like griev- 
 ous ills of the social body are treated in the "New 
 Tracts for the Times," from the moral and spiritual 
 standpoint, by constructive methods of redemption, with 
 the knowledge of our corporate responsibility and in re- 
 lation to their bearing on the future of the race. 
 
 The supreme and dominant conception running 
 through these Tracts is the Eegeneration of the Eace. 
 They strike not the leaden note of despair, but the 
 ringing tones of a new and certain hope. The regen- 
 erated race is coming to birth; the larger and nobler 
 civilisation is upon us. It is already seen that it is 
 criminal to live at the expense of the future, that chil- 
 dren must be wisely and diligently educated for parent- 
 hood, that vice must be sapped at its foundations, that 
 it is much more radically necessary to improve the con- 
 dition of the race through parentage than through 
 change of environment, that the emphasis must shift 
 from rescue to prevention. These Tracts turn the 
 searchlight of the twentieth century upon such problems 
 and seek to hasten the time when true religion will oc- 
 cupy its rightful place in our human lives, and woman 
 her true place in the home and society, and industry 
 will not deaden and demoralise, and life will be happier, 
 
New Tracts for the Times 
 
 sweeter and holier for every man, woman and 
 child. 
 
 These Tracts must awaken a sensitive, enlightened 
 social conscience throughout Great and Greater Britain, 
 which is being welded into a more compact Empire, and 
 give voice and new life to the long-silent and thwarted 
 aspirations for a regenerated humanity. 
 
 In their several ways, the authors of these "New 
 Tracts for the Times," each being alone responsible 
 for his or her own contribution, adopt this bracing 
 and hopeful attitude towards the transcendent prob- 
 lems which it is the object of the promoters to eluci- 
 date. 
 
 J. M. 
 
 National Council of Public Morals, 
 
 Holborn Hall, London, W. C. 
 
 September, 1911. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 PROEM . 4 
 
 PROLOGUE 5 
 
 CHAPTER 
 
 I WHAT is A NATION? 11 
 
 II THE NATIONAL IDEAL OF BRITAIN . . . .21 
 
 III THE ELEMENTS OF THE NATIONAL IDEAL . .31 
 
 IV THE SPIRITUAL IDEAL 48 
 
 EPILOGUE 55 
 
PEOEM 
 
 Is it degenerate to fall from wealth, 
 
 To live in straitened shores, on scanter fare, 
 To put on homespun, and to house with bare 
 
 Simplicity, the hardy nurse of health ? 
 
 Is it degenerate, if power or stealth 
 Pluck from our brow uncertain coronet, 
 Or unsubstantial pride of sword or gun, 
 Making a realm on which sun never set, 
 A realm of Spirit which needeth not the Sun? 
 
 Nay, these are accidents, which never yet 
 Could hurt nobility But one thing may 
 Brand on our brow the mark " Degenerate " : 
 
 To lose the vision of the truly great 
 
 And lapse from effort on the starry way. 
 
 K. F. H. 
 
PEOLOGUE 
 
 IN the preface of the " Phenomenology of Mind" 
 Hegel has a passage which is hardly less appropriate to 
 the opening of the twentieth than it was to the opening 
 of the nineteenth century. I beg leave to quote it in 
 full, as an introduction to all that I have to say about 
 a national ideal. Speaking of what the mind wants 
 from philosophy, he says : 
 
 "The beautiful, the holy, the eternal, religion, love those 
 are the bait required to awaken the desire to bite; not the 
 notion, but ecstasy, not the march of cold necessity in the 
 subject matter, but ferment and enthusiasm these are to be 
 the ways by which the wealth of the concrete substance is to 
 be stored and spread out to view. With this demand there 
 goes the strenuous effort ? almost perfervidly zealous in its 
 activity, to rescue mankind from being sunken in what is 
 sensuous, vulgar, and of fleeting importance, and to raise 
 men's minds to the stars; as if men had quite forgotten the 
 Divine, and were on the verge of finding satisfaction, like 
 worms, in mud and water. Time was when man had a heaven 
 decked and fitted out with endless wealth of thought and pic- 
 tures. The significance of all that is lay in the thread of 
 light by which it was attached to heaven. Instead of dwelling 
 in the present as it is here and now, the eye glided away over 
 the present to the Divine, away, so to say, to a present that 
 lies beyond. The mind's gaze had to be directed under com- 
 pulsion to what is earthly and kept fixed there; and it has 
 needed a long time to introduce that clearness, which only ce- 
 lestial realities had, into the crassness and confusion shroud- 
 
 5 
 
Prologue 
 
 ing the sense of earthly things, and to make attention to the 
 mere present as such, which was called experience, of interest 
 and value. Now we have apparently the need for the opposite 
 of all this: man's mind and interest are so deeply rooted in 
 the earthly that we require a like power to get them raised 
 above that level. His spirit shows such poverty of nature that 
 it seems to long for the mere pitiful feeling of the Divine in 
 the abstract, and to get refreshment from that, like a wanderer 
 in the desert craving for the merest mouthful of water. By 
 the little which can thus satisfy the needs of the human spirit 
 we can measure the extent of its loss." 
 
 Men once believed in, and sought, a City of God, and 
 built their cities on earth according to a pattern in the 
 heavens. The nations of Europe, and notably our own, 
 were founded in a vivid consciousness of the Divine. 
 The nation was, no less than Israel's, God's chosen ; and 
 the king held his authority of divine right, symbolised 
 by the sacred unction. But now the vision of heavenly 
 things has faded, and a nation is merely a conglomerate 
 of people occupying a common country, trying to govern 
 itself by a majority of votes. Its main object is to ex- 
 press what the majority desire; and as the majority de- 
 sire money, comfort, pleasure, and such-like earthly 
 things, the national ideal insensibly sinks to a base and 
 debasing earthiness. 
 
 The famous book from which I quote was concluded, 
 says Hegel, at midnight before the battle of Jena, that 
 is, on October 13th, 1805. With the irresistible armies 
 of Napoleon girdling the city in that year of the 
 death of Nelson at Trafalgar the philosopher brought 
 
 6 
 
Prologue 
 
 his study of the Absolute to an end, and showed the 
 world its need of higher ideals. Nations were being 
 obliterated under the effacing hand of Napoleon., and our 
 own country was reaching the heights of her self-con- 
 sciousness of resistance to the conqueror of Europe. 
 
 The philosopher's intuition saw the peril of the mod- 
 ern world, and his lofty contention for the reality and 
 permanence of the spiritual pointed out the way on 
 which subsequent thinkers have moved, the way which 
 we now follow with more assured steps. The world be- 
 gins to see that its ideals are to be renewed not by the 
 abolition of the spiritual, as thinkers of the last genera- 
 tion taught, but by the rehabilitation of the spiritual, as 
 Kant, Hegel, and Schelling said. 
 
 But Hegel is not able to lead us unaided into the land 
 of our desires, as is plain from his view of war, a view 
 natural perhaps in the days of Napoleon and Nelson, 
 and yet startling in a philosopher who pursued his med- 
 itations unhindered by the battle of Jena. War he con- 
 sidered "an indispensable means of maintaining the 
 moral health of the nations, preserving their plasticity, 
 and counteracting the tendency of settled habits to de- 
 generate into conventional routine." 
 
 If a grave and spiritual philosopher defends such a 
 position, we can hardly be astonished that a soldier like 
 Lord Eoberts should instil into boys the doctrine of 
 " My country, right or wrong," as the true patriotism, 
 and urge upon them the duties of moral discipline, in 
 order that they may defend their country, " right or 
 
 7 
 
Prologue 
 
 wrong," in arms; though we may still wonder that a 
 leading paper should applaud this doctrine as lofty. 1 
 
 But this leads us to ask seriously : What is our na- 
 tional ideal ? Do we think out what it is we are aiming 
 at? If the divine and celestial ideals have gone by 
 default in the modern world, have we taken the trouble 
 to reconstruct the ideal of a nation, to connect it with 
 the spiritual which is the real, and deliberately to shape 
 our course towards the attainment of a preconceived 
 end ? The crude militarism which passes for patriotism, 
 and even the vague imperialism which is supposed to 
 enlarge and even to elevate our national idealism, are 
 not the reasoned conceptions of our thinkers; they are 
 only the confused notions of the man in the street, the 
 off-hand opinions of leader-writers and (we must allow 
 it) the blatant interests of the military profession, or 
 of certain commercial undertakings, clothing themselves 
 in high-sounding phrases. The Army and the Fleet 
 naturally confuse patriotism with military and naval 
 activity, but we cannot expect to get our thinking done 
 by specialists whose mental powers are taxed to the ut- 
 most in devising arms of defence or offence. And 
 Imperialism, though an imposing term, when called to 
 account often means very little more than a blurred and 
 blustering idea that " trade follows the flag/' 
 
 The echoes of past theories, which were based on facts 
 now obsolescent, fill the ears of the modern world. We 
 
 1 " My country right or wrong, and right or wrong my coun- 
 try, is the sentiment most treasured in the breast of anyone 
 worthy the name of man." 
 
 8 
 
Prologue 
 
 still talk as if Napoleon's plan of conquering nations 
 and countries were feasible, and as if the object of a 
 nation were to annex other nations, or to possess itself 
 of scattered territory over the world. The word " Im- 
 perial " misleads us. We forget that there is nothing 
 which this age wants less than an emperor, Caesarean or 
 Napoleonic, nay, that at the bottom the whole movement 
 of the modern world is towards a condition of things in 
 which emperors and empires will be impossible. 
 
National Ideals and Race- Regenera- 
 tion 
 
 CHAPTEE I 
 
 WHAT IS A NATION? 
 
 WE require therefore some exact definitions ; we want .to 
 know, what is a nation, and what is a worthy national 
 ideal ? 
 
 And there are two things which give us some hope 
 of reaching an answer to our questions, two things which 
 must be taken together if the value of either is to be 
 appreciated. 
 
 1. The nation is acquiring a soul; and 2, an interna- 
 tional life is within sight. A federation of nations be- 
 gins to be the world's ideal. 
 
 1. The nation is acquiring a soul. That is a^fact of 
 the modern world which deserves close attention. After 
 the break up of the Napoleonic world, Metternich could 
 say : " There are no longer nations in Europe, but only 
 parties'." But for a century we have been moving to- 
 wards the consolidation and the spiritual identity of 
 nations. The national spirit is apt to be bellicose, and 
 the " armed camp " of Europe seems to result from na- 
 tional antagonisms. As we shall see presently, that is 
 
 11 
 
National Ideals and Race-Regeneration 
 
 the danger which is now to be overcome. But the 
 growth of a national consciousness, a national senti- 
 ment, a national pride, is in itself a definite gain. The 
 world would be a sorry place if all individuals were 
 alike. It would also be a sorry place if there were no 
 nations, but only a homogeneous body of humanity, 
 without light and shade or perspective. Nationality is 
 as valuable to the world, as individuality is to a nation. 
 When a nation first discovers its identity, it may be 
 turbulent with the riot of youth; but the birth of a 
 nation is a gain to mankind. When Italy was a " geo- 
 graphical expression/' she was interesting to the tourist, 
 the artist, the archaeologist; but when she became a 
 nation she was at once of interest for humanity. The 
 birth of Germany, more recent, and more disturbing to 
 the other nations of the world, is yet a factor in the 
 world's progress which history will appreciate better 
 than we do. Every nation has a character, a complex- 
 ion, a certain mental individuality. It is not wise to 
 attempt the delineation of nations in epigrams. We 
 cannot say, as once was said, " France claims dominion 
 of the land, Britain of the sea, Germany of the air." 
 We cannot say that Britain is practical, France scien- 
 tific, Germany philosophic. But, looking more deeply 
 and inclusively, we can distinctly recognise each of 
 these nations, and all other nations, as individuals which 
 the world cannot possibly spare. To lose one is a world 
 loss. We have not ceased to mourn the loss of Poland; 
 we tremble for the life of Finland. A Power which 
 seeks to destroy and absorb nations is not the world's 
 
 12 
 
What Is a Nation? 
 
 benefactor, but must be repressed by the combined judg- 
 ment of all nations. We cannot spare Switzerland be- 
 cause it is a little conglomerate of French, German, and 
 Italian states. Switzerland is a nation. Its national 
 spirit is unique; its contribution to the nations indis- 
 pensable. We cannot lose Holland. Its spiritual his- 
 tory and its spiritual life are as valuable to the world 
 as they are to itself. 
 
 As we value our own nationality we are bound to. 
 respect that of others. If we consider ours valuable to 
 the world, we cannot fail to see that other nationalities 
 also are valuable to the world. 
 
 What is required to-day is to think out what is meant 
 by this individuality of a nation, and to feel the full 
 force and influence of nationality in our own lives, in 
 order to learn how to respect other nationalities. We 
 in this country have struggled hard for liberty, for the 
 right of each man to be himself, and to live his life 
 according to his bent and faculty. When we come to 
 the logic of that situation we perceive that it involves 
 this, that the right which each claims for himself should 
 be extended to everyone else. We in this country real- 
 ise our national soul; we were never more conscious 
 of it, or prouder of it, than we are to-day. The logic 
 of the situation points (we can hardly yet say that it 
 leads) to our recognition of the value of each nation- 
 ality. We are bound, though we do not yet see it, to 
 wish that Germany should be as German as England is 
 English; and that every nation should have the flavour 
 of its individuality as we have the flavour of ours. 
 
 13 
 
National Ideals and Race-Regeneration 
 
 It will be our object presently to ask what is the soul 
 of our nation, that we may realise it, and develop it. 
 But for the moment let us pause to see how, owing to 
 the development of the souls of nations 
 
 2. An international life is within sight. It is on 
 this fact that the attention of mankind is gradually 
 concentrating. We do not say now with Metternich: 
 " There are no longer nations in Europe, but only par- 
 ties." We rather say, and are glad to say : " The na- 
 tions in Europe are now more individual, more self- 
 conscious, more sensitive, more patriotic, than they ever 
 were." But a new thought has entered the world: the 
 nations can supplement one another, and form in their 
 combination, without sacrifice of their individuality, one 
 organism of humanity. The thought is difficult of ful- 
 filment. No one can prophesy when the fulfilment will 
 come. But the thought has entered the world, not 
 again to be lost. We expect, not a universal empire, all 
 peoples under the domination of a ruler, or of a ruling 
 race that crude imperialism is visionary and out of 
 date, impossible, and, if it were possible, undesirable 
 but all peoples, organised and developed on those natural 
 lines which we call national, brought into a common 
 consciousness of solidarity, related to each other by just 
 such ties of mutual respect, held in this relation by just 
 such bonds of law, as at present hold men together in 
 a civilised society. The tentative efforts of the Hague 
 tribunal seem to be flaunted and defied by the very 
 Powers that made them. And time may yet be needed. 
 Centuries have passed since Grotius developed his amaz- 
 
 14 
 
What Is a Nation? 
 
 ing argument for the law of nations. He was over- 
 whelmed with obloquy, and his very statue at Delft was 
 assailed by the fierceness of theological hate. But his 
 principle has won the day. Progress may be more rapid 
 than we at present anticipate. But, swift or slow, no 
 one now can doubt that human society is moving on to 
 this consummation. Nations will be as individuals, 
 some big, some little, some rich, some poor, some richly 
 endowed with thought, some with the gift of action, 
 some artistic, some industrial ; but these variously gifted 
 individuals will live together in concord and mutual 
 aid, not grudging each other's prosperity, because 
 each shares in the good of all. The divisions caused 
 by distance, the varieties of language and religion, an- 
 cient animosities and misunderstandings, will be over- 
 come precisely as similar divisions within the boundaries 
 of a single State have been overcome. Distance disap- 
 pears when events all over the world are known within 
 the day. Before the establishment of Esperanto the 
 difficulties of Babel are practically surmounted. The 
 interpreter is everywhere; and we are moving towards 
 the surrender of age-long animosities, and the acquire- 
 ment of a firm basis of understanding and mutual 
 agreement, in the recognition of the solidarity of the 
 race, and of that common heart of humanity which is 
 only ignored so long as men do not know one another. 
 "Do not introduce me to that man," said Sidney 
 Smith ; " I want to hate him, and I cannot hate a man 
 I know." The process of mutual introduction among 
 the nations goes on by literature, and by travel, and by 
 
 15 
 
National Ideals and Race-Regeneration 
 
 commerce, at so accelerating a rate, that the day is fast 
 approaching when the earth will be covered with the 
 mutual knowledge of the peoples, and the differences 
 which spring from ignorance will disappear. 
 
 When, therefore, we try to present to ourselves afresh 
 our national ideal, it must be done in full view of the 
 international ideal. We wish to make our nation what 
 it should be, in order that it may take its proper place, 
 and play its appointed part, in the corporate life of all 
 nations. It is this novel feature the quickened and 
 quickening sense of the world as one, and of the nations 
 related to one another as formerly families were related 
 in a nation that makes the new discussion of the 
 national ideals necessary. Too many are thinking upon 
 this subject in terms of a past which, we may hope, 
 will never return. A nation no longer means a society 
 and organisation of individuals against the world, but 
 a society and organisation of individuals for the world. 
 What the State is in the United States of America, a 
 nation is to be in the united nations of the world. 
 
 But in considering our own national ideal we are 
 confronted by a difficulty which results from the im- 
 perial expansion of our little country; and the discus- 
 sion cannot proceed fruitfully until we have cleared our 
 minds upon this subject. Is the nation equivalent to 
 the Empire, or is the Empire a confederation of kindred 
 or allied nations ? The attempt to think imperially has 
 produced a ludicrous confusion in many well-meaning 
 British minds. They lose sight of their own nation, 
 and its great ideals, and try to feel themselves part of 
 
What Is a Nation? 
 
 an empire, another pseudo-nation, circling the globe. 
 And in this pseudo-nation the overwhelming majority, 
 probably four-fifths, are people of a different colour, a 
 different religion, and a different political provenance. 
 Nothing but confusion and degeneration can come from 
 imperialism thus understood; the fifty or sixty millions 
 of white men and Christians will be dragged down and 
 swamped by the three hundred and twenty millions of 
 Mohammedans, Hindoos, and Negroes. 
 
 Let us, therefore, be careful to establish the principle 
 that the British nation is and remains a nation. Its 
 ideal is to be determined in the light of its origin and 
 its experience. Its value to the Empire lies in its re- 
 taining its own identity, valuing its own past, perpetu- 
 ating its own principles. In its expansion, its whole 
 object is to foster and bring up daughter nations. The 
 Empire is not to be one nationality, but a group of na- 
 tions united by one crown, and held together by the 
 reverence and gratitude which daughters feel for their 
 mother. We desire the Dominion of Canada to be a 
 nation, born out of the side of Great Britain, but not 
 identical with it, nor permanently dependent upon it. 
 We look forward to a day when the great nation of Can- 
 ada will both teach and lead, in the light of the new 
 world, her revered mother from whom she sprang. We 
 expect Australia to be a nation, the United States or 
 Commonwealth of the Southern Hemisphere. That 
 nation must be very different from Britain ; climate, dis- 
 tance, the proximity of islands like New Guinea, and 
 empires like China and Japan, present for her problems 
 
 17 
 
National Ideals and Race-Regeneration 
 
 different from our own. That daughter nation must 
 by many experiments work out her political salvation, 
 and we must hope for the day when she will have suc- 
 cessful experiments to commend to the attention of the 
 mother country. New Zealand again, by its position, 
 by its natural resources, and by all its development hith- 
 erto, is marked out as a nation of the future, a nation 
 which will stand to Australia as Britain has stood to 
 Europe, but with this incalculable advantage, that it is 
 akin to Australia, and united to it by the same Crown. 
 We must anticipate also, though with much trepidation, 
 the nationality of South Africa. That vast population 
 of Bantu-Africans, with its narrow fringe of Dutch 
 and English, must work out its destiny, united to 
 Britain by the Crown, but in practical independence of 
 British control. The ideal of South Africa must be 
 formed on the spot; it cannot be slavishly copied from 
 Britain. The negroes, Pagan or Mohammedan or 
 Christian, must always be in the majority. The white 
 men must learn how to govern a State with the English 
 traditions but under these altered conditions. Already 
 British interference is regarded as an impertinence. 
 Where the problem is so strange, the preconceived judg- 
 ments of the inhabitants of the British Isles are treated 
 with a tolerant contempt. In India our presence and 
 influence have resulted in producing for the first time 
 in history an Indian nationality. We have made a 
 rude political unity of the numerous races and tongues 
 between the Himalayas and Cape Comorin. To incor- 
 porate this vast mass of humanity in the British nation 
 
 18 
 
What Is a Nation? 
 
 would be impossible, and dangerous to our national ex- 
 istence. We can have but one object in view, and that 
 is, to train and consolidate India as a nation, and to 
 teach it the art of self-government on our own model, 
 but with such differences as inevitably result from the 
 vastness of the country and the population, and from 
 the temperament and ideals which prevail in that great 
 peninsula. In Egypt we have a similar object in view ; 
 we desire an Egyptian nation like our own, or as like as 
 it can be with a Mohammedan population and under a 
 Mohammedan rule. 
 
 The Empire, united by the crown of the King, is thus 
 to be conceived of, not as a nation, but as a group of na- 
 tions, and the ideal of the Empire is that each nation in 
 it should have an independent, free and harmonious de- 
 velopment, only influenced by the example of that nation 
 within its borders to which it looks up as in a certain 
 sense the mother, or the foster-mother, of all. 
 
 There remains yet, before we can approach the discus- 
 sion of our national ideal, the perplexing problem pre- 
 sented by Ireland, and even by Wales. These parts of 
 the United Kingdom claim a separate national identity. 
 They do not wish to be torn asunder from the Empire, 
 but they claim some such rights of internal growth and 
 autonomy as are conceded to such nations as Canada or 
 New Zealand. It is hard to see how a genuine national 
 ideal can ever be maintained if a nation is to be made 
 up of a willing majority and an unwilling minority. If 
 by " nation " the Irish mean their own island, as against 
 Britain, what is gained by insisting on the idea of na- 
 
 19 
 
National Ideals and Race-Regeneration 
 
 tionality ? It becomes a separatist idea ; it hinders the 
 very national life which in Britain we wish to conceive 
 and to preserve. The case of Wales is not so extreme 
 or so exasperated as that of Ireland; and probably the 
 Welsh, if pushed for an answer, would ask to be, with 
 England and Scotland, an integral part of the one Brit- 
 ish Nation. 
 
 Our discussion must therefore proceed on the tacit 
 assumption that Ireland is to be treated separately, and 
 must be directed, as Canada or Australia is, by its own 
 national ideal. There is nothing, of course, to hinder 
 Ireland from adopting the British ideal. But while 
 Ireland prefers its own ideal, nothing is gained by dilut- 
 ing and distorting the British ideal in the effort to in- 
 clude a reluctant Ireland. 
 
 We have now clearly defined the nature of our inquiry. 
 We set out to sketch the national ideal of Great Britain. 
 We leave out of account the other nations of the Empire, 
 though always with the assumption that the British 
 ideal is to hold them all together in an honourable and 
 mutually serviceable political unity. And we do not 
 feel that to exclude these nations from the discussion is 
 any derogation from their dignity. Eather we know 
 that we serve them best by presenting in clear and con- 
 vincing outline the ideal of the mother nation. And 
 further, their close connection with us is a step towards 
 the achievement of the ultimate federation of all the 
 nations on earth, which is the ideal held by all wise and 
 seeing persons, not in Britain only, but throughout the 
 world. 
 
 20 
 
CHAPTEE II 
 
 THE NATIONAL IDEAL OF BRITAIN 
 
 THE first thing that has to be said, especially after the 
 line of reflection which we have been following, is, that 
 the national ideal must include the adequate defence of 
 this country against possible external aggression. We 
 live in hope, and preparation, for the day when the na- 
 tions will learn war no more; we are persuaded that 
 eventually differences between nations will be settled as 
 differences between individuals are already settled in a 
 civilised country : not by force, but by law. At present 
 we see only the faint and imperfect beginnings of an 
 international tribunal ; and the sanctions of international 
 law are only gaining the first hesitating recognition. 
 While we wait for that better day, we must all recognise 
 the necessity of being forearmed against possible foes. 
 We know that it is not possible to surrender our naval 
 and military establishment. We must make such pro- 
 vision to keep our command of the high seas as so widely 
 extended an empire and so absolute a dependence on 
 foreign supplies for food demand. We must train our 
 manhood to defend our shores, and also to secure the 
 scattered members of the imperial federation. And the 
 national ideal now, as ever, requires every man to be 
 ready, if the country calls, to lay down his life in her 
 defence. There is nothing in human life more honour- 
 
 21 
 
National Ideals and Race-Regeneration 
 
 able and admirable than that instinct which makes a 
 man ready to die, without pause or question, for his 
 fatherland. No one can see without emotion, in our 
 colleges, schools, or market-places, the monuments to 
 those young men who in one war after another have gone 
 out, leaving behind them all the bright prospects of 
 life and success at home, to die for their country. 
 
 I remember Cecil Boyle, cultured, wealthy, happy in 
 his home and in the honour paid him by his neighbours. 
 He felt it to be his duty to leave all and to lead his 
 troop of yeomanry to South Africa. There came from 
 him a brilliant account of the service under Colonel 
 French, and a telegram, followed by the slower post, to 
 say that he had fallen in an obscure skirmish. A coun- 
 try is certainly great when it has thousands of men like 
 him, who count not their lives of value when their coun- 
 try demands them. We may believe that a war like that 
 in South Africa was wholly unnecessary, or even that it 
 was brought on by blundering, by misunderstanding and 
 misrepresentation, or by the corrupt monetary interests 
 in South Africa or in England; we may, on looking 
 back, see how foolish it was to sacrifice 220,000,000 and 
 twenty thousand lives, valuable as Cecil Boyle's, only 
 to establish more securely and legally the inevitable 
 dominance of the majority in the management of South 
 African affairs; but no one can miss the value and im- 
 portance of that spirit in our country which made her 
 sons ready, without forming any opinion about the rights 
 of the war, to put their lives at their country's disposal. 
 
 22 
 
The National Ideal of Britain 
 
 That, I imagine, is what Lord Koberts meant when he 
 advocated the doctrine of " my country, right or wrong/' 
 and placed the highest patriotism in obedience to that 
 precept. He meant that in every country the men 
 should be ready to give their lives to preserve its integ- 
 rity and independence; and he knew that if each one 
 had to decide for himself whether the particular cause 
 was just and fair, that generous impulse would be sick- 
 lied o'er with the pale cast of thought. The precept 
 should not be " my country, right or wrong/' but rather : 
 " I am at my country's disposal, to live or die for her 
 life and her security." 
 
 The white cemeteries that dot the veld in South Africa 
 and the ocean sown with the bodies of our brave men, 
 
 " Whose heavy-shotted hammock-shrouds 
 Drop in the vast and wandering deep," 
 
 the great tradition that we place our country before our 
 own lives and, thinking of what England has done 
 for us, ask, What can we do for England ? these are 
 part of our national life, and feed the springs of our 
 national service. We cannot afford to dishonour or to 
 weaken this dumb, unselfish heroism, which is to every 
 country its first and greatest possession. 
 
 In our love of peace, and in our impatient anticipa- 
 tion of the better day when arbitration will supersede 
 the arbitrament of war, we must not weaken our protest 
 and discredit our principles, by speaking as if we pro- 
 posed to abolish the national defences, or as if we-under- 
 
 23 
 
National Ideals and Race-Regeneration 
 
 rated the manliness, courage and self -sacrifice of those 
 who elect to fight our battles for us on land and sea. 
 
 We look wistfully at that unique example of William 
 Penn governing the State of Pennsylvania, and secure 
 against the warlike Indians, by acting on the principle 
 of non-resistance; we hope that some day a great coun- 
 try will dare to do the same; we would give anything 
 that our own country might be great enough to make 
 the quixotic experiment. But we know that such an 
 act of national courage would only avail if the nation 
 were inspired and acted as one man. We do not see 
 how such a unanimity of conviction is possible in our 
 day. That a small minority should demand it may 
 hasten the day of its realisation ; but even that minority 
 may, without any inconsistency, maintain the defences 
 of the country which are necessary in the present state 
 of the world and the present temper of the public mind. 
 A man may believe that all disease could be avoided by 
 effectual precautions; that inoculation, operations, and 
 even medicine, might under right conditions become 
 unnecessary. But though he argues for such a possi- 
 bility, he is quite justified, and must not be charged with 
 inconsistency, if, meanwhile, he vaccinates his children 
 and calls in the doctor when he is ill. 
 
 But while we recognise heartily the necessity for mili- 
 tary and naval armaments of defence, and treat with 
 honour the brave men who enter the service, we cannot 
 too explicitly insist on the position that we do not wish 
 to be a military or naval state; we do not aim at con- 
 quests ; we do not believe that any assault on other coun- 
 
 24 
 
The National Ideal of Britain 
 
 tries is justifiable; we strictly and absolutely limit our 
 armaments to the task of defence. The reason for in- 
 sisting on this point in our national ideal is that in a 
 sense it is a platitude every country says that it is 
 only armed for self-defence. Even when Italy invades 
 Tripoli, the pretext is that Italians in Tripoli are in 
 danger of something or other. Germany might invade 
 England on the pretext that only so can she gain the 
 supremacy of the sea and an outlet for her surplus popu- 
 lation. As a platitude the principle is unnecessary and 
 somewhat nauseating. But what is needed is to raise 
 the platitude to the height of a dictate of the national 
 conscience. We must draw the sharp distinction, and 
 abide by it; we must recognise the progress which has 
 carried us so far from the days of Napoleon and the other 
 unscrupulous conquerors of the world. We must ac- 
 knowledge the truth brought out and demonstrated by 
 Norman Angell in his " Great Illusion," that conquest 
 of other countries is no longer possible, because the 
 nexus of commerce and international finance has made 
 us all so essentially one, that in trying to hurt another 
 nation we hurt ourselves as much, or more. 
 
 A waspish nation that assails another may fix its sting 
 in the flesh of the other ; but, leaving its sting there, it 
 will itself die. 
 
 The distinction we draw and abide by is : Our arma- 
 ments * are for defence and not for offence; while we 
 must be ready to repel attack, and must be able to do so 
 effectually, we cannot attack others ; we cannot -dream 
 of gaining anything by naval or military aggression. 
 
 25 
 
National Ideals and Race-Regeneration 
 
 The day for that is over. Other times call for other 
 methods. Our advance in the world, our management 
 of our own dependencies, our commerce, colonisation, 
 and spheres of influence over more backward countries, 
 must and shall be carried on without war. 
 
 But when we have resolutely set aside the false and 
 archaic ideals of militarism, which can do nothing but 
 mislead us, the question opens up, what is the ideal of 
 a nation which is frankly not set on naval conquest or 
 military glory? The Comtist theory was that the age 
 of militarism had passed into the age of industrialism ; 
 and, under the authority of that dictum, the world, and 
 especially the English-speaking world, has thrown itself 
 into industrial expansion with a military ardour. 
 
 Looking at our own country, we might suppose that, 
 at any rate since the Great Exhibition of 1851, our one 
 consideration has been to develop our industries, and to 
 extend our commerce. The national ideal might seem 
 to be to produce and to acquire and to enjoy material 
 wealth. With that dazzling ideal before us, it has be- 
 come the personal ambition and aim of a vast proportion 
 of the population to get and to spend. Now, so far as 
 this misguided ideal has taken the place of the ideal of 
 militarism, so far as industrial success has been substi- 
 tuted for chivalry, so far as the hero is now the man of 
 money instead of the man of the sword, we have reason 
 to deplore the change as a change for the worse. At the 
 beginning of the epoch, Tennyson, in " Maud," broke 
 out into violent invectives against the sordid results of 
 commercialism, and harked back to the sword and to 
 
 26 
 
The National Ideal of Britain 
 
 battles as the one way of preserving the nobility of na- 
 tions. Who can help sympathising with him? Arms 
 and battles have their horrors, but they also have their 
 heroism,, their glories, their self-sacrifice, their sense of 
 something greater than personal gain. But life misled 
 by the false ideal of commercialism becomes sordid and 
 revolting. The world is becoming conscious of a miser- 
 able deterioration, a kind of dry-rot, resulting from this 
 unrestrained pursuit of wealth. How exhausting is the 
 pursuit, how unsatisfying the result! Men are every- 
 where engaged in a feverish effort to produce and to 
 acquire. They all produce, a few acquire. Those who 
 do not acquire envy those who do ; but those who acquire 
 are far from enviable. Their lives are exhausted in vio- 
 lent efforts and in trivial pleasures. They gradually 
 realise themselves, when they have built their palaces 
 and are tearing through the country in their motor-cars, 
 as what they essentially are contemptible and aim- 
 less atoms, living without an object and dying without 
 being desired. The country deluded by the false ideal 
 of commercialism becomes drab and dreary and sterile, 
 and an almost universal sigh of moral degeneracy rises 
 from the land. 
 
 It is necessary, therefore, to bring out the fact that 
 the age of militarism does not, or ought not to, pass into 
 the age of commercialism, but into the age of brother- 
 hood. Commercialism is not the end, but only a means 
 to an end which must be kept always and everywhere in 
 its strictly subordinate position. 
 
 Strictly speaking, the ideal of commercialism has been 
 27 
 
National Ideals and Race-Regeneration 
 
 a fetish which has never deluded the elect Apparently 
 we in England have been bent on making money, and 
 everyone has given a lip-service to Mammon. But in a 
 dumb, unexpressed way the better minds have followed 
 another principle. Their lips have murmured Mam- 
 mon, and their knees have been bent in the Temple of 
 Mammon ; but their hearts have listened to the prophets, 
 Carlyle, Buskin, Tolstoy; and, though no doubt with a 
 certain faltering which always comes where head and 
 heart are at strife, they have lived by a totally different 
 ideal. That ideal, followed in silence by the few, is 
 gradually coming out into prominence, to be recognised 
 by all. It is that national ideal which we have now to 
 present to ourselves, asking seriously whether we do not 
 at heart believe in it, though apparently we have been 
 bowing to the image of gold which Nebuchadnezzar the 
 king had set up. Our national ideal is not really the 
 production and acquisition of wealth in Adam Smith's 
 sense of that term, but the production and acquisition 
 of wealth in the sense which Euskin, going back on its 
 intrinsic meaning, taught us to give to the word. 
 
 Our prophets have spoken in the land, and here in 
 England at any rate we believe what has been sung by 
 Walt Whitman in the deaf ears of his countrymen : 
 
 " The place where a great city stands is not the place of 
 stretched wharves, docks, manufactures, deposits of pro- 
 duce merely, 
 
 Nor the place of ceaseless salutes of newcomers, or the anchor- 
 lifters of the departing, 
 
 28 
 
The National Ideal of Britain 
 
 Nor the place of the tallest and costliest buildings or shops 
 
 selling goods from the rest of the earth, 
 Nor the place of the best libraries and schools, nor the place 
 
 where money is plentiest, 
 Nor the place of the most numerous population. 
 
 Where the city stands with the brawniest breed of orators and 
 
 bards, 
 Where the city stands that is beloved by these, and loves 
 
 them in return and understands them, 
 Where no monuments exist to heroes but in the common words 
 
 and deeds, 
 
 Where thrift is in its place and prudence is in its place, 
 Where the men and women think lightly of the laws, 
 Where the slave ceases and the master of slaves ceases, 
 Where the populace rises at once against the never ending 
 
 audacity of elected persons, 
 Where fierce men and women pour forth, as the sea to the 
 
 whistle of death pours its sweeping and unript waves, 
 Where outside authority enters always after the precedence of 
 
 inside authority, 
 Where the citizen is always the head and ideal, and president. 
 
 mayor, governor, and what not, are agents for pay, 
 Where children are taught to be laws for themselves, and to 
 
 depend on themselves, 
 
 Wliere equanimity is illustrated in affairs, 
 Where speculations on the soul are encouraged, 
 Where women walk in public processions in the streets the 
 
 same as the men, 
 Where they enter the public assembly and take places the same 
 
 as the men; 
 
 Where the city of the faithfulest friends stands 2 
 Where the city of the cleanliness of the sexes stands, 
 Where the city of the healthiest fathers stands, 
 Where the city of the best-bodied mothers stands, 
 There the great city stands." 
 29 
 
National Ideals and Race-Regeneration 
 
 The ideal which has been slowly shaping itself before 
 our eyes is not a military State (the defences of the coun- 
 try are subordinate, a means to an end), and not a 
 commercial or industrial State (the production of 
 wealth is merely a means to an end), but a community 
 of men and women in which health and well-being shall 
 be general, and the individual shall have the fullest 
 opportunity to contribute all of which he is capable to 
 the good of the whole. This ideal of a nation must be 
 presented in glowing colours, and in sufficient detail, to 
 captivate the citizens, and to fire the imagination of the 
 youth, as military glory did in the past, and as com- 
 mercial success does in the present. 
 
 If only the ideal can be adequately expressed, and all 
 can understand at what we are aiming, the tug of the 
 future will lead us to its realisation. And this has been 
 the work of our prophets, this is the thought of Democ- 
 racy, the dream of Eugenics. Let us gather together the 
 lessons of our teachers, and seek to harmonise them in 
 a consistent picture of what we wish our nation to be. 
 We will not dip too far into the future, but will try to 
 trace the paths which start out from just before our feet 
 to the fulfilment of the preconceived ideal. 
 
 SO 
 
CHAPTEE III 
 
 THE ELEMENTS OF THE NATIONAL IDEAL 
 
 1. FIRST of all, and foundation of all, is Health. Our 
 national ideal is to obtain and to keep a healthy popula- 
 tion. We see clearly now that a large industrial com- 
 munity, gathering necessarily for the most part in cities 
 and large towns, can only be kept in health, if the gov- 
 ernment, national and local, takes up the matter seri- 
 ously, and persistently, with large and inclusive plans 
 of action, which aim not only at the cure, but at the 
 prevention, of disease. Very remarkable results have 
 been achieved in repressing zymotic diseases, by the ac- 
 tion of local authorities in enforcing the regulations 
 which medical science prescribes. The scourges of 
 small-pox and typhus have been repressed within such 
 narrow limits that we hardly realise now what a terror 
 these diseases were to our fathers. We expect our gov- 
 ernment now to take vigorous action to deal with the 
 great national scourge of consumption. We see that it 
 is no longer merely a question of individual suffering; 
 it is even more a question of national suffering. Our 
 sixty thousand consumptives, most of them the young 
 and serviceable sinews of the national life, annually pin- 
 ing away and dying prematurely, when their work is 
 just begun, constitute a national disease, a consumption 
 
 31 
 
National Ideals and Race-Regeneration 
 
 which we must, as a nation, face, and if possible over- 
 come. A crusade against consumption should enlist the 
 sympathy and enthusiasm of our nation to-day, as Coeur 
 de Lion's crusade against the Saracen stirred the heart 
 of England in the twelfth century. Our enemies are 
 not Germans but germs ; and both Germans and British 
 should have their hands full with the noble warfare 
 against the unseen destroyers of the human race. 
 
 But we cannot be content with crusades against the 
 great plagues which devastate our population. Our pur- 
 pose is more searching and more far-reaching. We 
 want to secure the birth of healthy children, and to train 
 up the children from the beginning in healthy ways. 
 And it becomes increasingly a national ideal to prevent 
 infant mortality, and the unwholesome restriction of 
 families. 
 
 The sinister countenance of Malthus has vanished 
 among the spectres of the past. The groundless scare, 
 that population may overtake the means of subsistence, 
 which made it seem a virtue of prudence a generation 
 ago to remain celibate or to produce only small families, 
 has been dissipated by the enormous advances in the 
 arts of tilling the soil, of transit, and of mechanical 
 processes. And, further, we now plainly recognise that 
 the wealth of a country consists not in material products 
 at all, but in the number and succession of healthy and 
 vigorous lives. The prophetic oracle: "A man shall 
 be as the gold of Ophir," is realised in a sense which the 
 prophet did not intend. The wealth of the country is 
 its manhood and its womanhood. The more healthy 
 
 32 
 
The Elements of the National Ideal 
 
 human beings there are in these islands, the richer we 
 are. Human hands, human brains, human hearts, are 
 the only real property, the only serviceable wealth. Our 
 debased coinage is the debased humanity that we suffer 
 to grow up. Our poverty is, that so large a proportion 
 of this human wealth is wasted. The hands are idle, or 
 occupied in stealing or in other iniquities. The brain is 
 ill-nourished, unemployed, or wasted by the wrong use. 
 The hearts are chilled, or checked, or provoked. Our 
 people degenerate, and then of what use is the pile of 
 capital, or the vast accumulation of machinery and 
 means of production ? The idle, useless members of so- 
 ciety are our disease. 
 
 With the passing of the Malthusian nightmare we 
 recognise our true function as a nation, which is to be 
 fruitful and to replenish the earth. The large family 
 with insufficient food, without parental care, ill-taught 
 and untrained, is still to be deprecated. But the well- 
 being of the country lies in large families, properly 
 nourished, properly trained, properly educated, morally 
 and spiritually developed. Eugenics becomes a method 
 of patriotism. The worker in this science is now a 
 greater national benefactor than the soldier or the cap- 
 tain of industry. We now ask, what will secure the 
 birth of healthy children? How can the diseased and 
 unfit be prevented from propagating their infirmities to 
 their helpless offspring? How can the healthy and the 
 fit be encouraged to undertake the solemn responsibili- 
 ties of parenthood ? M. Guyau, groaning over the decay 
 of population in Prance, and complaining that his coim- 
 
 33 
 
National Ideals and Race-Regeneration 
 
 try was gaily dancing down the way of death, seriously 
 advocated the appointment of apostles to preach to the 
 French from the town halls of France the duty of parent- 
 hood ! We need teachers in pulpits and college chairs, 
 in schools, in papers and books, to bring home to our 
 people to-day the truth that the best service we can 
 render to the State is to bring up wholesome and effi- 
 cient sons and daughters, to be the life of the nation in 
 the immediate future. 
 
 It becomes necessary for parents, not only to under- 
 take the task of parenthood, eschewing the selfish fears 
 which prevent children from being born, but to under- 
 stand the laws of health and the methods of early train- 
 ing, so that they may bring up their children, strong 
 and well, in the nurture and admonition of the Lord. 
 The home-life, which has played a large part in this 
 country, and has given to our race a certain faculty for 
 making homes all over the earth, must be with all love 
 and enthusiasm preserved. The ideal home is part of 
 the national ideal. All the tendencies which weaken and 
 impair the pure, strong, and happy home-life should be 
 resisted. Government should discourage them; we all 
 should cease to foster them. And not only in the home ; 
 in schools also, and by wholesome education through 
 the years of adolescence, it becomes the national task to 
 train up and to discipline the young life in hardihood, 
 efficiency, and sanity. 
 
 2. From Health we pass insensibly to Wealth, be- 
 cause, as we have seen, we recognise the wealth of a 
 country in the number of its healthy and efficient citi- 
 
 34 
 
The Elements of the National Ideal 
 
 zens. But it is necessary to look at the problem of 
 wealth, in the common acceptation of that term. What 
 is our national ideal on this subject? Once, no doubt, 
 it was that our country should be the paradise of the 
 rich and the purgatory of the poor. Everything was 
 designed, laws were made, government was carried on, 
 to protect the rich in the enjoyment of their property, 
 and to secure to the poor the privilege of working for 
 the rich. According to the satirist, the people were 
 ranged on the village green as the rich went to church, 
 singing the pious hymn, 
 
 " God bless the squire, and all his rich relations, 
 And teach us poorer folk to keep our stations." 
 
 This was the implicit thought of our national life, this 
 was the tendency which things unconsciously took. But 
 can it be said that it is our national ideal to-day? If 
 a few fortunate persons, shut off from the breath of the 
 national life, still cherish this faded and unworthy ideal, 
 the nation has left them far behind. Wow, all parties 
 in political life, and all thinkers and leaders, would af- 
 firm that our main object, so far as material wealth is 
 concerned, is to have it in " widest commonalty spread." 
 We are set on discovering the ways by which naturally, 
 automatically, and without injustice to any, the shares 
 of all may be more equally allotted. 
 
 A new ideal has slowly but surely emerged, and 
 everyone, asked suddenly what it is that we are aiming 
 at, would probably say: We are aiming at such a dis- 
 tribution of wealth as would set every family well above 
 
 35 
 
National Ideals and Race-Regeneration 
 
 the bare margin of subsistence, and make it possible for 
 every child to be brought up, and educated, in health 
 and strength and efficiency. The investigations of Dr. 
 Charles Booth and of Mr. Bowntree, which showed that 
 a third of our population was not receiving enough to 
 secure a wholesome subsistence, have stirred the con- 
 science of the nation. Property is important. But the 
 people are more important. The national policy has 
 been directed to preserving property; now it is directed 
 to preserving people. It is the one settled and inflexi- 
 ble purpose of economists and politicians (so far as they 
 express the national conscience) to find how every 
 worker may find work, and all work may be paid with a 
 living wage. The interest in securing the wealth of the 
 rich has passed over (even among the rich themselves) 
 into the concern to secure the life, the wholesome and 
 worthy life, of the poor. 
 
 It has become our national ideal to remove the re- 
 proach that, while we are the richest of the nations, we 
 have more pauperism than any other, and a poverty 
 which is almost as colossal as our wealth. 
 
 There are some among us who think that the end is 
 to be gained by the policy of State Socialism expounded 
 in the great work of Marx; there are others who mis- 
 trust a doctrinaire Socialism, and yet insensibly gravi- 
 tate towards the same practical measures which Social- 
 ists would immediately advocate; there is a third party, 
 which dreads and detests the very name, and all that is 
 popularly understood by Socialism, and yet they are aim- 
 ing at the same object as Socialists, and decry the method 
 
 36 
 
The Elements of the National Ideal 
 
 because they do not think that it will achieve the result. 
 Socialists, Liberals, Conservatives, are no longer divided 
 in their object. They have all tacitly agreed to revise 
 the notion of the economic goal which the nation is seek- 
 ing. That object is no longer the accumulation of 
 wealth in the hands of the few, but the extinction of 
 pauperism, and the reduction of poverty within its nar- 
 rowest possible limits. Let us glance for a moment at 
 the three forces, or armies, which are bent on carrying 
 the same menacing citadel from different sides. The 
 famous remark of Sir William Harcourt : " We are all 
 Socialists now," has so much truth in it, that certain 
 objects which have been set before us by doctrinaire 
 Socialists have come to be accepted by the whole com- 
 munity. But the Socialists have their own view of the 
 way by which the objects are to be reached. Collective, 
 as opposed to private, possession is the formula which 
 carries us nearest to the Socialist ideal. The indis- 
 pensable means of production, earth and sea and air, 
 cannot be claimed by individuals, except so far as they 
 hold them in trust for the good of the community. The 
 nation, for example, is here, on these islands ; the ground 
 beneath its feet, the air above, and the sea around, are 
 the necessary conditions of its existence. It cannot part 
 with the control of the air, or allow a monopolist to tax 
 us all for the right of breathing. It cannot part with 
 the control of the sea, and allow enemies to blockade 
 our ports or raid our fisheries. Neither can it part with 
 the equally indispensable means of existence, the land. 
 Whatever rights of property in land are granted to indi- 
 
 37 
 
National Ideals and Race-Regeneration 
 
 viduals, those rights must be subject to the national con- 
 trol, and revocable in the interests of the nation. 
 
 Whatever can be owned, and more advantageously 
 used, by the community than by private owners, should 
 be, think Socialists, kept in the hands of the community. 
 This broad principle of Collectivism now floats before 
 our eyes, and, notwithstanding the very natural re- 
 sistance of monopolists and privileged owners, it more 
 and more shapes our aims and directs our practical legis- 
 lation. 
 
 On the other hand, many of us are opposed to a doc- 
 trinaire Socialism because the object in view may be 
 frustrated by withdrawing too largely the motives of 
 personal energy and initiative. Broadly speaking, Lib- 
 erals who are not Socialists will argue that the total in- 
 come of the country, obtained under present conditions, 
 in which the workers work at the spur of necessity, 
 would, if divided among the whole population, yield but 
 30 a head per annum. Only eleven or twelve shillings 
 a week each ! That is little more than a bare subsistence. 
 What is to be dreaded is, that if the spur of personal 
 need were, under a Socialist regime, removed, the gross 
 production for our population might sink far below that 
 level. And, the Liberal will urge, the close and neces- 
 sarily severe organisation of a Socialist State might 
 destroy the spring and impulse and joy of life. The old 
 passion of individual liberty is in the English blood, and 
 the ideal of a Socialist order, with its greater security 
 against starvation, haunts the English mind with the 
 fear of a spiritual starvation which many dread more 
 
 38 
 
The Elements of the National Ideal 
 
 than physical want. Englishmen are not idealists; they 
 are plain and practical; but they demand personal 
 freedom; they cannot breathe if they are overorgan- 
 ised. 
 
 The Liberal, therefore, aiming at the Socialist object, 
 is content to work towards a more equal distribution of 
 wealth, and to claim an ever-increasing proportion of 
 private incomes for State purposes, when the income 
 rises well above the line of a modest competence. 
 
 But even the " Diehards " of Individualism, and the 
 stoutest defenders of Tory tradition, are not so far as 
 they seem from agreement with these modern ideals. 
 They are distrustful of Socialist and Liberal methods, 
 but they fully accept the object which those other parties 
 have in view. They are opposed to spoliation and rob- 
 bery; but an uneasy suspicion has invaded their minds 
 that perhaps the masses of the dispossessed are the vic- 
 tims of some historic and chronic robbery; it sometimes 
 dawns upon them that they are enjoying perhaps the 
 proceeds of ancient spoliation. 
 
 And in this altered temper there is an increasing 
 readiness to face any cautious, moderate and well-con- 
 sidered plan for increasing small holdings, or for giving 
 to the masses of the people opportunities of progress 
 and promotion. The Labour Member of the House of 
 Commons to-day is received by no one more respectfully 
 than by the most outright representatives of the older 
 order. 
 
 Amid the clash and conflict of parties, the -national 
 ideal has clearly formed itself : to get rid of pauperism, 
 
 39 
 
National Ideals and Race-Regeneration 
 
 to make poverty unnecessary, to make' national wealth 
 the possession of a whole nation. 
 
 3. But Health and Wealth are only means to a higher 
 end. The national ideal aims at a wholesome Intel- 
 lectual Life for every member of the community. We 
 can at last truly say that education means something to 
 us, and that as a nation we accept the reiterated injunc- 
 tion : " Educate, educate, educate." May we not claim 
 that we now consider universal education, the education 
 of each unit up to the measure of individual capacity, 
 the object set before this country? We have a Board 
 of Education, and a Minister in the Cabinet responsible 
 for its administration. For forty years the beneficent 
 system of elementary education, initiated by that heroic 
 spirit, W. E. Forster, has been at work, and it has trans- 
 formed our country. That was only a beginning. The 
 methods of education were imperfect; the curricula 
 were tentative; the difficulty of religious teaching and 
 of sectarian interests has clogged the progress of the 
 work, and is not yet removed. The secondary and tech- 
 nical schools have not yet been dealt with on the same 
 broad, national scale. Universities are slowest of all to 
 develop and to adapt themselves to the needs of new 
 times. 
 
 But the ideal has formed itself, and is struggling 
 to its accomplishment in defiance of all opposition. 
 Education is now a science as well as an art, and it is 
 possible to take a wide inclusive view of the results which 
 we wish to attain. The modifications in elementary 
 schools, the provision and linking up of secondary 
 
 40 
 
The Elements of the National Ideal 
 
 schools, a sufficient and accessible supply of University 
 teaching, can be achieved so soon as the nation sees the 
 problem as a whole and realises what has to be done. 
 It is therefore well worth while to spend a little time in 
 visualising the ideal, and in allowing the beauty and 
 charm and desirableness of it to take possession of us. 
 A human mind is a potentiality of faculties. If it can 
 be elicited, or, what is the same thing, educated; if it 
 can be encouraged and trained to develop itself, so that 
 it becomes all that it is capable of becoming, and does 
 all that it was designed to do, it is a priceless possession 
 acquired by the national life. Each stunted, ill-devel- 
 oped, perverted mind is a loss, an irreparable loss. In 
 the exceptional cases of genius we are swift to recognise 
 the disaster, when through unkindly circumstances, the 
 chill of poverty or of neglect, or any other cause, the 
 gifted mind is removed by untimely decay or death. 
 Chatterton, Kirke White, Keats, pass away in their 
 marvellous boyhood; and all their splendid possibilities 
 are lost to us. By their fragmentary and precocious 
 achievements we only guess at what might have been. 
 
 But, as the ancients would have said, each human 
 being has his " genius." Every mind has a place to 
 fill and a work to do, and the loss of its failure is not 
 its own loss alone, but the nation's. The nation there- 
 fore girds herself for her great task to elicit and to train 
 the minds of which she is composed. 
 
 Her first thought is for the little children. They 
 must be taught in bright and beautiful and healthy 
 schools, by methods which lure the mind to exert itself, 
 
 41 
 
National Ideals and Race-Regeneration 
 
 and make the fruit of the tree of knowledge more at- 
 tractive than the baser fruits which the trees of life seem 
 to offer. The teachers must be trained for their delicate 
 work, and enthusiastic in its discharge. From standard 
 to standard the children must be led, with sufficient indi- 
 vidual care to mark and to train the capabilities of all. 
 
 When the elementary school is left behind, there must 
 be a separation. The larger proportion must pass to 
 manual work; and the nation is bound to see that they 
 are fitted for their work, apprenticed to a trade which 
 offers them the chance of an honourable living. It is 
 the nation's loss, more than the parent's, when a child 
 leaves school to sell newspapers, or do any of the odd 
 jobs which lead to nothing, and leave the boy or girl 
 after two or three years of loafing, useless and idle for 
 life. It is that period of adolescence, between leaving 
 school and maturity, which the nation is most concerned 
 to watch and to guard and to secure. Our streets, our 
 public amusements, our literature, must all be super- 
 vised and controlled, to preserve these growing citizens 
 from demoralisation. 
 
 But, on leaving the elementary school, every child 
 should have open before him, or her, the secondary 
 school, if any special mental capacity shows that a more 
 extended literary or scientific training is worth while. 
 Handiwork and the business of life should be a sec- 
 ondary school to all ; but there is always a minority whose 
 function will lie in intellectual directions, and it is a 
 misfortune that any child who has the gifts should be 
 lost to the community for want of that further training. 
 
 42 
 
The Elements of the National Ideal 
 
 More especially an industrial nation should have its tech- 
 nical schools, well equipped and accessible, that all who 
 show aptitude for such training may be prepared for 
 manufacturing, for agriculture, for scientific discovery, 
 by the very best teaching that the nation can give. 
 
 Then the Universities should open their doors, in all 
 large towns and even in country centres, to give the 
 higher training to every youth and girl who is capable 
 of original work, or is designed for teaching others. The 
 object is not to increase the number of those who get 
 a University education, but to make the University serve 
 its appropriate purpose, which is not to put an imaginary 
 cachet on a few favoured individuals, erecting a class 
 barrier between them and others, but to offer the fullest 
 training possible to that minority of the population who, 
 by their native capacity and character, are capable of 
 being the teachers, the guides and leaders of the future. 
 
 This then is our national ideal; an educated com- 
 munity not a herd of clerks in black coats, of pro- 
 fessional men treading each other down in their effort 
 to grasp the spoils of their particular careers, of a 
 jeunesse doree trained to enjoy itself and to claim by 
 right all the fields of human delight; but a varied 
 population, in which each one is developed and trained 
 to the utmost for the task assigned by faculty or oppor- 
 tunity, task of the hand, of the brain, or of the spirit. 
 
 4. Certainly the educational ideal should, and indeed 
 must, include both Moral and Spiritual Culture. But 
 this is so imperfectly realised by the public at large 
 that it is necessary, in framing the national ideals, to 
 
 43 
 
National Ideals and Race-Regeneration 
 
 give separate attention to the moral and the spiritual 
 sides; not, of course, that they can be dealt with sep- 
 arately in practice, but that they are apt to be thrust 
 aside in the purely intellectual work of education which 
 at present possesses the public mind. We know that as 
 a nation we can only hold our own among the nations 
 by a better and more complete education, mental, tech- 
 nical, practical. That motive for maintaining schools 
 and universities is only too liable to keep the moral and 
 the spiritual out of view. 
 
 We must therefore consider separately our moral and 
 our spiritual ideals, by which the nation can live and 
 progress. And first, the Moral. 
 
 We have a national ideal of morality. By it the 
 nation has grown and reached its present state in the 
 world. And in the nation's growth that ideal also has 
 grown, luring us on in its expanding glory to things 
 which are beyond. The British ideal of character and 
 conduct, for man and woman too, to be set before chil- 
 dren in examples even from the cradle, is expressed no 
 longer in the four cardinal virtues of antiquity, but in 
 these seven Veracity, Cleanness, Courage, Energy, 
 Justice, Altruism, Faith. About these much can and 
 ought to be said, but not here. All that can be done 
 now is to bring into the consciousness of the reader 
 how these terms express the kind of person which he 
 expects others to be, and is bound therefore to be him- 
 self. 
 
 Nothing takes us nearer the heart of the character 
 which this country admires and desires than the pride 
 
 44 
 
The Elements of the National Ideal 
 
 with which it has been said that " the word of an Eng- 
 lishman " is a guarantee throughout the world. Noth- 
 ing have we more cause to dread than the slackening of 
 veracity which the intrusion of other breeds is apt to 
 bring. The moral theology which excuses and allows 
 for equivocation is, and has always been, to this country, 
 anathema. That man and woman should say the thing 
 that is, should be forthright and downright, free from 
 subterfuges and double entendre, sincerely anxious 
 neither to deceive oneself nor others, transparent, faith- 
 ful to pledges, ready rather to die than to go back from 
 one's word this is the demand which we make on 
 others and on ourselves. Suffer anything rather than 
 lie; recognise that no good cause, least of all the best, 
 can ever be served by lying. Business depends on hon- 
 our. National success, in business and in government, 
 comes wholly from the habits of veracity which are 
 maintained among the people. 
 
 Then the cleanness we demand is not only external 
 or physical. We demand clean linen, the morning bath, 
 the scrubbed hearthstone and the polished door-handle; 
 dirt, untidiness, slovenliness, are odious to us. True. 
 But the value of this cleanness is that it is the outward 
 and visible sign of an inward and spiritual grace. We 
 are against uncleanly lives, lust and lechery, the self- 
 indulgence of the man of pleasure, the contamination 
 of the fallen woman. We are set on boyish purity, on 
 the strong, self-controlled, chivalrous young manhood, 
 on the essential chastity and wholesomeness of women. 
 We dread and deprecate the lower ideals of other na- 
 
 45 
 
National Ideals and Race-Regeneration 
 
 tions. We are resolved to stamp out the foul literature, 
 the pictures, and other provocatives of vice, by which 
 the young are seduced. This cleanness of life, of 
 thought, of word, wins genuine respect among us. We 
 all desire it. 
 
 Courage is a virtue common to humanity and to lower 
 animals. But moral courage is the virtue which this 
 country sets before itself to achieve. Sir Andrew 
 Frazer in India, a civil servant, is the typical Briton. 
 Once, when an elephant had gone mad, and was wildly 
 charging the retinue, certain to maul and kill some of 
 them, Frazer quietly turned on the wild animal, and 
 fired straight at the trunk; the elephant wheeled about 
 and fled ; Frazer looked round, and there was an Indian 
 gentleman who, unarmed, had remained by the Sahib. 
 On another occasion, when he was Lieut. -Governor of 
 Bengal, as he entered a great assembly, an infatuated 
 Bengalee rose, presented a pistol at his breast and pulled 
 the trigger. Happily that one chamber of the revolver 
 was unloaded. Before the assassin could discharge the 
 next, which was loaded, he was overpowered by his 
 fellow-students. Again Frazer found a valiant pro- 
 tector in a Hindoo of high station standing beside him, 
 who threw his arms about him, and interposed his own 
 body between him and the assailant. The lieutenant- 
 governor went on with the meeting, and spoke as if 
 nothing had happened. This manly courage is dear 
 to the heart of the Briton. 
 
 The national ideal demands energy, scorns indolence 
 and self-indulgence, expects everyone to be active, effi- 
 
 46 
 
The Elements of the National Ideal 
 
 cient, strenuous, untiring. We are slow to recognise the 
 virtue of intellectual energy, and are apt to lay an over- 
 emphasis on what we consider the practical side. But 
 we would be a nation not of dreamers, but of doers. 
 
 We admire justice. At the root of the national char- 
 acter is a desire to be just and to do justice. Fair-play 
 is a watchword. We prefer to say " Play the game," to 
 descanting on justice in more transcendental regions; 
 but our chief claim on the world's respect and admira- 
 tion is that in every colony and dependency we manage 
 to give to justice a definite meaning and power, which 
 we learnt at home. 
 
 Altruism has entered at last also into our national 
 ideal. Our boy scouts are taught to help someone every 
 day. We admire the humble hero of the mine or the 
 railway or the fire brigade, who risks his life for others. 
 Our highest praise is that a man is unselfish, forgets 
 himself and serves the rest. We are shy of talking 
 about love ; but that is really what we mean : " By love 
 serve one another " is a precept which has entered into 
 our national ideal. 
 
 And faith ; yes, we ask for men who have faith in the 
 people, faith in progress, faith in the future, faith in 
 God. This last is curiously inwrought in our national 
 character. It completes our moral ideal. But the men- 
 tion of it carries us upward on to another plane, and 
 we must give to it a concluding chapter. 
 
 47 
 
CHAPTER IV, 
 
 THE SPIRITUAL IDEAL 
 
 ASSUREDLY we have a national Spiritual Ideal. About 
 this it is very difficult to speak. And while about things 
 more concrete and tangible, with which we have been 
 dealing, there is a very general concurrence, as we 
 approach this underlying and invisible reality we are apt 
 to miss the way and to fall into disputes. Perhaps we 
 may reach the common element in which we are all 
 agreed by casting our eyes backward for a moment. 
 Once the spiritual side of our nation was Catholic ; that 
 is, it was a national part of the powerful Western 
 Church. At the Eef ormation a significant change came. 
 The spirituality of the Catholic Church no longer ex- 
 pressed the faith of this country. Still the attempt 
 was made to express that faith by a State Church. The 
 Tudor, and afterwards the Stuart, monarchs took the 
 place from which the Popes were deposed. But im- 
 mediately the Puritan element in England, and still 
 more in Scotland, carried the spiritual ideal beyond the 
 forms and organisation of the church established. 
 Since then, the varied forms in which the spiritual life 
 of this country has sought expression have all proved in- 
 adequate. Catholic, Anglican, Free Churchman, strive 
 
 48 
 
The Spiritual Ideal 
 
 to win back the country each to his own form, with no 
 conspicuous success; and the hasty observer might con- 
 clude that religion was passing away, and that the coun- 
 try was now content with a merely secular ideal. 
 Kationalism, and many other "isms/ 5 are at least as 
 loud in the land as any formal expression of a definite 
 Christian faith. But who that knows this country will 
 be deceived by this appearance ? The philosophy of our 
 day is spiritual; when Bergson lectures in London, his 
 audience is so large that it can hardly gain admission. 
 Eucken succeeds to the place which was once held by 
 Herbert Spencer. All through the thinking world to- 
 day, and most of all in our own country, it is recognised 
 that the spiritual is the only explanation that can be 
 offered of the problem of human life. The Spirit before 
 and beyond us is seeking in humanity a self-expression. 
 Science, Art, Politics, Morality, Eeligion, are the modes 
 in which the Spirit is working towards an ultimate goal. 
 Man's relation to that Spirit, the nation's relation to 
 that Spirit, the world's relation to that Spirit this is 
 the most vital and burning question of this, as of every 
 other epoch. And it is to be observed that our national 
 ideal is that relation of man to God which Christianity 
 has given to us. The inadequacy of the churches, and 
 of archaic formulae, to express the mighty mystery, ac- 
 counts for the apparent indifference to religion and 
 neglect of church institutions. We await, no doubt, the 
 quickening tides which will purge, reform, and invigor- 
 ate the organised expressions of the spiritual life which 
 is in us. But meanwhile the national faith remains the 
 
 49 
 
National Ideals and Race-Regeneration 
 
 same, and in many ways it is more vigorous and active 
 than it has ever been before. 
 
 Let us face the situation for a moment. Christianity 
 is the Divine power by which the Fatherhood of God 
 and the brotherhood of men can be realised. It is not 
 only the truth that one is our Father, even God, and all 
 we are brethren; but it is also a dynamic which works 
 towards the realisation of that ideal. This is our na- 
 tional ideal. We are not content to regard mankind 
 simply on the materialistic side; we do not admit that 
 science gives us a sufficient explanation of human life, 
 or even a commanding motive for living. We must 
 regard ourselves and one another as spiritual, sprung 
 from a spiritual origin, and moving towards a spiritual 
 result. This country never in her wildest excesses of 
 riot or unbelief enthroned Eeason as goddess in place 
 of God. As she never for the last four centuries identi- 
 fied the spiritual with the organisation of the Church, 
 she does not, like France or Italy, surrender the spiritual 
 when she criticises or disregards the Church. This 
 country is Christian in a very peculiar, but very genuine, 
 sense, which none but the most superficial observer can 
 mistake. We demand the recognition of God. Noth- 
 ing in modern times has gone more directly to the heart 
 of the whole country than the Eecessional: 
 
 " Lord of hosts, be with us yet, 
 Lest we forget, lest we forget." 
 
 By a State Church, if possible, but, if that be impossible, 
 by some other more effective way, we British mean to 
 
 50 
 
The Spiritual Ideal 
 
 express our dependence on God and our allegiance to 
 Him. Christ moves before us as our ideal of character ; 
 and His relation with God is the means of ours. We 
 acknowledge the law of the Sermon on the Mount. We 
 perceive the power of the Cross. 
 
 It is this deep underlying religion of the country 
 which really shapes the national ideal. The concern 
 for man as man, his health and well-being, his national 
 life and prospects; the effort to educate the people; the 
 moral ideals and the moral sanctions which we cherish 
 and commend to one another, are all fundamentally 
 based on the Christian faith. There are some sanguine 
 enough to believe that this national ideal, the heirloom 
 of our race, would survive, even if the Christian faith 
 were to be surrendered. With that we are not just now 
 concerned. The point to be seized is that the faith is 
 with us, in unsuspected power, and the spiritual ideal 
 which it presents is potent before our eyes and in our 
 hearts. M. Guyau wrote in France a book on " The 
 Non-Beligion of the Future." No such book has been 
 current in this country. Eather, he who would express 
 the thought of this country would speak of the religion 
 of the future, as contrasted with the non-religion of 
 the past. He would announce the Christ that is to be, 
 that fulfilment of the promise of His coming which was 
 given at the beginning. Our hope is not to get rid of 
 religion, but to get it; not to abolish Christianity, but 
 to realise it; not to supersede Christ, but to find Him. 
 And this national ideal works consciously or uncon- 
 sciously in us all. 
 
 51 
 
National Ideals and Race-Regeneration 
 
 But our national ideal cannot be described or kept 
 clearly before us unless we preserve the stress which in 
 these islands has always been laid on liberty. It is as 
 our last great Laureate says : 
 
 " The land where girt with friends or foes 
 A man may speak the thing he will." 
 
 Some features of the Victorian estimate of our 
 national ideal may change, and already be changing; 
 some of the views expressed in these pages may be ques- 
 tioned by many of our countrymen; but nothing was 
 ever said more characteristic of this country than the 
 lines : 
 
 " A land of settled government, 
 A land of just and old renown, 
 Where freedom slowly broadens down 
 
 From precedent to precedent." 
 
 That inclination to claim liberty and to grant liberty 
 is so peculiar a product of our history that we can 
 hardly imagine it disappearing. Our friends from the 
 Continent are amazed when they hear in great public 
 meetings subversive and anarchical opinions received 
 with a tolerant smile. They wonder how order is main- 
 tained, how religion survives, where speech is so free. 
 But, indeed, this is why order and religion among us 
 are secure. We are the devotees of liberty. We have 
 an instinctive conviction that when liberty lapses into 
 silence it corrects itself. We bear patiently with the 
 incidental disadvantages of liberty, because we know that 
 
 52 
 
The Spiritual Ideal 
 
 the loss of liberty is the greatest disadvantage of all. 
 To other nations we seem infatuated in our devotion. 
 Our method of quelling discontent in Canada, under 
 Lord Durham's wise guidance, was to grant Canada full 
 local autonomy. Europe was aghast when immediately 
 after the Boer War we granted a full constitution to 
 South Africa, and a general who fought against us for 
 three years became the prime minister of the South 
 African Government. That to other countries seems 
 rash and quixotic; but it is quite natural to us. We 
 feel in our blood the elixir of liberty. We cannot help 
 thinking that it works in the blood of others with the 
 same effect. 
 
 Political liberty, personal liberty, the liberty of 
 prophesying, religious liberty, these are the things for 
 which our fathers fought. We fancy them the pal- 
 ladium which came down to us from heaven. These 
 we are bound to maintain. If we are slack in their de- 
 fence, if we fail to sympathise with others who are 
 striving for the same priceless boon, we acknowledge 
 our delinquency and repent. 
 
 It is our most honourable reputation in the Agora of 
 the world, that we have always supported the struggles 
 of the nations for liberty, and that wherever we govern 
 we accord personal and religious liberty to all. When 
 Lord Mansfield gave the famous judgment, that even a 
 slave stepping on British soil (and that was held to 
 include the deck of a British ship) was immediately 
 free, the heart of the whole country responded. That 
 is to us vital and central. 
 
 53 
 
National Ideals and Race-Regeneration 
 
 In all our political developments, in all our efforts at 
 social amelioration, in all our religious and educational 
 arrangements, we are bound to keep in view the check 
 and limitation which are imposed by this fundamental 
 principle. We have that in our blood which makes it 
 impossible for us to be manipulated and dragooned by 
 a tyrant, however wise and beneficent he may be. 'No 
 prison, however gilded, will satisfy us. Comfort, lux- 
 ury, ease, which sometimes seem to be the main objects 
 of desire, swiftly become intolerable, and are unhesita- 
 tingly renounced if any attack is made upon our liber- 
 ties 
 
 " We must be free or die, who speak the tongue 
 
 That Shakespeare spake, the faith and morals hold 
 Which Milton held; in everything we are sprung 
 Of earth's first blood, have titles manifold." 
 
EPILOGUE 
 
 Now as our national ideal becomes clear before our 
 eyes,, we must enter into the field of our heritage, and 
 into the corresponding field of our duty. It is ours to 
 impart to the nations which are growing up under the 
 Crown, closely allied with us in the one Empire, as much 
 of our inheritance as they are able and willing to take. 
 Our task is so onerous that a poet of the nineteenth 
 century thought that he saw this country staggering 
 under " the too-vast orb of her fate." But with the new 
 century has come fresh courage, and also, we may hope, 
 a clearer insight into the nature of our task. The nine- 
 teenth century closed with a blatant blast of misguided 
 imperialism, which the author of the " Eecessional " 
 corrected. The twentieth opened with a far saner and 
 soberer view of the imperial task. We see now that the 
 Mother of Parliaments is not here to override the 
 kindred parliaments of the Empire, but to set them an 
 example. We understand that our function is to cherish 
 our own national ideals, that our sister nations may learn 
 from us, and acquire the fruits of our long travail. As 
 we desire our own nation to be free, as we make it our 
 object to maintain a healthy, prosperous population, as 
 we lay the stress on the mental and moral and. spiritual 
 training of the individual for the duties of our citizen- 
 ship, and the service of the human race; so we desire 
 
 55 
 
Epilogue 
 
 that the other nations under the Crown should grow in 
 liberty, in the arts of self-government, in the physical 
 and spiritual training which to us gives the value of 
 human life. Our task is not to repress or coerce, but 
 to develop and to lead. "We passionately believe in our 
 own country, and are thankful to God for its traditions 
 and ideals; our wish for the whole Empire is that our 
 traditions and ideals may be reproduced spontaneously 
 and eagerly wherever the Crown extends its unifying 
 sway. Those vaster nations, Canada, South Africa, 
 Australia, New Zealand, India, we would have as near 
 as may be what we are ourselves. 
 
 And while our first task is to enrich and cultivate our 
 own imperial federation, our task in the whole world is 
 similar, though less stringent. As we cherish our own 
 national ideal, we sympathise with every nation in which 
 the national consciousness is strong. We desire to be 
 cosmopolitan not in the sense that national feeling, 
 national pride, patriotism, should be effaced in favour 
 of a diluted and ill-conceived sentiment for a diffuse 
 humanity, but in the sense that we heartily wish other 
 nations well, that we respect their independence and 
 their national ideals, and that we make it our object, 
 not only to live at peace with them, but actively to pro- 
 mote their welfare. 
 
 We conceive the whole human race as one, made of 
 one blood, united in a necessary solidarity. It is one 
 as a family of nations, in which there are older, middle- 
 aged, adolescent, and baby nations. The African, as 
 Dr. Karl Kumm says, are the baby nations of the great 
 
 56 
 
Epilogue 
 
 family. In the family there is no foolish strife for 
 precedence; each takes the place allotted by age and 
 qualifications. There is no envy and hatred and malice, 
 because the prosperity of one is the prosperity of all. 
 Each nation in this family is to cultivate itself, in order 
 to contribute its part to the life of the whole. Its ob- 
 ject cannot be to subjugate the family. The Napoleonic 
 dream is a ghastly and devilish nightmare. The object 
 rather is that each may be developed to the utmost of 
 its capacity, that the family may be enriched; and, as 
 is proper in a family, that the older may serve the 
 younger, and all may deal tenderly and wisely with the 
 babies. 
 
 In this way the national ideal harmonises with the 
 international ideals, and all grow into the cosmopolitan 
 ideal. God is one and man is one ; but God has set man 
 in families, and in nations, that they may learn to love 
 Him with all their strength, and to love one another 
 with a pure heart fervently. 
 
 57, 
 
THIS BOOK IS DUE ON THE LAST DATE 
 STAMPED BELOW 
 
 AN INITIAL FINE OF 25 CENTS 
 
 WILL BE ASSESSED FOR FAILURE TO RETURN 
 THIS BOOK ON THE DATE DUE. THE PENALTY 
 WILL INCREASE TO SO CENTS ON THE FOURTH 
 DAY AND TO $1.OO ON THE SEVENTH DAY 
 OVERDUE. 
 
 APH 14 is: 
 
 OCT 31 ^ 
 
 DiSCCiRC FEB26'93 
 
 QCT 
 
 JAN 5 1343 
 
 Novi9'48RW 
 
 LD 21-95w-7,'37 
 
YB 080 
 
 Re: 
 
 U.C.BERKELEY LIBRARIES 
 
 259910