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