THE pp[|f c!f 
 
 r-T^Tj^^^^r^^^*: 
 
 BOUCK WHIT 
 
THE LIBRARY 
 
 OF 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY 
 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 LOS ANGELES 
 
 GIFT 
 From the library of 
 
 Henry Goldman, C.E. Ph.D. 
 
 1886-1972 
 
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Digitized by tlie Internet Arcliive 
 
 in 2007 witli funding from 
 
 IVIicrosoft Corporation 
 
 littp://www.arcliive.org/details/freecitybookofneOOwliitiala 
 
THE FREE GITY 
 
THE FKEE CITY 
 
 A BOOK OF NEIGHBORHOOD 
 
 BY 
 
 BOUCK WHITE 
 
 AUTHOR OP "the CALL OF THE CARPENTER," 
 
 "the carpenter and the rich man," 
 " the book of danisl drew," etc. 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 MOFFAT, YARD & COMPANY 
 1919 
 
COPYRIGHT, 1919, BY 
 M07FAT, YARD & COMPANY 
 
HT 
 
 TO 
 
 ARISTOTLE AND JESUS 
 
 THE TWO MASTER MINDS OF OUR PLANET, 
 
 FOUNDERS OF POLITICAL SCIENCE, 
 
 FELLOW TOILERS FOR A SOUND JURISPRUDENCE, 
 
 THIS BOOK IS REVERENTLY INSCRIBED. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER PAGE 
 
 I. Neighborhood or Nationhood 1 
 
 II. Municipal Communion is the Light of 
 
 Genius 12 
 
 TIL City-worship Lays Her Basis Deep ... 24 
 
 IV. When Rome was a Republic 38 
 
 V. Athenian Self-ownership 52 
 
 VI. The City Set on a Hill 70 
 
 VII. The Patriotism of Jesus 87 
 
 VIII. Why America is tbdej Loiterer 105 
 
 IX. Twilight and the Dark 120 
 
 X. Industrial Democracies 131 
 
 XL The City State is a Work State .... 144 
 
 XII. The Afterglow 169 
 
 XIII. When Commonwealth is King 174 
 
 XIV. Now IN THE World's Remaking .... 191 
 
 XV. Cara Patria, Carior Libertas 207 
 
 XVL The Mysticism of Municipality .... 224 
 
 XVII. The Social State 239 
 
 XVIIL Personality 252 
 
 XIX. The Land op Everlasting Life .... 271 
 
 XX. A Cosmic Courtship 282 
 
 XXI. The Republic of Common Sense .... 298 
 
The Free City 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 NEIGHBORHOOD OR NATIONHOOD? 
 
 THE present scheme is petering out; it has run its 
 tether. A thousand years have elapsed since 
 1914. Our America, in the form it held hitherto, 
 is no more booked for continuance than are the other 
 institutions of that prehistoric era before the War. The 
 best thing we can say about our Constitution is that it 
 provides the machinery for its own annulment. I sup- 
 pose that Alexander Hamilton let loose more currents 
 of greed and unbelief than any other man now inhabiting 
 the kingdoms of the dead. Does not this Potomac River 
 fabric that he was instrumental in creating, present to 
 the gaze of men and of angels a madder money-worship 
 than ever before bedevilled the human species? Where 
 else can be found so steep contrast between the extremes 
 of wealth and destitution? That gulf simdering through 
 the midriff of our body politic is the measure of our 
 social breakdown. In the dungeons of humdrum, plod 
 the toiling masses accursed; whilst in the banquet hall 
 above, the privileged ones hold carnival. But high against 
 the wall, the Flame-Finger is writing. It is no longer a 
 question. Shall we change our social order? but only, 
 What shall we change it into? 
 
 "League of Nations," is the answer given by many. 
 And certainly much sincere idealism acclaimed that 
 messiah. But even now, there is discernible in their 
 
2 THE FREE CITY 
 
 ardor a marked cooling. The league of nations Covenant, 
 that was to have been the document of a divine and 
 revolutionary change in our planetary ongoings, was not 
 long in shrinking from a world's diameter to a "Big 
 Five." Then a "Big Four." And soon, a "Big Three." 
 Geneva as the seat of John Calvin's Free City, achieved 
 a name aroimd which even yet clusters a radiance of 
 high description. But a Geneva of world pohticians, the 
 puppet of international financiers, would indite a quite 
 dififerent tale. Already there are signs of a rival League 
 of Nations, with a rival world capital. 
 
 As the area of the state enlarges, the importance of 
 the individual diminishes. Statehood is the window in 
 the house, through which we get our glimpse of Heaven; 
 inlet of celestial sunUght and the fresh air. But if too 
 many are crowded into one house, that window cannot 
 admit air and light for them all. And a suffocating Black 
 Hole of Calcutta is the result — a beast-den of wild 
 raging maniacs, clawing, shrieking, fighting towards that 
 vent. On the other hand, multiply the houses; you have 
 now fewer folk in each. So the window therein is adequate 
 to the inhabiters. And a civil decorum is engendered. 
 
 Liberty has a dual task: to build a state, and keep it 
 small. When the state is too large, imperialism is the 
 cursed product. When there is no state at all, anarchism 
 is the product, equally a hell broth of miseries. Col- 
 lectivity must be, but not a collectivity too colossal. 
 The municipal repubHc is statehood, but it is statehood 
 reduced to its lowest terms. Therefore it gives the 
 maximum of benefit, with a minimum of individual 
 repression. A state-kept-small, is man's servant; a state- 
 too-big mounts over him, a very tjTant for mastership. 
 
 Modernity, organizing the map of the globe into 
 huge governmental fabrics, talks gUbly of "Englands," 
 
NEIGHBORHOOD OR NATIONHOOD? 3 
 
 "Americas," "Italys," et cetera. The players of the 
 game sit around a table, shifting these counters like 
 gamesters in a poker match. They forget that each of 
 those collectivities is constituted of fifty million John 
 Smiths and Richard Roes, every one of whom is a deep 
 tremendous entity, with his love affairs, family ties, debts, 
 ambitions, diseases, worriments, struggHngs, plannings, 
 hopings, despondings. Which fifty million John Smiths 
 are refusing longer to lump themselves into a poUtical 
 poker chip to be bandied around an international gaming 
 table. 
 
 The submergence of the individual — here is the 
 heart of the present discontents. When the Potomac 
 scheme started, a Congressman represented thirty thou- 
 sand people. To-day a Congressman represents nearly 
 three hundred thousand people; a shrinkage of a thousand 
 per cent in the governmental weight of each American, in 
 a space of one hundred and thirty years. And the dis- 
 proportion is growing. 
 
 We Americans have tried to salve our wounded self- 
 esteem by explaining that we choose our representatives, 
 and therefore must not be accounted altogether as puppies 
 in a basket; for at least we elect the person who is to 
 carry the basket. But, to elect the basket-carrier once 
 in four years, and then be toted about — is it not still 
 a puppy status? Furthermore some disquieting thoughts 
 are arising as to that "election" business. It is being 
 discovered that centralization of government carries 
 with it centralization of control over political parties. 
 Nowhere is the unimportance of the individual more 
 poignantly manifest than on Election Day, when the 
 basket-carrier is chosen. The spectacle of that "sacred" 
 Tuesday in November is steadily deteriorating in its 
 power to swell the heart with emotions of freedom and 
 
4 THE FREE CITY 
 
 self-reverence. It is safe to aflGirm that there is not 
 another day in the calendar when the puppy-in-a-basket 
 feeling is so depressingly pushed home onto the con- 
 sciousness of everyone who knows the facts. 
 
 Sirs, only a league of Free Cities can be the United 
 States of the World. History holds no precedent of 
 nations federating. But history holds many a precedent 
 of Free Cities federating. National states are com- 
 mercial. Commerce covets a wide poUtical expanse. 
 When commerciaUsts get control, they straightway 
 tear down the territorial partitions; in order to give the 
 trader a broad area across which to ply his traffic. Which 
 broad unrestricted area in turn Uberates the conmiercial 
 — money-lusting — instinct. That money-lust after a 
 time collides with a like lust in some other national- 
 commercial group; with war as the name of it. Com- 
 mercialism, nationalism, militarism — Htter of one and 
 the same wolf-bitch. And Greed is the hound that 
 sired them. ■ In a large way of looking, there have been, 
 and will always be, only two forms of society: the mu- 
 nicipal and the national. Municipality projects an 
 artistic civilization; nationality projects a commercial 
 civilization. An artistic age is affectionate, a commercial 
 age is drab and chill and bloody. 
 
 America is not a country but a continent. Americans 
 are notorious for their materialist quality of mind. It is 
 because we gave up our system of httle republics, and 
 consolidated into what is now the hugest of nations. 
 Being biggest of them all, we are most material-minded 
 of them all. Things, Things, Things are in the saddle; 
 with man as the damned packhorse underneath. Rich 
 in peK are we, and spiritual paupers. The bank book is 
 our bible. Idolatry of the Dollar; stable of the Golden 
 Calf! With mediocrity marking us for her own. The 
 
NEIGHBORHOOD OR NATIONHOOD? 5 
 
 two first class souls we have produced were Emerson 
 and Whitman. Emerson spoke one continuing protest 
 against the materiaUsm of American Hfe. Whitman 
 lived that protest, and pleaded for decentralization of 
 goverrmient: "To the States, or any one of them, or any 
 City of the States: Resist much, obey little." 
 
 Why is the European laborer high-spirited, and the 
 American laborer low-spirited; so that any ferment in 
 our proletariat is usually to be traced to foreigners resi- 
 dent among us? It is because in Europe, states are 
 comparatively small; so the individual there is not 
 swallowed up, but retains a sense of personal importance. 
 America is well nigh as big as all Europe put together. 
 Living in so vast an empire, the American loses control 
 of his destiny; becomes fatalistic, submissive, crushed 
 with a feeling of helplessness. Search history, you will 
 find that practically all of the philosophies of fatalism 
 arose in times of huge statehoods. 
 
 The larger the state, the more supine is the individual. 
 That is why the forces of reaction are here so massively 
 intrenched. Europeans are awakening. We Americans 
 are the backward stagnant member of the human family. 
 "Government for the people," said Hamilton. "Govern- 
 ment by the people," pleaded Patrick Henry. Hamilton 
 triumphed — that secret convention of 1787, which 
 inflicted Central Government upon us. Hamilton labored 
 incessantly to the end that "the Federal Government 
 may then triumph over the State governments, and 
 reduce them to entire eubordination;" in order *' to pro- 
 tect the men of property from the depredations which 
 the democratic spirit is apt to make on property." Since 
 then, a hundred and thirty years of mammonism unre- 
 strained, unabashed, prove that Patrick Henry was 
 right, and Hamilton was wrong. 
 
6 THE FREE CITY 
 
 If life consisteth in the abundance of things man pos- 
 sesseth, then America is immistakably a success. But 
 if life is to be measured in terms of fellowship and joy 
 and song and beauty's high creation, then we are a 
 miserable and sorriest failure. No nation upon earth 
 that so needs to enter the valley of a deep humiUation, 
 as the U.S.A. The wholesomest thing that could happen 
 to us would be to sit for a season on the mourners' bench. 
 More than any other people, we need a penitential office, 
 intoning a Utany of mortification for our mistreadings 
 and shortcomings. Otherwise the blatancy and cockiness 
 of easy wealth wiU vulgarize us beyond the reach of 
 redemption. What America needs is not a sooth-teller 
 but a truth-teller. Let us be quit of the flatterers we 
 have hired to say pleasant things to us. 
 
 We are a nation of gadders and money-getters. We 
 have lost the instinct of Uberty — we think chiefly in 
 terms of comfort. There is a hardening of the heart. 
 Whilst our pocket book is fattening, the soul of us has 
 been going scrawny and tubercular. Where else upon 
 earth, in this or any other day, shall you find biUionairie 
 opulence side by side with a pauperism utter and stark 
 and naked of hope? Money — money is the thing we 
 boast; forgetful that the money-making talent is perhaps 
 the cheapest of them all. But not even the money is of 
 our own creating. We found the wealth here; had merely 
 to gather it in double handfuls. 
 
 Municipal states weigh life in terms of greatness. Na- 
 tional states weigh life in terms of bigness. The United 
 States Constitution, ordaining a people whose mentaUty 
 is attuned to standards of bulk, hugeness, sprawling im- 
 mensity, will have to be written down as the most sinister 
 document ever produced by the twin forces of extortion 
 and cynical unbelief. In the light of an American pro- 
 
NEIGHBORHOOD OR NATIONHOOD? 7 
 
 letariat so slavish, and a farming population large seg- 
 ments of which are slumping into peasanthood, we can 
 confidently affirm that the world would be better off if 
 birth control had been practised on Alexander Hamilton 
 before he was begun. Once awakened from the dollar- 
 dollar mania that is oppressing us Hke a nightmare, we 
 will perceive that the Potomac River episode in our 
 history was chiefly one of grandiose triviahty; and which 
 we will gladly permit to sHp into merciful obHvion. 
 
 America promises to be the next menace to the peace 
 of the world. In an Associated Press despatch from 
 Tokio I read that the Osaka Mainichi, in an article setting 
 forth the attitude of many Japanese thinkers, speaks of 
 "the American wolf, whose wolfish ambition is indeed to 
 be feared." Again, from another quarter: "We South 
 Americans do not understand all this anxiety of the 
 Samaritan American politicians about the Monroe Doc- 
 trine. We do not ask for any mantle of protection. If 
 in the near past we entertained any fear from outside 
 aggression, it was from the United States, and not from 
 any European power. Who has absorbed an immense 
 territory that once belonged to Mexico? Who has an- 
 nexed the Sandwich Islands? Who is holding Santo 
 Domingo by force?" And now, from Rio Janeiro, comes 
 an article by Albuquerque, a leading journahst of Brazil. 
 He accuses the United States of "fomenting revolutions 
 in Mexico," and says: "The United States will do to 
 Brazil as she has done to Central America nations." He 
 adds: "The United States incontestably is the Pi-ussia of 
 tomorrow." Commercialized Christendom is heading 
 towards another war; which will be as much more ter- 
 rible than the recent War, as that was more terrible 
 than the one that preceded it; with new implements of 
 slaughter, Hquid flames, poison gases, aye, disease germs 
 
8 THE FREE CITY 
 
 cultivated in huge laboratories — all the panoply of 
 destruction let loose by the unevangelized science of our 
 mammonistic age; a destruction so catastrophic that 
 victor and victim will go down in an equal disaster. 
 From present indications, that next war is not more than 
 a decade off. Unless we can institute a social fabric 
 based on neighborhood instead of nationhood, it is all up 
 with us. We have only about ten years in which to save 
 the world. 
 
 Small states, by the straitness of the girdling frontier, 
 constrain the population into solidarity. Large states, 
 on the other hand, permit the Haves and the Have-nots 
 to fly apart into warring classes. America, being larger 
 than any other, is more interiorly divided than any other. 
 Where else is brotherhood so tragically a stranger? where 
 else are the people spht so sharply into cHques and sects 
 and racial groups? It is time we put falsity far from us 
 and faced facts. The melting pot is not melting. Nor 
 can it. A pot as big as all out-doors is not a melting pot; 
 cannot be brought to the boiling pwint, where alone a 
 chemical fusion takes place. Our soldiers in the War 
 wrote home in 46 different languages. When the new- 
 comers among us were few, they were perforce swept into 
 the dominant type. But now that their numbers are 
 great, they are forming each a kingdom by itself; im- 
 peria in imperio. The "Union" we boast so loudly, is 
 the most disunited thing: a disharmony that resounds 
 with an ever more rasping note, as our wealth augments 
 to multiply the ostentations of the rich and the covetous- 
 ness of the poor. 
 
 Our present scheme is coming to an end because it is 
 too difficult. The attempt to govern three thousand 
 miles of people from one spot, has involved Washington 
 in so tangled a web of evasion and contradictions, that 
 
NEIGHBORHOOD OR NATIONHOOD? 9 
 
 now it sits dazed, irresolute, palsied. Potomac bureau- 
 crats should awaken our sympathy instead of our wrath. 
 A campaign of investigation into their blunders during 
 the War, is being started. To put men in so unnatural a 
 position, and then ask of them efficiency, is to demand 
 what the human frame is not equal to. A tired over- 
 worked president; and a hundred miUion other Ameri- 
 cans loafing on the job! 
 
 The Free City, by contrast, is the easy method; it 
 awakes the people to do their own governing; instead of 
 depending on prefects sent from Washington, and swivel 
 chairs in the District of Columbia. Our nation is gov- 
 ernment by the rich, of the rich, and for the rich. An 
 artificial apparatus, it requires a plexus of ropes and cords 
 and wires; machine that has grown more and more com- 
 plicated, until now it is breaking down by reason of 
 impossible clumsiness. Free government needs no elab- 
 oration of political devices. Directorship of a community 
 by the people who live in that conmiunity, is the com- 
 monsense method. A return to the Free City will be a 
 return to the simplified life. 
 
 The League of Nations has at least done this much: 
 It has tolled the knell of nationality. There were those 
 who thought nations to be in perpetuity; with London, 
 Paris, Washington henceforth as the everlasting arbiters 
 of man's fate. But Geneva, usurping those thrones of 
 sovereignty, has called in question that entire scheme of 
 things; and nowhere more emphatically than in smug 
 phiHstine America. The District of Columbia is a fiat 
 city; has no advantages of scenery or shipping or situa- 
 tion or natural resources. It was founded purely to be 
 the seat of poHtioal lordship. Therefore when that is 
 wrested from her, or when her prerogative is even called 
 in question (so sensitive a plant is sovereignty), she is 
 
10 THE FREE CITY 
 
 bereaved indeed. Washington was built as the capital of 
 a nation that should be based on the idea of bigness. 
 The local governments protested against that usurpation. 
 They pleaded: "A state should not be too big." "Tut, 
 tut," said the Potomac, "the bigger the better, the bigger 
 the better"; and grew fat at their expense. Now Geneva 
 proceeds to grow fat at her expense. "No, no," protests 
 the Potomac, in the person of the senatorial barons; "a 
 state should not be too big." "Tut, tut," says Geneva; 
 "bigger the better"; and she takes over the sovereignty. 
 Because — don't you see? — if size be the criterion of 
 perfectness, then a world-sized state is more perfect than 
 a state of only continental size. When once the neigh- 
 borhood-state is given up, and a nation-state begins, there 
 is then no stopping place until the supernation, embrac- 
 ing all mankind, is erected. Whereupon the structure 
 falls apart by its own weight. "Bigger-the-better" 
 built Washington. And now "Bigger-the-better" will 
 gobble her up. 
 
 The passing of the Potomac clears the field for muni- 
 cipaUty. Geneva translates the concrete nationalisms 
 that so balefully have plagued the world, into a vague 
 and fluid cosmopolitanism. This presents to our cities a 
 welcome liberation. The municipaUty heretofore has 
 been in eclipse. Central Government bulked so large 
 that the cities were but administrative tools of the Poto- 
 mac absolutism; were not permitted to have personaUties 
 of their own. Now however that national feehng is on 
 its death bed, municipal feeling can arise. "A new day 
 shines upon us." Sober minds will hardly contend that 
 this new day is to witness the seat of government trans- 
 ferred to the capital of a world empire, with the breadth 
 of waters spreading between us and a World Committee 
 dictating our destiny. Rather, it should see the seat of 
 
NEIGHBORHOOD OR NATIONHOOD? 11 
 
 goverament brought back to the communities, where we 
 of the conmion people have our habitation. This all- 
 fluid day invites to an overhauKng of our political ideas. 
 
 Home rule is freedom; delegated rule is the robbery of 
 freedom. When, out of the wide waste and mud of our 
 planet, a Free City pushes up into being, it is in the sight 
 of The Eternal, as when a gardener discovers a green 
 shoot pricking up out of a seed bed that he had given up 
 as hopeless. Better a poor type of government, ad- 
 ministered by a community for itself, than a mechanically 
 perfect government administered for them. If we don't 
 have Free Cities, we will have Servile Cities. Freedom 
 is self-determination. A Servile City is one whose gov- 
 erning is done outside her borders. A Free City attends 
 to her own governing; gives the back of her hand to any 
 power suggesting to take over these functions for her. 
 They only who Uve in a Free City, are free. Folk of a 
 Servile City are servile. 
 
 Not the nation, and not the supernation, but the munic- 
 ipality is life's natural pivot; the nucleating center of 
 a worthy world-system. The noble eras have always 
 been those wherein city hall was the focus of man's orbit 
 and his organ of commimication with the outside world. 
 The people are not saved by government but by govern- 
 ing. If it was done in Washington, it was done wrong. 
 E Pluribus Unum. We have overdone the Unum busi- 
 ness. Shall we not talk PlurUms for a while? 
 
CHAPTER n 
 
 MUNICIPAL COMMUNION IS THE LIGHT 
 OF GENIUS 
 
 COMMUNITY means, Communion; the Com- 
 mmiity States in history have begotten in their 
 people a quaUty of warmth and affection not seen 
 under other political forms. How large a commune — 
 community — should be, there is no rule of thumb to 
 determine. It is a grouping larger than the family and 
 smaller than the nation. On one side of it stretch the 
 family and the individual; on the other side, the nation 
 and the world; with the Commune reposing square in 
 the human center. The Conmiunistic (municipal) prin- 
 ciple is strong on federation, but is in deadly feud with 
 consolidation. Its devotees have received the name, 
 citizens, "folk of a Free City." Citizenship is the cult of 
 the city state. That is where the word derived, and has 
 been its grand historical meaning. 
 
 Let not the term city commonwealth suggest indif- 
 ference to rural life. A first result of Free Cities is to 
 bring the farmer out of his obscurity and celebrate him 
 as the cornerstone of the st.ate; for without self-subsist- 
 ence a community cannot enjoy self -ownership. In 
 Athens, two-thirds of the citizens lived in the country- 
 side. The Bible, that biography of the Jerusalem munic- 
 ipaUty, is intersprinkled with allusions to shepherds and 
 
 olive groves, running waters, green pastures, oil and com 
 
 12 
 
THE LIGHT OF GENIUS 13 
 
 and vineyards. We are in an age of nationalism; that is, 
 of large commercial states. And seldom before was rural 
 life in so low estimation. 
 
 Moderns look back upon the classic world with envy 
 and despair. Jerusalem, Greece, Rome — with what an 
 uncontested celebrity those names shine above the wreck- 
 age of the years! A lustre attaches to them; a glory that 
 has been continuously triumphant, and which has since 
 departed from the earth. The mind of man in that day 
 seems to have been cast in an ampler mold, and his veins 
 flowed richer blood. The thought will protrude that 
 Heaven had but a limited store of good clay; so that we 
 moderns are compounded of second-rate material, the 
 left-overs after the prime stuff had been used up, Plato, 
 Socrates, Cato, Virgil, Isaiah — folk to-day do not even 
 aspire to an equivalence with them. They were creators, 
 whilst we are imitators. The capacity to strike out new 
 paths, discover new continents in the mental universe, 
 has been lost. We have talent. But they had genius. 
 They gave us the seed, from which we painstakingly grow 
 the plants. The hills of Attica seem to have been closer 
 to the sky than Alleghany tops or the Sierra Nevadas. 
 There is a surmise that God is an oriental, and feels at 
 home only under Syrian stars. 
 
 Theories are advanced to explain our inferiority to 
 that classic world. Some say it was due to accident: 
 Destiny threw double-sixes once, and cannot cog the dice 
 so as to repeat the performance. More serious minds ex- 
 plain the classic supereminence as due to the exuberant 
 vitality of youth: The world was fresh, humankind was 
 young, and earth was nearer heaven than now. Classic 
 man lived his Ufe on a plane of poetry and lyrical ec- 
 stasies; a perfect daring, noble visionings, sustained en- 
 thusiasms. So that grand demeanor and bibles and 
 
14 ,THE FREE CITY 
 
 architecture and codes of equity rushed up to a majesty 
 of power beyond what we can hope to attain. Earth 
 wears the Parthenon as the proudest gem upon her zone, 
 and morning opes with haste her Hds to gaze upon the 
 Pyramids; because they who wrought the parthenons 
 and pyramids were in the youthtime of the race, and so 
 wrought wondrously. 
 
 It is an explanation. But, were it to go unchallenged, 
 would it not curse a plague of pessimism on all futurity? 
 If our inferiority to the ancients be due to advancing 
 years, — the prose of staid maturity as contrasted with 
 the romancings of life at twenty, — then the earth story 
 is writ in a descending curve. We are more decrepit than 
 our predecessors. They who come after us wUl be more 
 decrepit than we — the lag end of the drama, a tale dron- 
 ing on ever more wearily to its finis. Is it a heartening 
 thought to you that our lines have fallen in the declining 
 years of the world, and that mankind now will dodder on 
 to an old age of lassitude and senile decay? 
 
 Pohtical science brings us gladder tidings. We have 
 lapsed from the spirituality of the ancients, because we 
 have lapsed from their poUty of state. The classic world 
 was a network of municipal republics. They recognized 
 no other pohtical form. Commimity self-rulership, with 
 a jealousy that tolerated no "delegates" and "representa- 
 tives" — this imitation democracy that we moderns are 
 so proud to have hit upon — was with those Mediter- 
 ranean folk the fixed center of their thinking. From that, 
 all of their grandeur, all of their mental emiaence and 
 artistic genius took its fertilizing flow. 
 
 The Gothic age was another period of genius. And 
 that time of outflowering was also a period of Free Cities. 
 Municipal commonwealths have written the romance into 
 what otherwise had been the annals of a dull and prosy 
 
THE LIGHT OF GENIUS 15 
 
 planet. We should get well quit of that division of the 
 centuries into "Ancient, Medieval and Modern." All of 
 the centuries, under whatsoever cHme or meridian, are 
 in one of two divisions, the Luminous Ages and the Dull 
 Ages. The Luminous Ages have always been ages of 
 citizenship; that is, of city statehoods. And the Dull 
 Ages, such as our own, have been eras when mankind has 
 tried some other poUtical form. 
 
 Some will object that our day is commercial, transport- 
 ing commodities across a wide area; so that big national 
 states now are necessary. But the abohtion of frontiers 
 is not requisite to the interchange of traffic. Between 
 New York and Montreal proceeds daily a flow of goods 
 and passengers. When states mutually wish the goods 
 of each other, exchanges are easily perfected. True, the 
 presence of a frontier is an obstacle to freest come and go. 
 But so is a door on a man's house. Municipal states do 
 not regard commerce as the end of existence, or even as 
 the chief of life's desirables. You shall not enter into 
 an understanding of Athens or Rome the Republic, or 
 Jerusalem or Florence, or of Nuremburg and her sister 
 communes in that picturesque Gothic time, unless you 
 purge your mind of this poison of modernity, get a quite 
 different critique of life. The city conamonwealth sounds 
 like merely a proposal to change our political estabUsh- 
 ment. But this change carries with it an acquisition of 
 a new set of values, a shift from prose into poetry, from 
 talent into genius; a transfer of our habitat from a com- 
 mercial civilization over into an artistic civihzation. 
 
 Municipality is a spiritual organism, bulwark of free- 
 dom and labor. The Free City! It is a word of royal 
 tone, smacking of elegance, tranquillity, manners, the 
 brightest glory. But also it is an austere word, of very 
 thunderous intonation if things be not according to 
 
16 THE FREE CITY 
 
 equity. Whenever that word "Commune" has sounded 
 on the lips of the workingclass, mammon and his cohorts 
 have been stricken with a nervous chill, MunicipaUty is 
 labor's almighty redeemer. Review the Communes of 
 history, you shall see the aproned bricklayer, the smutched 
 blacksmith, down to the begrimed porter and drayman 
 of the gutter, as public characters with a statesmanly 
 participation in government. They were not "hands"; 
 they were humans, and drinking large draughts of in- 
 tellectual deHght. Co-partnership in the state awoke 
 manliness within them, shaped their fingers to subtle 
 craftsmanship, elevated the mechanic into artistry. " Re- 
 public" means a state whose people interest themselves 
 in public affairs. Only small states can be republics. 
 When the seat of government is many miles removed 
 from his home, a man will not take a daily and enthusias- 
 tic interest in that government. MunicipaUty and de- 
 mocracy, twinned in the same womb, are one and in- 
 separable. Communal self-government makes the people 
 public hearted. Representative government makes the 
 people private hearted. Here is the fester spot; mod- 
 ernity's deep and ulcerating cancer. Along with parent- 
 hood and love-making, government is a function that 
 cannot be delegated. They who do so forfeit their human 
 status. To recall the labor movement from class con- 
 sciousness back into civic consciousness, will not be 
 dangerous. 
 
 The present posture of the world is the dangerous thing. 
 I do not prophesy a convulsive time coming. The con- 
 vulsion is here. We are in the most humihating moment 
 since time began. What think you of a Christendom 
 that has been spending in mutual slaughter a sum daily 
 that would build two score universities? Nationahsm 
 was the distinctive pohty of the nineteenth century. 
 
THE LIGHT OF GENIUS 17 
 
 And our fratricidal day is the result. War is the castiga- 
 tion of our economic offendings. In contrast with the 
 artistic eras, a commercial age craves quantity — turns 
 out goods "cheaply." But does not miUtarism add ter- 
 ribly to the cost? Nations are obsolete, in that to main- 
 tain themselves they require such an enormous amount of 
 killing. Never before was nationaUsm — big states — 
 so regnant. And never before did mankind he in such a 
 soak of blood. 
 
 Like fire lanes in the forest to prevent the spread of 
 conflagrations, so are frontiers; they keep a war from 
 spreading into a world war. If the fire lanes are broad 
 and clean, no fire can grow into a conflagration. An era 
 of city commonwealths is never militaristic. When 
 citizens have in their own hands the diplomatic and the 
 war-declaring machinery, they settle disputes by amicable 
 processes. During the nearly five hundred years of their 
 existence, the Hanseatic League of Free Cities did not 
 once draw the sword in aggression. But under Bismarck 
 the Germans apostatized to the prince of this world. 
 Then, from the most pacific of peoples, they became the 
 swaggerer. Here is a letter written from Franlcfort-on- 
 the-Main in 1867: "Until last year this city, as well as 
 many others, including Hamburg, Mayence, Wiesbaden, 
 Homburg, were entirely separate from the Prussian 
 territory. Certain of the cities were free, and others be- 
 longed to httle duchies. Last summer Prussia gobbled 
 up all the Httle fellows and sent their governments to the 
 four winds. Deep is the feeling of resentment. Frank- 
 fort has been a free city for hundreds of years; and now, 
 to be made a mere speck on the map, is not agreeable. 
 Bismarck is universally hated among the Frankfurters." 
 
 It will be objected that the Free City, whilst an exalted 
 ideaHsm, is too ethereal for life's hurly-burly; municipality 
 
18 THE FREE CITY 
 
 needs to swell into nationality, because mere size is an 
 asset in the struggle for existence in this cock-pit called 
 Earth. Yes. And city commonwealths achieve size; 
 but by the principle of federation, not by consolidation. 
 The thirteen American colonies, federating, triumphed 
 over the British Empire. Thirty-six years later, in the 
 War of 1812, they fought that Empire again; but now 
 they were a consohdated nation — and they were de- 
 feated. Pohtical evolution does not mean that the small 
 state shall grow into a big state, but that the small state 
 shall grow ever more inteUigent, noble, and artistic. 
 Evolution usually takes the form of a decrease in bulk and 
 an increase in brains. The scale of ascending degrees is 
 not from municipal into national; but from municipaUty 
 into a federation of municipalities. That designs an elastic 
 meshwork illimitable in its reach; and not to be broken, 
 seeing that the parts are jointed by ligaments that are 
 entirely flexible. The railroad and the telegraph have 
 made possible now a world confederation, but should not 
 be misused unto world consohdation, wherein localisms 
 and refreshing diversity would be swallowed up in a 
 world-wide intolerable sameness. 
 
 Democracy is self-government. Nationalism is repre- 
 sentative government. The two are separated by a 
 cosmic diameter. Only an indifferent and docile folk will 
 consent to representative government; and that pohtical 
 form makes them ever more indifferent, ever more docile 
 — a descensus avemo proceeding with progressive ac- 
 celeration. In the purHeus of invisible diplomacy the 
 Dark Forces nest themselves; whose silent depredations 
 are hushed and horrible as a gas attack in the night. 
 Downing Street, Wilhebnstrasse, Quai d'Orsay, State 
 Department on Potomac banks — where you will — dip- 
 lomacy under representative government is shrouded in 
 
THE LIGHT OF GENIUS 19 
 
 veils of inscrutabiKty. How wide a gulf sunders be- 
 tween an imaginary democracy and an imaginative 
 democracy! 
 
 I hold that the travail and brow-sweat of mankind 
 through generations of generations have established cer- 
 tain masterful and basic principles; and that, of these, 
 self-government is chief. At once I am deafened by 
 moderns : * ' Self-government ! You mean that each munic- 
 ipal grouping, in sovereign and primary assembly, shall 
 have a pohtical status in questions of peace and war, and 
 in accrediting ambassadors? But that would require all 
 of us to be conversant with pubhc affairs and to partici- 
 pate therein. Our private interests will not afford us 
 leisure for engrossment in public interests. We prefer to 
 have our governing done for us. We haven't time for 
 self-government." 
 
 Suppose an Athenian heard that. Would it not move 
 him to an exclamatory burst: ''Haven't time for self- 
 government! But, my dear sir, what else is time for? 
 SeK-rulership is a heritage whose dignities are not to be 
 alienated. Animals lead a private life; that is why 
 they are animals. Humans are summoned to a public 
 consciousness, to a joint magistracy and stewardship over 
 the Commune. Think not that it is a cheap or trivial 
 commodity, this prize of self-government that you are 
 so Ustlessly throwing away. We ancients fought for it; 
 at Thermopylse and Marathon, paid a price for it. It is 
 the wellhead from which the world has derived civility, 
 justice, self-command, beauty, letters, philosophy; all of the 
 useful, all of the decorative arts. The citizen state is the 
 organizer of fellowship into concrete reaUty — fellowship, 
 whose mighty fire and scintillation is the principle of all 
 existence, the radical plasm and essence of our being. 
 'Representative government!' Probably the most ig- 
 
20 THE FREE CITY 
 
 noble, sinister, and squalid of political forms! Private 
 business has no business to get in the way of public busi- 
 ness. You say you have no time for self-government; 
 you cast it aside as a careless trifle, and devote yourself 
 to life's bric-a-brac. Harken to one who speaks the 
 hived wisdom of ten thousand vanished years: A people 
 that takes time from self-government to give to other 
 pursuits, will find in the day of their disillusionment that 
 those other pursuits were not worth giving time to. 
 Democracy is the dearest-valued gift vouchsafed of 
 Heaven." 
 
 The hmried and frowzy thing we moderns call Ufe, is 
 not life, and will not long be even existence. The tor- 
 rential times that are bursting upon the world apprize 
 us that man was made for beauty, and will not be at rest 
 until he rests in beauty. Nationality has supplanted 
 municipaUty; the wild waste of years that have super- 
 vened are landing us in a squat and earthy secularism. 
 These bournes of mediocrity are not only unexhilarating, 
 they are perilous. The soul of man is created for splen- 
 dours. And when splendours are denied it, convulsions of 
 the state are the pathologic admonitory symptoms. 
 Nationahty is now in the saddle. And never were the 
 members of mankind so at variance. The money power 
 and the mob — two cats tied together by their tails and 
 flung over a wash line. Black care is on the faces of the 
 people. A sense of insecurity. Joy is become an alien. 
 The present is a scheme of disunion. Fellowship is not 
 on the increase. Greed is on the increase. And it is 
 acting Uke the magnetic mountain in the Arabian Nights 
 tale, that drew the nails and bolts from out the planks 
 of the ship. There have been Dull Ages before this. 
 But I doubt if any of them was more joyless than is ours. 
 They were as bereft of fellowship as we. But at least it 
 
THE LIGHT OF GENIUS 21 
 
 was not a mechanistic joylessness to maintain which 
 they had to devote anxious days and nights of sleepless 
 care. They too had paralysis of the heart strings. But 
 they were spared a huge materiahstic clutter that sits 
 upon our bosoms hke a nightmare. They had their wars; 
 but not the machine-made annihihstic thing we behold, 
 when the mercantile cut-throatings ripen into military 
 throat-cuttings. MateriaUsm is not justified of her 
 children. 
 
 The community state is a co-operative workshop. 
 Good will and conciHation is the temper in which all of 
 its doings are wrought. Instances that have a squint to 
 the contrary will be found. Which is to say, a perfect 
 municipal repubhc has never yet appeared. Only eternity 
 will be long enough to bring perfection. The Luminous 
 Ages differ from the Dull Ages, not in being luminous 
 with an absolute illumination; but in being more bril- 
 liant — and noticeably more brilhant — than the Dull 
 Ages. 
 
 The ferocious egoisms now rending the social fabric 
 have got to be brought under. Nationahty cannot do it. 
 And for a reason. The nation is as much too large as the 
 individual is too small. The area of the state must be 
 no wider than the individual can expand into and fill with 
 his presence. Municipality is that area. It is the focal 
 point where private interest and public interest coincide. 
 In the community, we five and move and have our being. 
 To serve her is in truest sense serving ourselves. 
 
 The Free City is more than a city. It becomes a piety, 
 a spiritual adventure, a mysticism; aye, a love story, for 
 the feminine quahty of grace and lovehness is ever an 
 accompaniment of communalistic fife, and for want of 
 which in materiaUst modernity, womanhood is justly 
 rebellious. MunicipaUty passes into a transcendental 
 
22 THE FREE CITY 
 
 region of thought. It formulates a metaphysic of the 
 universe. Municipal communion is the incubator of 
 genius. When a man turns from self-glorification to 
 city-glorification, think you a small thing has happened? 
 I tell you, that is the miracle of miracles, which, when it 
 has arrived, brings all other miracles in its train. Thereby 
 the ego is raised to a supernormal plane of being, taps 
 new levels of energy, is capacitated beyond man's con- 
 stitutional endowment. City worship is the rehgion 
 that will make skepticism ridiculous. 
 
 These times are inclined to kiss the lips of innovation. 
 We hear much of a New Rehgion, New Thought, a New 
 Church, a New Path. A restiveness not to be wondered 
 at. Society, pining on so grievous a bed of sickness, 
 turns to any doctor that holds out hope. Numerous are 
 the new-fangled medicines being offered. Municipahty 
 has this to recommend it: he is an old-fashioned doctor, 
 has no patent medicines, no recipes or drugs of recent 
 discovery, nothing but simples that have been long and 
 and brilliantly tested. Experimental remedies — these 
 curiously devised programs — do but heighten the dis- 
 temper. 
 
 Municipahty is the publisher of peace to a world that 
 now has the smell of a slaughter house. In her liberal 
 keeping all of the interests of Hfe are secure. Property is 
 a false god. The populace is equally a false god. The 
 Free City, taking them each by a hand, leads them in a 
 single path to a common goal. It is the blend of material- 
 ity and ideaUty. Nicely it tempers and balances the 
 alloy as to those opposing ingredients. In small states 
 rehgion flourishes; in big states it pines into a languish- 
 ing death. 
 
 An intercontinental federation of little repubhcs — 
 there is the only poUtical form commensurate with the 
 
THE LIGHT OF GENIUS 23 
 
 totality of the human species. Because its one adaman- 
 tine dogma is, The right to be different. Municipality is 
 the categorical and Godly jurisprudence: a communion 
 of Free Cities, present on all shores, comprehending all 
 islands and all continents, conforming to all tongues and 
 climates and topographies. A fellowship in liberal divers- 
 ity encompassing the globe. 
 
CHAPTER III 
 
 CITY-WORSHIP LAYS HER BASIS DEEP 
 
 THE city state snuggles into the landscape. It 
 belongs to natural history. This fact is primary, 
 quintessential; the rudiment from which all of the 
 other facts take their form and texture. Of all the 
 peoples that developed municipahty as their mode of the 
 social union, the Greeks were the chiefest. In their 
 Uterature and art they painted a picture to point the 
 truth I am here proclaiming. It was the story of Giant 
 Antaeus, son of Mother Earth. Mightiest of the mighty 
 was he, so long as his feet were touching the ground; in 
 mystic fashion the strength of the soil seeped up into his 
 members like sap into a rooted oak. He had an enemy. 
 In every encounter between the two, Antseus was the 
 victor; the energies welling up into him from rock and 
 turf and loam, put power into his ankle bones. One 
 luckless day, however, that enemy learned the secret. 
 Thereupon, in a wrestle, he manoeuvered so as to lift 
 Antseus from the ground; and then easily conquered 
 him. 
 
 That parable enshrines the philosophy of city repub- 
 lics; the cause of their security and the secret of their 
 overthrow. Under barbarism, the city is sacrificed to 
 the country. Under nationalism, the country is sacri- 
 ficed to the city. Under municipalism, the two advance 
 
 hand in hand. Orchard city, is a fit name for the citizen 
 
 24 
 
CITY-WORSHIP LAYS HER BASIS DEEP 25 
 
 commonwealth in its perfection; rm-al metropolis: a 
 mmiicipality of milk and honey. In this natural form of 
 state, the farm articulates with the marketplace; so that 
 countrjonan and townsman are not two separate classes, 
 but the same man is both. A municipal fabric of state 
 puts a world capital in the midst of every farming district. 
 That metropoUs is reachable by the husbandmen from 
 the fields round about; hke Cincinnatus, leaving his plow 
 and giving himself to affairs of state, thence to return to 
 his flocks and fields. It brings governorship within the 
 competency of the handworker, expands him into a citizen 
 of the world. In city commonwealths the ruling order is 
 limited to the laboring and useful classes. At Athens, 
 Solon directed that a man who did not work should be 
 deprived of his poHtical rights. The Israel state insisted 
 that every boy, whether the scion of wealthy parents or 
 poor, should be bred to a trade. At Florence we find 
 Dante, son of r?ches and leisure, apprenticing himself to 
 the Apothecaries' Guild; seeing that no one but a mem- 
 ber of some work guild could possess citizenly privileges. 
 
 Moderns have the idea that the poetry of Nature found 
 in the literature of Greece and Rome and in the Bible, is 
 irrecoverable. Never again, say these, can we see wood- 
 nymphs and water-nymphs, four-footed Pan of the forest 
 and the piping reeds, cloud pillars by day and fire pillars 
 guiding by night, the bm-ning bush, magi led by the 
 beckoning star. This mythology belonged to the pagan 
 view of hfe; a bewitchingly engaging view, fraught with 
 all charm and loveliness; but one that can never be re- 
 captured. Science has made these dreamings of the 
 foretime forevermore impossible. 
 
 Not a few of the finer spirits, feeling this loss, have 
 uttered their lamentation. Listen to SchiUer, bemoaning 
 the departed glory: 
 
26 THE FREE CITY 
 
 Man ascribed nobility to Nature; 
 
 Rendered love unto the earth he trod. 
 Everywhere his eye, illuminated, 
 
 Saw the footprints of a god. 
 Reft of life, the meadows lie deserted; 
 
 Ne'er a Godhead can my fancy see. 
 Ah! If only, of those living colors, 
 
 Lingered yet the ghost with me! 
 
 Wordsworth, wandering by the sea, meditated on the 
 glories an Athenian would have beheld in that scene, 
 glories withholden from his eyes: 
 
 The world is too much with us; late and soon. 
 
 Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers; 
 
 Little we see in Nature thai is ours. 
 We have given our lives away, a sordid boon! 
 This sea that bares her bosom to the moon; 
 
 The winds thai will be howling at all hours, 
 
 And are upgathered now like sleeping flowers — 
 For this, for everything, we are out of tune. 
 It moves •ws not. Great God! Fd rather be 
 
 A pagan, suckled in a creed outworn; 
 So might I, standing on this pleasant lea, 
 
 Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn; 
 Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea, 
 
 Or hear old Triton blow his wreathed horn. 
 
 It is commonly supposed that we have lost that once- 
 time intimacy with Nature, because we have discovered 
 her to be a lifeless mechanism, governed by iron law. 
 That is an inversion of the facts. We have "discovered" 
 Nature to be a lifeless mechanism, because we lost that 
 oneness with her that our ancient forbears enjoyed. 
 Atheism is not a formulation of the mind. Atheism is a 
 mode of Ufe; an alienation from our natural Mother 
 
CITY-WORSHIP LAYS HER BASIS DEEP 27 
 
 whence we derived, and on first-hand contact with whom, 
 our spiritual health depends. Science had naught to do 
 with the decay of faith. Science means exact knowledge. 
 Think you it is impossible to know Nature with exacti- 
 tude, be acquainted with her habits so as to predict all 
 of her goings; and still cherish a blood relationship with 
 her? The mentahty of her may be on a lower plane than 
 ours. But is it not mentahty stiU? and is there not a 
 form of consciousness that attaches to all being? Her 
 emotional hfe may be less intense than ours. But it is 
 emotion; a heartthrob trembling in every eventide, and 
 a joy pulsating through all the jovial frame of the morning. 
 
 When man gave up municipahty and its communal de- 
 hghts, to roam the world in search of gain and private 
 happiness, he left Natiu-e behind. Separating himself 
 thus from her, he began to think he was of a different 
 species from her. Insufferable prig, he fashioned out of 
 his self-conceit a philosophy that assigned to him a su- 
 perior genesis; a nativity quite other than from her loins. 
 Thereupon he looked down upon her with top-loftiness. 
 This glorification of himself bred in man the notion that 
 he was free; by which he meant capriciousness, the 
 power of private choice; whereas Nature^ poor thing! 
 — is unfree, a mechanistic complex swayed by absolute 
 unvarying law: "a lifeless mechanical array of inanimate 
 forces." 
 
 Darwinism arrives to prick that bubble. Evolution 
 announces that we are not of a different order from 
 Nature. She is our mother. Out of her strong and 
 fecundating flanks we are sprung. In our lineaments we 
 bear her ineffaceable image. Man is heir of all the zo- 
 ological series. From the earHest filament that crys- 
 taUizes in the prenatal germplasm, up through aquarian 
 antics and bough-clasping grasp of the newborn infant, 
 
28 THE FREE CITY 
 
 and on to adulthood, we rehearse and epitomize Hfe's 
 thundering procession up the ages. A man's biography is 
 the world's history. We are related by ties of blood to 
 all animals and all vegetables. 
 
 The pagan world was poetic because it sensed this 
 truth which evolution is now revealing to the tardy in- 
 tellect. Those children of the soil felt the family kinship. 
 Perceiving the footsteps of Nature through the realm of 
 humankind, they in Kke manner perceived rudiments of 
 human thought and emotion in all the realm of natural- 
 kind. They anthropomorphised Nature, because they 
 had naturahzed Anthropos. We read the writings of that 
 day, wherein mountains bring forth, rivers have sons, 
 fish of the sea become participators in the human drama, 
 hills clap their hands for joy or some captain cries his 
 "Stand still" to the rolling sun. And in superior fashion 
 we smile at their childish naivete. We forget that they 
 saw Nature thus in the hkeness of man, because they in 
 similar fashion saw man in the likeness of Nature. The 
 law of mechanical necessity, formulated now by science, 
 is not a modern discovery. The Greeks knew it; per- 
 ceive how large a place Fate — anangke — occupies in 
 their Uterature. But they included man in that neces- 
 sitarian scheme of things; they attempted no priggish 
 distinction between the two orders. They staggered not 
 at the idea of Nature as a phantasmagoria of forces act- 
 ing like men; because they knew that man is in the same 
 network of necessity, and acts on the same principle as 
 do animals and cabbage. When you mechanicalize the 
 human realm, you thereby humanize the mechanical 
 realm. Nature was close to man, because the men of 
 that day were so close to Nature. 
 
 "Was it true" — some one asks — "that old myth- 
 ological view of tilings?" Truth is that which works. 
 
CITY-WORSHIP LAYS HER BASIS DEEP 29 
 
 The pagan view of the universe worked. So long as it 
 was retained, friendship and joy and artistic production 
 were the product. Harmony of adjustment between man 
 and Nature brings a condition known as blessedness. 
 Modern man is seeking that adjustment by posing him- 
 self in a stilted artificiality remote from Nature, and then 
 wresting her forces into harmony with his artificial 
 wishes, by appUed science. The ancients sought it by 
 remaining close to Nature, whereby the needs of man were 
 not greatly divergent from her normal supply of those 
 needs. They got results. We are not getting results. 
 They experienced blessedness. We, in om- neurasthenic 
 higgledy-piggledy, are unblessed. We pooh-pooh the 
 superstitions of the IsraeHtes, and boast of our nowaday 
 hygiene. But scarcely shall be found in these times so 
 rugged and rhythmic a set of heart valves as was the 
 average among those hardy hill folk. 
 
 We have erected x)urselves in a false and exposed posi- 
 tion far from the sheltering arms of our Earth-mother. 
 In so doing we have created a mass of wants, to supply 
 which we puff and pant and sweat the Hvelong day. We 
 have more quantum of commodities than had that classic 
 world. But they had less need. And the leisure they 
 thus gained over us, they employed in writing bibles and 
 iliads, producing prodigies of worth and beauty so far 
 above our fifth-rate competency that we do not even 
 aspire to rival them. Socrates and his wife Xanthippe 
 had but one cloak between them; so that in cold weather 
 they had to take turns going out. Modernity is produc- 
 ing overcoats in plenty. But is it producing Socratic 
 spirits in plenty? They had griefs, yes. But these 
 were not the haunting haggard perplexities and hint of 
 impending dissolution, which nightmare the modern brain. 
 Safe-folded in the strength of the hills, their hves had a 
 
30 THE FREE CITY 
 
 sure foundation. "They heal their griefs," said Homer; 
 "for curable are the hearts of the noble." Children of 
 Nature, naught could seriously harm them. 
 
 I hold no brief for an act of nihihsm to be practised on 
 applied science. I know that when man shall return to 
 his home in the principle of community and its adoration 
 of some spot of Nature, science will be no bar to a poet- 
 izing intimacy with her as in that former day. Is only 
 the antique astronomy poetic, and the Copernican system 
 necessarily dull and prosaic? They thought of the sun 
 as a charioteer driving his steeds across the heavens in 
 diurnal journey. Now we know that the Earth-mother is 
 the active agent in night-and-day's alternating sequence. 
 She holds a lapfull of her offspring up to the sun for a few 
 hours, to be kissed by the jocund orb. Then she gathers 
 them back under her shielding wing; covering their eyes 
 that they may sleep, as a hen covers her chickens. No 
 possibility there for poetry? No material in that, to 
 evoke in us a filial bearing towards the Great Mother 
 whose broad and faithful bosom holds us, whose udders 
 distended with milk nourish us? 
 
 When city repubUcs appear again, we shall have a 
 grander paganism than that which deified the Mediter- 
 ranean world; because we shall have an ampler science 
 to guide imagination's powerful pinions. The scientific 
 spirit is not a product of modern commerciahsm. The 
 impulse in its modem form originated in the municipal 
 universities of the thirteenth century. Can a commercial- 
 ized mind discover secrets from Nature? Pure science is 
 ever the mark of an unworldly soul; one who is a pious 
 child of Erda our mother, and who in the contemplation 
 of her loveUness is content to let the world go by. To 
 such devotees she imseals her mysteries, and to none 
 other. Whenever a votary of science gets inoculated 
 
CITY-WORSHIP LAYS HER BASIS DEEP 31 
 
 with the germ of gain, instantly Nature is silent to that 
 man. She averts her gaze from him; and her gathering 
 frown darkens the eyes of him. 
 
 From the Germans we were of late obtaining the chief- 
 est fmid of science. And in that land, we saw, the small 
 principality was preserved down to the middle of the 
 nineteenth century; before she had backslided to the un- 
 clean god of commercialism and a national polity of state. 
 Athens of old was a municipal repubhc. And she pro- 
 duced Aristotle, father of aU occidental scientists. The 
 city state produced poetry; it also produced science. 
 So far from a warfare betwixt these two, they are Siamese 
 twins, ligatured indivisibly. In a more fitting place we 
 shall see that the principle of municipaUty is the creator 
 of that Godlikest faculty which, for want of a better 
 name, we call imagination. The scientific use of the ima- 
 gination is a first principle with all who would discover 
 the modes and ongoings of Nature. A commercial 
 age, by kiUing imagination, destroys poetry; and it also 
 — were it to continue — would destroy science. 
 
 Paganism is beUef in the miraculous. It is a religious 
 attitude towards Nature; viewing her to be in nowise a 
 dead insentient thing but a concourse of forces, thinking 
 and feeUng and willing. Miracles are a restoration of 
 harmony between man and this lower natural kingdom. 
 The need for a miracle arises when, through some mis- 
 understanding, there has come to pass an apathetic or 
 belligerent relation between the two. When that apathy 
 or beUigerency gives way to co-operation, it begets in 
 man a sunburst of dehght. In his elation of rapture, he 
 calls the event by the most superlative term in his vocab- 
 ulary — miracle. 
 
 Are miracles true? Truth is anything that imites man 
 and Nature in sympathetic teamwork — what we call 
 
32 THE FREE CITY 
 
 felicity or blessedness. Miracles bring to pass that team- 
 work. Therefore they are true. Science is a code and 
 manual of the miraculous. It conducts innumerable ex- 
 perimentations in the art of getting Nature and man to 
 work together. The experiments that succeed are hsted 
 and codified. And we call it, science. It doesn't matter, 
 when man and Nature patch up a quarrel and lock elbows 
 in amity, which of the two yield to the other. The 
 Hegehan dialectic would declare that there had been a 
 mutual adjustment. 
 
 Monstrously false, the notion that there is antagonism 
 between the Bible and paganism. Nature-poetry — be- 
 hef in the miraculous — is ever an accompaniment of 
 municipal commonwealths; because the municipal com- 
 monwealth nestles into some nook of Nature and there 
 acclimates itself. Runs the legend, that when Jesus was 
 born, a shudder ran through the isles of Greece, and a cry 
 was heard by fishermen : "Pan is dead!" The cry did go 
 shuddering through the world at about that time. But 
 not because of the birth of Jesus. It was because of the 
 birth of the Roman Empire. Municipality gave us, and 
 will always give us, the pagan-poetic. Material com- 
 mercialism always destroys it. As that Empire extended 
 its bleakness like the blackened ashes of a conflagration 
 across the ancient world, the aforetime intimacy with 
 Nature survived only in sheltered rustic nooks whither 
 the new commercial spirit had not penetrated. In Latin, 
 the word for a rural thing is paganus. Pagans were thus 
 the "belated" folk who persisted in regarding the world 
 in terms of the miraculous; whilst the "advanced " people, 
 reclining amid wealth and ease, had left behind them those 
 "antiquated" notions. 
 
 Perceiving the loss that has resulted from overthrow- 
 ing that old and true faith, there have been attempts to 
 
CITY-WORSHIP LAYS HER BASIS DEEP 33 
 
 revive paganism. Emperor Julian, probably the purest- 
 hearted, highest-minded imperator that ever wore the 
 Roman purple, gave his Hfe to such an endeavor. William 
 Sharp attempted it with his New Pagan Review. Now 
 there are choice spirits not a few, banding themselves in 
 the same enterprise. Fiasco will be their fate. The 
 poetic view of hfe is not a matter of individual wishings 
 or wilhngs. It is a pohty of state. To seek to resurrect 
 the shapes and colorings in which the Jews and Greeks 
 and early Romans expressed their admiration of their 
 landscape, is distinctly anti-pagan. Commerciahsm can 
 borrow its poetry readymade; Paganism, never. Our 
 times and scenic- settings are different from theirs. Let 
 each grouping of people unite themselves with their plot 
 of earth as did the classic people, and that ensemble of 
 Nature will be vivified into a host of sentient beings, as 
 in the classic era. 
 
 Paganism — belief in the miraculous — is patriotism 
 heated to the combustion point, whereupon it blazes up, 
 and we call it poetry. Nations know not what true patriot- 
 ism is; they are too big. As the area of one's affection 
 enlarges, the intensity of that affection diminishes. 
 Nations, perceiving that patriotism is in decay, have tried 
 to galvanize it into action by statutes and incantations. 
 Thus they have brought into ridicule the noblest senti- 
 ment that can inhabit the human breast — a people's 
 attachment to the soil they live upon. The Jerusalem 
 state developed in its people an intense patriotism ; where- 
 fore the Bible presents a pagan-poetic view of Nature, 
 the most sustained of any literature. Palestine's hill 
 country would not seem a favorable setting for man's 
 poetizing faculty to work upon. But patriotism can, out 
 of a bleak wilderness, image forth a Holy Land filled with 
 glory^ That hill state took the gaunt crags of the Leba- 
 
34 THE FREE CITY 
 
 non Range and dignified them into a cupola of the world. 
 Contrariwise, when patriotism perishes, the fairest realm 
 on earth is accounted a rat hole. 
 
 The Bible folk fitted snugly into vtheir landscape. 
 Therefore they believed that the landscape fitted them. 
 They were at one with the purposes of Nature in that 
 spot; which is another way of saying, Nature was at 
 one with their purposes. So they rapturously pictured 
 the scenery as taking part in the human plan. The genius 
 of the state — Jehovah was the name thereof — sum- 
 moned all that wedge of earth to partake in the political 
 program. The creatures in the subhuman world heeded 
 that call of their marshalhng chieftain. FUes and Uce 
 and darkness and frogs plagued Israel's enemies. The sea 
 opened a path to Jewish feet. Sinai gave them counsel. 
 A cloud was spread for their covering; and a fire gave 
 them light. Was it true, this view of Nature as man's 
 miraculous coadjutor? Yes; because it worked. It 
 welded the most compact social union in perhaps all the 
 story of man. It wrote a Book, to whose incomparable 
 worth nineteen grateful centuries testify. And it built 
 a city of God whose illumination has hghtened our dull 
 world, and still lightens it. 
 
 When the Persians overran Attica, the Athenians, 
 rather than capitulate, took ship and lived o£f shore. 
 During that exile came the season for their processional 
 to the village of Eleusis; the stated Eleusinian Mysteries. 
 Albeit the citizens were now absent from Athens, the city 
 was not on that account bereft of inhabitants. For the 
 Nature divinities were still there : Athena and her gUtter- 
 ing host; and the spirits of the forefathers, thick-peopling 
 the spot as an invisible nimbus. And now notice the 
 miracle that happened — as related by her true-believ- 
 ing historians. On the Eleusinian date, the processional 
 
CITY-WORSHIP LAYS HER BASIS DEEP 35 
 
 to Eleusis was not permitted to go by default. Those in- 
 visible inhabiters of Athens formed themselves into a 
 pilgrim band and marched thither. The proof of it is 
 that the people on shipboard, straining their eyes in that 
 direction to see what would happen, actually saw the dust 
 clouds raised by the feet of the processioning host. 
 
 A mere superstition, you say? the miracle never hap- 
 pened; dust clouds raised by the wind — which is naught 
 but gaseous matter in mechanical motion; and which the 
 childish Athenians interpreted according to their ardent 
 expectations. O bhnd, stoneblind modern! See you not 
 that the "ardent expectation" was itself the miracle? 
 Was it true, this procession by an invisible host? Most 
 veraciously true. Is capable of pragmatic verification. 
 A few months later those Athenians- left their ships, the 
 enemy being now departed. And with gush of power, 
 they built the Parthenon. I say unto you, anything that 
 can build a Parthenon is true. And anything that builds 
 dry-goods-box architecture, in the commerciaUzed ugli- 
 ness we call modernity, is most positively untrue. The 
 Unes of the Parthenon are true lines. Therefore they 
 came from Godhead, who is the Lord of truth. The lines 
 of dry-goods-box architecture are untrue lines. There- 
 fore they came from the devil, that father of lies and lord 
 of all unveracity. 
 
 Why did not the Athenians, it may be asked, when their 
 home site was thus desolated by an invading foe, go else- 
 where? What! Leave Attica? Their life was inter- 
 woven with her hills and brooks, her furrow fields and 
 forests. These objects of Nature were not a stretch of 
 dead territory. The hills were peopled with divinities. 
 The brooks were water-nymphs; you could overhear 
 them babbling — the arrant chatterboxes! The fields 
 were a trencher plate on which Demeter and Ceres spread 
 
36 THE FREE CITY 
 
 fat viands. On the orchard trees, Pomona hung luscious 
 fruit. Pan and his singing train vivified each woodland. 
 Whilst above the AcropoUs hovered Athena the Protect- 
 ress. Leave these? or surrender them into the sover- 
 eignty of another? An Athenian would sooner have 
 died a thousand deaths. 
 
 For moderns it is difficult, suckled as we are in a cheap 
 and trivial view of Nature, to reahze the intensity of 
 patriotism wherewith citizens in a Free City cherish their 
 homeland. That which we — so stupidly — call the 
 "forces of nature," was to them a community of intel- 
 ligences. Their political life was implicated with these 
 subhuman but very sentient creatures. They consulted 
 them. Wrought hand in hand with them. Athenians 
 planted their grain with prayer; pruned their fruit trees 
 with an invocation to Pomona. They carved the stone 
 and hewed the beam of wood rehgiously. We shall see 
 the communal workshops of India displaying this self- 
 same naturalness of devotion. When patriotism localizes 
 itself within the constricted boundaries of a small de- 
 mocracy, it bursts into a flaming fire, whose other name 
 is rehgion. 
 
 Free Cities have no hankering after the territory of 
 others. Their own terrain is so fraught with deeps be- 
 low deeps and heights above heights, a kingdom inviting 
 to endless exploration, that thoy have no eyes for covet- 
 ing outside splendors. A national state, in contrast, is 
 bitten constantly with land hunger. Commercial states 
 expand horizontally, and are always getting into collision. 
 Artistic states expand vertically; in that direction there 
 are no coUidings. Nationalism is a migratory mania; a 
 restiveness that is never content save when whizzing on 
 wheels. Municipality goes to a different tune. It en- 
 genders a temper of society wherein the bonnie purple 
 
CITY-WORSHIP LA^ HER BASIS DEEP 37 
 
 heather cladding the thin soil of a Scotland, seems love- 
 lier than the Riviera; and all the sumac by the wayside 
 is a burning bush. 
 
 The Athenians never invaded Persia. But Persia was 
 repeatedly trying to invade Athens. Small states are 
 magnanimous in their foreign relations. Big states are 
 narrow-hearted; with largeness of girth they display 
 smallness of mind. The Athenians, with a few square 
 miles to call their own, were content therewith as their 
 world. Persia was so big that Cyrus boasted to Xeno- 
 phon: "My father's empire is so large that people perish 
 with cold at one extremity whilst they are suffocated with 
 heat at the other.", 
 
 Genius is a distillation from the strong herb of munic- 
 ipaUty — Nature rushing up in man unto immeasurable 
 power; opening within him unexpected geysers of capa- 
 bility. Addressing ourselves to a swift reviewal of the 
 past, we shall see that the city republic is the cradle of 
 culture, nurse of liberal arts and civil law, fostering 
 mother of whatsoever is lovely and of good report. 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 
 WHEN ROME WAS A REPUBLIC 
 
 WHY is Rome so magical a name? She is not 
 delectable for situation. Seven or eight vol- 
 canic pimples — eruption on an otherwise flat 
 and dreary campagna; washed by a narrow stream whose 
 overflowings have been immemorially a terror. Something 
 more than scenic accessories and stage setting went to 
 the making of the drama known by those conjuring words, 
 Roma Immortalis. Historians have given us the chron- 
 icles of this town by the Tiber; without seeking a clue 
 to the motor force behind those three thousand consecu- 
 tive years of achievement. They have taken for granted 
 the marvellousness of Roman character. And then they 
 show the wonders it wrought. But it is the genesis of 
 that primal fact we are in quest of. Great character will 
 issue into great history. But how grew she the greatness 
 of character? 
 
 I find Rome's clue and secret in her religiousness. Re- 
 ligion is nowadays a word of ill repilte. And for a reason. 
 In the disintegration of society to-day, the individual has 
 become the unit. So that by religion modem ears under- 
 stand it to mean reUgious individuals. Religion intensi- 
 fies whatsoever it touches. Tie it up with the ego, it 
 makes that ego tenfold more egoistic. Much of the re- 
 ligious energy of our day, therefore, tends to sunder the 
 individual from the social mass, in a pursuit of private 
 salvation. Small wonder that such a. spectacle excites 
 
 38 
 
WHEN ROME WAS A REPUBLIC 39 
 
 the derision of the best and higher minds. But civic re- 
 ligion is of another stripe. City-worship is the religion 
 that is pure and undefiled, seeing that it keeps the ego 
 subordinate to the commonweal. The private must 
 serve the pubHc. When ego-interests bulk more im- 
 portantly than communal interests, hell migrates to earth 
 and takes up its visible habitation. By "religiousness" 
 I use the word as the Romans used it : The investiture of 
 the community with divine prerogatives. 
 
 To the average reader, Rome suggests an association of 
 ideas quite other than religious — power and law and 
 empire, legions trampling with steel-shod feet, lust of 
 dominion, pride of hfe, Lucullan feasts, iniquities cynical 
 and immoderate. But these were the sproutings after 
 she had ceased to be a municipahty and had gone off into 
 an imperium. I am speaking of her when she was a city 
 republic, nestling in her Latium coziness. In this her 
 original and creative era, devotional intensity was the 
 badge of all her being. 
 
 Romulus was the chieftain of the band of shepherds 
 who, driven from the Alban hills by a volcano, settled on 
 the Palatine Hill. He was one of the great spiritual 
 leaders of all time; a reHgious genius. (It is agreeable to 
 remember that, in accepting these early chronicles of 
 Rome, we are in line with the latest and most scientific 
 history. That is not legendary lore. Mystical, yes; but 
 of sound historicity.) 
 
 The first thought of Romulus the Founder was to get 
 into friendly relations with this new landscape. He well 
 understood that the Tiber, with the hills and plain and 
 grass and clouds and rain and dew round about, were not 
 agglomerations of dead atoms; these were intelligences, 
 with capacity to love you if you cherished them, or hate 
 you, if you were indifferent to them. Seeking a mystic 
 
40 THE FREE CITY 
 
 union with these, Romulus first of all erected a shrine ; he 
 began the ritual of democracy. We Americans, depart- 
 ing from the precedent set by our long-ago forefathers, 
 have lost the tradition of city-worship. We account only 
 material considerations to be of consequence in the found- 
 ing of a city. One will believe this to be an improvement, 
 when Cincinnati and Baltimore and Denver surpass in 
 grandeur Jerusalem and Rome and Athens; signalizing 
 themselves in universal history as did those communes 
 of the Mediterranean. 
 
 Romulus and his fellow shepherds knew that if the com- 
 munity they were founding was to go successfully, they 
 must dedicate themselves. So they built a fire. And all 
 of the people jumped across the flame; in order, as 
 Coulanges interprets it, that they might be pure of every 
 stain. Then arose a most solemn sohcitude — the city's 
 awful and inviolate sanctity; whose other word is sover- 
 eignty. A subject city, the rulership resident somewhere 
 outside! that were an abdication of self-government, un- 
 speakable affront to their manhood. In a commercial 
 civihzation a city will barter away her freedom without 
 a thought. In a divine civihzation a city that loses her 
 sovereignty is held to be a disreputable place for human 
 beings to inhabit. Romulus saw to it that the city which 
 was to be called after his name should be a residence of 
 reputable souls. 
 
 He took a plow and carved a furrow around the city; 
 marking thus her boundaries. That furrow was sacred. 
 The sanctity attaching thus to frontiers, and seen later 
 in the worship of the god Terminus, was most important 
 in its influence on the patriotism of that people — civic 
 patriotism, without which neither Rome nor any other 
 community would have achieved the pinnacles of fame. 
 That furrow was regarded with so dread a reverence that 
 
WHEN ROME WAS A REPUBLIC 41 
 
 no one, not even the Romans themselves, were permitted 
 to step over it, in either direction. Some method had 
 to be devised to permit entrance into the city, and exit. 
 Therefore at certain places Romulus lifted the plow and 
 carried it for a few feet. These gaps in the furrow were 
 the gates; whence the name "portal," from portare, the 
 places where the plow was "carried." Remus, brother 
 of Romulus, in a moment of hurry or thoughtlessness, 
 failed to go around and pass by the portal; he stepped 
 across the furrow. To violate thus the sanctified frontier 
 was a crime beyond atonement. Romulus killed him. 
 In a city state, family ties are sacred. But the municipal 
 tie is still more - sacred. If one's love to one's blood- 
 brother gets in the way of one's love to the conamunity, 
 the lesser love must yield. 
 
 This reHgious attitude towards their plot of earth pene- 
 trated everything the Romans did. Before the grain had 
 reached the ear, the Roman cultivator had offered more 
 than ten sacrifices. We see them each month go out 
 under the sky and sing Jana Novella, the ancient hynm, as 
 the new moon grew bright in the west. Every home was 
 a temple. With the Roman, all of his actions were rites. 
 Birth, the taking of the toga, marriage, and each recurring 
 anniversary of these, were solemn acts of worship. Of 
 Rome, Livy bore witness: "There is not a place in this 
 city which is not impregnated with reUgion." 
 
 The sacredness that attached to all other provinces of 
 their life attached also to sex. "The soul, not the body, 
 makes marriage eternal," said PubHus. Sex, more than 
 any other department of man's Ufe, is the incitor to self- 
 ishness. Municipahty is an organised crusade against 
 selfishness. City states therefore always develop a 
 high standard of sex moraHty. In the Jerusalem state 
 no male infant could become a citizen except he be cir- 
 
42 THE FREE CITY 
 
 cumcised — the sign of sex discipline and renunciation 
 even to the point of agony. Of Judaic citizenship it was 
 the centrabnost ceremony; foreigners seeking entrance 
 into that civic fellowship were compelled to undergo this 
 rite. In Rome this consecration of sex went still more 
 religiously. So much so, that if I were asked to name the 
 most rehgious people in history, I should answer, the 
 Romans; giving them the primacy here even over the 
 Israehtes and their sacred Zion. St. Augustine affirms 
 that among the Romans, in the procreative embrace and 
 the generative rite, no less than four separate divine 
 presences were invoked. At the wedding, a marriage 
 hymn was sung by the guests in epithalamic choral, a 
 prayer to the Great Mother, Generatrice. The nuptial 
 chamber was beHeved to be filled with a crowd of deities. 
 Religion presided, not only over the conception of a 
 Roman child, but over the newborn infant. There was 
 a goddess that especially protected cradles. And an- 
 other, who milked out the breast to the Uttle one. 
 
 It was not an accident that Rome developed as perhaps 
 the cardinal fact of her ritual the Vestal Virgins. With 
 so scrupulous a nicety was the immaculateness of the 
 Vestals protected, if one of them fell from the covenant 
 she had taken, it was prescribed by law that no execu- 
 tioner could touch her even to put her to death. She 
 was escorted into an underground vault. Beside her 
 were placed a candle, water and bread. Then the en- 
 trance was sealed up. Rome endured the Tajquins, until 
 one of them violated the virtue of Lucretia. The specta- 
 cle of a woman dishonored aroused the Roman citizenry. 
 Tarquin and all his family were expelled. Rome never 
 had another king. Horatio holding the bridge against 
 the Tarquins attempting to return, is known of every 
 schoolboy. 
 
WHEN ROME WAS A REPUBLIC 43 
 
 The other great political revolution there was caused 
 likewise by a deed — no, it was but a desire — of in- 
 continence. Rome's administration had fallen into the 
 hands of a ruKng class. One of these turned desirous 
 eyes on Virginia, the daughter of Virginius. Rather than 
 see his daughter violated, and unable to protect her from 
 the powerful oligarch, the father caught up a butcher's 
 knife from a stall in the street near where the altercation 
 was staged, and dug it into her bosom. It was the signal 
 once more for an uprising against a ruUng set some of 
 whose members had become thus lustfully inclined. For 
 nearly two hundred years, not a case of divorce was 
 known. Respect for wife and mother was rigidly en- 
 forced. 
 
 Because of the intensity of their city-worship, and of 
 the discipline that the Romans imposed on themselves 
 in consequence, the Romans became noted for the aus- 
 terity of their morals. They were the Puritans of that 
 day. "Noblest Roman of them all," pictures the awe- 
 struck regard that the severe virtue of this people awoke 
 among outsiders. The municipahty was everything. To 
 it the individual bent his private inclinations with an 
 obedience hard for moderns to imagine. What would 
 people to-day say of a public officer specially chosen and 
 set apart to inquire into public and private morals? Yet 
 in Rome this office — the Censor, he was called — was 
 one of the highest in the city, a post aspired to as the 
 crown of a civic career. He could bar an elected official 
 from office, on moral grounds. A part of the Censor's 
 duty was to take an enumeration of the people; whence 
 the term; "census." The census was for the purpose of 
 assigning to each person in the state his share in sup- 
 porting the civic structure. 
 
 Men were prohibited from wearing silk. Women 
 
44 THE FREE CITY 
 
 could not wear a dress of more than one color. The 
 number of guests one could invite to a dinner was limited, 
 as also the amount to be spent in entertaining them. 
 The maximum one could spend on a wedding or a funeral 
 was fixed. The Lex Licinis sought to encourage a diet 
 of garden products; it limited the amount of meat and 
 fish one could eat. A Consular law passed not long after 
 B.C. 161 forbade — on non-festal days — the serving of 
 any fowl but a single hen, and that not fattened. The 
 wearing of jewelry was Hmited. Also was fixed the price 
 one could spend for furnitm*e, equipage and gravestones. 
 Even as late as Caesar's time, guards were placed around 
 the market to seize forbidden luxuries. Sometimes 
 dishes were seized by officers of the law from the tables 
 of the citizens. 
 
 Writes Cato, of the self-denying code of that time: 
 "Their custom was to be dressed in public respectably; 
 at home, as much as was needful. They paid more for 
 horses than for cooks. If a man appUed himself to con- 
 viviaHty, he was called a vagabond." In their festival 
 hours, said he, "it had been a custom of the forefathers, 
 for those who recUned at banquets, to sing to the flute 
 the praise and merits of illustrious heroes." The worthies 
 of that day had small use for the mere rhetorician. Said 
 Cato: "An orator, son Marcus, is a good man skilled in 
 speech." And he added: "Grip the subject; words will 
 follow." 
 
 The austerity of such a code strikes a chill into softling 
 modernity. But it struck no chill into the Romans. 
 Their beds consisted of planks of wood covered with 
 straw or leaves or moss. They saw no privation in such 
 a life. To make their city rich, they themselves were 
 content to be poor. That which one does in a devoted 
 frame, he does joyfully. Sacrifice for Rome? They 
 
WHEN ROME WAS A REPUBLIC 45 
 
 would die for her, and with no wince of repining. In 
 whatsoever a Roman did, it was felt that the fair name of 
 the municipality was at stake. The municipality saw 
 to it, therefore, that he did what was right. FideUty to 
 engagements, self-mastery over the appetites, dutiful 
 service, simpUcity of apparel, plain food, mercantile 
 honor — these were enforced with penahtes; even to 
 throwing from the Tarpeian Rock. 
 
 In that era of strong implacable government, we hear 
 not of murmurings. A pervasive contentment brooded 
 over the people. In our times the individual has ten times 
 the Hcense that a Roman had. And to-day insurgencies 
 outroar the dungeons of the damned. A government 
 strong enough to govern everybody in the state, is free- 
 dom. Only self-government — community government 
 — is strong enough for that task. The absence of 
 government to-day is separating society into rich and 
 poor; upon whom the laws bear down unequally. 
 There, the root of the complainings. The deepest 
 hunger of the heart of man is for fellowship. Rome 
 saw to it that upon all the population the laws put 
 their just and equal pressure. We find Brutus the 
 Elder ordering his sons to death, because of their un- 
 faithfulness to the city; he standing by unmoved as 
 their heads were struck from their shoulders. We are 
 told of Dentatus, hero of three trimnphs, eating 
 boiled turnips in his chimney corner, and scorning the 
 gold of Macedonia. ManUus put his son to death for 
 winning a victory contrary to orders: "DiscipUne is 
 the secret of Roman success," explained the inflexible 
 father. 
 
 It seems to have been a custom among the Roman 
 women to kiss, with a liberality that attracted the notice 
 of people outside. Plutarch tries to explain the habit. 
 
46 THE FREE CITY 
 
 He remarks that Roman women were forbidden to drink 
 wine; and suggests that the kissing custom may have 
 arisen in that fact, in order to yield detection if any of 
 them had broken the rule. Probably the surmise is 
 wide of the mark. But the fact that Plutarch evolved 
 such a guess, is eloquent of the wide reputation the 
 Romans enjoyed, for discipline. So highly did Rome 
 exalt the importance and rights of society, it was by law 
 permitted to kill any man who might be suspected of 
 wishing to become king. 
 
 Formerly the Roman calendar began with March. 
 The evidence of that is still visible in our names of the 
 months. September, "Seventh Month," is the seventh 
 from March; and likewise with "October," "November," 
 "December." But March was Mars' month; Mars, god 
 of war. When Rome was a city commonwealth, she was 
 not miUtary. Therefore — as is evident — they felt that 
 to begin the year with a month dedicated to the war-god, 
 was attaching to him a quite excessive praise. So they 
 made the year begin with January; named from Janus, 
 the patron deity of civilian life. Legend says that Janus 
 on his arrival in Italy had put the people into conmion- 
 wealths. To this patron of peace and husbandry, there- 
 fore, the Romans gave the place of honor in their calendar. 
 The Pantheon, built in this her municipal period, was 
 Rome's symbol of fraternity with and hospitaUty towards 
 the civic deities of other states that joined themselves to 
 Rome's ItaUan federation. To the extent that a people 
 adore their own square of territory, they will respect the 
 territorial possessions of others. 
 
 The affection of this people for their landscape is mir- 
 rored in the speech of Camillus when it was proposed, 
 after Rome lay in ashes as the result of hostile invasion, 
 to give up that site and move elsewhere: "Romans, 
 
WHEN ROME WAS A REPUBLIC 47 
 
 what an act of impiety we are about to perpetrate! We 
 are in possession of a city built under the direction of 
 auspices and auguries; in which there is not a spot but 
 is full of gods and religious rites. All these do ye intend, 
 Romans, to forsake? Has our native soil so slight a 
 hold on our affections; and this earth which we call om* 
 Mother? or does our love for our country extend no further 
 than the surface?" livy, reporting his speech, adds: 
 "Camillus is said to have affected them much by other 
 parts of his discourse, but particularly by that which re- 
 lated to reUgious matters." 
 
 Four centuries of this devotion and frugahty — private 
 plainness and public magnificence — wrought their work. 
 Romans stretched head and shoulders above the type of 
 people round about. The citizenship of her men and 
 women became one of the wonders of the world. To be 
 known as a Roman was to be known as one aflame with 
 municipal ardor, of fierce patriotism, proud of one's city 
 with a consuming pride, exacting in the moral code 
 imposed on oneself; in bartering, just; concerning ad- 
 herance to contracts, trustworthy; stoic in physical 
 endurance; disdainful of luxuries; serving the state first. 
 Her history thereafter was the uncoiling of the spring that 
 had been wound up during those four hundred formative 
 years. It had burned into the brains of that people the 
 dogma that private happiness must be subordinated to 
 conmiunity good. Happiness is an ego delectation. Joy 
 is a communal delectation. Four centuries of life in a 
 city state had won the Romans to prefer joy over 
 happiness. 
 
 Why did Rome cease to be a municipal commonwealth 
 and degenerate into an empire? It was because her 
 people got away from the soil. Founded by hill shep- 
 herds, she long preserved this note of toil and simphcity. 
 
48 THE FREE CITY 
 
 Rome, first a sheepfold, became the center of an agri- 
 cultm-al region. "The River Village," as the people 
 called her, was a rural metropolis. The rugged honesty 
 of her people attracted thither the farmers in the country- 
 side to do their bartering. In her annals during this 
 period we read of "cackling geese." One of her gates 
 was named Cattle Gate. We see her women spinning 
 and weaving wool in front of their houses; whilst along 
 the street pass flocks of sheep and lowing herds. Each 
 morning goats and cows were driven in from the surround- 
 ing pastures and milked from door to door; a custom still 
 discernible in those European cities that have conserved 
 the naturalness and the local customs that make Europe 
 picturesque. 
 
 In the Rome of that day everybody worked. I men- 
 tioned Athens and Jerusalem and Florence, in attesting 
 that the city state is an industrial commonwealth. Rome 
 is another witness. A bridge carpenter was called by 
 them pontifex. So highly did Rome honor manual labor, 
 that she made the "bridge-builder" her loftiest official: 
 Pontifex Maximus, highest priest. In a theocratic state, 
 to be supreme priest is to hold the most powerful of 
 positions. So mighty is the racial resonance awakened 
 even yet by that sacred bridge-building occupation, the 
 Pope calls himself by that ancient handicraftsman: 
 Pontiff. 
 
 We shall see as these chapters advance that city- 
 worship is ever a theocracy. To this people, Rome was 
 their deity. Jupiter Capitolinus, was another way of 
 saying: "An industrial and sovereign democracy, in- 
 stituted by Heaven and divinely fostered." To this day 
 tourists will observe that the road through the Roman 
 Forum is the "Sacred Way," via sacra. Towards the 
 end of the empire, the deification of the emperors declined 
 
WHEN ROME WAS A REPUBLIC 49 
 
 without doubt into a political deviee. But at the be- 
 ginning it was not so. Rome was a theocratic society. 
 The state was God in visible form; noblest object of 
 endeavor and sacrifice. Claudian, when he called her 
 ROMA DEA, Consort of Jupiter, mother of arts, Goddess 
 Rome, was not employing the language of hyperbole. 
 He cries out: "Rise, reverend Mother, coeval with the 
 sky! Iron fate shall never master thee, till Nature 
 changes her laws and rivers run backward." 
 
 But what if the covenant be broken between man and 
 this Nature world below, not by Nature changing her 
 laws but by man departing from Nature? Claudian seems 
 not to have perceived that possibiHty. The Romans 
 after a time began to covet an existence devoid of work. 
 Which means, being interpreted, an existence divorced 
 from Nature. Work is the process whereby man and the 
 landscape get into friendship with each other. Every 
 child of Nature is a worker; has to be, in order to Uve. 
 And every worker is a child of Nature. 
 
 We have a contemporary document, testifying to this 
 change from a natural civihzation over into a commercial 
 civiUzation. Cato, in his treatise on Agriculture, pic- 
 tures the Romans of this transition period leaving the soil, 
 congregating in the urban centers as absentee landlords, 
 and driving the laborers with harsh exactions. Servitude 
 is beginning to appear; the "family," in Cato's use of 
 the term, being a midway step apparently from the free 
 labor of the former period into the slavery that did all 
 the work in Rome when the decadence had got well under 
 way. Cato is laying down a manual for the overseer of 
 one of these absentee farm-estates: 
 
 "These shall be the bailiff's duties. He shall keep 
 good discipUne. The hoHdays must be observed. The 
 family is not to suffer, to be cold, to be hungry. He is to 
 
50 THE FREE CITY 
 
 keep it busy, as thus he will more easily restrain it from 
 mischief and thieving. The bailiff must not be a saun- 
 terer; he must always be sober; he must not go out to 
 dinner. He must square accounts with his master often. 
 The mechanic, the hirehng, the sharpener of tools, he 
 must never keep more than a day. He should know how 
 to do every farm task, and should do it often. If he does 
 this, he will know what is in the minds of the family, 
 and they will work more contentedly. He should be the 
 first to get up and the last to go to bed; should see that 
 the house is locked up, that each is sleeping where he be- 
 longs, and that the cattle are fed." 
 
 There and then, the decline of Rome set in. When a 
 man is a worker, half of his deHght is in producing, and 
 the other haK in consuming. When the productive side 
 is lacking, all a man's deHght is to consume. Luxuri- 
 ousness is the consequence. There developed in Rome an 
 idler class; among whom the art of consuming wealth got 
 to be a specialty. To satisfy the luxurious appetites of 
 the rich, aggressions on neighboring states began. MiU- 
 tary force supplanted civihan control. And now The 
 Commune is at an end. Fierce egoisms, kept under when 
 the municipahty was all and in all, lift themselves like 
 snake-haired furies. We see Marius and Sulla tearing 
 the repubhc to pieces for their own greatness. Out of a 
 clashing of egoisms, one ego is sure to emerge, iron-heeled, 
 heavy-fisted. An emperor arises on the ruins of the re- 
 public. Ovid has to admit that Astrea, goddess of truth 
 and innocency, has departed: terras astrea reliquit. 
 Democracy is at an end. Autocracy has begun. 
 
 But so resplendent a fight could not entirely be dimmed. 
 In the Roman Cathofic Church, the Rome of the early 
 primal splendor fived on, and stiU fives. The torch held 
 aloft by that Church has not always burned with a clear 
 
WHEN ROME WAS A REPUBLIC 51 
 
 and smokeless flame. But she has been the most con- 
 secutive spiritual tradition that has illumined Earth's 
 dark and dingy time-field. During her imperial cen- 
 turies Rome was the mistress of the world; so that the 
 streams both of Attica and of Israel emptied into the 
 ItaUan flood. So the Roman Church caught up into her 
 ample bosom the spirit of beauty from Athens and from 
 Judea the spirit of righteousness. But her roots are 
 Roman. Her tongue is Latin; the language that has 
 given us our greatly spiritual words: patriotism, father, 
 mother, citizenship, civics, city, civihzation, piety, com- 
 munion, sanctity, art, grace, justice, municipaUty, sacra- 
 ment, equity, redeemer, humankind, rehgion — a muster 
 well nigh without end. 
 
 As to many a count in the indictment against her, the 
 Roman Catholic Church is culpable; her own historians 
 concede it. But on one point she has not been culpable. 
 Steadfast, as when the bright shining of a candle giveth 
 hght, she has kept alive in the world a glow of spiritual- 
 mindedness. At this moment, when the muddy tides of 
 secularism are threatening to inundate all things with 
 their sHme, reducing the high colorings of civihzation to 
 grime and flatness, she is the chiefest breakwater. Herein 
 the Roman Church is proving herself to be the lineal de- 
 scendant of the most theocratic city state that ever kissed 
 our planet into glory. 
 
CHAPTER V 
 
 ATHENIAN SELF-OWNERSHIP 
 
 ALL Greece is not so large as the State of Pennsyl- 
 vania. And in the classic age, little Greece was 
 divided into more than a dozen sovereign state- 
 hoods. There is the clue to Grecian history — and 
 Grecian greatness. Conditions would have permitted 
 nationhood instead of cityhood, had the Greeks been 
 willing to surrender their citizenly character. The Greek 
 race composed one racial unit, of one speech and stock, 
 more truly than the population of the American nation 
 composes one racial unit. Homer speaks of "Hellas," 
 meaning all Greece. He mentions the "Hellenes," as 
 the general group of which the municipal communities 
 were parts. Conceivably this Hellas might have been 
 the political formation. But the Greeks were citizens 
 rather than nationalists; metropolitan, not cosmopolitan. 
 Said Aristotle: "The greatest state is not where popula- 
 tion is most numerous." The Greek culture is civic. 
 Her genius is municipal. They regarded the city state as 
 the highest form of political Ufe. So they developed a 
 civilization that is the wonder and the envy of all culti- 
 vated minds. 
 
 The Greeks held to the polity of small states, because 
 they so dearly prized self-government. They knew that 
 this thing so grandiloquently called "representative gov- 
 ernment" is but a high-swelling phrase to cover up eva- 
 
 52 
 
ATHENIAN SELF-OWNERSHIP 53 
 
 sion of their public duties by the people; an excuse for 
 egoistic absorption in the pursuit of private happiness. 
 In that day there were abnormal individuals who were 
 lacking in citizenly interest. "Idiot" was the term they 
 applied to such. It was a technical term. It meant, 
 engrossment by a person in his private affairs, to the 
 forgetfulness of his duties to the state; still seen in our 
 word "idiosyncrasy," "that which individuahzes." 
 The pathological extension of the term in our day is 
 scientifically correct. Visitors to an idiot asylum are 
 informed that the determining test of an idiot is persistent 
 egoism; his want of interest in the social union. 
 
 The Greek writers on poUtical science accepted the 
 city state as the normal form. They did not greatly 
 argue this; they took it for granted. They believed that 
 all right-minded people will wish self-government; be- 
 cause only under self-government do pubHc-minded people 
 appear and selfishness is repressed. Had Aristotle been 
 told that a people would arise called the American nation, 
 ninety-nine per cent of whom would be "idiots" — that 
 is, their minds chiefly engaged with private affairs — he 
 would have refused to let such a prophecy enter his ear 
 channels; would have regarded it as a degradation im- 
 possible to the human species. He beUeved that man is 
 so naturally noble as to crave a personal and direct 
 participation in the shaping of his destiny. So in his 
 "PoUtics" he treats only of municipal states. Repre- 
 sentative government, that seduction to all sloth and aU 
 selfishness, he put out of his mind. 
 
 Attica, of which Athens was the city-center, was thirty 
 miles from east to west. America is three thousand miles 
 from east to west. The Athenians beheved that the state 
 should be small in order that the people might be great. 
 An Athenian was a whale in a tiny sea. An American is 
 
5i THE FREE CITY 
 
 a minnow in an ocean. Well did they understand this 
 relation between greatness in the people and smallness of 
 the governmental aggregate. Said Aristotle: "Ten 
 thousand people are too few for a state, and a hundred 
 thousand are too many"; an exaggeration of statement, 
 doubtless; but it was spoken by perhaps the most mas- 
 terly intelUgence that ever concerned itself with poUtical 
 science. The following is the size he laid down as large 
 enough for a free and independent statehood: "When 
 several villages are united in a single community perfect 
 and large enough to be nearly or quite self-sufficing." 
 Small states make great peoples; because only in small 
 states can the people conduct their own affairs, with no 
 intermediary to deflect their will or narcotize their citizenly 
 spirit into slumber. 
 
 Democracy is the mother of the entire sisterhood of 
 virtues; begetter of strength, fountain of the arts, parent 
 of all the nobilities that embellish and fructify the world. 
 Democracy is self-government; and is found therefore 
 only in small states. The word comes from Athens. 
 Her people — the demos — could enjoy a personal par- 
 ticipation in government only when the poUtical aggre- 
 gate was small in its geographical area. The founders of 
 the American nation were candid to admit that, in de- 
 stroying the thirteen local sovereignties and setting up a 
 centralized power, they were leaving democracy behind. 
 Said the Federalist, in Paper No. 14: "The natural hmit 
 of a democracy is that distance from the central point 
 which will but just permit the most remote citizens to 
 assemble as often as their public functions demand." 
 Self-subsistence, which is the irreducible minimum, is 
 also, according to Aristotle, the maximum; any increase 
 of size being then a departure from democracy into some 
 other poUtical form. Representative government is 
 
ATHENIAN SELF-OWNERSHIP 55 
 
 government by politicians. Athens would have nothing 
 to do with politicians. She had no poUtical parties. On 
 current questions when they arose, the people divided 
 into opposing groups; but there was no permanency in 
 these alignments. A tribe of professional poHticians, or 
 a civil service separate from the body of the people — 
 Athens refused to accept so imcivic a posture of affairs. 
 
 Athens was a commune. The state owned the land, 
 the mines, the harbors, the theatres — and the people. 
 And the scheme worked. When the state is large, any 
 extension of governmental activity builds a bureaucracy, 
 and chloroforms the populace. When the state is small, 
 extension of governmental activity is fellowship, co- 
 operation; because then the state is but the individual 
 raised to his Nth power. Athens farmed out her mines 
 to contractors in perpetuity, for a fixed sum. It was her 
 public ownership of the silver mines at Laurium that gave 
 Athens the money wherewith to fight the Persians; and 
 helped to build the public works that stand to this day 
 in monumental splendor. "A fountain of silver," was 
 the exultant epithet bestowed by ^Eschylus on that state- 
 owned silver mine at Laurium. Her other properties, 
 the commune rented out; mostly in annual leases. Once 
 some private parties got into the habit of going down to 
 the docks at Piraeus and buying up a cargo of grain, thus 
 monopolizing the food supply. The state forestalled 
 these forestallers; built publicly-owned warehouses for 
 storing grain, and for retaihng it to the people at cost. 
 The money of orphans was managed for them by the 
 state. 
 
 In Athens, public affairs were numerous, and private 
 affairs were few. That is the secret of Athenian great- 
 ness. Aristotle said it is the secret of all greatness. The 
 one problem before the human race, said he, is so to dis- 
 
56 THE FREE CITY 
 
 pose the higher natures that they shall be unwilHng to 
 aggrandize themselves, and the lower natures that they 
 shall be unable to aggrandize themselves. Athens did 
 much for her people. In return she asked her people to 
 do much for her. She made large claims on their devo- 
 tion. Said Plato: "The children belong less to their 
 parents than to the city." And Aristotle was even more 
 emphatic: "No one should think he belongs to himself; 
 all belong to the state." 
 
 Because the commune was thus the principal property 
 owner, Athens had a Fortunatus wallet supplying all her 
 necessities. How this opulence was expended, her public 
 monuments testify. Wealth was owned by the city; 
 and therefore was used to glorify the city. Pericles for- 
 mulated this into a set poHcy: "Wealth should be laid 
 out on such works as would be eternal monuments of her 
 glory, and which during their execution would diffuse a 
 universal plenty. For, as so many kinds of labor and 
 such a variety of instruments and materials were req- 
 uisite to these undertakings, every art would be exerted; 
 almost the whole city would be in pay, and at the same 
 time both adorned and supported by herself." 
 
 A fear is expressed nowadays that democracy means a 
 flattening of life down into economic materiahty, wherein 
 beauty and color and the graces that polish om* existence 
 would be extinguished. A nationalistic fabric makes in 
 that direction — the cold impersonahty of a government 
 administered by bm-eaucrats. Athens was not a bureau- 
 cracy; she was a democracy. Not only her legislation, 
 but her executive, judicial, and ambassadorial affairs were 
 administered by the people in direct assembly. There 
 was no parhament, no congress, no cabinet. In that 
 sovereign and free assembly, all of the citizens were on an 
 equal footing. To it belonged cobblers, horse-shoers, 
 
ATHENIAN SELF-OWNERSHIP 57 
 
 ship carpenters, metal smiths. But, so far from dragging 
 the polity of state down to a bread-and-butter level, her 
 public program was more continuously sustained on a 
 plane of sentiment and ideality than has elsewhere been 
 seen since the beginning of days. Municipality is the 
 guardian of culture, depository of freedom and splendor, 
 wellspring of delights. 
 
 Commercially-minded moderns are inclined to rebuke 
 Athens for what is deemed an excess of romance and 
 poetry. Cunningham takes her to task for these "un- 
 remunerative " pubHc works. Says he: "The Hues on 
 which the energies and enterprises of the citizens were 
 directed by Pericles were not those which favored the 
 permanent prosperity of the industrial and commercial 
 life of the city. The works of Pericles served no economic 
 purpose but that of display." "Display!" All art is 
 naught but the habit of and proficiency in display. To 
 express the soul in visible form — is it not quite the 
 choicest and praiseworthiest of instincts? The world as 
 a whole, the planets and all the scheme of things entire 
 — I deem it but an attempt at artistic self-expression 
 on the part of The Absolute; God's mania and lust of 
 ostentation. The Phoenicians were exactly what Cun- 
 ningham would seem most to admire. The factories of 
 Tyre sang the song of gain. Her colonies were for pur- 
 poses of commerce. Tyrian merchandise floated on every 
 known sea. And behold her, sordid, unrememberable; 
 crumbled into a mound of sifting sand. At Lake Maoris 
 in Egypt, slave labor toiled at "remunerative" tasks; to 
 reclaim tillable areas. Does Lake Maoris stand as a 
 name to conjure with? Athens gave herself to civic art; 
 and has haunted all subsequent history. 
 
 Athenians had poHtical genius. They knew that in 
 founding a state, sentiment is a utihty. By these "un- 
 
58 THE FREE CITY 
 
 remunerative" works wherewith she decked herself, 
 there was wrought in the breasts of her people a feeling 
 for the city. They were moved to eager fidehties, glad 
 self-effacement. Municipal interests bulked larger than 
 ego interests. They were tethered to the state by an 
 impalpable cordage. Let a hint be whispered that 
 Athens was in danger, mothers gave their sons to die for 
 her with joy. Impressing a soldiery by forced draught 
 would have been accounted a civic disgrace. In time of 
 war her men were in the battle front as the rock on which 
 their city was founded. Witness the buffet they dealt 
 to the pride of Darius; at Marathon a handful of them 
 put the fear of their God into all the satraps of Persia. 
 And in time of peace, their self-devotion took no 
 hoUday. 
 
 These folk of Attica had weighed the value of material 
 possession divorced from spiritual aims, and found it 
 wanting. What signifies a world full of wealth, if the 
 heart be full of woe? The Midas parable was their ex- 
 pression of the worthlessness of mere money-riches. 
 Granted the gift of turning whatsoever he touched into 
 gold, Midas went about using the power: turned house 
 and furniture and chariot into shiny 24-karat metal. He 
 became hungry; lo, the food he touched turned into gold. 
 He grasped a goblet of water; the Uquid turned to gold. 
 In anguish he clasped his child to him; the child trans- 
 formed into a statue of gold. On his bended knees, 
 Midas besought high heaven to remove from him the 
 cursed gift. Better to be embowered in fellowship, with 
 labor and privations, than imprisoned in a golden hell. 
 
 Athens had no wealthy class; no set comparable to the 
 monarchs of Mesopotamia, the merchants of Phoenicia, or 
 the Carthaginian magnates. But she had a wealthier 
 wealth — the sacrificial service of her people. Adorning 
 
ATHENIAN SELF-OWNERSHIP 59 
 
 her with the pinnacles of fame and strength and im- 
 mortality, they subordinated all things to mmiicipal suc- 
 cess. The city was their freehold. With ministerial 
 devotion they lived for her and wrought for her. A living 
 wellhead was with them, out of which they drank blessed- 
 ness every minute. Domestic simplicity and communal 
 magnificence — this was the miracle the Athenians gave 
 to the world. 
 
 Pericles in his oration over the dead bodies of those 
 fallen in a war, is classic in his description of the type 
 of man begotten by the principle of municipality: "We 
 regard a man who takes no interest in public affairs, not 
 as indolent but as good-for-nothing; and if few of us are 
 originators, we are all sound judges of a poHcy. The 
 great impediment to action is, in our opinion, not dis- 
 cussion but the want of that knowledge which is gained 
 by discussion preparatory to action. We have a pecuUar 
 power of thinking before we act; and of acting, too. 
 Whereas other men are courageous upon ignorance, but 
 hesitate upon reflection. They are surely the bravest 
 spirits who, having the clearest sense both of the pains 
 and pleasures of Ufe, do not on that account shrink from 
 danger." 
 
 "Such," said he in closing, "is the city for whose sake 
 these men nobly fought and died; they could not bear 
 the thought that she might be taken from them. And 
 every one of us who survives should gladly toil on her 
 behalf. I have dwelt upon the greatness of Athens be- 
 cause I want to show you that we are contending for a 
 higher prize than those who enjoy none of these privileges. 
 I would have you day by day fix your eyes upon the great- 
 ness of Athens, until you become filled with the devo- 
 tion of her. And when you are impressed by the spectacle 
 of her glory, reflect that this state has been acquired by 
 
60 THE FREE CITY 
 
 men who knew their duty and had the courage to do it. 
 The sacrifice which they collectively made was repaid to 
 them. They received a praise which grows not old; and 
 the noblest of sepulchres — I speak not of that in which 
 their remains are laid, but of that in which their glory 
 survives." 
 
 True. But it was not the whole truth. The fanatical 
 attachment of Athenians to their city was deeper than 
 Pericles and his generation perceived. He Uved in an 
 age of culmination. The fifty-year period of splendor 
 known by his name was the outflowering of roots long pre- 
 paring. That popular devotion had not been achieved 
 by appeals to their reason. Logic of the intellect is like 
 sunshine in winter; clear, but freezing. Athens owed her 
 greatness, not to citizenship, but to the religion of 
 citizenship. 
 
 Religion made Rome great. It was religion also that 
 made Athens great. Xenophon informs us that Athens 
 had more religious festivals than any other of the Greek 
 states. Her name derived from her patron deity, Pallas 
 Athena. Athens was a theocracy; she regarded herself 
 as the corporeal manifestation of an unseen presence, 
 who was the Protectress of the city, and Whom in turn 
 the city aided and defended. The AcropoHs was an altar- 
 rock. Atop it stood the temple of Athena, which was also 
 the state capitol. There was no distinction between 
 church and state. A rehgion independent of statehood, 
 and capable of existing if the state disappeared! Atheni- 
 ans would have scorned a rehgion so anemic and un- 
 citizenly. It has remained for moderns to achieve the 
 discovery of sacred things as a department of life divorced 
 from secular things; a population bifurcated into rain- 
 bow-chasers and denizens of the dungliill; mooners and 
 muckers. In Athens, an ideahst was not content until 
 
ATHENIAN SELF-OWNERSHIP 61 
 
 his idealism had got harnessed up to actuaHty. And the 
 actualists were uneasy until their actuahty was leavened 
 by idealism's yeasty ferment. None but the theocratic 
 eras have produced art. Theocracy means, The union of 
 reUgion and worldliness. It is the joining of ideaUty and 
 materiality. But that conjunction is art — invisibilities 
 emblemed forth and taking physical embodiment. 
 
 In Attica there was no set-apart priestly class. The 
 father was priest in his family; and the chief magistrate 
 was priest in the state. The secular life was shot through 
 with sanctities. In the public assembly the people re- 
 ceived and despatched embassies, heard reports from 
 generals in the field, decided peace and war, legislated 
 for and administered the state. Whenever a speaker 
 mounted the tribune to address the assembly, he first 
 waited while, over the silent mass of people, a prayer was 
 offered. No one was supposed to speak unless he first 
 had invoked the Unseen. Life in the countryside was a 
 round of invocation. Plowing, seedtime, flowering time 
 and vintage — every part of the husbandman's fife was 
 accompanied with worship. Men went about their 
 daily tasks reciting sacred hymns. The Confederations 
 or Amphictyonies, which united the city states of Greece 
 for common tasks, were as much rehgious as political. 
 The Amphictyony of Thermopylae was an Association 
 for offering in the temple there a united worship. Its 
 members met at that shrine in a federal festival; to eat 
 together the common meal, offer prayers, sing hymns, 
 and witness sacred plays. 
 
 This municipal republic of Attica was a part of the 
 natural world. She had PenteHcus to give her marble; 
 the blossoms of Hymettus, for honey; the Attic plain, 
 for furrow-fat; the forests on the slopes of Thessaly, for 
 shipbuilding; and the city-center, Athens, for connection 
 
62 THE FREE CITY 
 
 with the outside world. The oUve tree is a specialty in 
 Attica. It was accounted a gift to her people from Athena 
 herself. And to this day the oUve branch is the symbol 
 of fellowship and peaceable incUnations. Megara, her 
 next-door neighbor, gave Athens trouble. And what did 
 Athens? She submitted the dispute to arbitration. The 
 Athenians had all the expanse of heaven to swell up into. 
 Then how could they covet the land of others? In com- 
 parison with other landscapes, Attica does not shine. 
 The soil is thin. The north wind prevails during much 
 of the year; so that we see Boreas portrayed in their 
 carvings as a bearded imcouth man roughly dressed. The 
 dust clouds in summer are grievous to the lungs, and 
 breed eye troubles. Nevertheless the Athenians thought 
 no other spot could compare with theirs. The picture of 
 this people presented by Euripides presents them "ever 
 walking gracefully through the most luminous ether." 
 Pindar calls Athens "the violet-crowned." Sophocles 
 sings of her "brightly-shining shores." 
 
 So attached were they to their soil, they deified it. 
 Their adoration of Nature was not an affair of verse- 
 making and the weaving of epithets — poems to the 
 buttercup and the asphodel. It mounted into a worship. 
 They were not content with Odes To Springtime. Spring- 
 tide was to them a very ecstasy; with a Dionysiac festival 
 they welcomed her. The fructifying field was deemed a 
 company of spirits; so they erected a temple to Demeter 
 at Eleusis and paid torchlight processions thither. And 
 when was come the summertime, the Panathenea made 
 the day a rapture. That festival terminated in the 
 sweep of all the citizens up the Propylea steps of the 
 Acropolis to the shrine of the Virgin Goddess; which 
 processional, Phidias carved into the frieze of the Parthe- 
 non. In those happy days, sang Keats, 
 
ATHENIAN SELF-OWNERSHIP 63 
 
 Holy were the haunted forest houghs; 
 Holy the air, the water and the fire. 
 
 The people felt a blood-kinship with the lily of the fields, 
 with lark-notes descending from the blue, with the ca- 
 thedral music of the sea, with the white marble streaking 
 Pentelican Mount, with nesting birds in the hedgerow. 
 Nearly all of the stamps on the coins of the earUest and 
 best period are religious in their theme. Without the 
 hovering Presence, Athenians could not work or play or 
 eat. 
 
 The statue of Pallas Athena in the center of the city 
 was called from her name, the Palladium. So long as 
 that was unviolated, and kept from enemy hands, she 
 would continue her favor to her people. This is why 
 home rule was with them a religious necessity. To let 
 their city go into a mastership placed outside! it would 
 have been deemed a sacrilege. Forever after, Pallas 
 Athena would have averted her face from the recreant 
 ones. From this, "palladium" has come to mean the 
 test and guarantee of civic honor. Civic patriotism 
 awoke in them a zest of civic freedom. And the unceas- 
 ing struggle for freedom kept their citizenship vigilant. 
 Sang Euripides: 
 
 Had He not turned us in His hand, and thrust 
 Our high things low, and shook our hills as dust, 
 We had not been this splendor. 
 
 This necessity to defend their municipal liberty wove 
 bonds of beautiful communion betwixt the citizens. 
 The dear companionship when neighbor joins neighbor 
 in fending from invasion their common hearth, was a 
 religious fellowship. Athens was more than an aggrega- 
 tion of houses and fields. She was a transcendentaUsm. 
 The citizens walked about in a meshwork of magnetic 
 
64 THE FREE CITY 
 
 threads floating invisible. It stirred in them rich-blooded 
 resolutions; wrought them into a great-minded people, 
 valorous and coveting much honor. Through their 
 pious intimacies with Nature, they were a part of the 
 cosmos; and through their participation in government, 
 they were factors in universal history. It expanded them 
 to Homeric size, gave them large habitual views where- 
 with to meet all questions and all occasions. 
 
 Said Pericles: "An Athenian citizen does not neglect 
 the state because he takes care of his own household; 
 and even those of us who are engaged in business have 
 a very fair idea of poUtics." "A very fair idea of poh- 
 tics!" The world has seen nothing to equal it since. 
 The average citizen in Athens was wiser than the gov- 
 ernor of an American state. Every citizen was a mem- 
 ber of the Grand Committee. Their life was one round 
 of intellectual excitement. Residence in Athens was a 
 hberal education. They refused to accept the notion of 
 orders and ranks of inteUigence. The Council of Five 
 Hundred was chosen by lot; and every one, cobbler as 
 well as philosopher, was expected to serve. Thus all 
 were drawn into the vortex of stimulus and magisterial 
 responsibiUty. The days and nights of even the com- 
 monest folk were electric with mental provocation. It 
 was as though earth had moved permanently into a mete- 
 oric zone. 
 
 "Nothing in overplus," was the Athenian motto. 
 That is always the spirit of a municipal commonwealth. 
 Athens was a church, a workshop, a home, a farm, a 
 university, a fortress, a law-court, and a social club — 
 rolled into one. These were not separated vocations, as 
 in modem life. They were petals of the same flower, 
 each petal receiving glory from the others, and contribut- 
 ing its glory to the others. When life falls apart into 
 
ATHENIAN SELF-OWNERSHIP 65 
 
 specialisms, God is hacked asunder. Socrates insisted 
 that the Good, the Beautiful and the True are the same 
 thing. "I say that Athens is the school of Greece," 
 declared Pericles; "the individual Athenian in his own 
 person seems to have the power of adapting himself to 
 the most varied forms of action, with the utmost ver- 
 satihty and grace. This is no passing and idle word, but 
 truth and fact. We shall assuredly not be without wit- 
 nesses; there are mighty monuments which will make us 
 the wonder of this and succeeding ages." 
 
 Yes; "truth and fact." To this day it is recognized 
 that they are of the Athenian type who develop poise of 
 spirit, serenity, an existence full-orbing itself into physical, 
 mental and spiritual. Insane asylums to-day are in- 
 creasing more rapidly than the population; because our 
 life is departmental. Mania is always monomania, an 
 engrossing interest in some one concernment, to the ex- 
 clusion of life's other sides. The Athenians were not 
 troubled with insane folk. They saw life steadily; they 
 hved life totally. Athens was a collectivity — Briaireus, 
 a colossal Person with one heart and a hundred hands. 
 This union of the secular and the sacred engendered in 
 the nerve plasm an awareness of totaUty; curbed all 
 tendencies to excess; inflamed the aspirations of every 
 man to achieve in himself a united and perfect whole. 
 
 Daily contact with thinkers and poets and scholars in- 
 fused through the industrial mass an ethereal fire. It 
 worked their handicraft into an instinct of balance and 
 fitness and taste. Pegasus became an ass with loaded 
 paniers, to serve all the uses of life. The water jar, the 
 door lintel, pots and cauldrons of the kitchen, garments, 
 utensils, harness, and the vehicle — all were beautiful. 
 So that to-day we dig up the debris of the common fife 
 of that people, and build museums for cherishing it. 
 
66 THE FREE CITY 
 
 Athenians were not ascetic. Neither were they sen- 
 sual. Sensuous is the road between; and this they fol- 
 lowed. Pallas Athena was the virgin goddess; that 
 surname, Pallas, being the Greek word meaning "maiden." 
 Her temple, the Parthenon, was so named, because it 
 meant "The Virgin's Chamber." The one other divinity 
 accorded a place of honor on the AcropoUs was Artemis, 
 the other virgin goddess in the ancient pantheon; known 
 also as Diana the Huntress. This Artemis-Diana re- 
 quired chaste cehbacy in her priests and priestesses. To 
 her the Athenian girls sacrificed ceremonially their dolls 
 and girlish toys before they were married. 
 
 The Athenian cult developed no agonizing theology of 
 individual sin, and redemption by the vicarious suffer- 
 ings of another. They regarded the municipality as the 
 subject of salvation. Morality means, a life organized 
 communally, so that every part bears its due ratio to 
 every other part; ratio, from which we get "rational," 
 and "reason." Goodness is sweet reasonableness. Virtue 
 is sense of proportion. They developed pubhc con- 
 science, a sense of obligation to the commonwealth; and 
 in so doing they found that they had developed private 
 conscience as well. The cleansing of the Augean Stable 
 symboUzed this. Hundreds of horses and cattle in that 
 stable; and Hercules must cleanse it alone. Cleansing 
 each stable individually, were clearly beyond his powers. 
 So he turned through the stable a river flowing near that 
 spot. Thus a large problem was tackled by a power 
 equally large. And the scavenging was accomplished. 
 The city state makes for self control, because it incul- 
 cates into every pore of man the dogma that the claims 
 of society must take precedence over individual desir- 
 ings. A man can be as high as he wishes, provided the 
 municipahty is higher. So the blood's blazing wildfire 
 
ATHENIAN SELF-OWNERSHIP 67 
 
 is transmuted into altar flames. And the energies that 
 hitherto went into egoistic amours, now well up like sap 
 in a tree, and foliage forth into forms of art-creation. 
 
 After the battle of Salamis and the departure of the 
 Persians from Attica, the Athenians came back to find 
 their city in ashes and the plain of Attica a ravaged waste. 
 They had no roof to cover them, no tillage for their sus- 
 tenance. We moderns, with our notion of beauty as 
 something to be added only after a material surplus has 
 been accumulated, would have counselled to works of 
 "utiUty." But the Athenians refused to build for them- 
 selves homes and comforts, whilst the municipal life lay 
 in ruins. Living in shacks and huts, they set themselves 
 first of all to adorn the Acropolis altar-rock. And now 
 attend: for I know not in the story of man a mightier 
 instance of competency of handiwork and nobihty of de- 
 votion : Out of the ashes of their city they cleared a space 
 — and within twenty years, the Parthenon was completed. 
 
 Paul, visiting Athens, was impressed by this quality of 
 devotion in the make-up of the people. With their 
 liberahty of welcome to the outside world, the Athenians 
 invited him to speak from their civic rostrum. He said: 
 "Ye men of Athens, I perceive that in all things ye are 
 very reUgious." Paul never established a church in 
 Attica. Because they already had a church. The public 
 assembly of the citizens was called Ecclesia. Thence we 
 get "ecclesiastical." 
 
 Why then did Athens collapse? Because she and the 
 other city states could not combine? But they could 
 and did combine. As Persia found to her sorrow. The 
 empire of Xerxes and Darius could not separate the Greek 
 cities one from the other and conquer them separately, 
 as it had done with the peoples in Syria and Asia Minor. 
 They stood together — so long as they remained true 
 
68 THE FREE CITY 
 
 city republics. When the city of Rhodes was destroyed 
 by an earthquake, the other cities in the Greek Confed- 
 eration rebuilt her into her former magnificence. 
 
 Athens fell, for the same reason that Rome fell — she 
 got away from the soil, and from the rehgion of labor. 
 In the early period, when her municipal strength was col- 
 lecting, Hesiod had announced: "Gods and mortals are 
 aUke indignant with the man who lives without toiUng. 
 He is hke to the stingless drones; for they without labor- 
 ing devour the product of the honey-bees' work." When 
 Athenians lost contact with their landscape and began to 
 huddle into the city away from the farmlands, she ceased 
 to be a city state. Then slavery came in; Aspasias, and 
 decadence. With Rome in the days of her early prime, 
 and with Athens in the foretime, slavery had not existed. 
 In Homer, slaves are not found. He pictures a princess 
 of the palace driving a laundry cart to the river and 
 washing the soiled linen. As slavery crept in, the city 
 state went out; by which I mean, the desire for munic- 
 ipal independence — they cannot exist together. As 
 late as the time of Pericles, slavery had not become the 
 terrible servitude we find later on. A contemporary of 
 that era noticed that slaves in Athens could acquire a 
 fortune and Uve in luxury. The slave was permitted 
 perfect freedom of speech. And was protected by law 
 against excesses by his master. In the Athens of that 
 time, the status of a slave was probably better than that 
 of a factory hand in the modem unimaginative mill. 
 Euripides affii-ms: "One thing only disgraces a slave, and 
 that is the name. In all other respects a slave, if he be 
 good, is no worse than a freeman." But slavery is so 
 mischievous an ill that even the name emits a pestilential 
 breath. When labor in Athens became associated with 
 a degraded class, the Commune was at an end. In 
 
ATHENIAN SELF-OWNERSHIP 69 
 
 fettering the workingclass, Athens forged the fetters 
 about her own wrists and ankles. It was not long after, 
 that the gold of Philip proved more eloquent with the 
 Athenians than the silver-trumpeted pleadings of 
 Demosthenes. 
 
 The Russians are to-day probably our most artistic 
 people; and the mir, or commune, is the true focus of 
 their political Ufe. Russia got her civilization from 
 Athens; or rather, from Constantinople, after the Greeks 
 had fled thither on the irruption of the northern barbarians 
 into the Grecian peninsula. Wheresoever the influence 
 of Attica has penetrated, a sense of the beautiful has 
 gone. The World-Spirit, seeking to form Athens into an 
 oasis of permanency, that His name of fellowship and 
 truth might have an enduring habitation, failed. The 
 desert stretches of greed overran that pleasant spot. 
 But the Uzard and the jackal and the seeping sands have 
 not won a perfect triumph. Though the Attic commune, 
 majestic with sovereignty, did not endure, the soul of 
 her still abides. In her fallen estate she sits by the green 
 waters of the ^gean, ruminating her antique imperish- 
 able splendor. 
 
CHAPTER VI 
 
 THE CITY SET ON A HILL 
 
 THE Bible is Jerusalem's autobiography. From 
 cover to cover, the religion of citizenship wrote 
 the book. Certainly the book tells of God. But 
 not of an abstract far-away Deity, or of a pantheistic God 
 gaseously diffused through space. Those cobwebs of the 
 modern brain were not a part of the mental composition 
 of Mediterranean folk. That is why they were artists, 
 and did exploits. The Jehovah told of in the Bible was 
 the Near-one. He had a habitation, which habitation 
 was his embodiment, his Alter Ego. That habitation 
 was Jerusalem. 
 
 This connection between Jehovah and Jerusalem is 
 obscured by the order in which the books of the Bible 
 are arranged. To the casual reader there seems to have 
 passed a long stretch of time — all of the doings recorded 
 in the earUer books, from Genesis to Joshua — during 
 which the God-idea was present; and Jerusalem had not 
 yet been founded. Modern scholarship, however, is 
 showing that those supposedly earUer narratives are not 
 earher. They were written during the Jerusalem era, 
 and dated back into the past. The writers took the 
 folklore traditions and wove them into a narrative; edit- 
 ing the same from the reUgious viewpoint which munic- 
 ipal life at Jerusalem had developed. 
 
 Take Jerusalem away, you have cut from the Bible its 
 
 70 
 
THE CITY SET ON A HILL 71 
 
 heart and spinal jelly. That diminishes not the high 
 validity of the God-theme. The two cannot be demar- 
 cated. Jehovah without Jerusalem for his home, was a 
 thought as incomprehensible to the IsraeHtes as would 
 have been the opposite thought of a Jerusalem without 
 God for her indwelling and consecrating presence. Re- 
 hgion as they understood it was a practical everyday 
 affair; part and parcel of their political existence. The 
 Bible is not a book of theology. It is a manual of citi- 
 zenship, a textbook in pohtical science. The "saints" 
 mentioned in its pages were as far as possible from the 
 self-contemplative world-shunning type that is modernly 
 associated with that word. In that day the saint was 
 a dedicated citizen, more devoted to Jerusalem than the 
 rest of the population, extraordinarily impassioned unto 
 her freedom and renown. 
 
 The IsraeHtes, formerly a nomad tribe in the deserts 
 neighboring Egypt, had effected their release from that 
 empire and under the leadership of a chieftain called 
 Moses, had pushed north into Canaan. Here they 
 settled, driving the PhiHstines out of that hill country 
 downward to the seacoast. This expropriation of the 
 PhiUstine has been held up against Israel by critics, as a 
 ludicrous set-off to her claim of being the ethical pre- 
 ceptor of mankind. But the Philistines themselves were 
 interlopers; apparently having come from Cyprus not 
 long before the coming of the Jews. There is not a people 
 upon earth but is occupying a region originally pos- 
 sessed by another. To raise the territorial question at 
 this tardy date would open a morahty puzzle quite beyond 
 disentanglement. The Jews traced a claim to Palestine 
 through far-back ancestral inheritance. Whatever the 
 vaUdity of this claim, the IsraeUtes thought that in pos- 
 sessing themselves of this land they were re-entering a 
 
72 THE FREE CITY 
 
 family heritage from which they had departed only for a 
 sojom-n in Egypt. 
 
 David was the founder of Jerusalem, and the con- 
 solidator of the Jewish state. The massive position he 
 occupies in Hebrew thought, and in the imagination of 
 mankind, is not extravagant. He had the municipal 
 instinct. He was a city-builder. He had the genius to 
 see that an agricultural folk, without a capital city free 
 and sovereign, could never concentrate its life so as to be 
 redeemed from rustic boorishness. Therefore he built 
 a city up into which the countryside could rally as its 
 administrative center, and through which in manly self- 
 assertion it could take a place among the sovereignties 
 of the earth. High up in a nest among the limestone 
 crags, Jerusalem was established. 
 
 "Zion" is now become a cant word, smacking of pietism 
 and mental flabbiness. In the Bible, however, it was a 
 poetic designation for the capital city; and thence, for 
 the commonwealth as a whole. Zion meant "shiny." 
 Jerusalem on its limestone summit, catching on her tower 
 tops the first gUnt of the sunrise and preserving the sun- 
 set after the surrounding valleys were in dusk, was a 
 sparkling object in the landscape — the Shining City. 
 The term caught the popular fancy. At first apparently 
 a slang term, it finally got into hterary speech: "The 
 Lord shall bless thee out of Zion; and thou shalt see the 
 good of Jerusalem all thy days." 
 
 Jerusalem the Shiny was radiant with more than a 
 physical briUiance. To the Israehte it possessed a lumi- 
 nosity mystical beyond all other objects in earth or sea 
 or sky. This town was nothing less than the capital 
 city of Lord God, the place where his honor dwelt and 
 where his resplendence abided. "Great is the Lord, and 
 greatly to be praised, in the city of our God, in the moun- 
 
THE CITY SET ON A HILL 73 
 
 tain of his holiness. Beautiful for situation, the joy of 
 the whole earth, is Mount Zion the city of the great King. 
 Walk about Zion; mark ye well her bulwarks. For this 
 God is our God, forever and ever." 
 
 To the faithful Israelite the defense of Jerusalem's 
 independent statehood and her upbuilding in majesty, 
 became all his pohtics, all his religion. That mountain 
 range would seem one of the last places in the world to 
 covet as a homeland; ravines torrential in winter, dry 
 and stony in summer. But to the patriotic Jew it was the 
 center and garden of the world. The rose of Sharon, 
 heifers and bulls in the pasture of Bashan, orchards of 
 pomegranates, spikenard and calamus with all trees of 
 frankincense, wells of living waters and streams from 
 Lebanon, Jordan's reedy banks and fish of Capernaum — 
 these were the song of the Israelite from this time for- 
 ward. With the land's hard-won fatness for their nourish- 
 ment, and with independent statehood as the sustenance 
 of their soul, they were self-subsistent. So they coveted 
 no neighbor's territory; stretched out no imperiahst 
 armies and fleets. Their pacific incUnation seems to be 
 suggested in the name they gave to their capital — 
 Jerusalem, "City of Peace." Apparently the contrast 
 between the peaceableness of Israel and the militarism of 
 the nation-empires round about, occurred to the mind of 
 Isaiah. In close juxtaposition he puts two pictures: 
 "Every battle of the warrior is with confused noise and 
 garments rolled in blood"; but unto us "the mighty God, 
 the Everlasting Father, the Prince of Peace." The final 
 act that closed the Jerusalem drama in a burst of power, 
 her swan song as she was about to pass away, was ushered 
 in with a pronouncement: "Peace on earth, goodwill to 
 men." 
 
 Like Athena unto the Attic commune, Jehovah was 
 
74 THE FREE CITY 
 
 the tutellary protector of the Jewish state; their gov- 
 ernor in time of peace, the commander-in-chief of their 
 army in time of war. Deborah pictures him marching as 
 at the head of a troop: "Lord, when thou wentest out of 
 Seir, when thou marchest out of the field of Edom, the 
 earth trembled and the clouds dropped water." This 
 divine Presence, on the field and in the council chamber 
 of state, was symbolized by the ark of the covenant. 
 It was to the Israelite what the palladium was to Athe- 
 nians, a municipal amulet, image of civic personification. 
 
 Jehovah had given to his people a set of communal 
 rules and regulations: the Ten Commandments; en- 
 graven on two tables of stone. He had made a covenant 
 with them: If they would keep these laws, he the Lord 
 would be their municipal Protector and Friend: "Blessed 
 shalt thou be in the city, and blessed shalt thou be in the 
 field. Blessed shall be the fruit of thy body, and the 
 fruit of thy ground. Blessed shall be thy basket and thy 
 store." The Jews accepted the compact. As a sign and 
 seal of this agreement, the two tables were placed in a 
 preciously wrought casket, with a pair of winged seraphs 
 on the top, symboUzing the Spirit that would continue 
 to brood over an obedient people. This casket was 
 called the Ark of the Testimony, or of the Covenant. 
 
 The installation of this palladium in Jerusalem was a 
 first duty with David after founding the city. Like 
 Romulus — with whom he was a close contemporary — 
 David was a city-builder because he was a rehgious 
 genius. With strong masculine sense he combined an 
 insight into the psychological deeps of man. He had in- 
 tuition that a city does not exist by bread alone, but by 
 sentiment, prestige, all the powerful provinces of the 
 imagination, whereby is evoked a citizenly attachment in 
 the people, so that man-power is forthcoming unto the 
 
THE CITY SET ON A HILL ^ 73 
 
 city's every need. "Except the Lord build the house, 
 they labor in vain that build it; except the Lord keep the 
 city, the watchmen waketh but in vain." Therefore 
 "David prepared a place for the ark of God, and pitched 
 for it a tent." Enemies were round about and walls were 
 sorely needed to protect the infant city. But, as with 
 the Athenians when they built the Parthenon for their 
 Athena before they had houses for themselves, David's 
 care went first to the mystic foundations on which Jeru- 
 salem was to repose. "David gathered all Israel together 
 to Jerusalem, to bring up the ark of the Lord imto his 
 place which he had prepared for it." 
 
 The installation of this Jehovah palladium within the 
 Jerusalem enclosure was the birthday of the Jewish state. 
 And, as it turned out, was one of the cardinal happenings 
 in the history of the world. That ark enshrined the 
 moral law. Therefore this deed estabhshed the Jewish 
 commonwealth on an ethical basis. Moderns have dis- 
 covered — as they suppose — that the social union can 
 get along without religion; that obedience to law needs 
 no transcendental sanctions, but can be enforced by the 
 police power — dragoons, nightsticks, a secret service 
 ramifying to every keyhole; courts and handcuffs and 
 prison walls. For a little while yet, we will be permitted 
 to^ bask in this pleasant theory. The spiritual power 
 bequeathed to us by the municipal theocracies of Rome, 
 Athens, and Jerusalem is not yet exhausted of its 
 momentum. Whilst that borrowed inspiration continues, 
 moderns can Uve without cultivating reUgious power of 
 their own. 
 
 David had no Bible to fall back upon; that book was 
 not yet written. Roman law had not put its massive 
 discipline on the impulses of mankind. Athenian art 
 and science had not as yet radiated their sweetness and 
 
76 THE FREE CITY 
 
 light into the fibers of man. He had a mass of wild hu- 
 man energies to handle. And he handled these untrained 
 forces by the psychological rather than the zoological 
 method; he wrought upon them from within, instead of 
 by police power from without. Because he was thus re- 
 Ugious in his approach to the problem, he built a city that 
 was destined to long durations and mightiest grandeur. 
 
 This sanctification of the city by formally establishing 
 within her the ark of the covenant, made the Jews a 
 theocratic municipaHty. From that moment their capital 
 city was God's capital too. David seems to have had a 
 sense of the historicity of the deed he was enacting. He 
 panoplied the event with a ceremonial pageantry that 
 shines from the recording page. The Jews now had of- 
 ficially been committed to the principle of civic sov- 
 ereignty based on righteousness and sanctioned by Jeho- 
 vah. From that day the Hebrews have regarded David 
 with an almost divine veneration. They called their 
 capital, "The City of David." As time went on, his 
 figure loomed with the proportions of a demigod. About 
 a millenium later, when the populace in an ecstasy of de- 
 votion to their leader Jesus sought a superlative title 
 wherewith to glorify him, "Hosanna to the Son of 
 David" was their appellation. 
 
 In founding Jerusalem and committing Israel to an 
 independent poUtical status, David had bequeathed to 
 the Jews a stormy inheritance. Palestine was a buffer 
 state. Egypt was on one side; Assyria on the other. 
 Both claimed a suzerainty over her. It was a political 
 hornet's nest. This act by David was Israel's declara- 
 tion of independence. It threw down the gauntlet to 
 Egypt and to Assyria; also to the Philistines still inhabit- 
 ing portions of the land. From that time the Jews had 
 a sore wrestle of an existence. Almost without hyperbole 
 
THE CITY SET ON A HILL 77 
 
 could she exclaim, "They that hate me without a cause 
 are more than the hairs of my head." 
 
 In addition to these three outside enemies, there was a 
 fourth foe: the spirit of commerciaUsm that possessed 
 many of the Jews themselves. The question is heard 
 nowadays, Why are so many of the Hebrew race mer- 
 cantilists? Through two thousand years of European 
 history, wherever the Jews have gone, a goodly propor- 
 tion of them have been retailers and brokers. The 
 answer is found in Palestinian geography. Canaan lay 
 square athwart the commercial highways of the ancient 
 world. Between the Euphrates valley, which tapped all 
 the East, and Eg3rpt, which was the emporium for the 
 western world, the exchange of commodities passed. The 
 route traversed Palestine diagonally, from northeast to 
 southwest. Also the route from Arabia up to Damascus 
 and Tyre was by way of Palestine, this' highroad running 
 north and south. The traffic on these trade routes begot 
 in hundreds of the Jews, and from earUest times, a ten- 
 dency towards merchandising. Many of them sold sup- 
 pUes to the passing caravans. Many also improved the 
 opportunity to trade on their own account. On their 
 journeys through Palestine the caravans had regular 
 halting places, which became market towns. To these 
 centers the commercial Jews would resort, exchanging 
 fruits and grain and olive oil and wine for the merchandise 
 of Egypt or of the East; which in turn they would retail. 
 The sale of Joseph to a caravan on its way to Egypt, is 
 photographic in the picture it paints of the trading spirit 
 that was springing up. 
 
 To this trend towards commercialism, Israel's inde- 
 pendent statehood ran counter. Independence got the 
 Jews into hostile relations with Egypt and Chaldea, thus 
 hurting trade. In the opposite direction, trade and its 
 
78 THE FREE CITY 
 
 accumulation of private riches fattened the soul out of 
 the Jews who were engaged in it, destroying in them the 
 citizenly spirit and counselling to a surrender of Jewish 
 independence. Thus her population sundered into two 
 groups: the citizens — the "saints" — to whom Israel's 
 civic freedom outweighed a thousand gains of money; 
 and the traders, who appraised life in terms of securities 
 negotiable for cash. The affair of the Golden Calf had 
 to do with this clash of tendencies. 
 
 Matthew Arnold coined the word "Philistine" to desig- 
 nate people whose personality is duU and indistinct, 
 soggy unaspiring creatures content only with material 
 goods. Therein he showed a true instinct of history. 
 The Philistines were of this brutish stripe. They waged 
 no war against Egypt or Chaldea; they were satisfied to 
 be under a suzerainty. To eat and sleep and breed was 
 for them all the meaning of hfe; as we should express it 
 to-day, "the full diimer pail." They chose comfortable 
 slavery, rather than the straining wrestle for freedom. 
 The commercial class in Israel wished to reduce the Jews 
 also to a Philistine basis. Among the Philistines, God 
 was an agricultural deity, a Baal whose only connection 
 with the inhabiters of the land was to furnish harvests in 
 great handfulls and provide fecundation for the herds and 
 flocks. The Jews were largely herders. The cow was 
 their principal means of subsistence. The Golden Calf 
 was an attempt by the trader class among them to deify 
 their daily bread; beatify the belly. The Philistines had 
 no care for so elusive and troublesome a thing as municipal 
 freedom; the god they worshipped was the purveyor of 
 hides and milk and cheese. Why could not Israel accept 
 the same kind of a religion? The Golden Calf was the 
 emblem of this poHtical party in the Jewish state. 
 
 The municipal party, on the other hand, would not 
 
THE CITY SET ON A HILL 79 
 
 worship Baal; they worshipped Jehovah. Jehovah's 
 glory demanded that Jerusalem, his dwelling place, be a 
 sovereign entity among the sovereignties of the earth. 
 Says ".he prophet Micah: "All people will walk, everyone 
 in the name of his god; and we will walk in the name of 
 the Lord our God." It was political science Micah there 
 was inculcating; the principle of municipal repubhcs, 
 each sovereign and distinct, as opposed to the fusing 
 principle of large commercial empires. Jerusalem as a 
 free city was Jehovah arising into majesty. Practically 
 the entire book of Psalms is a repetition of this theme. 
 The ego that there speaks is scarcely ever an individual 
 man bux the municipahty regarded as a moral person in 
 feud with the empires roimd about or with the rich trader 
 class within the state. When Jerusalem is great and 
 free, Jehovah is in honor. When Jerusalem is under 
 bondage, Jehovah is dishonored: "O God, the heathen 
 are come into thine inheritance; they have laid Jerusalem 
 on heaps. Help us, for the glory of thy name." 
 
 The Ark of the Covenant and the Golden Calf consti- 
 tuted the emblems of these opposing parties. Moses, 
 coming down from Sinai with the Ten Commandments, 
 for placing inside the Ark and so constitutLag the pal- 
 ladium of Jewish statehood, hurled these tables to the 
 ground when he saw the Calf and the people worshipping 
 it. Beneath that folklore story, as beneath the poetry 
 of the Greeks, lay an important significance. The ark- 
 worship, with its municipal meaning, and the Calf- 
 worship with its Phihstine materialist meaning, could 
 not get on together. One of the two must give way. 
 The Calf gave way. Municipahsm triumphed over com- 
 merciaUsm. "Moses' anger waxed hot; and he took the 
 Calf which they had made, and burnt it in the fire, and 
 ground it to powder, and strowed it upon the water, and 
 
80 THE FREE CITY 
 
 made the children of Israel drink of it." Apparently it 
 was more than a passing episode. It was a war to the 
 knife between the two tendencies. We read, after the 
 CaK was burnt: "There fell of the people that day about 
 three thousand men." 
 
 The Golden Calf is the emblem of those in all time who 
 have everything to live with and nothing to Lve for. 
 Those Calf-worshippers wished to dwell in material com- 
 fort, with no Jerusalem capital and no Ark of the Cov- 
 enant summoning them to statehood's hazardous ad- 
 venture. Had they triumphed, there would have been 
 no Jewish state, no Bible, no Jesus of GaUlee, no city of 
 God set on a hill and irradiating the world. Israel would 
 have melted down into and been absorbed by the peoples 
 round about; a peasantry of herders, tributary \o Egjrpt 
 or Chaldea. And the history of our planet would have 
 been miserably impoverished. An agricultural region 
 that is not a sovereign state is booked for decadence. 
 The city in the midst thereof must be a world-capital; 
 otherwise it is but a trading town, and the cultivators are 
 robbed of self-rulership. Subject farmers, abject and 
 contented, are of the Philistine type; they shall develop 
 no moraUty, no literature, no art. They tread a down- 
 ward path. Sovereign farmers, owning their square of 
 territory and governing it with no dictation from outside, 
 are of the Israel type. 
 
 In order to catch the rural region up into the municipal 
 current and safeguard the husbandry class from slumping 
 into slouchiness, the Jewish law-givers devised three 
 annual assembhes of the population at Jerusalem. The 
 two principal ones, the Passover and the Feast of Booths, 
 corresponded roughly with the spring and autumn po- 
 sitions of the sun; celebrations of springtide joy and the 
 Bunmier's harvest-home. The Feast of Pentecost, seven 
 
THE CITY SET ON A HILL 81 
 
 weeks after the Passover, was a sort of rest-time when the 
 seed-sowing had been gotten through with and before the 
 maturing crops would need attention. Every male, 
 unless incapacitated by sickness or infirmity, was obliged 
 to attend. Thus all parts of the country were made 
 participators in affairs of state. There was no General 
 Assembly, as in Athens; which met on an average every 
 three weeks. But the Jewish state was a democracy 
 none the less. Municipahty does not insist on any one 
 formula of administrative head; can get along with a 
 king, a duke, a president; a variety of forms. Its only 
 insistence is that the area of the state be small enough 
 so that the entire body of citizens can be frequently con- 
 voked. Then the sovereignty of the people is assured. 
 Israel was democracy-by-mass-meeting. The thrice- 
 yearly assemblings of the masses were judgment days for 
 those who were at the headship of affairs. There was no 
 peasant class in Israel — those voiceless multitudes found 
 in national forms of the social union, backwoods folk far 
 removed from the capital. Every Jew was a citizen; 
 and an active participator in the state. 
 
 These festivals were not merely political; they were 
 rehgious. The land was Jehovah's. The Jews were his 
 guests. He wished his guests to have a good time. Joy 
 was an integral part of the Jewish faith. Modernity, 
 having lost the principle of collectivity, has lost the spirit 
 of joy. So religion has come to have a sour prohibitory 
 cast, a thing one would get along without if one dared. 
 In a municipal repubUc, religion is a glad occupation, 
 saturated with dancing and music and feasting. These 
 poUtical festivals were termed "the set feasts of Jehovah." 
 From all corners of the land the people gathered, journey- 
 ing up to Jerusalem on foot in pilgrim bands, camping at 
 night wheresoever darkness overtook them. Here is one 
 
82 THE FREE CITY 
 
 of the songs they used to sing on the journey: "I was 
 glad when they said unto me, Let us go unto the house of 
 the Lord. Our feet shall stand within thy gates, O 
 Jerusalem. Jerusalem is builded as a city that is com- 
 pact together; whither the tribes go up, the tribes of the 
 Lord, imto the testimony of Israel. Pray for the peace of 
 Jerusalem; they shall prosper that love thee. Peace be 
 within thy walls and prosperity within thy palaces. For 
 my brethren and companions' sakes I will now say. Peace 
 be within thee. Because of the house of the Lord our 
 God, I wiU seek thy good." 
 
 At Jerusalem during a feast the streets and open places 
 were crowded with tents, the encampment overflowing 
 far into the suburbs. The Feast of Booths in September 
 presents a picturesque scene — an entire people setting 
 apart a week once a year for collectively camping out: 
 "Ye shaU take the fruit of goodly trees, branches of palm 
 trees, and boughs of thick trees, and willows of the brook; 
 and ye shall rejoice before Jehovah your God seven days." 
 "Ye shall rejoice"; the flowing hearty injunction of a 
 Householder welcoming guests and insisting that they 
 have a good time. 
 
 This Supreme Owner of the land was — hke every true 
 host — desirous that every one, even to the least of his 
 guests, should share the good things. Jehovah was the 
 guarantee of the rights of the common man. "When 
 ye reap the harvest of your land," he commanded, "thou 
 shalt not wholly reap the corners of thy field, neither shalt 
 thou gather the gleanings of thy harvest; neither shalt 
 thou gather every grape of thy vineyard. Thou 
 shalt leave them for the poor and stranger. I am the 
 Master." And again: "The wages of him that is hired 
 shall not abide with thee all night until the morning. 
 Thou shalt not curse the deaf nor put a stumbling block 
 
THE CITY SET ON A HILL 83 
 
 before the blind. I am the Master." This common- 
 wealth quality in Israel's political structure was mas- 
 sively protected. Every seventh year was a Sabbatical 
 year; during it the produce of the land was in common. 
 The law further prescribed that seven Sabbatical years — 
 that is, every fifty years — should constitute a Jubilee 
 Year, when every member of the state who had been 
 compelled to part with his land or his economic Uberty, 
 must have it restored to him without price. 
 
 The prophets — forthspeakers — were the mouth- 
 pieces of Jehovah; and therefore, like the Tribunes in 
 Rome, were the champions of "the multitude" against 
 class selfishness by the richer folk. Wherefore, even 
 under kings, Palestine was a repubhc. Republic means, 
 the supremacy of the pubHc good over private gain. In 
 this Jewish repubhc, Jehovah protected the lowly: 
 "The Lord is known by the judgment which he ex- 
 ecuteth. The needy shall not always be forgotten; the 
 expectation of the poor shall not perish forever." There 
 must be no gulf sundering the population into Haves and 
 Have-nots: "If thou draw out thy soul to the hungry, 
 to undo the heavy burdens, to let the oppressed go free, 
 then shalt thou call and the Lord shall answer." 
 
 Patriotism is another word for locaUsm. Civic patri- 
 otism is intense localism. Naaman, a stranger, fell in 
 love with the Jewish state whilst on a visit to Palestine; 
 wished thereafter to worship none other but the Pal- 
 estinian Jehovah. But how to do so, upon leaving Pales- 
 tine and returning to his home in Syria? After the 
 following fashion he solved the problem: "And Naaman 
 said. Shall there not then, I pray thee, be given to thy 
 servant two mules' burden of earth? for thy servant will 
 henceforth offer neither burnt offering nor sacrifice unto 
 other gods, but unto the Lord." Civic patriotism is 
 
84 THE FREE CITY 
 
 patriotism heated to the steaming point. That steam is 
 religion. It was the religion of the Bible; is the only 
 virile vital rehgion. Paradoxical as it may seem, local- 
 ism is the true universalism. All the wedges and seg- 
 ments of the earth meet at the center. Israel in her 
 peaceableness is an example of this law in poUtical science: 
 The people who are most devoutly locaUzed in their af- 
 fections, display a fraternal spirit toward all other home- 
 cherishing peoples. 
 
 The prophets, representing the reUgious as opposed to 
 the trader instincts, were the spokesmen of this patriotic 
 passion. They stood for Jerusalem's independent politi- 
 cal status. "If ye forsake the Lord and serve strange 
 gods, then he will do you hurt." Opposed to the prophets 
 stood the rich commercial class, who were constantly 
 seeking an imperial alliance with the wealthy set in neigh- 
 boring states. This cohesion of wealth whereby patri- 
 otism was forgotten in the lust to make common cause 
 with the rich in other countries, finds a terse expression: 
 "Now Jehosaphat had riches and honor in abundance — 
 and joined affinity with Ahab"; Ahab being the monarch 
 who was in aUiance with the merchant kingdom of Phoe- 
 nicia. Jezebel, his wife, was a princess of the kingdom 
 of Tyre and Sidon. EUjah's campaign against Jezebel 
 reminds one of the trumpet-tongued Demosthenes plead- 
 ing with the Athenians against a merger into the empire 
 of Macedon. 
 
 Of all these commercializers, Solomon was chief. He 
 seems to have organized a mercantile department of 
 state; something Uke the Doges of Venice or the Dutch 
 East India Company. "The king [Solomon] had at sea 
 a navy of Tarshish with the navy of Hiram [king of Tyre]. 
 Once every three years came the navy of Tarshish, bring- 
 ing gold and silver, ivory, apes, and peacocks." The 
 
THE CITY SET ON A HILL 85 
 
 "strange women" whom he married were women of the 
 stranger nations romid about; commercial alliance was 
 the end sought. "King Solomon loved many strange 
 women; of the nations concerning which the Lord said 
 unto the children of Israel, Ye shall not go in to them, 
 neither shall they come in to you. His heart was not 
 perfect with the Lord." 
 
 It seems to modern-minded nationahsts a narrow 
 policy the prophets were here enunciating. But history 
 has justified them. "Ivory, apes, and peacocks" were 
 not Palestine's contribution to mankind. An artistic 
 conception of Ufe demands that each landscape bring 
 forth after its kind; emblem forth its own flora and fauna; 
 each landscape a different blossom, and content to be 
 different; whereupon these differing blossoms, gathered 
 into a bundle, will make planet Earth a nosegay for the 
 Eternal. Any engrossment by the Jews in ivory, apes, 
 and peacocks would have detracted from their interest 
 in Palestinian products. Had Israel followed Solomon's 
 lead and transformed itself into a broker of ivory, apes, 
 and peacocks, she would have been engulfed by obUvion's 
 hungry maw, as Tyre and Sidon were engulfed; as were 
 engulfed the Hittites and the Philistines. 
 
 The Jews made not that mistaken choice. When, in 
 the person of Solomon's successor, this course of treason 
 against Jehovah-of-Palestine was fixed as the permanent 
 poUcy of state, ten of the twelve tribes — counties, as we 
 would now caU them — seceded. Thereafter we hear no 
 more of ivory, apes, and peacocks. But we hear a great 
 deal about the moral law. The Covenant had stipulated 
 that if the Jews would keep The Law, Jehovah would 
 bless them. With the coming now of poUtical disunion 
 and disaster, terminating in captivity at Babylon, the 
 Jews began a long and agonizing attempt to get back into 
 
86 THE FREE CITY 
 
 Jehovah's good graces, by keeping The Law. From that 
 time the ethical imperative, which Kant classed with the 
 starry heavens at night as the two sublimest objects in 
 the miiverse, became Israel's obsession. The Jew learned 
 to say, I ought. He wrote those words, prayed them 
 and sang them and preached them; with a vehemence 
 that made him, and the Book wherein he expressed them, 
 the ethical teacher of all succeeding ages. Not that the 
 Jew by congenital endowment was moral above other 
 peoples. But in his case the moral law got joined up 
 with civic patriotism; and thereby became heated to the 
 flaming point. 
 
 "By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down. Yea, 
 we wept when we remembered Zion. We hanged our 
 harps upon the willows in the midst thereof. For there 
 they that carried us away captive required of us a song; 
 and they that wasted us required of us mirth saying. 
 Sing us one of the songs of Zion. How shall we sing the 
 Lord's song in a strange land? If I forget thee, O Jeru- 
 salem, let my right hand forget her cunning. If I do not 
 remember thee, let my tongue cleave to the roof of my 
 mouth; if I prefer not Jerusalem above my chief joy." 
 
CHAPTER VII 
 
 THE PATRIOTISM OF JESUS 
 
 THAT Jesus was a man without a coimtry, is a de- 
 lusion held by many. They who get famihar 
 with the historical setting see, on the contrary, 
 that he had a local problem on his hands. His life co- 
 incided with the formation of the Roman Empire and its 
 extension over Palestine. Rome as a city republic had 
 been a lovable object. As an empire, o'erleaping geo- 
 graphical lines and welding the world into mechanical 
 imiformity, she was not a lovable object. The Roman 
 Empire was a worldwide amalgamation of capitalistic 
 classes for the enslavement of the working masses. Rome 
 did not conquer the various countries; she annexed them 
 by forming an alliance with the magnate class in each. 
 Much of the New Testament reflects the coalescence of 
 the local grandees in Palestine with the Roman System.^ 
 Formerly the slave-holding class in each country had 
 maintained its own army. But with the growth of slave 
 rebelUousness, begun by Spartacus a generation earher, 
 the malcontents in each country were outnumbering the 
 local army. The Roman Empire, accordingly, was a 
 consoUdation of these separate armies into a miUtary 
 unit, with an Imperator at its head; who was the Em- 
 
 ^ In the " Call of the Carpenter " I have painted the industrial 
 and economic background of Jesus with some fulness. Here I 
 have only space to outline it sketchily. 
 
 87 
 
8S THE FREE CITY 
 
 peror. By means of uniform dress, tactics, weapons, and 
 organization, the legions — as the world army was now 
 called — were discipUned into a fighting machine of high 
 efficiency. Great roadways were built, for celerity in 
 mobihzing the legions. These causeways were paved 
 with flat stones so as to make for swift marching. They 
 were carried straight across the countryside, cutting 
 through mountains and carr5dng over valleys on mas- 
 sive viaducts. No expense was spared in shortening dis- 
 tances; because the reach of the entire mihtary force into 
 the district of every member of this world Corporation 
 was the heart of the System. Let the magnate class in 
 any country of the Empire send in a call for help, within 
 forty-eight hours there would ghtter on the horizon the 
 spear flash of the gathering legions, bearing down upon 
 that spot from the four corners of the globe. Thus the 
 Roman Empire cemented its might. Embracing all 
 countries and tongues and climates — a motley crew — 
 they had a cohering principle which swallowed up their 
 diversities: an appetite for plunder. 
 
 This Empire was coiling its snaky folds about Pales- 
 tine. Jesus, brought up in a carpenter shop and himself 
 a carpenter, finally laid aside his workingman's apron, 
 brushed the shavings and sawdust from his clothing, and 
 set out to announce to Israel her deliverance from the 
 degrading bondage that was fastening itself upon her 
 back. In that cause he hved and taught and died. 
 
 His celebrated epigram, "Render unto Caesar the 
 things that are Csesar's," has been quite misinterpreted; 
 and so has blinded the eyes of some otherwise keen- 
 sighted students. Those words were spoken in answer 
 to a catch question put to him by a band of informers, 
 "spies which should feign themselves just men, that 
 they might take hold of his words, that so they might 
 
THE PATRIOTISM OF JESUS 89 
 
 deliver him unto the power and authority of the gov- 
 ernor." They asked him, "Is it lawful to give tribute 
 tmto Caesar?" It was shrewdly put. If he disallowed 
 the tribute, Rome would take affront and despatch a 
 legion of troops to end him and his movement without 
 delay; a clash that he avoided as long as possible: "My 
 time is not yet come." On the other hand, if he approved 
 of the tribute, he would lose his followers, who were 
 "waiting for the consolation of Israel" and who had 
 ralUed around him because they saw here one who "should 
 dehver Israel." Jesus "perceived their craftiness." 
 
 In putting their question, the spies handed him a coin. 
 It was a Roman coin; bore the image of the Emperor. 
 That image, to every patriotic son of Israel, was 
 anathema. When Pilate sought to carry into Jerusalem the 
 Roman standards which bore the image of the Imperator, 
 the Jews protested so violently that he had to revoke 
 the order. When the Emperor CaUgula issued his de- 
 cree that his statue be set up in Jerusalem, "many ten 
 thousands of Jews" met the imperial messenger long 
 before he reached their sacred city, to head off the sac- 
 rilegious thing that was on its way to the defacement of 
 Jehovah's town. He asked if they meant war. "No," 
 said they; "but we rather die than break our laws. And 
 they threw themselves on their faces ready to be slain." 
 Israel — the common people in her citizenry — was so 
 flamingly patriotic that a law had been passed by her 
 lawgivers, forbidding the priests to accept the temple tax 
 in anjrthing but Jewish coins; lest some coin be offered 
 that bore the image of an earthly emperor. That was 
 why "money-changers" were in the temple court: to 
 change foreign money into Jewish currency, so that it 
 could be offered without insult to Jehovah. The Romans, 
 on the other hand, would naturally ask that their tribute 
 
90 THE FREE CITY 
 
 be paid to them in Roman money. Therefore the re- 
 quest of Jesus to the spies: "Show me the tribute money." 
 
 The Jews had a saying: "No people is conquered until 
 it has accepted the currency of the invader." So when 
 the spies put their question, Jesus "saith unto them, 
 Whose is this image and superscription? They say unto 
 him, Caesar's. Then saith he unto them, Render there- 
 fore unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's; and unto 
 God the things that are God's." His followers under- 
 stood that answer to mean: Render back unto Caesar 
 the blasphemous coins he has brought into our country; 
 a proclamation of non-intercourse with the hateful 
 System, extending even to an embargo on Roman coin- 
 age. His quickness of repartee thus enabled him to 
 dodge one horn of the dilemma without impaUng himself 
 on the other. "When they heard these words, they 
 marvelled; and left him." "And they could not take 
 hold of his words before the people." 
 
 Syria, of which province Palestine was a part, had be- 
 come Rome's Eldorado. Italian adventurers, bankrupt 
 through extravagance at home, sought eagerly an ap- 
 pointment here, as a career of glorious piracy. To sup- 
 pose that The Galilean gave a clean bill of health to this 
 Caesarism that was sucking dry the veins of the people, 
 is to betray want of knowledge of the historical back- 
 ground. We read: "He steadfastly set his face to go to 
 Jerusalem." That which once had been the holy city, 
 was become the stronghold of Rome's grip on the country. 
 Mark Antony, acting for the Romans, had appointed 
 Herod the Great to be Rome's vassal king. Herod 
 changed the name of Samaria into Sebaste, the Greek 
 word for "Augustus," the Roman Emperor. His aping 
 of Roman ways went so far as to erect an amphitheatre 
 in Jerusalem, and the exhibition there every five years 
 
THE PATRIOTISM OF JESUS 91 
 
 of gladiatorial combats in honor of Augustus. Over the 
 gate of the temple itself — there where the holy Ark of 
 the Covenant resided — he erected a golden eagle, the 
 Roman military ensign, in token that the Jerusalem state, 
 both pohtically and spiritually, was in bondage to the 
 Empire. At this last unendurable stigma a seething mob 
 gathered and tore the eagle from its perch. As punish- 
 ment, Herod burned forty of the people ahve. 
 
 To deliver Jerusalem from this "abomination of deso- 
 lation standing in the holy place," was the constant re- 
 solve of Jesus; and cost him Calvary. The temple in 
 Jerusalem had by now become the center of high finance. 
 The Jewish magnates — the priestly class — were in 
 partnership with Rome; and received protection from 
 Rome in gouging the lower classes. To the high priests 
 Annas and Caiaphas went all the fleeces and skins of the 
 animals that were sacrificed; also the firstfruits of the 
 ground, and large money levies. The cupidity of these 
 temple rulers was notorious. The Jewish populace, long 
 in revolt against them, were powerless. These temple 
 grandees were in cahoots with the Roman System; and 
 a Roman garrison in Fort Antonio, close to the temple 
 gate, kept the people cowed — Fort Antonio, recalling 
 Mark Antony. Lately this renegade coterie of Jewish 
 millionaires had achieved a further refinement of ex- 
 tortion. Within the temple enclosure they sold animals 
 for sacrifice, at exorbitant rates. A worshipper, coming 
 with an animal purchased outside in the open city mar- 
 kets, would frequently have his offering rejected, on the 
 ground that the animal was "ceremonially unsound." 
 The Emperor Tiberias — now the successor of Augustus 
 — had changed the occupancy of the Jerusalem high 
 priesthood four times, until he found in Caiaphas a com- 
 pliant instrument and submissive friend of Rome. In 
 
92 THE FREE CITY 
 
 return, the Roman legions protected Caiaphas and his 
 fellow plunderers with brutal might. 
 
 To the flaming patriot soul of Jesus the scene was un- 
 endurable. Journeying to Jerusalem at a Passover 
 season when the city would be full of pilgrims, he entered 
 the temple and started an insurrection by driving out 
 the entire set of merchandisers: "It is written, My 
 house shall be called a house of prayer; but ye have made 
 it a den of thieves." It exalted him to be the popular 
 hero; a person dangerous to the System. Three days 
 later, he was hanging on the cross; nailed there by Ro- 
 man soldiers at the instigation of the Caiaphas cHque. 
 And this was the charge against him: "He stirreth up 
 the people." The Lord's Supper, celebrating the meal 
 he ate with his disciples the night before his execution, 
 is the sacrament of municipality. Those elements me- 
 morialize the body and blood of the world's supreme 
 Citizen, who counted not his hfe dear unto him when 
 the civic need sounded. 
 
 The popularity of Jesus with the Jewish multitude is 
 well attested: "The common people heard him gladly." 
 The shouters of "Crucify him!" in Pilate's judgment hall 
 were not the Jewish workingclass, but a gang of court 
 hangers-on, and who had been coached by the Caiaphas 
 ring to make this demonstration. Jesus was spirited 
 away to crucifixion at an early morning hour; the authori- 
 ties breaking the code of criminal procedure that they 
 might get him nailed to the cross before the common 
 people, heavy with sleep from the Passover banquet of 
 the night before, could awake and learn that their Leader 
 had been arrested. A couple of days later we hear the 
 heart-broken lamentation of his followers: "We trusted 
 that it had been he which should have redeemed Israel." 
 
 Jesus was a scion of the racial stock. He took pains, 
 
THE PATRIOTISM OF JESUS 93 
 
 early in his career, to declare that he was not an innova- 
 tor: "Think not that I am come to destroy the law or the 
 prophets." In organizing his propaganda, he threw it 
 expressly into the mold of the Jewish state; chose twelve 
 disciples in order that, as he explained, each of them might 
 take charge of one of the twelve tribes of Israel. "Son 
 of David," is a name he apphes to himself. Paul was 
 acquainted with other Hteratures. Jesus knows not any 
 writings save those of his own people. His mind was 
 steeped in Old Testament lore. His heroes are Abra- 
 ham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses, David, Elijah, Isaiah. The 
 first recorded act of his life was his circumcision, "as it 
 is written in the law of the Lord"; for which ceremony 
 he was carried by his patriotic parents up to Jerusalem. 
 And his last act, before his death, was to eat the Passover 
 Festival in that same Jerusalem. I doubt if in all the 
 story of mankind can be found another whose mind was 
 more exclusively colored by love of country than Jesus of 
 Nazareth. From him the phrase "Abraham's bosom," 
 has come to be a popular designation for Heaven. Jesus 
 was the quintessence of the Old Testament; he is patriot- 
 ism's elixir and double distillation. 
 
 It was this locaHsm that was the secret of his great- 
 ness. To be a cosmopolitan is to be shallow. Only 
 they are colossal who are metropolitan. Had Jesus 
 spread himself over a universal geography, he would 
 have been as cheap and ineffective as the roamer type 
 ever is. There seems to have been a temptation to this 
 very thing. At the start-off in his career and while hi& 
 mind was forming, it is related that he was up on an ex- 
 ceeding high mountain and beheld in vision all the king- 
 doms of the world. Satan said unto him, "All these 
 things will I give unto thee." But with an "Apage, 
 Satana!" Jesus turned his back on a career that would 
 
94 THE FREE CITY 
 
 have meant only territorial bigness: "Get thee hence, 
 Satan." That is why he became such a great power of 
 God. Localism is not a littleness, it is a greatness. 
 Anyone can be a cosmopolitan; the streets of our large 
 cities are littered with them. To stay in one's own square 
 of territory and wrestle with the concrete problems there 
 demanding attention — that's the acid test. 
 
 Jesus was the most prodigious person that ever trod 
 this planet, because he was the most patriotic person that 
 ever trod this planet. Only that which is wrought 
 deeply can endure immortally. And deepness requires 
 that the surface area be severely circumscribed. In 
 geographical extent Palestine is microscopic. EUjah ran 
 across it in one day. And from north to south, it is about 
 half the distance of New York to Albany. A mere fleck 
 on the world's map. But that fleck was enough soil for 
 Jesus to plant there a tree of life whose fertile pollen has 
 blown abroad through all the spaces of the globe. Man 
 reckons greatness by surface measure. God reckons great- 
 ness by cubic measure; except the life of a people is as 
 large in the up-and-down direction as it is in the hori- 
 zontal direction, that poUtical fabric is dimensionally 
 distorted. In limiting his activities to the local problem, 
 Jesus became the messiah of the healthy gospel of munici- 
 paUty, to a mankind cursed with the mania of univer- 
 sahty, vague generaUsations, shallow abstractions. Let 
 each community clean in front of its own door, the world 
 will be clean in no time. 
 
 The patriotic saturation started whilst his members 
 were yet unformed: "Thou Bethlehem in the land of 
 Juda art not the least among the princes of Juda; for 
 out of thee shall come a governor that shall rule my 
 people Israel." His very name, Jesus, had a local ap- 
 plication: "Thou shalt call his name Jesus, for he shall 
 
THE PATRIOTISM OF JESUS 95 
 
 save his people from their sins." The angel, announcing 
 to Mary of the child she was carrying under her heart, 
 said: "He shall be great, and shall be called the Son of 
 the Highest; and the Lord God shall give unto him the 
 throne of his father David; and he shall reign over the 
 house of Jacob forever." And this was her reply: "My 
 soul doth magnify the Lord. He hath holpen his servant 
 Israel, as he spake to our fathers, to Abraham and to his 
 seed forever." Nor do we need to reject these prenatal 
 chapters on the ground that they are poetry. The fact 
 that they got into the record shows what those who were 
 nearest to him, both in time and in spiritual intimacy, 
 thought concerning him; and explains his power over his 
 contemporaries. Moreover the heart of man by a sure 
 instinct has ratified the local flavor in Jesus. Paul 
 changed his Jewish name for a Roman name. But Jesus, 
 never. The imagination cannot picture him save in his 
 native setting. In strength he is the "lion of the tribe 
 of Juda." For beauty, he is "the rose of Sharon," 
 or the lily in a Palestinian valley. 
 
 The center of his teaching was, the Kingdom of God. 
 That was a municipal kingdom; restoring to Jerusalem 
 her aforetime status as a sovereign and independent 
 state; a theocracy, with God in the rulership, instead of 
 a province with Tiberias in the rulership. The idea of a 
 restoration undergirds every line of the Gospel story. 
 This was the Good News — the Gospel — -he announced. 
 To break the historic continuity and sunder Jesus from 
 his racial roots, is to render his doings and teachings un- 
 intelHgible. The Book of Matthew was written ex- 
 pressly to show that Jesus is the continuer of the Old 
 Testament line. The Epistle to the Hebrews had a 
 similar purpose. They who break with history shall 
 make no history. Jesus kept his continuity with the 
 
96 THE FREE CITY 
 
 roots from which he sprung. When he wishes to eulogize 
 Nathaniel, it is with a "Behold an Israelite indeed, in 
 whom is no guile." There is a note almost of severity in 
 his refusal of the distractions of "all the kingdoms of the 
 world and the glory of them." To the Phoenician woman 
 he announced: "I am not sent but to the lost sheep of 
 the house of Israel." And to his disciples: "Go not into 
 the way of the Gentiles, and into any city of the Samari- 
 tans enter ye not; but go rather to the lost sheep of the 
 house of Israel." 
 
 Austere? Yes. But a principle of the first importance 
 was involved; and had to be laid down with sharp- 
 edged clarity. The principle of municipality is the 
 saviour of the world; delivering us from the hell of 
 mihtarism; inaugurating a reign of fellowship and dis- 
 tinguished handiwork. By stationing himself sohdly on 
 the reUgion of Homeland, Jesus became concentric with 
 the heart of God and the flowing ages. An altruism that 
 cannot find employment in one's own community but 
 must seek out aUen fields, is a sentimentaUty. By an 
 expatriate, no great work was ever wrought. 
 
 This municipalism of his dream and plannings, is the 
 clue to the democracy of Jesus. Every loyal member of 
 the household of Israel, irrespective of station or em- 
 ployment or education or manners, was a comrade of his. 
 They were sheep of his flock; and his wide arms shep- 
 herded them all. This got him into the clash with the 
 Pharisees. Pharisee is a word meaning, "That which 
 draws itself apart." They were sticklers for social law. 
 Jesus would not permit any schism of the body poHtic. 
 Allegiance to the State took precedence with him over 
 all other considerations. He associated with social out- 
 casts, the "lost sheep," the "sinners." Herein he is con- 
 firmed by Aristotle, and by the finer spirits in all ages. 
 
THE PATRIOTISM OF JESUS 97 
 
 Civic loyalty is the supreme virtue. Make the munici- 
 pahty supreme, private morals will take care of them- 
 selves. Permit the municipaUty to collapse, no amount 
 of ethical precept will then keep individuals true and 
 wholesome. Against those Pharisees he spoke of the 
 Wheat-and-the-Tares: "Let both grow together." And, 
 "Like unto a net that was cast into the sea and gathered 
 of very kind." Against their snobbery that excluded 
 "the accursed mulitude that knoweth not the law," he 
 taught a sowing of seed in wide cathoUcity; letting the 
 harvest decide which ground was the hundredfold soil, 
 and which the sixtyfold. 
 
 Towards the treasonable Caiaphas-Annas clique Jesus 
 was especially implacable. The Jewish state had a 
 Uberal policy of naturalization; admitting ahens to the 
 citizenship upon their quahfying themselves by a two- 
 fold rite: circumcision and a partaking of the Passover 
 Feast. Jesus threatens the unfaithful rulers of the 
 vineyard — these disobedient "sons of the kingdom" — 
 with expulsion from their posts of leadership and their 
 replacement by naturalized "children of the adoption," 
 who "shall come from the east and from the west." 
 
 His Parable of the Illegal Steward discloses in Jesus a 
 statesmanly recognition of one of the cardinal problems 
 in economic administration. He was there wrestling 
 with that old, old question, absentee landlordship. In 
 every civiHzation — I cannot think of an exception — 
 as soon as riches accumulate, the owner has tended to 
 leave the soil and move into the city; turning over his 
 land to a steward who shall send him his annual produce. 
 This was happening in Israel. Jerusalem was getting 
 rich at the expense of the outlying countryside. Isaiah 
 complains of the swallowing up of the old farming fami- 
 lies by the Jerusalem leisure class. We saw how, because 
 
98 THE FREE CITY 
 
 of this, Rome and Athens fell. Anyone who knows the 
 desolation spread in a rural region by absentee land- 
 lordism will understand why Jesus was relentless. A 
 farm owned by an absentee is a curse to the countryside. 
 It makes no contributions to the social life of the neigh- 
 borhood. It grows up to weeds, and plagues all the 
 neighboring farms with thistledown and cockle. Man- 
 aged by an agent, it gives forth a cold impersonahty which 
 always attaches to property that is not humanized by 
 the personal presence of the owner. In this parable 
 Jesus represents the steward taking sides with the local 
 residents, and against the "certain rich man" in his 
 aloofness. The utter ruthlessness of wealth adminis- 
 tered by agents — careless of all but the yearly per cent 
 — puts it into the wolfish category. Jesus told the people 
 they had a right to shear the wolf ad Hbitum. 
 
 Jesus was the Prince of Peace because he was the prince 
 of patriots. Unchallengeably the messianic kingdom he 
 announced was Jerusalem-centered: "Swear not at all; 
 neither by heaven, for it is God's throne; neither by 
 Jerusalem, for it is the city of the great King." In the 
 Book of Revelation is drawn a picture of the kind of 
 society Jesus was seeking to institute: a city state, ir- 
 radiating blessedness north and south and east and west. 
 "That great city, the holy Jerusalem, descending out of 
 heaven from God. And had a wall great and high; and 
 had twelve gates; and names written thereon, which are 
 the names of the twelve tribes of the children of Israel." 
 
 The map of mankind is a mosaic of communities; re- 
 deem each community, the redemption of the world will 
 take care of itself. Jesus had a world program. It was 
 this: IsraeUtes, of high degree and of low degree, must 
 repent of their greeds and feuds, all unfraternal beastli- 
 ness; among each other, rendering good for evil, turning 
 
THE PATRIOTISM OF JESUS 99 
 
 the other cheek. Each Jew must love the Father and 
 the Fatherland with all his heart, and his neighbor as 
 himself. The spectacle of a Commune thus knit in the 
 cords of lovely affection, would be seen abroad. Other 
 peoples will "see your good works, and glorify your 
 Father which is in heaven." It would start, through 
 the length and breadth of the Roman Empire, a spirit- 
 ual epidemic. There would be inaugurated a confed- 
 eracy of communes. God had expressly put Palestine 
 on a high hill, as a man puts a candle on a table, in order 
 that it may give Ught to aU that are in the house. Little 
 Palestine, scarce bigger than a mustard seed on the map, 
 would wax into a tree wide as the world, so that the birds 
 would come to lodge in the branches thereof. Tiny; yet 
 she would be as "leaven hid in three measures of meal, 
 till the whole was leavened." Thereupon, fortified by a 
 wide confederation, Israel could proclaim herself in- 
 dependent. But not before: "Which of you, intending 
 to build a tower, sitteth not down first and counteth the 
 cost, whether he have sufficient to finish it? Lest haply, 
 after he hath laid the foundation and is not able to finish 
 it, all that behold it begin to mock him saying. This man 
 began to build, and was not able to finish." A free 
 Jerusalem then would be a beacon to the world. A hun- 
 dred other peoples, now cowed in subjection to the Em- 
 pire, would behold the signal so luminously flashing from 
 Zion's top. They would catch the contagion. Bondage 
 everywhere would be broken. The world would be re- 
 deemed. 
 
 This Galilean taught that civic freedom is a commodity 
 of price. The municipal republic is a dizzy altitude. A 
 Free City is set in the high places of the universe. The 
 ascension thither is not for a half-breed folk, but for 
 thoroughbreds. In summoning volunteers, he demanded 
 
100 THE FREE CITY 
 
 all or nothing. No one could follow him by halves. 
 Self-government is the supreme treasure; and a people 
 must be willing to pay for it the supreme price. "Like 
 unto treasure hid in a field; the which, when a man hath 
 found, he goeth and selleth all that he hath, and buyeth 
 that field." A Free City is "the pearl of great price." 
 
 Jesus invited the people to form a poUtical union dif- 
 ferent from and independent of the Roman System. 
 There were those who advocated a concihatory attitude 
 toward Rome — accept the Empire, correct its more 
 glaring faults; make the best of it; be practical. He 
 showed the fallacy of this. The Kingdom of God could 
 not pour its explosive wine into the Herod-Caiaphas 
 bottles. This Carpenter from Nazareth was discreet, 
 gentle-spirited, sweet-minded. But he was also a non- 
 compromiser. Through the first three books of the New 
 Testament — where his photographic portrait is given — 
 we behold a master mind proclaiming a revolutionary re- 
 versal in the world's ongoings. Jesus did not establish 
 a church. He said to Peter, "On this rock I wUl found 
 my ecclesia." Ecclesia, as we saw in Athens, meant the 
 General Assembly of the citizens. In that theocratic day 
 a church separate from the body politic was unimaginable. 
 By "ecclesia" Jesus meant The Commune; the historic 
 and universal meaning of the word. To translate it into 
 a meaning that did not become widely current till the 
 Third Century, is not scholarship. He called people one 
 by one to be his followers. These were the Old Testa- 
 ment "saints" we saw: people who rallied around him 
 for the purpose of restoring to Jerusalem her sovereignty. 
 The Jesus' "Way" was not a church. It was an Associa- 
 tion For A League of Free Cities. Jesus was a jurist. 
 He gave his life to set up an ideal form of society. 
 
 He reminded his followers that the Jerusalem state 
 
THE PATRIOTISM OF JESUS 101 
 
 had the moral law for its palladium. "Repent ye, for 
 the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand." As when Romulus 
 kindled the fire and caused the people to leap over it, so 
 Jesus took over from John the rite of baptism, that those 
 who followed this "Way" might be washed and purged. 
 The Ejngdom he was announcing was "not of this world"; 
 that is to say, was not a political science based on Roman 
 Empire principles — world dominion and commercial 
 piracy. It was a kingdom of fellowship. Therefore the 
 citizens must love one another; lend to one another and 
 ask not in return; minister, rather than seek to be min- 
 istered to. 
 
 The "Father" idea, so dominant in the Jesus' psy- 
 chology, and his favorite name for God, derived from his 
 patriotism. The two ideas are not only akin; they are 
 Uterally the same word. In Latin the word for father is 
 PATER. In the German that becomes vater. In Middle 
 Low German it takes the form, fader; whence our Eng- 
 lish, "father." A patriot is one in whom the filial instinct, 
 affection for father and the fatherland, is uppermost. 
 Jesus, announcing himself as a son of the Father, em- 
 phasized by that phrase his Hneal descent from the 
 Fatherland, and the messiahship which this Hving senti- 
 ent Fatherland had anointed him unto. The State was 
 a moral Person; and Jesus declared himself to be a true- 
 begotten child thereof. In his speech there is not a 
 hair's breadth of difference betwixt the divine Father and 
 the divine Fatherland. 
 
 Wonderworks attended the ministry of Jesus. Munic- 
 ipahty is an intense communion between a people and 
 their fatherland. In that mysticism all the tissues of 
 Jesus were drenched. And in like manner all the tis- 
 sues of the people who flocked around him. Thereby 
 both he and they were supernormally endowed. It is 
 
102 THE FREE CITY 
 
 unscientific to judge the truth or falsity of events in a 
 psychological situation such as that, by the dull work- 
 ings of the human spirit in a commercial era Uke the 
 present. To try to interpret an age of genius by the 
 formulas and standards of our cold modernity, is to 
 measure an electric current with a foot rule. Nothing is 
 clearer than that the people expected miracles, and also 
 that Jesus frequently satisfied that expectation. It is 
 also in the record that the people's posture of expectancy 
 created the favoring psychology by means of which his 
 wonderworks were wrought upon them. Remembering 
 the stream of history he let loose upon the world and 
 which has flowed from that day to this, the other miracles 
 recorded of him become massively credible. Municipal- 
 ity, whereia man's httle ego is caught up into and domi- 
 nated by the cosmic Self, is the miracle of miracles. 
 Which, when it happens, all ''mighty works" stand 
 easily within the prospect of beHef . 
 
 Civic fatherhood makes for hmnan brotherhood. Un- 
 less men love their country they will not love each other. 
 To the extent that people are patriotic they will be demo- 
 cratic. Jesus was aflame with the passion of fellowship; 
 and so he was more fierce than any other person in his- 
 tory I know of, against the foes of feUowship. A poUti- 
 cal science based on the father idea, necessitates a poUti- 
 cal economy based on the brother idea. Jesus sought to 
 estabhsh a commune. Quench this lust of private gain, 
 said he. It chops the civic body into hash. Make the 
 municipahty your bank of deposit. There lay up your 
 treasure. Take no thought saying. What shall we eat 
 or what shaU we drink. Your fatherland knoweth that 
 ye have need of all these things. Seek ye first the king- 
 dom of God, and all these things shall be added unto you. 
 It was the poUtical economy that Plato and Aristotle also 
 
THE PATRIOTISM OF JESUS 103 
 
 had urged: Our supreme care should be for the munici- 
 paUty, which careth for us. Jesus sought to reestablish 
 Israel as a social repubUc. He planned a cooperative 
 democracy, wherein a man would cherish the commune, 
 and the commune in turn would give him liis daily bread. 
 He could not abide a rich man clothing himself in purple 
 and fine linen whilst another citizen, Lazarus, lay in rags; 
 nor one who would pull down his barns to build bigger, 
 whilst his brothers in the civic household crouched in want. 
 With almost Uteral accuracy Jesus foreshadowed the 
 clash between Israel and the Roman Empire. This 
 was three and twenty years before the Great Jewish Re- 
 belUon, and which ended in the destruction of Jerusalem 
 by Titus. Had the officials in the Jewish state heeded 
 his call to repentance and civic dedication, Jesus would 
 have led Israel with so statesmanly a mind and so massive 
 a spirituality that the outcome of that clash could easily 
 have been reversed. Israel attempted to fight the Em- 
 pire single-handed. Jesus expressly cautioned against 
 this: *'What king, going to make war against another 
 king, sitteth not down first and consulteth whether he be 
 able with ten thousand to meet him that cometh against 
 him with twenty thousand?" Only a world confedera- 
 tion could make head against a world empire: the whole 
 lump must first be leavened. But those who "were at 
 ease in Zion" were too comfortable in the fat incomes they 
 were drawing under the protection of the Roman legions. 
 Poignant his outburst of sorrow; the elegy of a breaking 
 heart: "O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, thou that killest the 
 prophets and stonest them which are sent unto thee; 
 how often would I have gathered thy children together, 
 even as a hen gathereth her chickens under her wing, and 
 ye would not! Behold, your house is left unto you 
 desolate." 
 
104 THE FREE CITY 
 
 "How often would I have gathered thy children to- 
 gether!" This anguish, his wrestle with that local prob- 
 lem he had on his hands, was not a casual or subordinate 
 feature of his life's work. It was the fire that burned 
 continuously at the heart of him. "How often!" From 
 his boyhood dreamings, until the film glazed finally over 
 his eyes on that April afternoon atop Golgotha's bitter 
 summit, the deHverance of his people Israel was the 
 thread that ran through all of his plannings. Multi- 
 tudes of people keep Friday of each week as his death- 
 day. It is not too extravagant a memorial of him. But 
 it should be connected with the municipal purpose for 
 which he there paid that full measure of devotion. In 
 giving himself for a free city, Jesus incarnated all the 
 fulness of the Godhead bodily. Since Gethsemane and 
 Golgotha, municipahty has been pierced into the feet of 
 very God, and engraven on the palm of his hands. Cal- 
 vary is one of the supreme shrines in the religion of citi- 
 zenship. The Patriot who there was nailed to death 
 stands foremost in the company of the immortals; the 
 civic Christ, freedom's incomparable devotee, the world's 
 municipal Redeemer. 
 
CHAPTER Vni 
 
 WHY AMERICA IS THE LOITERER 
 
 WHY did civilization start in the Eastern Hemi- 
 sphere rather than in the Western? This 
 question seems never to have got itself asked by 
 historians. It has been taken for granted that Europe 
 should be primary, and America secondary. The as- 
 sumption has been that the human species originated in 
 the Eastern world-half; and got to America by Behring 
 Straits, the Aleutian chain of islands, or by Malay folk 
 stepping from isle to isle across the Pacific Ocean to 
 America; where Columbus discovered them. But there 
 is no evidence of that Asia-to-America route. For all 
 we know, it may have been in the other direction, from 
 America to Asia. Civilization, and therefore the his- 
 torians, originated in the Eastern Hemisphere. Those 
 historians, writing up the history of the human race from 
 the standpoint of their own ethnical folklore, traced the 
 origin of the human family back to their own racial and 
 geographical roots. Thus Adam and Eve and an oriental 
 Garden of Eden have become soaked into our mental 
 fibres; so that we believe by a dull instinct that man 
 started over there; which would explain why civiUzation 
 also started there. 
 
 But even on the showing of those historians, man had 
 existed in these Americas through a long enough duration 
 prior to the coming of Columbus to have developed a 
 
 105 
 
106 THE FREE CITY 
 
 civilization equal to that of the Europe- Asia world. The 
 Inca Empire in Peru was contemporary with Romulus 
 at Rome, Homer in Greece, David at Jerusalem. Cy- 
 clopean remains in Peru, and foreign to the genius of the 
 Inca architecture, announce a powerful people existing 
 there before the Inca dynasty; pushing the date back 
 another thousand years. Yucatan and the Mound 
 Builders of Ohio, will occur to the reader. Recent dis- 
 coveries in a gravel bank by the Delaware south of Trenton 
 have unearthed instruments made by human hands, in a 
 geological period antedating the glacial epoch. There- 
 fore Paleohthic man certainly existed in America; dat- 
 ing human life on this continent back probably 20,000 
 years B.C. Then why did the Stone Man in Europe 
 develop finally into Platos and Parthenons, whilst the 
 same Stone Man in America did not develop? 
 
 Climate? But the Eastern Hemisphere has no climate 
 that the Western Hemisphere cannot duplicate. Edibles? 
 America is surprising the world for the variety and rich- 
 ness of her tillable lands. During twenty thousand 
 years man existed here, amid a climate as favorable, and 
 girt with a material supply more favorable, than what 
 Europe or Asia can show. No spot elsewhere on the 
 globe where soil and climate combine more perfectly for 
 human uses than California. Then why is America now 
 put to the humiUation of importing her civiUzation from 
 Europe? Every time an American law court sits, it 
 proceeds according to Roman law. What political science 
 we possess, is based on traditions inherited from Athens; 
 and all of our art schools draw from her as their well- 
 spring. Every Protestant, Catholic, and Jewish church 
 in America officially harks back to Palestine; so much so 
 that the scenery of that Asiatic region has become in- 
 stitutionalized for devotional purposes: the River Jordan, 
 
WHY AMERICA IS THE LOITERER 107 
 
 Sinai, Mount Zion — names that are uttered with the 
 same awe as is evoked by the divine Name itself. Why? 
 How came it that the heavens of the Oriental hemisphere 
 are starred with luminaries that even yet o'ersparkle our 
 night with their radiance; while this our Western world, 
 during a human existence at least as long — and maybe, 
 longer — has produced no stars of magnitude? 
 
 The reason why civilization originated in the Mediter- 
 ranean basin rather than around Lake Ontario or Southern 
 California or the Missouri River, is because the geography 
 of the Mediterranean made city states obUgatory. Whilst 
 the geography of North and South America made a 
 nomad existence possible. 
 
 Brute man — man in his animal unregenerate form — 
 will be a roamer whenever he can. That is the path of 
 least resistance. To wander, unfastened unattached, is 
 the animal instinct universally. It is the loafer trait, 
 so massively in all of us, human and subhuman. Beast 
 nor fowl nor fish ever sink deep roots or Uve intensively. 
 They get their subsistence by skimming over the surface 
 of Nature; never by cultivating one spot of Nature. 
 Where they find some product ready grown, they eat it. 
 When that is exhausted they find some other windfall, 
 or perish. They are consumers only; never producers. 
 Depth is another word for localism. Both quad- 
 rupeds and commercialists laugh immoderately at the 
 idea of locaUsm. Both of these types covet only a sur- 
 face existence. In order to grow deep, one must needs 
 remain in the same locality. Animals have a horror of 
 localism; wild animals, I mean; domesticated animals 
 have taken on a touch of civiUzation, that is to say, 
 localism. Animals, and men in their wild state, covet a 
 form of life that shall be broad and shallow. 
 
 Man, inheritor of immemorial generations of animal 
 
108 THE FREE CITY 
 
 ancestry, has got this virus of nomadism terribly in his 
 blood. He is a natural-born gypsy. He likes to reap 
 where he has not sown, and gather where he has not 
 strewed. He will not settle down unless he has to. In 
 America he didn't have to. Wild tracts of level land in- 
 vited to a gratification of the wander-lust. Here the 
 central plain permits travel in a straight line for a thou- 
 sand miles, without bumping against a wall. The sea- 
 board too is wide. Rivers in America, as a consequence, 
 are usually gentle-mannered; which fact also favored 
 frequent moving of one's habitat, by navigation. Fur- 
 thermore the fertihty of the soil here produced so lux- 
 uriantly that primitive man was not compelled to dig 
 and plant. So he remained unchangeably the roamer he 
 was when he emerged from the four-footed estate. And a 
 roamer still was he when Columbus found him; hving in 
 wigwams and teepees which could be pulled down and 
 dragged by a horse to the next camping place; the ex- 
 istence of a fisher or a hunter. 
 
 That is to say, Man in America was a savage; or, at 
 best, a barbarian. Nor has contact with Europe even 
 yet produced a truly civil type of existence. Four 
 centuries of life here in much-travelling America has al- 
 ready begun to deciviUze the Caucasians who migrated 
 hither; so that the modern American, returning now to 
 staid old Europe as a globe-trotter and rushing through 
 her aisles and corridors, is infecting the peoples there with 
 the same mania for gadding. We Americans present to 
 view the most restless people of all the kindreds of man- 
 kind. The men we hold in honor and load with mil- 
 lionairic opulence, are those who put wheels under us, 
 whereby we may rush from one place where we are bored, 
 to another place where we will be equally bored. To the 
 destruction of character and of creative power. Neigh- 
 
WHY AMERICA IS THE LOITERER 109 
 
 borhood is the stay and guard of decency. Travel is a 
 means of escape from the Ten Commandments. Va- 
 grants, be they in rags, be they in tags, or be they in 
 velvet gowns, are not long in getting to be vagabonds. 
 
 Mediterranean man in the Stone Age inherited from 
 his animal ancestry as much of the nomad instinct as did 
 the Stone Man in America. But the geography there 
 put a prompt and severe veto to his roaming propensities. 
 There we find a narrow strip of land surrounding the sea, 
 and with high mountains almost immediately behind. 
 On practically all sides, the coast is a shelf but a few 
 miles in width, backed by a mountain wall; or, as on the 
 Sahara side, by a forbidding desert. Moreover, the 
 Mediterranean shore is not only narrow; but this narrow 
 strip is itself intersected at frequent intervals by tongues 
 of the sea. These tongues of water, in early times when 
 navigation was perilous, served as transverse barriers, 
 preventing migratory movements sideways; as the 
 mountain or desert prevented migratory movements in 
 the backward direction. 
 
 By these natural pockets, Mediterranean man was un- 
 consciously wooed by Nature into a form of life other than 
 nomadic; namely, small collectivities, each settling in 
 its little niche and there abiding. The coast where Rome 
 pitched her site is an example. From the Alban moun- 
 tains to the sea is five and twenty miles. So that Rome, 
 midway between, had a twelve mile leeway. And the 
 overflooding of the Tiber isolated her people on their 
 seven hills for weeks at a time. In North America, by 
 contrast, the mountains bordering the Atlantic are a 
 hundred miles back; with a thousand-mile stretch north 
 and south as an invitation to the rambler instinct. 
 
 Greece is even more finely cut up than Italy. She is 
 more indented by tongues of the sea and more parti- 
 
no THE FREE CITY 
 
 tioned by mountain walls, than probably any other spot 
 of equal size on the globe. And Greece developed the 
 city state more perfectly than any other people. The 
 Greek archipelago, Ukewise, is a checkerboard of islands; 
 and each of them was the seat of a sovereign community. 
 Palestine is another natural pocket. There, a group of 
 valleys give down eastwardly into the Jordan. Thus, 
 hemmed in on the west by the Lebanon ridge, and on the 
 east by the Jordan and the desert, the IsraeUtes snuggled 
 closely. In good sooth, "snuggle" is quite the word to 
 describe her life during her formative period, and which 
 made her the coherent people she became. The city 
 state of Memphis was another — and most important — 
 center of ancient civilization. This Egypt commune oc- 
 cupied a narrow strip on each side of the Nile; with 
 inhospitable deserts round about, to keep them from 
 roaming. 
 
 In the other spots where civilization developed, the 
 same geographical feature — natural pockets — is to be 
 noticed. In the Mesopotamia valley, girdUng deserts 
 made the wall. In India, the communes were located 
 each ia some cleared area, with the danger-infested jungle 
 as the barrier round about. Japan is a small mountainous 
 country, with indentations from the sea; Hke Greece. 
 China apparently got her arts and culture from this 
 island neighbor. 
 
 The municipal state was the originator of ci\41ization; 
 and can be the only guarantee of a continuing civihza- 
 tion. The principle of municipaUty is a cord woven of 
 two strands: collectivity and continuity. Nomads want 
 both of these qualities. Roaming wide spaces, nomads 
 do not touch elbows constantly with the same individuals; 
 therefore they grow no sense of solidarity — all of those 
 countless graces that are bred when neighbor rubs against 
 
WHY AMERICA IS THE LOITERER 111 
 
 neighbor, that Feeling of the Other Fellow, to which we 
 give the name justice manners amity. Also, nomads 
 possess no graveyards. A graveyard means an attitude 
 of reverence towards the generations that have gone be- 
 fore. It is a constant reminder that we were preceded 
 by othei-s, and in turn will be followed by others. The 
 word patriot, as we saw, comes from the word "father." 
 In the Bible, reUgion was in large part a ritual for keeping 
 alive in the people a philosophy of history; a sense of the 
 pit from which they were hewed and the root from which 
 they were sprung. "The God of your fathers," — that 
 is what gave religion to the world. Said Jesus: "Other 
 men have labored, and ye are entered into their labors." 
 This veneration of the past is an outstanding character- 
 istic of city commonwealths; and is a prime cause of 
 civilization. It made Rome the giver to mankind of 
 that marvelous fabric known as Roman Law. Rome as 
 a municipal repubhc developed the "father" idea as 
 perhaps her chief product. Her entire conception of the 
 state centered around it. She called the state, "the 
 patria," "the place where the fathers Uved and are 
 buried." She venerated the "Conscript Fathers"; called 
 those who were — originally — the public-spirited class in 
 the population, "The Patricians." From this there was 
 begotten in Roman psychology a respect for the What- 
 has-been. She styled herself, literally, a terra patrum: 
 a commonwealth where fatherhood was the sacredly es- 
 tablished principle of State. Accordingly, whenever a 
 way of doing things had become estabHshed, the people 
 clung to it with a religious fidelity: the Fathers did so 
 and so; ergo, the children must follow it with scrupulous 
 fideUty. In this way formulas and procedures became 
 sharpened into definiteness. Other peoples, where the 
 Fathers were not in so awful a veneration, oscillated from 
 
112 THE FREE CITY 
 
 one manner of doing a thing into another manner of doing 
 it. Not so, the Romans. Precedence — that which the 
 Fathers have done — was here consecrated with solemn 
 awe. In this way Roman customs concerning property 
 and the rights of persons came to stand out finally with a 
 fixedness and precision quite lacking in the codes of other 
 peoples. So Roman Law survived, whilst the wobbly 
 processes in other countries became forgotten. Lawyers 
 to this day are proverbially conser\'ative. Their mental 
 inheritance from Rome breeds in them an instinct for 
 precedent, and a distaste for innovation. 
 
 The vagrant is never a civilization builder, because he 
 is not a city builder. The word civilization is from the 
 Latin civitas; (which, carried over into our tongue, be- 
 comes "city.") A city is a settlement. Civilization is 
 the product of a settled life. All that we comprehend 
 under that scopeful word — law, manners, art, Uterature, 
 science, material monuments, mutual help — cannot be 
 the improvisation of a moment. They are plants of a 
 slow growth, to the maturing of which, generations of 
 generations must contribute each its quota. In Norse 
 fancy, Igdrasil, Tree of Being, enshrines an irrefutable 
 truth. Civilization is a tree, whose roots go deep in 
 order that its branches may reach high. Each genera- 
 tion can build but one ring in the trunk of that oak; add- 
 ing itself to the layers that have been built in already, 
 and upon which they that come after must build. 
 
 The nomad thinks and Uves in terms of a single genera- 
 tion. He chops the life of mankind into disconnected 
 particles. With him, no Igdrasil adding its slow bulk 
 ring upon ring. His plant must germinate, take root, 
 spring up, and come into foUage, all in the threescore and 
 ten of one man's life. Which kind of a plant, as the 
 secular durations of the world count values, is but a 
 
WHY AMERICA IS THE LOITERER 113 
 
 mushroom growth, a fungus. Fungus, seeing that it 
 shoots forth in a day, shall in a day perish. In the Red 
 Skin folk of North America, or the fisher folk of the 
 prahies by the Amazon, inventive minds arose, brains 
 that struck out excellent suggestions for progress. Had 
 those beginnings been followed up, they would have led 
 to a civiHzation full as rich as that of Attica or Latium. 
 But on his death there was no fihal-minded person to 
 take up the invention where his predecessor left off. 
 With no regard for antiquity, they gave no heed to pos- 
 terity; erected no schools, built no monumental splendors 
 to decorate the world in the day of their children's chil- 
 dren: "as we neglect the fathers, so we in turn will be 
 neglected by our children. Eat, drink and be merry; 
 for tomorrow we will be forgotten." 
 
 That word "fungus" accurately describes all nomad 
 life, be it the nomadism of savagery, or the gadding mania 
 in modernity. Fungi are parasites. They have no 
 power to take up sustenance directly from the earth; 
 they feed on other organisms. Therefore the comparison 
 is exact. Nomadism means, "having no home." A more 
 just description would be, "having no workshop." Home 
 is not where we Hve, but where we make our living. If 
 productivity be wanting, 'tis not a home but a boarding 
 house. The reason why people are nomads, is not be- 
 cause they have an aversion to a settled dwellingplace, 
 but because they have an aversion to work. A home- 
 Ufe makes for a work-Ufe. Contrariwise, a work-Ufe 
 makes for a home-hfe. So long as people are happily at 
 work, they stay home. There is no delight to be com- 
 pared with expressing the soul day by day in material 
 form. People who produce the most, journey the least. 
 The great travel ages in history have been non-productive 
 ages. Eras of art creation have always been home- 
 
114 THE FREE CITY 
 
 staying eras. It seems as though the hands and feet are 
 competitors for the energy that is in us. When the hands 
 are busy, the feet keep still. It is when the hands go 
 hstlessly to a task, the feet get the travel itch. 
 
 Work is an acquired trait. Because of our animal 
 ancestry, not work but loafing is the instinctive bent in 
 all of us. Wild animals don't work. That is why they 
 are animals. The ascent of species is the development of 
 a capacity for work. The monkey is higher than the 
 zebra in the scale of being, because the monkey has 
 fingers with which to work up the raw material it finds, 
 into forms more suitable for its food and habitation. A 
 zebra, finding a heap of beans, half of them good and half 
 decayed, must eat all or none. I had a monkey once. 
 One day I gave him a green pod of peas. He not only set 
 to work, in good housewifely fashion, to shell the peas 
 from the pod; but he took one of the roxmd peas and with 
 his fingernails proceeded to skin off the peel that was its 
 integument, a membrane so thin that I never knew there- 
 tofore of its existence. With the viand thus prepared to 
 his hking, he ate it. Darwin states the formula of evo- 
 lution as "adaptation to environment." A more exact 
 phrasing, I submit, would be, Capacity to labor. Adap- 
 tation to environment is the result of hard and continuous 
 effort. Talent for work is the key to the evolutionary 
 ascent. 
 
 The nomad is a low form of human life, because it 
 shows a low grade of productivity. Hunters and fishers 
 and trappers grow not the objects they use. Civilized 
 man, in contrast, does not depend upon the wild chamois 
 but raises a flock of sheep. He breeds textile and fur 
 animals for his clothing; Hke the skunk and fox farms 
 we behold, and ostrich farms for plumage. This quaUty 
 in man — capacity to toil — was bred in him by life in 
 
WHY AMERICA IS THE LOITERER 115 
 
 municipal states. Work that is greatly productive is 
 characterized by collectivity and continuity, the two 
 strands of which municipahty is woven. 
 
 Vast was the stretch of time requisite to domesticate 
 the animals we use, and on which so much of our civiliza- 
 tion depends. To take that wild chamois and breed him 
 into the pasture-lot sheep of our farmsteads — five 
 hundred years of continuous selective breeding were a 
 short time for that achievement; the son taking the flock 
 reverently from the fathers, making a small increment to 
 the task of domestication, and then handing the half-bred 
 flock on to the children. The breeding of our horse 
 from the wild mustang and the zebra; of the cow from 
 the buffalo; of the pig from the wild boar; of the dog 
 from the woK — not centuries but millenniums were re- 
 quired. Likewise to domesticate the plants, upon which 
 our Uving so largely depends. The potato in its wild 
 form is a tuber the size of a filbert nut. I beUeve that 
 some scientists, as a means of calculating the age of the 
 Inca civiHzation, have been trying to educate that wild 
 tuber. And in a hundred years they have not yet evolved 
 anything appreciably larger than the original filbert- 
 thing. Civilized corn is of so ancient an ancestry that 
 we do not even know from what wild plant it originated. 
 These tasks required for their accomplishing thousands 
 of years. The Ufe of a man is but threescore and ten. 
 A community, however, can have a fife measured by 
 centuries. When the conmiunity idea, therefore, had 
 been hit upon, civiHzation commenced. 
 
 TTiis continuity stretching over centuries, required 
 also collectivity. Imagine a task of a thousand-yeared 
 duration, entrusted to the slender thread of one family. 
 At any time disease or accident might sunder that line, 
 and intercept the process. Without man, domestic 
 
116 THE FREE CITY 
 
 animals and plants cannot survive. In order to provide 
 continuity, with no gap in it, a collectivity of families 
 had .to be. Many tasks, furthermore, are beyond the 
 competency of individual toil; as in a ''Raising," to Uft 
 the heavy framework of a house. 
 
 But the collectivity must not be too big. Aristotle 
 and Jesus were right: To hold a people together through 
 generations of generations, the fellowship must be of a 
 vigorous quaUty. As the area of the human group en- 
 larges, the warmth of fellowship lessens. The further 
 they are stretched, the more the threads of intimacy at- 
 tenuate. The attenuation gets to be so slender at last 
 that the thread snaps; the individual no longer feels 
 himseK identified in sympathy and interest with the 
 others. Altercation then opens a gulf. Bickerings arise; 
 class feuds; warfare. And that civilization-line is cut. 
 
 Further, it must not only be a community, and a small 
 community; but it must be a sovereign community. 
 The small repubUc is always a work state; a commune of 
 producers banding themselves against exploitation. No- 
 mads round about seek to pilfer the product of these 
 toilers, either by overt incursions, or by spohation dis- 
 guised under commercial formulas. Sovereignty is the 
 hedge wherewith the community girdles itself, to defend 
 that garden-plot of civiUzation from being overrun and 
 trampled by hmnan tigers. Like early Rome, defending 
 herself against commercially-minded Carthage. Like 
 Athens, against the hordes of Darius and Xerxes. Like 
 Israel, against Egypt and Chaldea and Caesarism. With- 
 out that hedge, the fruits of the garden could never have 
 come to maturity. 
 
 CiviUzation, thus, is the product of a small collectivity, 
 abiding continuously in one spot through hundreds of 
 years, and sovereign. Which is another way to describe 
 
WHY AMERICA IS THE LOITERER 117 
 
 a city republic. The one spot in America that most 
 closely resembles the broken topography of the Mediter- 
 ranean, is Peru. That cordillera of the Andes Range is 
 made up of "knots"; plateaux formed by the crossing 
 of two ranges, and surrounded on all sides by mountain 
 walls or dizzy ravines. In those natural nests, people 
 grouped themselves. Cut off by profound gorges or 
 snow-capped sierras from the peoples around them, they 
 developed into communities. Each was a httle republic, 
 owning their lands and hves in common. The Inca 
 civilization was the result. The wild potato of a filbert's 
 size became in their hands a tubercle practically as we 
 have it to-day. The wild plant became the maize, whence 
 we have our golden corn. The mountain goat was do- 
 mesticated into their llama, and its wool was woven into 
 tapestries of strange beauty. 
 
 Why then did not the Incas go on to the cultural 
 heights reached by Athens and her sister communes? 
 Those Peruvians made the mistake that modernity is 
 making: they went from municipality over into nation- 
 aUty; they got the mania of bigness. The natural 
 barriers were not sufficiently insuperable to keep the 
 communities distinct. As soon as they began to get 
 civilized, they drove highways through the mountain 
 walls, threw bridges across the deep defiles. Then they 
 committed the heresy of heresies: instead of federating, 
 the communities fused. They yielded up their local 
 autonomy, unto a centraUzed power. With the big state 
 came a weakening of the tie conjoining man to man. 
 The people fell into discords. Warrings broke out. 
 Commotions followed commotions. Until the Man on 
 Horseback appeared. A ruling dynasty established itself, 
 supported by a military dictatorship. The Incas be- 
 came what is probably the most perfect instance of 
 
118 THE FREE CITY 
 
 socialistic nationalism ever known. "Hie huge state was 
 a centralized and highly benevolent despotism. There 
 was great pomp in Cuzco, the capital; and dull drudgery 
 in the provinces. The eye of the central power, reports 
 Clement Markham, was ever upon the people. The 
 never-faiUng brain provided for all their wants; gathered 
 in the tribute; selected their cliildren for the various 
 occupations. 
 
 And what was the net product of this mammoth and 
 highly centraUzed nation? The Peruvians developed 
 much in the way of materiahty, and naught in the realm 
 of personaUty. Nationality makes a people rich. Mu- 
 nicipaHty makes a people great. The Incas, when they 
 gave up their Uttle repubUcs and fused into a nation, 
 chose material values at the expense of personal values. 
 Their hydraulic engineering was bold and skilful. They 
 had a level road sixteen hundred miles in length, with 
 galleries cut league after league through solid rock. 
 Ravines of hideous depth were filled with bridges of solid 
 masonry. It was a land of gold, hterally. Pizarro, 
 Amalgro, and their fellow Spaniards found that the re- 
 ports which had come to them on this score were not ex- 
 aggerated. In one of the temples, all of the implements, 
 even to the spades and rakes in the garden, were of gold. 
 When Pizarro, having captured their chief, demanded a 
 ransom, one of the parcels of treasure sent to him con- 
 sisted of eleven thousand llamas laden with gold. 
 
 But where in her annals will you find the name of a 
 great-minded Inca? Of them we read, "The people were 
 nourished and well cared for, and they multiplied ex- 
 ceedingly." Nor did the gold they heaped together 
 enrich mankind permanently. It brought upon them the 
 Spaniards, and tragic ferocities. Pizarro and Amalgro 
 themselves were not lastingly enriched. They wasted 
 
WHY AMERICA IS THE LOITERER 119 
 
 their winnings in wars with each other. And both of 
 them died so poor that they were "buried of mere char- 
 ity." The gold that this Inca treasury poured into the 
 lap of Spain was the latter's undoing. From that time 
 dates the commencement of Spanish decay. 
 
 CiviUzation is the flower, of which a Free City is the 
 stem and root. A millennial plant, it requires a thousand 
 years of consecutive growth to come to efflorescence. 
 Man in America has not yet acquired that fixedness of 
 rootage. Through twenty thousand years, America has 
 been the loiterer. At this moment, smothered up in 
 superfluity, we are still the loiterer. Cardboard churches, 
 plaster ornaments, imitation stone, iron towers that 
 pretend to be granite; commercial privateering; poli- 
 tician government; a people drunk with materiahty; 
 speed; money to spend and boots to kollop — who in 
 after ages will think of us? What are we building that 
 the quicksand years will not swallow? Whatsoever 
 values we possess are an importation from Europe and 
 Asia. There, httle repubUcs fastened themselves in one 
 spot; toilers with investiture of indefeasible majesty, 
 and producing works that gHster with an immortal re- 
 nown. Of us, the record: "The people were nourished 
 and well cared for, and they multipUed exceedingly." 
 
CHAPTER IX 
 
 TWILIGHT AND THE DARK 
 
 SO long as municipality was their political form, the 
 Mediterranean coastal reaches continued to be the 
 home of a civilized and creative order. When this 
 was supplanted by a pohtical establishment based on the 
 idea of bigness, that civihzation passed away. The 
 Roman Empire, Uke all huge poUtical structures, spelt 
 decadence. 
 
 Because of their inheritance from the early and mu- 
 nicipal era, the Roman emperors possessed no small 
 amount of political genius. Roman law, Greek art, 
 GaUlean ethics, gave to the Empire a store of vitaUty 
 which kept her going through more than four hundred 
 years. In the flush and force of that invigoration, the 
 emperors wrought ofttimes in statesmanly fashion. Al- 
 exander had founded his empire on the Greek model: 
 small units, each with a city for its center. The Roman 
 emperors did the same. They would grant to a city the 
 civiTAs; whereby the town became a httle Rome in that 
 locaUty, and whose people enjoyed the Roman citizen- 
 ship. Over such, the emperors maintained a personal 
 surveillance. Their edicts for the welfare of these city- 
 centers grew at last into a considerable body of munic- 
 ipal law. 
 
 But these devices could not permanently avail. The 
 Empire was sick with a deep-seated sickness; paUiatives 
 
 120 
 
TWILIGHT AND THE DARK 121 
 
 could but relieve temporarily. This malady was, the de- 
 cay of pubhc-mindedness in the people. The provincial 
 cities had become puppets worked by the central and far 
 away power. The only rights of self-government left 
 to the communities were on trumpery matters. The real 
 government — matters concerning the importances of 
 life — had been wrested from them, taken over by the 
 centrahzed machine on the Tiber. Perceiving that local 
 patriotism was declining, the emperors tried to induce in 
 the people a pride in the Empire as a whole. But human 
 beings cannot identify themselves enthusiastically with 
 a governmental aggregate whose area reaches beyond the 
 confines of their daily affairs. The decay of pubUc con- 
 sciousness is the outstanding fact of these five downward- 
 sHpping centuries. 
 
 Rome herself was no longer a source of virtue. There 
 at the heart, the spirit of citizenship was also dead, or 
 dying. The influx of tribute was a leprosy disseminating 
 its white pus through all the tissues of society. They 
 who had once been citizens of the Cato breed, hardy ab- 
 stemious folk resolute for freedom, were now a rabble, 
 accepting bread from the Emperor, and a dole of tickets 
 to amphitheatrical bestiaUties. Those folk in Rome 
 thought to be free at the expense of bondage in the prov- 
 inces. They found that the chain wherewith they 
 shackled these, tangled its other end about their own 
 ankles; a clamp self-locking, as though the iron links 
 had by some Egyptian magic transformed into serpents 
 and now were twining their coils about the Laocoon. 
 Souls, once of the Gracchi stamp, deteriorated to a 
 PANEM ET ciRCENSES level. They proved that the descent 
 into hell is easy. "None cared what way he gained, so 
 gain were his," recorded Juvenal. And he hved early, 
 when the descensus Averno was at its commencement. 
 
122 THE FREE CITY 
 
 Rome as a municipal republic had been an ascending 
 society. Rome as the center of a far-encircUng imperial- 
 ism, was a descending society. 
 
 The obliteration of local autonomy went on progres- 
 sively. Augustus had affected to be a bourgeois emperor. 
 He left much power in the hands of the outlying provinces. 
 But one thing he did not leave in their hands — sover- 
 eignty. So they lacked the one thing needful. These 
 local centers were no longer world capitals, invested with 
 awful majesty, free of dictation from any source except 
 the Source Within. They were satellites to the central 
 sun on the Tiber. Therefore, in the influence they 
 wielded on the imaginations of their people, there was all 
 the difference between sunlight and moonlight. Munic- 
 ipal freedom is hke the solar emanations: possessed of 
 mysterious power, because acting directly. But when 
 reflected, as from the moon's orb, those rays lose their 
 occult chemistry; become pale and lifeless. 
 
 The faUing away of civic spirit in the provinces gave 
 the emperors no end of trouble. When each community 
 had been a sovereign state, the people had insisted on the 
 privilege of participation in the government; had fought 
 battles to maintain that right. Now that Free Cities 
 were no more, the spirit of citizenship atrophied. More 
 and more, the hands of the Emperor had to busy them- 
 selves with distant affairs, which once the local citizens 
 had administered. After Augustus, the centralization 
 proceeded with constant pace. The state became con- 
 centrated in a princeps on his Palatine throne. There 
 are historians who criticise the emperors for thus grasp- 
 ing more and more power; as there are contemporary 
 critics rebuking the president of the United States of 
 America for his extension of White House authority. 
 In neither case is the executive at fault. Both the 
 
TWILIGHT AND THE DARK 123 
 
 Roman Empire and the United States bulk as colossal 
 states; therefore, as participation by the individual in 
 the affairs of government decUnes, the central power is 
 compelled to take into its own hands the neglected 
 threads. 
 
 To handle the increase of administrative matters, an 
 officialdom gathered about the Emperor; a civil service 
 constantly more bureaucratic, constantly more profes- 
 sional. In Hadrian's day the step was formally taken: 
 the civil service was organized into a machine — an 
 enormous array of bureaucrats taking orders from the 
 government on the banks of the Tiber; radiating over 
 the Empire like strands in the web of a spider. 
 
 Citizenship means, the absorption of the ego into the 
 communal group, whereby his private inclinations are 
 subjugated. That self-obliteration in the public weal is 
 the seed of civilization. When the small republics of the 
 Mediterranean world gave way to the giant state, this 
 absorption of the ego in public consciousness could no 
 longer take place. The state was become a far-extending 
 leviathan; whose palpable embodiment was in a distant 
 city of the Italian peninsula, invisible and therefore im- 
 personal. Such a state sent no throb to the heart- 
 strings, awoke in the people no passion of self-abnegation. 
 Accordingly they slumped back into their primeval self- 
 ishness. Each one followed the devices and desires of 
 his own heart. Because there was no longer any thought 
 of the social union, there was no ardency of virtue. Aris- 
 totle is never tired of showing that moraUty is pubUc- 
 spiritedness: the municipality, beset by rivals and by 
 foes, needs a strong coherent society within her borders; 
 ergo, I as an individual, one of that component mass, 
 must not squander my health or my strength or my 
 goods; I must hve honestly and amicably and truthfully 
 
124 THE FREE CITY 
 
 and serviceably. When the body politic ia no longer 
 visibly present, but the government is become a mechan- 
 istic bureaucracy in a far-away invisible spot, that sum- 
 mons to the ethical life has lost its resounding and vibrant 
 note. 
 
 The vexations that plagued the emperors in their at- 
 tempts to administer the huge aggregate by means of a 
 Civil Service, were under several categories. But all of 
 these were variants of the one curse, the decHne of social- 
 mindedness. There was no longer in the people a sense 
 of society. Population decreased — portent of the ego- 
 istic sensuahties that were gaining the upper hand. The 
 army arose in a spirit of class-assertiveness; overrode all 
 restraints of law; assassinated emperors at will. Land 
 went out of cultivation, so that large tracts became waste. 
 When pride of locaUty perishes, agriculture is touched 
 with a mortal sickness; is caught in the drive of the 
 population away from the rural regions toward the urban 
 centers and a life of leisure. Thus the temper of the time 
 was fashioned by an idle class. Labor became a degra- 
 dation. People flocked to the commercial seats, where 
 they could get a livehhood without contact with loam and 
 cattle. 
 
 We see frequent attempts by the Princeps and his 
 ofl&cialdom to overhaul the finances of the provincial 
 cities. This interference discouraged the citizens from 
 interesting themselves in local affairs that had become 
 but the administrative tool of the Palatine bureaucracy. 
 As the citizens let go, affairs muddled into a still sorrier 
 mess; which called for additional interference from the 
 center. That interference destroyed still more com- 
 pletely in the citizens their sense of responsibility for the 
 state. The Empire was caught in a vicious circle which 
 locked itself ever more tightly: Private negligence com- 
 
TWILIGHT AND THE DARK 125 
 
 pelled bureaucratic intervention; bureaucratic inter- 
 vention augmented the private negligence. 
 
 We behold the emperors appointing curatores: 
 "Commissioners For the Investigation of the Condition of 
 Free Cities." As these officials became corrupt, other 
 officials were appointed to watch the first. Soon watchers 
 had to be appointed to watch the watchers. Eagerly the 
 emperors sought to stir up the people in each community 
 to care for the pubUc business; in much the same method 
 as is being witnessed in America — hortatory suppUca- 
 tions: a "Revival of Citizenship." It was in vain. Ex- 
 hortations failing, decrees conmianded the town senates 
 — the CURIA — ^^to do their work: inspect the pubhc 
 buildings, provide games, oversee the postal and trans- 
 port service, collect the taxes, work the vacant lands. 
 Penalties were exacted upon recreant town senates, and 
 upon the members thereof who sought to dodge their 
 obligations to society. Finally membership in a town 
 senate became so irksome that we see the emperors 
 sentencing to membership in those curia as punishment, 
 prisoners who had been convicted of some crime or 
 misdemeanor. 
 
 The Roman Empire was unable to fuse the populational 
 ingredients; when the melting pot is too large, it will not 
 come to the melting point. The barbarians from the 
 North were not the destroyers of that Empire. It broke 
 asunder of its own weight. A thousand-miled nation 
 from East to West, it had no coherency. Over so large 
 an area, identity of interest was impossible. Class be- 
 came arrayed against class; section against section. 
 Perceiving their mistake, the emperors tried at last a 
 remedy: they divided the Empire into halves, with a 
 capital for the western end, and another capital for the 
 eastern end. But this compromise still left the state five 
 
126 THE FREE CITY 
 
 hundred miles long. So that, in the thousand daily 
 procedures of the people, private interest continued to 
 take precedence over pubUc interest. Each Uttle act 
 of private-mindedness was in itself of small consequence. 
 But when the selfishness of one individual is multiplied 
 by that of one hundred and twenty million individuals, it 
 makes a disintegrating force against which no emperor, 
 no civil service, no poUce force, can cope. In every 
 bosom was generated a nest of serpents and cockatrices 
 that refused to be charmed. The social union was de- 
 composed. In the year 476, when the barbarians en- 
 camped around the city of Rome and vanquished her, 
 they were but expressing in outward fact what had for 
 long been the inward condition: the Roman state had 
 ceased to be; that society had disintegrated into one 
 hundred and twenty miUion individualistic atoms. 
 
 Ostragoth, Hun, and Visigoth were uncivilized, because 
 their wanderings through the forests of central Europe 
 and the steppes of the East had wrought in them no 
 consecutive and collective existence; that is to say, no 
 mimicipal psychology. This uncivihzed North now over- 
 flooded the uncivihzed South. "If the whole ocean," 
 says a contemporary witness of the cyclonic event, "if 
 the whole ocean had swept over this country, it could not 
 have made more horrible ravages. Our stock, our fruits, 
 our harvests have been taken from us. Villages situated 
 upon the highest mountains, even cities surrounded by 
 rivers, have not been able to protect their inhabitants 
 against the fury of these barbarians." Rome was sacked. 
 Athens and the isles of Greece were harried. Jerusalem 
 long before had been crushed under the imperial foot of 
 Titus. Where the songs of Zion had been heard, now 
 resounded the speech of roaming tribes from the deserts 
 of the Arabah. Where the flexible Greek and the terse 
 
TWILIGHT AND THE DARK 127 
 
 Latin had communicated graciousness to man's life, the 
 gutturals of the barbaroi were heard. The sun of munic- 
 ipality had set. Night settled down thickly. 
 
 The barbarians made effort to continue some of the 
 cities. Wallia of the Visigoths took up his headquarters 
 at Toulouse. Theodoric, at Ravenna. Clovis, at Paris. 
 But the endeavor was short-Uved. In these nomadic 
 hordes there was no instinct of municipaUty. After these 
 chieftains were dead, their followers left the cities. They 
 made the domain instead of the city their seat. Thus 
 they could give themselves to himting and hawking, and 
 the migrant life generally. 
 
 Schools passed out of existence. Libraries were 
 tumbled; books no longer circulated. Seeds and fruit 
 trees and Uve stock, that had been improved through 
 consecutive generations of cultivators, were destroyed or 
 permitted to perish. Husbandry pined away. There 
 was certainly not much arable, and but little even of 
 pasture farming. Large tracts that once had been fertile, 
 grew up to wildwood. Roads through the forest tangle 
 disappeared. The Romans had been skilful carriage 
 makers. These roamer tribes had no use for vehicles. 
 They preferred horseback. So roads gave place to bridle 
 paths. 
 
 Some of the towns — Lyons, Marseilles, Milan, Genoa, 
 Florence, Pisa — continued as names. But they had no 
 municipal spirit. Wide areas in these towns were de- 
 serted, so that flocks were pastured in the midst of once 
 populous cities. The architecture of the classic world 
 was used as a quarry whence to pillage stone for the 
 hovels of the people. In only two places have we very 
 much of the antique world still standing. One of these 
 is Syria east of the Jordan, in a narrow strip edging the 
 desert; Roman structures there are visible, and in abund- 
 
128 THE FREE CITY 
 
 ance; because the Bedouin natives in that region lived in 
 tents, and had no need for carved stone. The other spot 
 was preserved to us also by accident : Pompeii and Her- 
 culaneum. We can never be too grateful to Vesuvius for 
 the protecting layer of ashes and lava wherewith it 
 blanketed those two cities and preserved them intact 
 to our day. Say not, the elements are destructive. For 
 destroying power there is nothing in the imiverse to equal 
 man, when his egoistic impulses are unbridled by civiU- 
 zation's sweet restraints. Those two spots accidentally 
 saved to us, hint the splendor that covered all of the 
 Mediterranean world in the classic era, that Luminous 
 Age we have been reviewing: landscapes radiant with 
 carved work; towns and countrysides inwrought with 
 marble shafts; streets gorgeous in azure and gold. 
 
 The Dark Ages that now followed must not be under- 
 stood as a lifeless era. There was life enough. But it 
 was egoistic Life. Now that communal sovereignty was 
 no more, each man claimed that he was sovereign; he 
 did that which was right in his own eyes; which meant, 
 he indulged his caprice, obeyed no law, followed the im- 
 pulse of the moment. We read, in one of the edicts by 
 which the Holy Roman Empire — as the faint survival of 
 the ancient Empire called itself — sought to control the 
 turbulence: "It is enjoined upon all the tenants that none 
 of them attack any others, in word or deed, with clubs 
 or arrows or knives." And again: "It is ordained that 
 all the women must restrain their tongues from slander- 
 ing." And this: "Whatever son shall drive his father 
 from his castle with fire and sword, or shall attack, wound, 
 or imprison his father, shall be regarded as dishonored 
 and an outlaw." A Simon Stylites, self-worshipped on 
 his pillar top, images the time. 
 
 Life became a business of naked physical force. Each 
 
TWILIGHT AND THE DARK 129 
 
 man was arrayed against his fellow. Scrimmage was the 
 normal condition. Each family was its own policeman. 
 Unshielded against the assaults of brigandage, the lowly 
 attached themselves in a servile relationship to some lord 
 who was powerful enough to protect them; whence the 
 feudal status of seigneur and serf. A wide-wasting ocean 
 of feuds and scuffling and pillage. 
 
 City-worship, we saw, brings rehgion home to every- 
 day Ufe; whereby the doings of each moment are chas- 
 tened; and a moraUzed society is the result. Now, re- 
 ligion and Hfe were divorced — the flying apart of the 
 elements of society, when the state is big. A knight 
 would amass a fortune in open brigandage, burning, slay- 
 ing, robbing; and then would devote the proceeds to the 
 church. No small part of the rehgious estates of that 
 period obtained in this way their foimdations. A noble- 
 man and his family were punctiUous to attend mass in 
 the oratory of the castle; whilst in the dungeon under- 
 neath, a serf or poUtical prisoner would be perishing for 
 want of bread and water. The people would go from 
 prayers to witness cold-bloodedly an execution by rack 
 or wheel or burning at the stake. A brigand, awaiting in 
 ambush a traveller coming up the valley, would tell his 
 beads in the interim. Charlemagne commanded: "Let 
 no priest presume to store provisions or hay in the church." 
 And further: "Let the priests, according to the apostle's 
 advice, withdraw themselves from revelling and drunken- 
 ness. For some of them are wont to sit up till midnight 
 or later, boozing with their neighbors; and then these 
 men, who ought to be of a rehgious or holy deportment, 
 return to their churches drunken." 
 
 Of the Celts we have a description by Posidonius: 
 "They eat in a slovenly manner; and seize with their 
 hands, hke Uons with their claws, whole quarters of meat; 
 
130 THE FREE CITY 
 
 which they tear in pieces with their teeth. If they find 
 a tough morsel they cut it with a small knife which they 
 always carry in a sheaf at their side." Forks were not 
 known till very late. A traveller in Italy records his 
 pleasure at discovering this utensil in use; it seems to 
 him a better way than for everyone to dip his fingers in 
 the common dish, "seeing that all men's fingers are not 
 alike clean." We have preserved a recipe that throws 
 Ught on the cookery of the time: "Take a pig, draw him, 
 smite ofif his head, cut him in IV. quarters, boil him; take 
 him up and let cool; smite him in pieces." 
 
 This then was the Dark Ages. A welter of fightings, 
 and of uncoordinated whimsical energies. A decay of 
 intellectual life and the mechanic arts. No centers where 
 fellowship could rear her beautiful growths. The decay 
 of municipaUty was the decay also of a feeling for Nature. 
 The pitiful attempts at art in this period possess but a 
 documentary value; like the reUgion of the day, a formal- 
 ism; no naturalness; a stilted grotesquerie. Five squaUd 
 centuries. 
 
 Citizenship is the Ught of the world. That shining 
 orb now was set. So night ensued; a night long and 
 black and turbulent. 
 
CHAPTER X 
 
 INDUSTRIAL DEMOCRACIES 
 
 THE rise of Free Cities, and accordingly the end of 
 the Dark Ages, dates shortly after the year 1000. 
 In part the arrival of that round millennial figure 
 started the new era. The mind of man, groping in the 
 night that was upon Europe, hailed the year 1000 as a 
 perhaps divinely intentioned turning point. The real 
 causation, however, was something far more concrete 
 and massive. The resurrection of municipal states in 
 Europe traced its roots to the Orient. 
 
 Throughout the Dark Ages a vestige of civilization had 
 continued, in that there was kept aUve in the people the 
 vision of at least one free city — Jerusalem. Man can- 
 not get along without splendors. When he is starved of 
 them in his daily smroundings, the fantasy-forming 
 faculty builds an illusional world whither his spirit may 
 take up its abode. Such had been to Europeans the 
 dream-Jerusalem during those five dismal centuries: a 
 realm of the Blessed, rich with all resplendence; gates 
 of pearl, streets of massy gold, walls of sapphire and ruby 
 and jasper — the "Zion" of the Book of Revelation. 
 As is ever the case, the sumptuousness of that visionary- 
 world was in direct ratio to the dinginess of the actual 
 world they were living in. The mind of man has seldom 
 pictured a more radiant paradise, than during those five 
 hundred years when Europe was a gloomy roaring hell. 
 
 131 
 
132 THE FREE CITY 
 
 But this Jerusalem, though etherealized, was also a 
 geographical fact. Europe in that age had a more vivid 
 awareness of Palestine than have moderns. The Saracen, 
 inhabiting that land, had become the topic of topics — 
 much what the labor movement is to-day. The spread 
 of the Moslem up through Spain into France, and from 
 the other direction through Asia Minor towards the 
 Balkan gateway into Europe, was an omnipresent dread. 
 
 The westward horn of that advancing crescent was no 
 longer menacing; Martel the Hammerer had terminated 
 that prong of aggression. But the horn at the other end 
 was portentous, threatening. The Saracens had captured 
 Jerusalem, and were edging up ever more close to the 
 Dardanelles. 
 
 Pilgrimages to Jerusalem by pious Christians, which 
 had hitherto been a frequent custom, were now inter- 
 rupted by the hated Mohammedans. When therefore 
 Peter the Hermit began to preach, "Jerusalem must be 
 delivered," he obtained a Uvely response. The Latin 
 hymn, urbs zion aurea, by Bernard of Cluny, is char- 
 acteristic of that day; is a historical document in the re- 
 ligion of citizenship: 
 
 Jerusalem the golden, with milk and honey hlest! 
 Beneath thy contemplation, sink heart and voice 
 
 oppressed. 
 I know not, Oh I know not, what joys await ws there; 
 What radiancy of glory, what bliss beyond compare. 
 
 To rescue the "sweet and blessed country that eager 
 hearts expect," the Crusades began. 
 
 On their way to dehver Jerusalem, the Crusaders be- 
 held Constantinople. This was the only city in Europe 
 that had escaped the barbarian deluge; thanks to the 
 fact that the Danube flows east and west. The rivers of 
 
INDUSTRIAL DEMOCRACIES 133 
 
 western Europe flow north and south, facilitating the 
 downward incursion of the barbaric tribes. But the 
 Danube permitted a stand to be taken against them. 
 This barrier saved Constantinople, whilst Rome and 
 Athens succumbed. Thus through a thousand years, 
 Constantinople had been the refuge of the arts of the 
 classic world. Against the Saracen, in the other direc- 
 tion, she had long been the watcher at the gate of 
 Europe, Because she kept that watch with faithfulness 
 much of the civiUzation we possess to-day is due. 
 
 For most of the Crusaders, Constantinople was their 
 first sight of a city. And it was a spectacle eminently 
 calculated to impress them. Here schools were flourish- 
 ing; the academies of Rome and the porticoes of Greece, 
 that had hither fled for shelter. Constantinople was the 
 renowned city of the world; famed for her tapestry 
 weavings, her ceramic art, philosophy, forensic oratory, 
 and imposing ceremonial of state. As the Crusaders 
 looked upon this town, home of a so glistering and deco- 
 rated life, a new mental imiverse swam within their ken. 
 It caused a somersault in their point of view; reversed 
 their standards, their judgment of themselves and the 
 world. They contrasted the orderliness and security of 
 life here, with their chaotic countrysides, torn by broils 
 and alarms. They contrasted the distinguished manners 
 of these townsmen with their own crudities of speech 
 and dress and bearing. They contrasted the amphi- 
 theatre, the baths, the colonnades, with the gray dreari- 
 ness of their home country. They contrasted the houses 
 here, of splendid tile and masonry, gardened and win- 
 dowed, with their own turf huts thatched with branches, 
 a hole in the roof for smoke-vent. 
 
 Passing over into Asia Minor, they saw Smyrna, Ephe- 
 sus, Ancre, Antioch, Gaza; and the civiUzing work in the 
 
134 THE FREE CITY 
 
 marrow of their spinal system was continued. How 
 dingy seemed their own Europe, when measured against 
 the vivacity and splendors of life here in organized com- 
 munities! The stabihty of this communal existence im- 
 pressed them. Here were towns that boasted twenty 
 centuries of uninterrupted being; so that each generation 
 as it came into the world was caught up by and en- 
 wrapped in a body of civil tradition whereby a refining 
 fire was made to play upon the dross in man's composi- 
 tion. The city, they perceived, was an organization of 
 resources for instruction and humane intercourse; an 
 institution that was lacking in the hfe of Europe. Loath 
 though they were, these Westerners had to concede that 
 the despised Saracen infidel was a more civiUzed being 
 than they were. 
 
 I mean not to color the picture too highly. Contrasted 
 with the standards of modem material comfort, those 
 Moslem cities would shine with but a sombre light. But 
 in the art of manners, the Saracen of that day was prob- 
 ably more advanced than the average modem. The 
 Mussulman culture was a city culture. Mohammed had 
 had a Mecca and a Medina in his spiritual career. Also 
 the Old Testament stateliness was in his blood. There 
 was in the Moslem faith no hostiHty to cities. They 
 spared the towns they took, and continued the civil 
 traditions. The architecture of the Alhambra attests 
 that they had creative power. There were Moslem uni- 
 versities at Bagdad, Babylon, and Alexandria. Their 
 Cordova in Spain was a center of intellectuaUty and bril- 
 liant culture, whilst Christian Europe was tossing in the 
 hag-ridden years of nightmare. Nothing is more clear 
 than the impression of polish and high deportment which 
 the Moslems made on the Crusader. To the Moslem, in 
 turn, these Westerners appeared vulgarians, raw, unen- 
 
INDUSTRIAL DEMOCRACIES 135 
 
 kindled; given to garlic and other indelicate viands; 
 heavy witted, lumpish in spirit. The beef-bellied, 
 beef-brained Crusaders for the first time saw themselves 
 as others saw them. They compared this garnished 
 civiHzation with their own land where the people ate off 
 the bottom of a barrel for a table; for a seat had a bundle 
 of straw — serfs in mud-walled hutches, cowering at the 
 nod of their seigneur. The contrast cut deep welts in 
 their consciousness. 
 
 Then at last, on the vision of the Crusaders, lifted the 
 city of cities — the Zion of their dreams. Artists have 
 tried to picture the psychology of these pilgrim hosts as 
 they caught sight for the first time of Jerusalem; have 
 portrayed their dfevoutness of expression, kneehng, mail- 
 clad, and surrounded by the panoply of war. Canvas can 
 present but a feeble image of the reahty. When that 
 city burst into view, it was as when the Delectable Moun- 
 tains and the Gate Beautiful loomed upon the sight of 
 the travellers in Pilgrim's Progress. They had not been 
 dulled, as we modems are, by too much and useless travel. 
 Each new city was to them a fresh wonder. But here was 
 the primate of cities; cradle of their reUgion, where very 
 God had dwelt and been crucified and entombed; Home- 
 land of their souls, to attain which they had braved a 
 thousand dangers, endured a thousand hells of privation. 
 
 From that time the city form of existence, with its rich 
 ornament and stately decorums, became the goal of 
 striving in every devout pilgrim breast. The Crusaders 
 returned home, missionaries of a civil and urbane organi- 
 zation of life. Now began to be fulfilled that forecast 
 announced by Jesus: Jerusalem became the mother of 
 Free Cities. It was verily the Son of Man coming again 
 in power and great glory. Like a river lost underground, 
 that Palestinian stream of influence had flowed for a 
 
136 THE FREE CITY 
 
 thousand years, out of the sight of history and men's 
 eyes. Now it reemerged in the form of a hundred 
 municipal republics, dotting Italy and France and Ger- 
 many and the Netherlands and England, So Jerusalem 
 in the days of her exile proved more fecundative than 
 during her Judaic period. 
 
 As might have been expected, one of the first places 
 where the Free City revived was Rome. Her ancient 
 fame and grandeur had never utterly failed. Charle- 
 magne had had a chair of silver, chased to represent 
 the city of Rome; and another chair representing Con- 
 stantinople. The barbarians had wrought havoc upon 
 Tiber's Town; but her animate stones kept a something 
 of tradition aUve. And now, Arnold of Brescia started 
 her civic resurrection. A monk, and of rapt austere 
 fibre, his heart cried aloud at the corruption in the papal 
 court. There was at the time a struggle in Rome be- 
 tween the local nobility and the pojje. Arnold entered 
 the fight on the side of the nobihty. Soon he became a 
 prominent figure in the controversy. 
 
 There is a dispute among historians as to whether 
 Arnold was a religious devotee or a political reformer. 
 The debate is its own answer. He was both. He sought 
 to restore the city state of Rome. The return to a munic- 
 ipal commonwealth is a return to life's midmost center, 
 where secularity and sanctity are reunited. Arnold 
 wished to woo those antitjrpes into harmony. He planned 
 to rebuild Rome as a Christian Republic: the oldtime 
 blessed marriage of pohtics and rehgion. He dethroned 
 the pope. Under his leadership much of the city of Rome 
 was built up out of its ruins. Those old words of magic, 
 SENATus POPULUSQUE ROMANUS, became once more a 
 living phrase. A municipal era had recommenced. To 
 be sure, Arnold did not last long. The pope rallied from 
 
INDUSTRIAL DEMOCRACIES 137 
 
 his discomfiture, and got the emperor to aid him. Said 
 this Frederick: "It is not for the people to give laws to 
 the prince, but to obey his commands." Arnold was 
 hung. But the gallowstree lifted him into the sight of 
 all Christendom. 
 
 Thereafter Rome would not be quiet. A Free City is 
 so instinct with hberty that its brick and mortar become 
 tinctured with the subtle essence. Prussia, seeking to 
 imperialize the German Confederacy, found most trouble 
 with towns like Bremen and Hamburg, whose working 
 people could not forget their aforetime liberties when 
 these were Free Cities. Rome's commonalty has always 
 been a nest of liornets in the cushion of any despot who 
 thought there to make a comfortable seat. Not long 
 after Arnold, "Rome and her rats" made it so disagree- 
 able for the pope that he moved out, nor stopped until 
 he had reached the valley of the Rhone; and for seventy 
 years the papacy pitched camp at Avignon. 
 
 Now Rienzi arose to take up the unfinished task 
 of Arnold. Rienzi was a worshipper — Hterally — of 
 Rome's ancient glory. An expert in archeology, he con- 
 ducted companies of people through her ruins, and dis- 
 coursed to them on the scenes that had there been enacted. 
 His imagination kindled. He began to think in terms of 
 an ideal commonwealth, the good state — il buono 
 BTATO. By a coup d'etat he wrested control of the city 
 from the turbulent nobles. Then he issued a proclama- 
 tion investing the people with the government and 
 property; a proprietorship that included the lands round 
 about. In this uprising of a popular power hostile to 
 them both, pope and nobles forgot their long-standing 
 quarrel. They joined hands against this upstart city- 
 state. Rienzi, "Last of the Tribunes," was killed, and 
 his doings annulled. 
 
138 THE FREE CITY 
 
 These events at Rome are a specimen of what was 
 happening in a score of places. A great gust of freedom 
 was whifFmg powerfully through the corridors of Europe. 
 This age saw the first popular parliament in France; 
 Magna Charta in England; in Spain, permission secured 
 from Alfonso of Castile for the Free Cities to send dele- 
 gates to the Cortes; and deputies sent by the Cities in 
 Germany to the imperial Diet. The Albigenses move- 
 ment was in hke manner an assertion of local spirit against 
 the centralizing power of the Holy Roman Empire. The 
 animosity against this rising ferment crops out in the 
 chronicle narrating the suppression of the Albigenses : "The 
 brute and pestilent race, unworthy of the name of men, 
 were cut away by the toil of the faithful, and by God's 
 mercy destroyed." This was the era of The Jacquerie, 
 a wide insurgency of the French peasant population. Wat 
 Tyler and John Ball in England also were preparing. 
 
 Historians differ as to the exact quality of this wide- 
 spread and simultaneous gusto of hberty.* MunicipaUty, 
 whose principle is teamwork, gives us the clue. The 
 Crusades had taught the people to act together — col- 
 lectivity, the municipal idea; declaring that work-folk 
 are too weak to stand individually against their enemies, 
 and therefore must assemble their social strengths. This 
 new-found principle revealed to the people their omnipo- 
 tence. Against their feudal lords the people put into 
 play the law of cooperation which the Crusades had 
 taught them. The people, restive against their seigneur 
 or baron or bishop, associated themselves to oppose his 
 power. This grouping was the formation of a Free City 
 in that domain. "The air of the town gives freedom," 
 was a medieval proverb. To win their freedom the 
 people had to barricade themselves from the feudal lord. 
 To retain their freedom they had to solidify that barricade 
 
INDUSTRIAL DEMOCRACIES 139 
 
 into a permanent ring of defense; which became the city 
 wall. It wrought in the workers a sense of joint interest, 
 and the practise of acting together. About the year 1100, 
 civic communities began to seek and to obtain from king 
 or church, charters of incorporation against encroach- 
 ment by lay and feudal barons. 
 
 It is well to fix a clear picture of the birth of Free Cities 
 in this Medieval or Gothic era, as it has come to be called. 
 What we are here witnessing is the rise of the Commons, 
 that Third Estate which was to take its place alongside 
 the Clergy and the Nobles, and to play thenceforward no 
 trivial part in the annals of Europe. This thirteenth 
 century — most wonderful of all the eighteen centuries 
 since Jesus — saw come into being the city repubHcs of 
 Italy; in France, the communes; in Spain, the com- 
 muneros; the Freistadte of Germany; the municipalities 
 of England and Scotland. Freedom was the animating 
 spirit in their estabUshing. So fiercely flamed the hatred 
 between the nobility and these municipal common- 
 wealths, the knights were unwilling to have any of their 
 number Uve in a town; if one of them did so without good 
 and sufficient cause, it ofttimes disbarred him from their 
 tournaments. The town bell was the public voice of the 
 community. And that voice rang for freedom. This 
 spirit of communal sovereignty got into some of the 
 names, to this day: Freiburg, in Germany; Villefranche, 
 in France; Villafranca, in Spain. 
 
 At Laon we have preserved a contemporary document. 
 The nobles in that region had long been accustomed to 
 capture one of the common people and hold him for a 
 ransom. The bishop took sides with these oppressors 
 of the workingclass; was himself their cruellest oppressor. 
 He would hand over all who displeased him, to be tortured 
 by a negro slave that he kept largely for that purpose. 
 
140 THE FREE CITY 
 
 Forty of the peopJe swore to kill him. Learning of it, 
 he said, "What can you expect these folk to do by their 
 commotions? If my negro John were to seize the most 
 terrible one of them by the nose, the fellow would not 
 dare to give him even a growl. "VNTiat they yesterday 
 called their 'Conmiune' I have forced them to give up, 
 at least as long as I Uve." But the next day a cry rang 
 through the town: "Commune!" "Commune!" "Com- 
 mune!" It was the signal for insurrection. Bands of 
 men besieged the episcopal palace, entered, and found the 
 bishop hiding in a cask at the bottom of the cellar. They 
 killed him. Not long thereafter the king granted to 
 Laon a charter for a Conmiune. In forming one of these 
 Free Cities, the people were accustomed to join them- 
 selves to each other by a solemn oath known as The 
 Conjuration. In 1230 John, Bishop of Eppes, obtained 
 from the emperor a decree forbidding "conjurations" 
 and "conununes" in all the kingdom of Germany. 
 
 These commimes were hterally commonwealths — a 
 conmiunity of interest and property and person; that is, 
 they felt, thought, planned as one. We shall see these 
 Giothic folk working miracles of art achievement that 
 are the despair of modems. The secret of that art 
 baptism is to be found in this oneness of the civic tie 
 whereby the magic of crowd contagion and mass activity 
 was Uberated. At fairs, if a buyer was tricked, the laws 
 of the fair held not only the trickster but aU the other 
 tradesmen from that town responsible; and the goods 
 of any of them could be seized to compensate the victim. 
 "All the men of the Commune," read the charter of SenHs, 
 "shall aid each other with all their power." The charter 
 of Abbeville commanded: "Each of the men of the Com- 
 mune shall be faithful to his fellow, come to his succor, 
 lend him aid and counsel." 
 
INDUSTRIAL DEMOCRACIES 141 
 
 The community was the source of power and authority; 
 even of the authority to work. The town council por- 
 tioned out the right to practise a trade to a guild of 
 workmen. We find the gold-beaters' guild, the iron- 
 workers' guild, guilds of pewter makers, candle chandlers, 
 ale brewers, naUmakers, button makers, glovers, lantern 
 makers, potters, rope makers, wire drawers, jewellers, 
 gem cutters; and so forward. The community not only 
 had power; it accepted the responsibility that goes with 
 power. The city saw to it that every man was educated 
 in order to be able to work; and then supplied him with 
 work. Unemployment would have been regarded as civic 
 incompetency and municipal collapse. 
 
 In the towns of Flanders the city bell was called the 
 Werkklock, because it began and stopped the day's tasks. 
 The chiefs of the work guilds were not elected by the 
 workers, but were appointed by the civic magistracy; 
 and their by-laws were drawn up by the same public 
 body. Work was compulsory. A strike was accounted a 
 crime against the commonwealth. The artisan was re- 
 garded as an official in the service of the municipaUty; 
 and he was protected against competition both from in- 
 side and outside the state. An artisan was not per- 
 mitted to undersell another; he was absolutely forbidden 
 to have recourse to advertisements, or to boast his wares 
 to the disparaging of another's. At Saint Omer a market 
 ordinance forbade a vendor even to greet the passers-by. 
 Industry was a municipal affair. No one was permitted 
 to crush his fellow. There was a wholesome spirit of 
 rivalry; but not between man and man. The rivalry 
 was between all of the workers in one Commune, seeking 
 to make their town more beautiful and famous than the 
 Communes round about. 
 
 The citizens were connected with the municipality, 
 
142 THE FREE CITY 
 
 not as individuals but through their craft guilds. Police ser- 
 vice was rendered by all the able-bodied, each taking his turn 
 at the "watch and ward." In Paris we find the Old Clothes' 
 Guild securing partial exemption from this service : * ' No one 
 who is 60 years old, nor those whose wives are with child, 
 and no one who has been bled, need to share the watch." 
 
 The guilds had a legal standing. The power to en- 
 force regulations on their members was backed by the 
 arm of the state. The Commune guaranteed the eco- 
 nomic well-being of all; and enforced obedience from all. 
 The guilds were for service, not for selfishness. The 
 municipahty was sovereign over them. Athens of old 
 had met the tendency of a guild of workmen to set their 
 departmental interest ahead of the interest of the entire 
 community; and had severely disallowed this drift. So 
 with the Gothic cities. No set of workmen were per- 
 mitted to account themselves above other workmen. In 
 one Commune we find that even the mendicants were 
 recognized: the Beggars' Guild. The municipal republic 
 is the only political form that has ever been able to en- 
 courage the growth of trade unions and at the same time 
 retain the lordship over those unions so as to direct their 
 energies away from private advantage into channels of 
 pubhc well-being. The Gothic guilds maintained schools, 
 arranged technical training and apprenticeships, cared for 
 orphans, decorated festivals for the people; they built the 
 hospitals that, along with the city halls and cathedrals, 
 stand so wondrously as the monuments of the period. 
 
 It was an age of brotherhood, literally and actually. The 
 guildsmen were citizens first, and industrialists afterwards. 
 Thus they had an allegiance superior than to their trade; 
 were human beings. By the principle of collectivity the 
 workers had possessed themselves of power against their 
 feudal seigneurs. Now, from adding Hberty unto them, 
 
INDUSTRIAL DEMOCRACIES 143 
 
 this same principle of municipality went on to ennoble and 
 sweeten those workers. We saw that the Great Common- 
 wealthsman discom-aged the accumulation of a private for- 
 tune: "Seek ye first the city of God and its righteousness, 
 and all other things shall be added unto you." The taking 
 of anxious thought for one's Hvehhood was regarded by 
 him as a breach of confidence in the Commune. 
 
 The Gothic commonwealths caught up from Him this 
 idea of the collectivity, and cherished it. One of the 
 "best sellers" in that day was the Romance of the Rose. 
 Here is a passage from it: "Three cruel vengeances 
 pursue those wretches that hoard up their worthless 
 wealth: sore labor in the winning it, their fear to lose it, 
 and lastly the most bitter grief that they must leave their 
 hoards behind. If they were fain, who hold so much 
 gold, to shower around their bounty unto those in need 
 thereof, and nobly lend it free from measurement of usury, 
 I guess that then throughout the land were seen no pauper 
 man, nor starveling purchased woman." 
 
 This was the age that saw the coming of the Friars: 
 men whose apostolate had for its purpose to carry the 
 gospel from the monasteries out into the busy haunts of 
 men. It was the age of St. Francis, and of his plea for 
 fraternity, even to the extent of returning to evangelical 
 poverty. The poverello's contempt for riches attracted 
 multitudes of men and women. "The good order of 
 Christ," it was called; democracy towards the lowliest 
 human, and comprehending even the birds and flowers of 
 the meadow. The birth of Free Cities caught up all 
 classes in a communalistic ardor. Rarely has the world 
 witnessed another so impassioned era of fellowship. In- 
 stead of the self-seekings and self-importances of the 
 Dark Ages, men now learned the principle of collectivity. 
 And loveUest achievings were the consequence. 
 
CHAPTER XI 
 
 THE CITY STATE IS A WORK STATE 
 
 THE Gothic communes arose in a movement by the 
 workers for freedom; that is, in order to secure to 
 themselves the full product of their toil. Free 
 people are those who labor, and who enjoy the fruits of 
 their labor. All others are in slavery. "It is good and 
 comely for one to eat and to drink, and to enjoy the good 
 of all his labor that he taketh under the sun all the days 
 of his Ufe, which God giveth him; for it is his portion." 
 By collective effort, the toilers found that they could 
 overcome the knight, baron, or feudal seigneur; and that, 
 by continuing the association, they could perpetuate the 
 emancipation. That was the origin of those Free Cities. 
 Then the nobles adopted other tactics. They lo- 
 cated their castles near to the trade routes along which 
 the suppUes came to those towns; and began a systematic 
 pillage of the convoys. The Rhine was the principal route 
 between Italy and the cities of North Germany and the 
 Netherlands. The castles on the banks of that river — 
 picturesque now in their ruins — were robber strongholds. 
 For a noble to engage in a productive occupation dis- 
 graced and declassed him. Even to associate with these 
 burghers — as the inhabitants of the burghs, the forti- 
 fied cities, were called — was a blemish on the seignorial 
 escutcheon. So, they got their Uving by pillaging the 
 trade caravans. To guard the routes, we soon find the 
 
 144 
 
THE CITY STATE IS A WORK STATE 145 
 
 Cities making highway regulations. The law read that 
 roads leading from one market town to another must be 
 cleared, as to the bushes and underbrush, for a space of 
 two hundred feet on each side, to prevent men from 
 "liu-king in them to do hurt." 
 
 From that, the Cities went on to a further step: they 
 federated. These federations were purely for defense. 
 Military might for purposes of aggression did not 
 come into their mind. The municipal state is al- 
 ways a civiHan state. These Gothic municipaHties arose 
 to bring to an end the Dark Ages which had been char- 
 acterized by competition between man and man, leading 
 to private declarations of war and physical force. So 
 habitual had the scufflings become that the Church had 
 sought to establish a "Peace of God," which forbade 
 warfarings from Thursday evening till Monday morning 
 of each week. The workers at last became weary of so 
 turbulent a condition of affairs. They wished to be 
 something other than the men-at-arms of a feudal chief- 
 tain, swaggering, brawling, pillaging. In order to es- 
 tablish a pacific form of society, so as to lead their 
 respective calhngs in peace, they associated themselves 
 into Free Cities. In the charter obtained by the town of 
 Lorris, one of the articles read: "No burgher shall go 
 on an expedition, on foot or on horseback, from which he 
 cannot return the same day to his home if he desires." 
 A soldiery that insists on returning home every night, 
 would not be of much use for military purposes. 
 
 In the charter of the League of Rhine Cities, 1291, it is 
 almost pathetic to note the reiterated yearnings for a 
 peaceable mode of life: "To secure these things which 
 are for the pubhc good, we will spare neither ourselves 
 nor our possessions. We will mutually aid each other 
 with all our strength in securing redress from our griev- 
 
146 THE FREE CITY 
 
 ances. We decree that no member of the League shall 
 fmnish food, arms, or aid to anyone who opposes the 
 Peace. No citizen of any of the Cities in the League shall 
 associate with such, or give them coxmsel or support. If 
 anyone is convicted of doing so, he shall be expelled from 
 the city, and punished so severely in his property that he 
 will be a warning to others not to do such things. If 
 any knight molest us anywhere outside of the walled 
 towns, he is breaking the Peace; and we will in some way 
 inflict due punishment on him and his possessions, no 
 matter who he is. We wish to be protectors of the peas- 
 ants, if they will observe the Peace with us. But if they 
 make war on us, and if we catch them in any of the 
 Cities, we will punish them. We wish the Cities to 
 destroy all the ferries except those in their immediate 
 neighborhood; this to be done in order that the enemies 
 of the Peace may be deprived of all means of crossing 
 the Rhine. Under threat of punishment we forbid any 
 citizen to revile the lords, although they may be our 
 enemies. For although we wish to punish them for the 
 violence they have done us, yet before making war on 
 them we will first warn them to cease from injuring us. 
 We desire that each City shall try to persuade its neigh- 
 boring Cities to swear to keep the Peace. If they do 
 not do so, they will be entirely cut off from the Peace. 
 We wish all members of the League, lords and all the 
 others, to arm themselves and prepare for war, so that 
 whenever we call upon them we shall find them ready." 
 
 This federation idea spread to the Swiss communities; 
 so that we behold them forming aUiance against the House 
 of Hapsburg. The confederacy of Swiss communes, by 
 producing instances of valor such as that of Wilham Tell 
 and Arnold von Winkelried, demonstrates that the federal 
 plan of union is more conducive to heroism than the 
 
THE CITY STATE IS A WORK STATE 147 
 
 nationalist principle of fusion. A free community has a 
 stamina and capacity for resistance, not possessed by a 
 subject people. Say these communes of Switzerland: 
 
 "Know all men that we, the people of the Valley of 
 Uri, the conununity of the Valley of Schwiz, and the 
 mountaineers of the Lower Valley, have solemnly agreed 
 and bound ourselves by oath to aid and defend each other 
 with all our might and main; with our hves and property; 
 both within and without our boundaries each at his 
 own expense; against every enemy whatever who shall 
 attempt to molest us. We have decreed that we will 
 accept no magistrate in our Valleys who is not a native 
 or resident among us. Every difference among us shall 
 be decided by the wisest men; and whoever shall reject 
 their award shall be compelled by the other confederates. 
 If internal quarrels arise and one of the parties shall re- 
 fuse fair satisfaction, the confederates shall support the 
 other party. This covenant for our common weal shall, 
 God wilHng, endure forever." 
 
 The municipal republics in North Italy were in perhaps 
 a more necessitous situation than the others. They 
 were between the pope on one side, who from his seat 
 in Rome asserted imperial prerogatives; and the emperor 
 on the other side, head of the Holy German Empire. 
 Accordingly, Florence and her sister republics in the valley 
 of the Arno alUed themselves in what was known as the 
 Tuscan League. Milan and her neighbor republics, in 
 like fashion, formed themselves into the Lombard League. 
 Thereupon they put both pope and emperor into a due 
 posture of reverence towards these Communes that were 
 so mightily emerging. The Battle of Legnano, when the 
 Milanese sent the army of the emperor scurrying back 
 through the passes of the Alps into Germany, is one of 
 the notable events in the history of human freedom. 
 
148 THE FREE CITY 
 
 Along the Baltic arose still another federation — the 
 Hanseatic Cities. The engrossment of the German em- 
 peror with his Tuscan and Lombard cities so energetically 
 mutinous against his suzerainty, gave to the Baltic 
 towns the wholesome inattentiveness which enabled them 
 to learn the lesson of self-help. They were not long in 
 demonstrating that their interests were not towards the 
 empire, but towards their civic hearthstones. Com- 
 plained the Emperor Maximilian: "If one of these 
 traders only lost a bag of pepper, he disturbed the whole 
 empire about it; but if his imperial crown were in jeopardy 
 not a man would stir." Bremen, Hamburg, and Luebeck 
 were the original confederates. To this nucleus, one 
 after one other towns joined themselves. Till finally the 
 Hanse Cities extended from Norway to the Alps, and 
 from Russia on the east, far into the Low Country and 
 France. This international sway they exercised is of 
 high significance. It shows that the boundary Unes 
 drawn by nationality are artificial; frontiers arbitrarily 
 drawn to suit commercial or dynastic ends; there is no 
 spot on earth where the boundaries of race and nation- 
 aUty coincide. 
 
 The Hanseatics made the City the supreme unit. And 
 on that system they organized all of northern Europe, irre- 
 spective of language or race or position. Nominally they 
 were under the sway of the empire. But this was a for- 
 mality preserved for the sake of appearances. Emperor 
 Charles IV, though he had expressed disapproval of such 
 confederations, made an about-face and paid overtures 
 that he might become their head. Courteously, but with 
 steel-hard resolution, they rejected his advances. 
 
 These Hanseatic Communes were a true federalism; 
 that is, they retained the autonomy of the local units; 
 they never fused. For their joint business they held 
 
THE CITY STATE IS A WORK STATE 149 
 
 Councils or Diets. The Diets met in the various cities 
 and to it the Free Towns in the League sent delegates. 
 But the Diet had no binding authority. The call for a 
 Diet specified the business that would be taken up. 
 Thereupon each city held what were known as "Prede- 
 hberations," to instruct its delegates in the matter that 
 the Diet was to consider. When some joint action had 
 been agreed upon, there was still no coercion on the local 
 units. A city that broke discipline was "imhansed"; 
 excluded from the federation. This principle of punish- 
 ment was advocated by Oliver Wendell Holmes against 
 South Carolina, in preference to the application of vio- 
 lence, when she was nullifying an act of Congress: 
 
 Go then, our rash sister, afar and aloof; 
 Run wild in the sunshine away from our roof. 
 But when your heart aches and your feet have 
 
 grown sore, 
 Remember the pathway that leads to our door. 
 
 A city excluded from the Hanseatic League was well 
 nigh given over to death. The Great Ban not only 
 separated the culprit city from the League, but forbade 
 any of the other cities to have intercourse with her. 
 Nor was the ban lifted until the offender, by money 
 payment, by penances, by pilgrimages, by humble sup- 
 plications, had testified to the sincerity of her repentance. 
 The Lesser Ban did not deprive the city of intercourse 
 with other cities, but merely took away her rights at the 
 Diet. For still lesser offenses, the punishment was a fine. 
 Severest penalties were denounced against any Hanse 
 municipaUty that appealed from the Diet to any prince 
 or lord, or to the emperor. One of the ordinances of the 
 League decreed that a vessel lost on the coast did not 
 become wholly the possession of the natives at that spot; 
 
150 THE FREE CITY 
 
 this, to discourage the illumination of false beacons 
 whereby vessels were lured to their destruction for the 
 sake of the wreckage. Luebeck refused to agree to this 
 ordinance. She was boycotted by the rest of the League. 
 Whereupon we read of her: "The people starved, tH 
 markets were deserted, grass grew in the streets, and the 
 inhabitants left in large numbers." 
 
 The Hanseatic League was powerful. The King of 
 Denmark once invaded their rights, attacking one of their 
 cities and pillaging it. The Hanse Towns declared war 
 upon him, and fought him to his knees. Kingdoms 
 treated with them on equal terms; emperors courted 
 their good will. They poUced the Baltic and the North 
 Seas until the pirates that had infested these waters left 
 off and betook themselves to an honest Uvelihood. Nor 
 was this power wielded for militaristic or aggressive in- 
 vasion. Their pacifist spirit led them, if anything, into 
 an excess of the compromising policy. When they had 
 brought Denmark's king to book, they exacted of him 
 control of some of his ports, until the damage he had 
 caused them should be recompensed. But to collect even 
 tills rightful indemnity became quickly distasteful. Long 
 before the stipulated term they relinquished his territory; 
 preferring to lose money rather than collect it by mili- 
 taristic methods. Northern Europe, after five centuries of 
 Dark Ages, had presented one of the blackest infernos of 
 hell-chaos that the ordering mind of man has ever been 
 called upon to confront. The Hanseatic Free Cities took 
 that heU, and transformed it into Gothic architecture 
 and sculpture, which travellers to-day journey thousands 
 of miles to gaze at. So warm was the social union en- 
 gendered by these free municipahties that two of them, 
 Hamburg and Bremen, endured until our own day. It 
 was not until 1888 that these two were finally brought to 
 
THE CITY STATE IS A WORK STATE 151 
 
 surrender their independence and enter the Prussian 
 customs union. 
 
 Behind the walls and bastions of Gothic communes, 
 civil Hberty took root; civil liberty, which is another 
 ^Ift^t^ 'for industrial liberty. There were guilds of 
 Free Masons, Free Carpenters, Free Blacksmiths, Free 
 Goldsmitha In Florence one of the far-famed magis- 
 trates was Michael di Lando, a laborer elevated to the 
 post of rulership, and who mightily puUed the teeth of 
 the recalcitrant nobles. This Commune on the Amo was 
 a household; Uvely enough, to be sure — "a place where 
 everybody speaks his mind." But, for all the disputings, 
 they were citizens melted into oneness by civic pride; 
 as that Gahleo, "who loved the Commune marvellously." 
 Here in Florence the humbler classes were known as "the 
 lesser arts"; it was understood that everybody should 
 have a part in the creation of things beautiful. The 
 entire political fabric was based on the principle of 
 productivity. 
 
 The world's work in that day was not performed by 
 individuals. In very truth the individual as such hardly 
 existed. To-day we hear much of "personal liberty"; by 
 which is meant an individualistic ordering of one's life, 
 a following of egoistic whims and vagaries. The Gothic 
 era knew that Uberty is a conmiunal possession; that it 
 is but another word for fellowship. A workman, by 
 reason of his productive bent, is not skilled in the use of 
 arms. When isolated, therefore, he is defenceless against 
 the exploiter, who makes a specialty of the arts of violence 
 and aggression. The Dark Ages had precisely been a 
 time of "personal Uberty." And the result we saw — a 
 wild-jangling confusion; thievings and quarrellings and 
 slaughter; ending finally in the serfdom of the toiler class 
 beneath the seigneur's mail-clad might. MunicipaUty is 
 
152 THE FREE CITY 
 
 the principle of collectivity, as opposed to anarchistic in- 
 dividualism. When the workingclass discovered this 
 principle, it obtained freedom; began to enjoy the full 
 product of its toil. 
 
 In these commonwealths the ego was a part of some- 
 thing larger. That Something Larger was first the munic- 
 ipaUty; and then the confederation of municipaUties, 
 extending to the ends of the earth. The individual sur- 
 rendered his private sovereignty to the commune. Work 
 was a collective thing. They sociaUzed their produc- 
 tivity; and with a thoroughness that moderns, in our 
 divisive unaffectionate day, have diflficulty to understand. 
 The ego gave himself to the cormnunity. But, in return, 
 the community gave itself to him. So his self-limitation 
 turned out to be self-expansion. 
 
 The Free Cities had no bowels of mercy towards any- 
 one who "in ease and sloth doth Hve on the sweat of 
 others, and puffeth himself up in lustful pride." In 
 Paris we find the regulations: "Retailers ought not to 
 buy in advance, of a merchant, eggs and cheese deUver- 
 able on his next trip." And the reason was stated: 
 "The rich will sell back everything as dear as it pleases 
 them to do." There were severe guild regulations "to 
 restrain the folly and joUity of the apprentices." The 
 fatherly hand was stern, but it also was just. In a Paris 
 guild we find it recorded: "We have commanded the 
 said master to treat his apprentice by the matters con- 
 tained in the said contract, without having him beaten 
 by his wife; but that he should beat him himself if he 
 misbehaved." 
 
 That word "fatherly" quite expresses the relation be- 
 tween the elders in any craft, and the youngsters entering 
 it. A social bond held the master and his apprentice 
 together. The learner of a trade passed through three 
 
THE CITY STATE IS A WORK STATE 153 
 
 distinct stages. He began as an Apprentice — the 
 Lehryahre. After three or five years he became an art 
 pilgrim — the Wanderyahre. Dm-ing this second period 
 he journeyed from city to city, broadening his powers. 
 This was his Jom'nejmian stage. On returning, he was set 
 to do an original piece of work, as his examination for 
 entrance into the Master rank. Whence we derive the 
 word "masterpiece." The work had to show a finished 
 and competent craftsmanship, or the title of "Master" 
 was denied him. 
 
 Because of this visiting of Journeymen from commune 
 to commune, each guild was a sort of hospitaller to those 
 of its craft who were strangers in the city. Masons, since 
 their work takes them from home much of the time, and 
 for long durations, were especially given to hospitaUty 
 towards visiting fellowcraftsmen. We see in Freemasons 
 to-day an elaborate set of signs for identifying strangers; 
 and a large hberahty in making an authenticated member 
 at home amongst them. The Freemasonic lodges, with 
 their stateliness of ritual and their fraternal features, are 
 a Hneal perpetuator of the guilds of brick and stone 
 masons of this period. These Gothic cities had, as we 
 saw, a historic root in the Crusades. Accordingly the 
 Freemasons' claim to a lineage dating mystically from 
 Solomon's Temple in Jerusalem, is tinctured with authen- 
 ticity. Modern readers will get a fair idea of the religion 
 of labor as these Gothic guilds developed it, by im- 
 agining a trade union in our day carrying on its weekly 
 meetings with the solemnity of temper and majesty of 
 ceremonial that characterize a lodge of Freemasons. 
 That apron worn as so proud a part of their regalia was 
 in the Gothic era no mere ornamentation, but a service- 
 able part of the workclothes of a high-minded day laborer 
 toiling in brick and terra cotta and stone. 
 
154 THE FREE CITY 
 
 This majesty and largeness of demeanor on the part of 
 those workmen, and which touched their product into 
 so strange a beauty, was due to the civic mind that was 
 in them. The worker wrought not for himself primarily, 
 nor to a gainful end, but for the community. The 
 burgher's person and goods belonged to the city; could 
 be requisitioned at any time. Each citizen had taken 
 an oath to the Commune. An isolated worker was 
 unthinkable. All were answerable for each. The indi- 
 vidual carried in his hands the fair name of his munic- 
 ipaUty. Therefore he sought to maintain himself and 
 his product to the height of the occasion. The cauldrons 
 of Dinant, the woolen stuffs of Bruges and Ypres and 
 Ghent and Louvain, were inwrought with citizenly self- 
 reverence. The city of Arras became so famous for her 
 tapestries that in Shakespeare's Hamlet we read "behind 
 the arras," where "behind the tapestry" is what is meant. 
 
 In Paris we find the haberdashers complaining that 
 there had been put out "several pieces of bad work, to 
 the damage of all the commonweal every day, by reason 
 of the lack of restrictions." As late as 1456, two grocers 
 and a woman assistant were burned aUve in Nuremburg 
 for selling adulterated goods. Guild law said that wares 
 must be "in the eyes of all, good, irreproachable and with- 
 out flaw." Municipal ordinances compelled an artisan to 
 practise his trade openly at his window, to facihtate in- 
 spection. This mania for quality in workmanship is 
 witnessed in the contract Torregiano took for the making 
 of a tomb. He was required to make it "well, surely, 
 cleanly, and workmanUke, curiously and substantially." 
 Florence was famed for her workers in woolen; one of 
 the rules of which guild required that a label be put on 
 every piece of cloth, stating the number of yards, and 
 any imperfections. Often the regulations forbade work 
 
THE CITY STATE IS A WORK STATE 155 
 
 after nightfall, "by reason that no man can work so 
 neatly by night as by day." 
 
 The eleventh century, when the Gothic communes 
 were getting into their stride, was a time of reHgious 
 awakening. A municipal commonwealth, as we have 
 seen, is always a theocracy. Within those circumscribed 
 frontiers, the closeness of contact brings about an inter- 
 action between the dreamer of dreams and the doer of 
 deeds; an interfusing of spirituaHty and worldliness, 
 to the advantage of both. The Gothic commonwealths 
 were not so entirely sovereign as the city-states of the 
 classic world. But in the measure that they were Free 
 Cities, they displayed the same union of the sacred and 
 the secular, which we saw in Athens and Jerusalem and 
 early Rome. In the thirteenth century, the Gothic 
 commonwealths were at their highest. That century 
 was Christianity's strongest time. It was the era of the 
 cathedral builders, and the uprearing of those hotels de 
 ville that stand now in so stately a magnificence. The 
 Gothic is a reUgious style of architecture. It extended 
 to all of the buildings of that period, including even bams 
 and sheepfolds. There was no distinction between sacred 
 and profane; life in its totality was held to be sacred. 
 The upward-striving note of aspiration marked all the 
 building of the period. The private houses had pointed 
 arches over the doors and windows; excellent glasswork, 
 traceries, finials, and usually a Christ or Madonna in a 
 niche over the entrance. The Gothic was not a specially 
 designed school of construction for use only in stately 
 edifices. It was the informing spirit in aU the life of the 
 time. Everything was religious; because everything was 
 done to the Spirit of Fellowship. 
 
 India and Japan were coadjutors with the Mediter- 
 ranean world in estabUshing civihzation upon earth. 
 
156 THE FREE CITY 
 
 And in both of those countries life also organized itself 
 on a basis of industrial communes, devotionally admin- 
 istered. As to Japan, Lafcadio Hearn testifies: *'A11 
 craftsmen and all laborers formed guilds, and prohibited 
 competition as imdertaken for purely personal ad- 
 vantage. Nearly similar forms of organization are 
 maintained by laborers to-day, in the old communistic 
 manner. Apprentices bound to a master-workman 
 were boarded, lodged, clothed and even educated by 
 their patron, with whom they might hope to pass the rest 
 of their Uves. These paternal and filial relations have 
 helped to make life pleasant and labor cheerful. The 
 quahty of all industrial production must suffer much 
 when they disappear." 
 
 "To the Indian land-and-village-system," reports Bird- 
 wood, "we owe altogether the hereditary cimning of the 
 Hindoo craftsmen. It has created for him simple plenty 
 and a scheme of democratic life in which all are coordi- 
 nated parts of one undivided and indivisible whole; the 
 provision and respect due to every man in it being en- 
 forced under the highest rehgious sanctions. The village 
 communities remain in full vigor all over the peninsula. 
 The religious trade union villagers have remained stead- 
 fast." And of the Indian craftsman he says: "He 
 knows nothing of the desperate struggle for existence 
 which oppresses life and crushes the soul out of the 
 English workingman. He has his assured place, in- 
 herited from father to son for a hundred generations. 
 This at once reheves him from an incalculable weight of 
 cares, and enables him to give to his work, which is also a 
 religious function, that contentment of mind, and leisure 
 and pride and pleasure in it for its own sake, which are 
 essential to all artistic excellence." 
 
 Of that communal life, Coomaraswamy to whom I 
 
THE CITY STATE IS A WORK STATE 157 
 
 owe these quotations, has gathered much evidence. "In 
 the East," he says, "there is traditionally a peculiar re- 
 lation of devotion between master and pupil; it is thought 
 that the master's secret, his real inward method so to say, 
 is best learned by the pupil in devoted personal service. 
 And so we get a beautiful and affectionate relation be- 
 tween the apprentice and master. I have seen a man of 
 thirty receive wages in the presence of his teacher and 
 hand them to him as the master, with the gentlest pos- 
 sible respect and grace; and as gently and dehcately they 
 were received and handed back, waiving the right to 
 retain." 
 
 Very ancient of date, these communalistic craft guilds 
 of India. We read of "a village of carpenters in which 
 five hundred carpenters lived. They would go up the 
 river in a vessel and enter the forest, where they would 
 shape beams and planks for house-building, and put to- 
 gether the framework of houses, numbering all the pieces. 
 These they then brought down to the river bank and put 
 them all on board. Then rowing downstream again, 
 they would build houses to order as it was required of 
 them. After which they went back for more materials; 
 and in this way they made their hvelihood." We learn 
 of a "smith's village of a thousand houses; people came 
 from the villages around to have razors, axes, plowshares, 
 and goads made." A passage in the Ramayana de- 
 scribes an ancient procession of citizens, including "well 
 known goldsmiths"; also gem-cutters, weavers, potters, 
 and ivory-workers. And in the Harivamsa: "The 
 amphitheater was filled by the citizens anxious to behold 
 the games. The pavilions of the different companies 
 and corporations, vast as mountains, were decorated 
 with banners bearing upon them the implements and 
 emblems of the several crafts." 
 
158 THE FREE CITY 
 
 The Kashmir community was also — the fame still 
 survives — in much repute for grace of woolen work; 
 a sense for line and color on the part of her weavers, and 
 a deft touch of hand. Lawrence, writing of the E^shmir 
 Valley, tells the secret: In the old days, says he, the 
 public authorities "exercised a rigorous supervision over 
 the quality of the raw material and the manufactured 
 article. In the good days of the shawl trade no spurious 
 wool was brought in to be mixed with the real shawl wool 
 of Central Asia; and woe betide the weaver who did bad 
 work, or the silversmith who was too Uberal with his 
 alloy. There is no such supervision nowadays. Com- 
 petition has lowered prices; and the real masters of 
 weaving, silver and copperwork have to bend to the time 
 and supply their customers with cheap inferior work." 
 
 The communes of the East prove it; the conmiunes of 
 the classic Mediterranean period prove it; the communes 
 of the Gothic era prove it: in fellowship alone stands in- 
 dustrial freedom. Whose poUtical form is mimicipality. 
 And whose product is beauty. "Two are better than 
 one; because they have a good reward for their labor. 
 For if they fall, the one will lift up his fellow. Again, 
 if two lie together, then they have heat; but how can 
 one be warm alone? And if one prevail against him, 
 two shall withstand; and a threefold cord is not quickly 
 broken." 
 
CHAPTER XII 
 
 THE AFTERGLOW 
 
 GOTHIC art is pre-eminently characterized by a 
 law of liberty. Ruskin's sure intuition made this 
 discoveiy. But he did not connect that hberty 
 with the industrial and poHtical life of the period. Gothic 
 art is emancipated art, because the workmen who wrought 
 it, secure behind the moats and ramparts of Free Cities, 
 were no longer fearful of their hege lord's displeasure. 
 
 Every land is a holy land, where freedom has her habi- 
 tat. Those Medieval commonwealths were the offspring 
 of a rehgious revival, the Crusades; and were themselves 
 the continuation of that revival. The guilds had each its 
 patron saint, and usually a church that it regarded as its 
 home. In Cologne, neighboring the great cathedral, 
 stands a smaller church; tradition says that this humbler 
 edifice was built by the workmen during their rest hours, 
 while working on the large building. At Lincoln, Eng- 
 land, we find the painters, gilders, stainers, and alabaster 
 men organized into the Guild of St. Luke. They cele- 
 brated the feast day of that saint each year with a common 
 dinner, "for love and amity and good communication to 
 be had for the several weal of the fraternity." For a 
 labor union nowadays to call itself after a Saint, center 
 its life around a church, and conduct its meetings with 
 prayer and ritual, would excite world comment. In the 
 
 Gothic era it was regarded as the natural thing. The 
 
 159 
 
160 THE FREE CITY 
 
 Free City was their religion. The religion of citizenship 
 i*? but another way of saying, devout handicraftsmen: 
 the marriage of worship and labor. 
 
 To-day an architect shuts himself in an oflSce, and the 
 "hands" out in the stoneyard and on the building carr} 
 but his plannings. In that day the architect was simply 
 the master-workman; he toiled on the scaffold along 
 with his men; and those masterpieces of architecture are 
 the result. To-day a trophy cup is designed by an "ex- 
 pert." The drawing is then passed upon by the "super- 
 visors of art." Then it is given to the "operatives" to 
 shape into metal. The result is the mediocrity we 
 modems behold: a shiny vessel of silver, quite excellent 
 as a sample of machine burnishing; but devoid of quaint- 
 ness or strength or character. To-day, people work at 
 their worship. In that day people worshipped at their 
 work. 
 
 In the Gothic period the workman was his own de- 
 signer. Every producer was an educated producer. He 
 was a civic laborer, a pubUc-spirited mechanic. In the 
 product of his hands the honor of the municipaUty re- 
 posed. Poor workmanship would have disgraced the 
 state, of which he was a constituent and enthusiastic 
 member. The modem cleavage between "manuals" 
 and "intellectuals" would have seemed to them incom- 
 prehensible. The village carpenter was also a wood 
 carver. The oak screens of that day, with that sinuous 
 linaa-fold pattern now treasured in museums, was the 
 work of day-laborers; hkewise the furniture, wain- 
 scotting, pulpits, and stalls in the churches; and the 
 carved oak panellings in the houses. 
 
 Nowadays a lock or hinge of the Middle Age, rusty 
 perhaps and with the wood crumbling away, is cherished 
 under glass cases; the rugged grace of it and the magical 
 
THE AFTERGLOW 161 
 
 trait of humanness that was forged into it, give it a 
 preciousness beyond gold and silver. That iron work 
 was the output of the village blacksmith. In forging 
 a door bolt or grating, he was not a subaltern blindly 
 following a blueprint drawn by some absent designer. 
 That blacksmith was one of the citizen-owners of the 
 commonwealth. In working for the fame of his city he 
 was working for the dearest possession of his life. Not 
 only his pair of arms; his soul too was engaged at that 
 anvil. In hammering the iron into shape, he was ex- 
 pressing his vision of life. So he wrought joyously. 
 Iron assumed amazing ductility. In the hand of the 
 locksmith the toughest metals took on submissiveness. 
 Amid soot and cinders the burly ironsmith put into his 
 product a tender craftsmanship and delicacy of taste. 
 
 It was, I say, a rehgious revival. An age of genius. 
 Conventionahty was frowned upon. Spontaneity was 
 everything. There is no absolute symmetry in Gothic 
 art — that is why it is art. If they put two balancing 
 steeples on a church, one of them was sure to be higher 
 than the other. Small windows pierced where con- 
 venience dictated. Rules of formalized procedure were 
 cast to the winds : let the workman express himseK at all 
 hazards. And this absence of orderliness proved to be 
 the highest orderliness. The fact that they were all 
 working to a common end — the Commune's glory — 
 gave to their separate doings a wizardry of unification. 
 These toilers were not individualists, they were com- 
 munaUsts. So, private whims and fads and eccentrici- 
 ties did not emerge. They could trust each man to work 
 under his own soul's dictation; because the soul within 
 him was the PubUc Soul, overruling his private thought 
 to the social good. 
 
 Sometimes this freedom had most unconventional re- 
 
162 THE FREE CITY 
 
 suits; as the "bestiaries." At Chartres Cathedral one 
 of the stone workers, wishing to make his contribution, 
 carved the statue of a jackass playing a l3rre. A modern 
 Building Committee would sternly reject such an offer- 
 ing, as something sacrilegious. But Chartres did not 
 reject it. A droUerie? yes. But it was the best that 
 this particular workman could contrive; it was his origi- 
 nal contribution. Therefore it was accepted and given 
 an honorable place in the structure. And — so holy is 
 the heart of a workingman when expressing itself un- 
 fettered — that Donkey-playing-the-lyre blends without 
 note of dissonance in one of the most holy and successful 
 pieces of architecture our planet can boast. In city 
 conmionwealths life is picturesque. The charm of those 
 Gothic towns is the human hberty that presided over 
 their building. Houses niche themselves at unexpected 
 places in the street. Original thought starts forth at 
 every corner to surprise one. The whole fabric is quaint 
 with naive unconventional conceits. 
 
 Henry Adams' "Mount St. Michel" is rich in illustra- 
 tion of this Gothic splendor. We owe that book to Ralph 
 Adams Cram, who of all Uving artists incarnates the 
 spirit of that God-intoxicated era most perfectly. I 
 quote from those pages an account of the constructing of 
 that cathedral at Chartres. Bishop Hugo, observing the 
 community at work, reported: "The inhabitants of 
 Chartres have combined to aid in the construction of 
 their church by transporting the materials. They admit 
 no one into their company unless he has been to confes- 
 sion, has renounced enmity and revenges, and has recon- 
 ciled himself with his foes. That done, they elect a chief, 
 under whose direction they conduct their wagons in 
 silence and with humihty." The quarries were more 
 than five miles away. Some of the blocks of stone were 
 
THE AFTERGLOW 163 
 
 massive; and, except by mass action on a large scale, 
 could not have been handled. In a letter to Tutbury 
 Abbey in England, Abbot Haimon also described that 
 spectacle of nobles and burghers toiling hand in hand: 
 
 "Who has ever seen, who has ever heard tell in times 
 past, that men brought up in honor and wealth, that 
 nobles — men and women — have bent their haughty 
 necks to the harness of carts, and that like beasts of 
 burden they have dragged to the abode of Christ these 
 wagons, loaded with wines, grains, oil, stone, wood, and all 
 that is necessary for the wants of life for the construc- 
 tion of the church. Often when a thousand persons are 
 attached to the chariot — so great is the difficulty — yet 
 they march in such silence that not a murmur is heard. 
 When they halt on the road, nothing is heard but pure 
 and suppliant prayer. They forget all hatred; discord 
 is thrown far aside; debts are remitted; the unity of 
 hearts is established. But if anyone is so far advanced 
 in evil as to be unwilling to pardon an offender, his of- 
 fering is instantly thrown from the wagon as impure; 
 and he himself shamefully excluded from the society of 
 the holy. When they have reached the church, they 
 arrange the wagons about it like a spiritual camp; and 
 during the whole night they celebrate by hymns and 
 canticles. On each wagon they light tapers and lamps. 
 Afterwards the priests close the ceremony by processions 
 which the people follow with devout hearts." 
 
 Every important community in England and France 
 and Germany and Spain and Italy was now building its 
 cathedral or town hall; in healthy emulation to make 
 their building more sumptuous and grand than the one in 
 the neighboring commune. This was the age of poetry. 
 Hans Sachs the cobbler, and his Meistersingers at Nurem- 
 burg; the Niebelungen Lied; the Cid; the Arthur 
 
164 THE FREE CITY 
 
 Legends; minnesingers and troubadours. Arnolfo was 
 building the duomo at Florence, with Ghiberti assisting 
 and Dante looking on. Not only were these major arts 
 flourishing. The minor arts also contributed their quota. 
 Bell founders cast their metal with an alloy that retains 
 its tone better perhaps than any bells man has been 
 able to cast since. The stained windows show secrets of 
 glass-working that now are lost. Needlework attained 
 much deftness. Missals were richly illuminated. The 
 guild towns of Flanders were producing music masters for 
 all the rest of Europe. Universities sprang up; impulse 
 that started the scientific era, and which has come to 
 its blossoming only in our day. In that period the 
 universities of Oxford, Paris, and Bologna were laying their 
 foundations. Venetian glass, and the piazza of San 
 Marco, were making that island RepubUc world-famous. 
 Bruges and Ghent and Louvain were erecting those civic 
 structures now so notable a feature of the Low Country. 
 Nuremburg was building her burgher homes; that ex- 
 panse of gables, in all the naivete and charm of affection- 
 ate workmanship. Florence with her loggia was no whit 
 behind. Decidedly, the Dark Ages were at an end. The 
 sun of municipality was arisen, and had vanished the old 
 sad night. The most luminous day man's history had 
 seen, since the Mediterranean Communes a thousand 
 years before. 
 
 Of that Gothic day of blaze and power, the Renais- 
 sance was the sunset; a parting outburst, as the shining 
 light disappeared below the horizon. Like many a sunset, 
 the Renaissance was in some ways more gorgeous than 
 had been the noonday. By its very excess of heat the 
 noon sun consumes away all mist, and shines with a 
 power unrecognized because the heat is converted directly 
 into the fructifying energy of the soil. In its going down. 
 
THE AFTERGLOW 165 
 
 the sun is not so vivifying a presence; and for that reason 
 is often more showy. The lessening warmth has 
 permitted vapors to condense into cloud formation; 
 which now reflect the rays of the sun into figures and 
 overpowering color masses. An ensemble of such names 
 as Leonardo, Michael Angelo, Benvenuto, the Delia 
 Robbias, Lippo Lippi, Donatello, Andrea del Sarto, 
 Bartolomeo, Albrecht Diirer, the Holbeins, Velasquez, 
 Murillo, sparkles with a splendor not often witnessed by 
 our Uttle Earth at one and the same time. 
 
 Despite the spectacular beauty of it, however, the 
 Renaissance was truly an age of decline. This is notice- 
 able in its architecture. As to painting and sculpture, 
 these arts are conservative in their underlying principles; 
 can carry over into one age the power that had been ac- 
 cumulated in the age that had gone before. But archi- 
 tecture is the social art, and is quickly responsive to a 
 new temper in society. Gothic architecture had sub- 
 ordinated every part to the whole. Because the Gothic 
 builders were citizens; that is, they had lost their ego- 
 isms in devotion to the commonwealth. Each incorpo- 
 rated his lesser plan in the master dream. To sustain 
 the fortunes of their city, had been their soUcitude. 
 Subordinating all things to municipal success, they took 
 no shame to work in lowly tasks. In their building, this 
 quaUty crops out. No matter how bewildering a wealth 
 of detail, the parts possess a mystic affinity with each 
 other and with the whole; all redundancy pruned away. 
 
 Not so. Renaissance architecture. The Gothic spirit 
 of citizenship was now decaying. That is another way 
 of saying, private wishings bulked larger than communal 
 glory. Individualism supplanted municipahsm. Men 
 became proud in heart. The work of man's hand was 
 not long in betraying the change. Architecture lost its 
 
166 THE FREE CITY 
 
 dignity; went off into meaningless ornamentation; vol- 
 uptuous, ornate, excessive. The Gothic had decorated 
 construction; Renaissance builders constructed decora- 
 tion. At first the change was slight; so that early Re- 
 naissance architecture is still restrained and simplified. 
 But a new temper has seated itself deep in the crowd- 
 mass; both gentlemen and artisans are sunk in pleasure. 
 So the architecture exhibits a progressive decadence. 
 Details of a building are amplified for their own sake. 
 Selfishness — the accentuation of the parts of society 
 against the whole — had gained the dominion. And art, 
 which is always a reflex of the social temper, went off in 
 the same centrifugal dispersion. The Renaissance was 
 morally bankrupt; and declares this fact, in the pre- 
 dominance of horizontal lines over the vertical. There 
 was a loss of truth and vitality. In a chaos of whim- 
 sicalities, unity disappeared. 
 
 What was the cause: Commercialism; another way of 
 saying, big states began to supplant the small city com- 
 monwealths. Frontiers permit the people to regulate the 
 money-makers. So the money-makers contrived huge 
 national aggregates wherein frontiers were obliterated. 
 Then the commercially-minded had uninterrupted sway. 
 The commercial spirit signifies private advantage. The 
 Gothic spirit had emphasized communal advantage. 
 Arising as a protest against the individualist temper of 
 the Dark Ages, those Communes had enshrined the 
 principle of association. And we saw what a bright il- 
 lumination that fire of fellowship kindled. Those folk 
 were not egos; they were citizens. 
 
 But selfish men crept in. As it happened in that 
 classic era we reviewed, so again it came to pass. The 
 artist soul is gentle-minded, tender, unsuspecting. The 
 more artist he, the more is he childhke. Jesus loved this 
 
THE AFTERGLOW 167 
 
 type; said that he was going to establish a common- 
 wealth where this type would feel at home: "Except ye 
 become as little children, ye cannot enter the kingdom." 
 The workers in his day were being exploited by cold 
 calculating men of affairs. They were as sheep not hav- 
 ing a shepherd. That is why he made himself their 
 shepherd. In getting between them and the wolves, he 
 was gnashed upon by their ravening teeth, was torn to 
 pieces. 
 
 When the Gothic communes were in vigorous life, 
 commercialists were unknown; meaning by that term, 
 a middleman between producer and consumer. The 
 guildsmen were- their own merchants. The guilds had 
 a salaried agent to act for them in disposing of their 
 product. So there existed a closeness of tie between the 
 maker of an article, and the user. Work was largely 
 home industry, for a home market. This neighborliness 
 of relation put personality into the product. Because 
 the maker of it was known, he was determined to be favor- 
 ably known; he turned out an article that he could per- 
 sonally stand behind. A remnant of this personalized 
 product was seen even as late as our grandfathers' day: 
 the Ditson saw, the Buck chisel, Wade-and-Butcher 
 razor, the Torrey strop. In the contrary direction, be- 
 cause the user of the article was known to the maker, he 
 wished to be on relations of honorabihty with that 
 maker; gave him as a remuneration for his labor a price 
 that was just. It was a mental atmosphere that made 
 right dealing between man and man habitual. 
 
 Then came the commerciahzer. With clever excuses 
 he horned in between the maker and the user. Any 
 elaboration of trade apparatus in the conveyance of an 
 article from producer to consumer depersonahzes it, and 
 therefore bestiaUzes it. This the commerciaUst did. He 
 
168 THE FREE CITY 
 
 established himself on an independent footing; buying 
 the article outright from the maker. Necessarily his 
 gain depended on paying the maker a small price, and 
 charging the user a large price. In modern parlance, he 
 paid the worker "a Uving wage"; and to the consumer 
 "charged what the traffic will bear." 
 
 A depersonaUzed product is always an inartistic prod- 
 uct. Plato saw the evil t'hat is inherent in a commercial 
 ordering of society. In his ideal state he laid it down 
 that conmierce was to be reduced to a minimum. In 
 the Bible we saw that Solomon, he of the commercial 
 instinct, was the disrupter of the state. That visit the 
 Queen of Sheba paid him was at bottom a merchandizing 
 affair. Each made "gifts" to the other; seeing to it 
 that one got in return as much as one "gave." Solomon, 
 seeking to degrade the Israelites into peddlers of ivory, 
 apes, and peacocks, is not reckoned in the gallery of 
 spiritual heroes. Jesus never refers to Solomon except 
 with an innuendo of contempt. The prophets would not 
 permit an alliance with the "merchants of Tyre." And in 
 the Book of Revelation, the burning of Rome evoked a 
 shout of exultation. Because the Roman Empire was a 
 commercial form of society: "The merchants of the earth 
 are waxed rich through the abundance of her delicacies." 
 
 The commercializing of the Gothic Communes began 
 with the wholesalers. These would buy up a shipload of 
 provisions, or the entire supply of a caravan. Banding 
 together, they became stronger than the commune; for 
 these speculators were alert, whilst the people fell asleep. 
 To these mercantile adventurers now swollen with power, 
 the regulations that were issued by town council and guild 
 were as cobwebs in the path of a bumble bee. Roman 
 law, in the form it took in the Empire days, sided with 
 these magnates in their seK-assertion. In early Rome, 
 
THE AFTERGLOW 169 
 
 law had made much of public property, had discouraged 
 private property. In the Hebrew commonwealth the 
 taking of interest was forbidden by statutory enactment. 
 But with the coming of the Empire, Roman law had 
 more and more come to teach the theory of absolutely 
 private possessions. In Justinian's code it is expressly 
 pointed out: "In purchase and sale it is naturally al- 
 lowed to try to overreach each other." "Overreaching" 
 was now organized into a system, to overthrow the 
 Gothic municipalities. 
 
 The conmiunes did not surrender without a fight. The 
 struggle between the old communahstic form of industry, 
 and the new nationalist-commercial spirit, lasted for over 
 a century. The story of it, in The Netherlands for ex- 
 ample, has added brilliant chapters to the story of human 
 heroism.' The contest was political. The nobles, when 
 the communes were first arising, would allow none of 
 their members to fraternize with the upstart burghers. 
 But when some of these burghers began to accumulate 
 riches, the knightly order decreed that "for the support 
 of an ancient and honorable line," a noble could marry 
 a burgher's daughter, provided she brought him a dowry 
 of at least four thousand florins. From that began a 
 rapprochement between the nobiUty and the commercial 
 magnates. 
 
 By the middle of the thirteenth century the rich can 
 be seen lining up in class cleavage against the "poor folk, 
 and others of mean estate." Constantly this demarca- 
 tion between the "great men" — the majores, the 
 DiviTATEs — and the "lesser folk" — the minores/ pau- 
 PERES, PLEBEi — became more sharp. Charles V took 
 sides with the magnate class against the commons. He 
 encouraged Antwerp, the stronghold of materiaUsm, to 
 usurp the place of leadership formerly held by beautiful 
 
170 THE FREE CITY 
 
 Bruges. Antwerp became thereupon the master city 
 of the world. From there as a center, a trading class 
 of nomads wandered feverishly up and down the world, 
 in search of the large fortunes that a few men were amas- 
 sing. These were men without a home or ancestors or 
 family traditions; unscrupulous buccaneers eager to 
 acquire wealth. The Free Cities walled their gates 
 against the new spirit; but the gates were battered down. 
 Rather than be conquered by the King of Spain and these 
 magnates, the Low Country opened the dykes and flooded 
 the landscape. Notable is that page, in the chronicles of 
 freedom. When Charles V destroyed the communal 
 government of Ghent and turned it into a capitalistic 
 center, he decreed that "Roland," the big bell in the 
 town belfry, must be taken down. He was afraid of that 
 communal tintinnabulation; its power to stir remembrances 
 of associated action and civic Hberty. 
 
 The collapse of Free Cities saw the decline in morals 
 that characterized the Renaissance generally. Machia- 
 velli now became the lawgiver in the realm of right and 
 wrong. Dante was superseded in Florence by Boccaccio 
 and his ladies of the Decameron. This was the age too 
 of Cesare Borgia, Cellini, and Aretino. Compare these 
 with those folk of the Gothic time. Giotto, master 
 mason of Florence and one of the world's supreme archi- 
 tects, was a devotee of the Franciscan order. This 
 premier artist of the Middle Age represented Cupid as 
 one of an infernal trinity, the other two being Satan and 
 Death. The Renaissance artists pictured the love god 
 as near akin to angels; a love deity, furthermore, whose 
 favorite abode was with the opulent. Spenser's picture 
 of Gluttony is a witness too of this new pleasure-mad era, 
 supporting its riot of extravagance by pillaging the 
 toilers: 
 
THE AFTERGLOW 171 
 
 His belly was upbhwne with luxury; 
 And eke with fatness swollen were his eyne. 
 And like a crane his neck was long and fine; 
 Wherewith he swallowed up excessive feast; 
 For want whereof, poor people oft did pine. 
 
 Rome during her municipal era had reverenced the 
 virtue of women. We saw Athens enthroning Pallas 
 Athena as the virgin goddess of the state. In Israel the 
 designation "strange women" indicates that the red 
 light district in Jerusalem could find only foreign women 
 for its victims. Paris to-day is the seat of a commercial 
 civilization; and would not be pointed out as a place 
 oversensitive in morals. But in the Paris of the Gothic 
 period there was a certain wool-weaver whose relations 
 with a woman were loose. He "was sent out of the city 
 and forbidden the trade, until he should amend his 
 character." An artistic civiHzation is a healthy-hearted 
 society. A commercial era, on the other hand, is a time 
 of ethical decay. 
 
 I do not mean to paint the picture all high light and 
 black shade. Those Mediterranean communes were not 
 perfect, in morals or aught else; and the Gothic common- 
 wealths likewise had many a flaw. But in the large, 
 history reveals a finer sex morality in municipal states 
 than in the huge aggregates known as nations and em- 
 pires. Self-government works in the people a cleanness 
 of spirit; they have scant leisure for baseness. Free and 
 creative toil breeds a people that turn every thought into 
 self-expression. It is when those higher vents are clogged, 
 man pursues in forbidden pathways the gratification that 
 normal life had denied him. In the first church in Venice, 
 this was lettered: "Around this temple, let the mer- 
 chant's law be just, his weights true, and his contracts 
 guileless." In the Renaissance, this Venice commune 
 
172 THE FREE CITY 
 
 changed into a narrow oligarchy, whose only thought 
 was commercial empire; and the orgies of the people in 
 Venice became notorious. When joy withers away, man 
 seeks to fill its place with pleasure. 
 
 At the close of the day, the sunset. At the close of 
 the sunset, the afterglow. Since the Gothic era, have 
 followed six centuries of slow decline. Here and there 
 have been outbursts of power. But these have been 
 spasmodic, and in large part imitative. An afterglow is 
 ofttimes so ht up that people walk in it with scarce a 
 reahzation that the Ught is a reflection and not the shin- 
 ing of the sun. Moderns are hving contentedly in this 
 reflected light, heedless of the fact that the sun has set 
 and that the Ught must by Uttle and Uttle fade. Shake- 
 speare and the spacious times of EUzabeth, were the 
 splendid outburst prepared by the Gothic day in England. 
 The age of Cervantes in Spain was the afterglow of her 
 Gothic period; bringing her to that day of climax, when 
 Spain extended from Naples and Milan to The Nether- 
 lands, and to the New World. The energy of the Middle 
 Age gathered to a meridian splendor about the year 1300. 
 Since that time, in the matter of original creative power, 
 Christendom has traced slowly a descending curve; the 
 dying out of genius, and its replacement by talent. 
 
 We moderns have been kept going by a survival also 
 from another age than the Gothic — the Bible. That 
 Book, we saw, is the story of perhaps the most intense 
 city-worship in all history. So long as it retained the 
 mysticism with which it was originally endowed, great 
 was the power of the Scriptures to evoke in man a public 
 spirit; a zest of freedom: Home rule, as Heaven's first 
 commandment. Luther was a lover of the Bible. The 
 movement he originated was at bottom a revival of 
 local feeling. It was "Peter's Pence" that started him 
 
THE AFTERGLOW 173 
 
 on his break with the Papal Empire; the taking of Ger- 
 man coin to build St. Peter's church in far-away Rome. 
 Calvin was spurred by that Book to transform Geneva 
 into a theocratic republic. John Leyden sought to make 
 Miinster over into a "Kingdom of Zion"; the entire 
 Anabaptist movement tended toward local autonomy, 
 under the rule of Heaven alone; as at Utrecht and Am- 
 sterdam. Knox was ardent to make Scotland a theocracy, 
 Uke Israel of old. The Pilgrims, hugging that Book to 
 their bosoms, founded in New England a theocratic 
 commonwealth; from which came the town meeting, 
 foimtain of no small part of America's political life. 
 
 The revolvings of the calendar are wheeUng us far and 
 further from Palestine in her municipal prime. But the 
 Bible, into which she poured her spirit, is charged with 
 so high a voltage that even yet we get from it intermittent 
 gleams of revival, dim-flashing hke boreal lights above 
 our darkening era. Could that Book have retained its 
 power permanently, unmolested by Higher Criticism's 
 rationalizing touch, modernity might have struggled 
 along for some centuries yet, living on borrowed Ught. 
 
CHAPTER Xin 
 
 WHEN COMMONWEALTH IS KING 
 
 THERE are five manners of political fabric. The 
 first is that wherein the individual is the seat of 
 government; this is the savage state — anarch- 
 ism, egotocracy. The second is when the family is the 
 seat of the government; oligarchy is its name; with 
 feudahsm as the type of society it generates. The third 
 is when the community is the seat of government; this 
 form is known as democracy. The fourth manner of 
 fabric is that wherein the nation is the seat of the gov- 
 ernment; known as plutocracy — rule by the rich, of 
 the rich, and for the rich. The fifth, is when the world 
 is the seat of the government; known as autocracy, a 
 world-chieftain swaying all mankind. 
 
 In one of those five units the sovereignty must repose. 
 Social Science does not think in terms of these five units. 
 That is because it does not think at all. Social Science 
 is an emotionalism; a sentimental expansion, quite 
 splendid for supplying heat, but of utter incapacity for 
 supplying fight. When Social Science begins to think, 
 it becomes PoUtical Science. PoHtical Science knows 
 that there must be sovereignty somewhere; and that the 
 choice of a seat for that sovereignty lies between the 
 five units I have mentioned. 
 
 Sovereignty is constituted of a threefold prerogative: 
 
 war-power, coinage, and diplomacy. That seems a short 
 
 174 
 
WHEN COMMONWEALTH IS KING 175 
 
 and mild enumeration, wherewith to describe so omnipo- 
 tent a thing as governmental omnipotence. But that 
 threefold majesty is comprehensive. In the realm of 
 physics, scientists tell us that there are but three colors, 
 red, blue, and yellow; all of the other tints in the spectrum 
 being combinations of those primary hues. So, in the 
 realm of jurisprudence, the threefold prerogative here 
 enumerated confers mundane almightinesfe. A status in 
 coining money regulates the relations between debtor and 
 creditor, determines all exchanges, all material values; 
 gives control over the life economic. A status in de- 
 termining foreign relations, decides what shall be the at- 
 titude of this autonomous political group toward the rest 
 of the world. That third item, a poHtical status in de- 
 claring peace or war, is essential for preserving the other 
 two prerogatives; a community that must fight at the 
 dictation of a power outside of itself, turning over to that 
 outside power control over its armed forces, is not free 
 but subject. Coinage, diplomacy, war-power — these 
 are the primary attributes of statehood. And the cord 
 that is twisted of them is sovereignty. 
 
 Where shall this sovereignty vest? The question is the 
 most stupendous to which the mind of man can address 
 itself. Until that is settled, nothing is settled. And 
 when that is once settled, everything else in earth and sea 
 and sky will settle itself. Shall the human being give his 
 loyalty to himself, in preference to those other four 
 claimants? But then, what would happen to his family, 
 his community, his nation, his world? All the problems 
 in ethics, all the perplexities that assail the mind and 
 tear the heart, are occasioned by these five conflicting 
 loyalties. With that question hanging in the air, the 
 man is interiorly dismembered, is pulled apart by the 
 competing claims; so that all of his spiritual bones are 
 
176 THE FREE CITY 
 
 out of joint; he is double-minded, unstable in his ways; 
 is a wave of the sea driven by the wind and tossed. Shall 
 the nation have the sole right to declare war, or shall 
 each individual decide that for himself? Which is su- 
 preme, a man's loyalty to his family, or to his com- 
 munity? Business men are answering it, "to his family." 
 Which answer accounts for much of the ruthlessness in 
 commercial life. The man grinds the sons and daughters 
 of other families, in order that his own son and daughter 
 may ride in high-powered chariots. Many a man is a 
 good husband and a bad citizen. No small part of the 
 revolutionary heave now convulsing society is engendered 
 by the spectacle of one home embowered in sumptuous- 
 ness, amidst other homes that are dismal huts. New 
 York City, for example — an island of woe divided by 
 an avenue of wealth. 
 
 In the collision between the community and the nation, 
 there are many who think a compromise to be possible: 
 "Let the nation run the national industries, and let the 
 community run the community industries"; by "na- 
 tional industries," meaning interstate affairs, such as 
 trunk railroads. But that word "interstate" is exactly 
 the word the advocate of local sovereignty hkes; the 
 word "inter-state" is a contradiction of terms in the 
 mouth of a nationalist, who believes that the nation is 
 the state, that is, the seat of the government. The rail- 
 road between New York and Montreal is not one but two; 
 and trains cross the frontier by treaty arrangement. Shall 
 this be the case also with railroads between New York 
 and Chicago? The municipalist answers. Yes. Free 
 Cities have universally insisted on rulership over the 
 highroads within their respective territories. In practice 
 the Free City consents to treaties whereby her roads are 
 linked up to those in adjoining states. But it never re- 
 
WHEN COMMONWEALTH IS KING 177 
 
 linquishes sovereign rule over the highways within her 
 frontiers. And so, with every other item in what is 
 loosely termed "national industries." Every item in 
 life can be interpreted nationally, and also municipally. 
 Street railways would seem to be distinctively a local 
 affair; but one can travel from New York to Boston by 
 trolley car. The principles of federahsm and of national- 
 ism are in square collision. 
 
 And so, throughout all the area of man's life. We 
 shall never enjoy an organized existence until one of 
 these five claimants, and the right one, is enthroned 
 above the other four. Five courts of concurrent juris- 
 diction, each claiming the last appeal, form a hydra 
 in government; produce confusion worse confounded. 
 These contending loyalties wrench a high-souled man 
 apart; leave him a dislocated spirit; clog the motions 
 of his will so that he goes with faltering step. One of 
 the five has got to be supreme, and the other four 
 dutifully subordinate. 
 
 It will be noticed that, of the five, the community oc- 
 cupies the central place. To the left of it are to be found 
 the family and the individual; to the right, the nation 
 and the world — a teeter-board, balancing at the middle. 
 That is the psychological mid-point; let a man climb 
 from the ego-status up into community-consciousness, and 
 he is spiritually half-way towards world-consciousness. 
 To that center, points the omnipotent finger of God. Be- 
 cause it is the natural center. The municipal republic — 
 a conamunity of people occupying their plot of earth in 
 sovereignty — is the pohtical establishment that people 
 fall into when left to themselves. It is the normal econ- 
 omy. Rome and Athens and Israel, the industrial com- 
 munes of India, were not contrived by men expert in 
 political science. It was the easiest way of organizing 
 
178 THE FREE CITY 
 
 the life of man. Later on came an Aristotle, who took 
 
 up the matter into thought and explained it to itself. 
 But the commune of Athens had endured long prior to 
 Aristotle and his justification of that form of society. 
 Nations, on the other hand, are a conscious fabrication, 
 deliberately devised by a junta of men who had some- 
 thing privately to gain thereby. The only reason for 
 the wiping out of small frontiers and the formation of 
 huge nationalist fabrics, is commercial profit. Munic- 
 ipalities, on the other hand, form themselves when life 
 is Hved according to the natural fitness of things. An 
 Indian poetess, quoted by Maine, likens the settlement of 
 India to the "flowing of the juice of the sugar cane over 
 a flat surface; the juice crystallizes, and the crystals are 
 the various village communities. In the middle is one 
 lump of particularly fine sugar; the place where is the 
 temple of the god." 
 
 That left arm of the teeter-board, made up of the 
 family and the individual, is known in Pohtical Science 
 as the party of the Left; it is the radical wing, clamors for 
 human rights, defends the popular cause, is restive and 
 fiery and innovative. The opposite arm, made up of the 
 nation (the continental grouping) and the world, is known 
 as the party of the Right; this is conservative in its 
 leanings, is constituted of the monied set, cares more for 
 property rights than for personal rights. The extreme 
 Left is anarchism. The extreme Right is imperialism. 
 Anarchism is personal rights gone rabid. Imperialism is 
 property rights gone rabid. The former thinks only in 
 terms of people. The latter thinks only in terms of 
 things. Anarchism is the extreme of individuality; by 
 making every ego different from every other ego, it would 
 give us a picturesque people, but miserably poor. Im- 
 perialism is the extreme of collectivity; would give us a 
 
WHEN COMMONWEALTH IS KING 179 
 
 people who are all alike, and enormously rich, folk with 
 large bank balances but of a bovine countenance. 
 
 Let an anarchist carry his philosophy into hteral prac- 
 tice: renounce all collectivity, resolve that he will eat 
 nothing but what his own pair of hands have produced. 
 His meal would consist of roots that he could dig from 
 the forest; of fish also, provided he himself caught and 
 cleaned and cooked them, and mined the iron that formed 
 the hook, and grew the cotton that constituted the fish 
 line. Per contra, let imperialists carry their philosophy 
 perfectly into practice, we would have a world reduced to 
 asphalt uniformity. All the human race would dress 
 alike, think ahke, talk alike, look alike; one colossal 
 machine nm by an engineer at the top. Enormous would 
 be the bulk of material product. But there would be no 
 fun. Anarchism gives us a large appetite, and no dinner. 
 Imperialism gives us a large dinner, and no appetite. 
 
 The propertied class always make for uniformity. 
 The more nearly the workingclass can be brought into a 
 machine-like regularity, the greater is -their wealth-pro- 
 ducing power. A plutocratic age is hostile to the prin- 
 ciple of variation. As money gets the upper hand, 
 fashion predominates; a subtle zeit gcist walks to and 
 fro, ridiculing whatever is out of fashion. And for a 
 reason. Anyone who departs from the orthodox style 
 and mode, betrays a rebel spirit. He must be put down, 
 or he will put plutocracy down. That is why rich people 
 bore each other; they are of one sameness — peas in a 
 pod. In their social clubs, when a millionaire meets 
 another millionaire he mentally yawns. He knows there 
 is no more possibility of hearing a new idea from that 
 club-mate, than of finding orchids under a snowbank. 
 Anarchism screams the song of liberty-that-is-license. 
 Imperialism intones the ritual of orderliness-that-is- 
 
180 THE FREE CITY 
 
 stagnation. If either got control, life would be 
 unlivable. 
 
 Between these two extremes, municipality m the via me- 
 dia. When the community is sovereign — that group mid- 
 way between the family and the nation — the teeter-board 
 hangs level. All the interests of life then are cared for. 
 Under municipality's impartial shepherding, both the 
 party of the Left and the party of the Right are cherished. 
 Jesus, we saw, identified himself with this centralmost 
 unit. Against the anarchists of that day, who exalted 
 the ego to be supreme, he taught that a man must lose 
 himself in something larger, and in doing so, would find 
 his truer self. Against those who wished to make the 
 family the supreme loyalty, he proclaimed a higher al- 
 legiance than to "father or mother or son or daughter or 
 mother-in-law or daughter-in-law." Passing over to the 
 Right arm of the teeter-board, he rebuked the Herods 
 and the Csesarisms that were shifting the center of Ufe 
 away from the municipal group — Palestine — over into 
 the huge imperial state where materiaUty and money- 
 riches predominated. 
 
 In declaring that in the true Israelite all the thoughts 
 of the heart must be concentric with the Jerusalem munic- 
 ipaUty, even to the sacrifice it might be of one's own blood 
 family, Jesus was not harsh or fanatical. It was Great- 
 heart uttering a statesmanly pronouncement. When the 
 community is life's center, both the Left and the Right 
 are secure. In order to build a noble family, there must 
 first be a noble community. The father who is a good 
 parent but a slothful citizen, is bequeathing a bitter 
 heritage to his children. Christ's dogma that the ego 
 also must yield its private treasures up into municipal 
 treasure, was hard-headed practicality. People can pro- 
 duce more by working co-operatively than by working 
 
WHEN COMMONWEALTH IS KING 181 
 
 privately; in return for that surrender of self unto the 
 communal Self, Jesus promised them great return: "good 
 measure, heaped up, shaken together, running over." 
 To the extremists on the Right, he announced that life 
 does not live by bread only. The criterion of a meal is 
 not the menu alone, but the gusto wherewith it is eaten. 
 Luscious, a dinner of herbs, when seasoned with good 
 fellowship. Jesus perceived that a materialist set of 
 people are dull; he wished that they might have life, and 
 might have it more abundantly. A great people moder- 
 ately rich — that was the Jesus' program. 
 
 MunicipaHty is the core of converging forces. That is 
 why the municipal eras in history have been the artistic 
 eras. The classic school in art thinks only of rules, pre- 
 cedent, "the tradition of the elders"; a rehashing of 
 yesterday's achievements. The romanticist school, on 
 the other hand, is a mania of innovation, a rebellion 
 against all established forms, a following of inspiration 
 utterly; futuristic fantasias that scorn the wisdom of the 
 past. MunicipaHty is the road between. It is the spirit 
 of the eternal To-day, whose roots trace back into old 
 Yesterday, and whose seed reaches to young To-morrow. 
 In citizen commonwealths, the fathers are reverenced and 
 the children are tenderly nurtured. In art, that spirit 
 makes for originahty. Stagnancy keeps to the beaten 
 path, and stops when the path stops. Phantasy o'er- 
 leaps the wall alongside the beaten path, losing itself in 
 side alleys where is no thoroughfare. Originality keeps 
 to the beaten path, and pushes it a parasang further. 
 
 MimicipaHty is the world's sanity. Any divergence of 
 sovereignty away from that midpoint in the teeter-board, 
 is a departure into eccentricity: "off-center." Sanity 
 means balance. Neither the party of the Left nor the 
 party of the Right has all the wisdom; but municipality. 
 
182 THE FREE CITY 
 
 positioned between and comprehending them both. It 
 is the temperate zone, mid-distant from the excessive 
 heat of the tropics, and the polar ice. As against the 
 extreme of individualism, it stands for collectivity; but 
 not for a collectivity so large as to obliterate the individ- 
 ual. Against the imperialist extreme, it stands for in- 
 dividuahty; but not for individuahty smaller than 
 conmnmities, which would destroy all collectivity. 
 
 Collectivism, provided the collectivity be not too large, 
 produces great people. The outstanding spirits in history 
 will be found to have appeared in or near the epochs 
 of Free Cities. The individual can stretch his skin to 
 the area of a small state, and does. But the human epi- 
 dermis is not elastic enough to extend across a fabric 
 three thousand miles from east to west; and the individual 
 does not make the attempt. Big states breed small in- 
 dividuals. Small states breed great individuals. 
 
 Life in city republics is colorful. Color is materiality, 
 with light shining upon it. In a Free City, because of the 
 constricted frontiers, the social fabric is compact. The 
 intellectual and the manual classes are close together; 
 no gulf there, between the university set and the crowd; 
 gulf that is so distressing a feature of huge national states. 
 The tourist in Europe notices that the towns built in the 
 Gothic period show a palace or castle cheek by jowl with 
 the cottages of the lowly. The prince or rich man lived 
 in the same street with the hand workers; often in a 
 house alongside their houses. The narrowness of the 
 boundaries brought highbrow and lowbrow into daily 
 contact. 
 
 This neighborliness between the thinkers and the 
 workers acted like, and really was, a shining of light 
 upon a material object; and color was the consequence. 
 In city commonwealths a leisure class is never an idle 
 
WHEN COMMONWEALTH IS KING 183 
 
 class. They don't dare to be. An idle class must live 
 at so far a remove from the workingclass that the clenched 
 fist of the latter cannot reach them, or must have a huge 
 national guard ready to be hurled against an uprising of 
 the industrial mass in any locahty. In municipal re- 
 publics the leisurists lack both of these safeguards. They 
 live in the same neighborhood with the workers, and the 
 sovereignty of the frontier hedges outside troops from en- 
 tering to stand between the exploiter and his outraged 
 victims. In Free Cities, therefore, a leisure class is com- 
 pelled to justify its existence. So these folk devote 
 themselves and their wealth to public uses. Goethe was 
 fostered by the duke in a small duchy on the Rhine; 
 owed much of his productivity to the courtly encourage- 
 ment. Wagner at the court of Mimich is a more recent 
 example; without that princely co-operation, Bayreuth 
 would never have been. 
 
 In big states, the rich live in a city far-distant from the 
 factory town where their dividends are produced. There- 
 fore the leisure class to-day degenerates into an idle class. 
 And the workers in turn, deprived of that quickening 
 contact with the more cultured leisurists, slump down into 
 sodden dullards. Art is that which is richly formed and 
 roughly finished; every chair and dish and kettle touched 
 into shapehness. To-day our makers of beauty cater to 
 an idle class; to embellish an existence already over- 
 embeUished. "Fine Art" is the result; a sickishly 
 ornate, overpolished piece of work; as though one should 
 sit down to a dinner of marshmellows, bonbons, and cake. 
 The while all the useful things are untouched by refined 
 handiwork. The Greeks had no use for "artists," by 
 which term they meant those who produce mere sumptu- 
 ousness divorced from utihty. Plato in his ideal com- 
 monwealth would not admit this type. The Athenians 
 
184 THE FREE CITY 
 
 were artistic, because they insisted that beauty and 
 utility be conjoined. They desired craftsmen rather 
 than "artists"; hard-handed workmen dreaming dreams. 
 With them the workshop masses merged with college 
 professors and the courtly set. So they presented a life 
 rich with color. Municipality, by bringing the head and 
 the hand together, produces a highly pictorial form of 
 state; a society wherein every dream tends towards ma- 
 terial expression; yeast and the lump interfusing. 
 
 In municipal repubUcs people do not read romance; 
 they Uve it. Survey the city commonwealths of North 
 Italy, where Shakespeare and Browning drew so much 
 of their dramatic materials: Venice, Florence, Pisa, 
 Milan, Verona, Padua. Those citizens were attuned 
 habitually to a higher level of vivacity and noble prompt- 
 ings, than folk in our dull age. Life was not puritanic, 
 in the sense of outward repressions that screw down 
 clamps upon life. The zest of participation in the civic 
 adventure after Uberty, indisposed them to animal 
 promptings. Political freedom, in whose dihgence they 
 were unceasing, kept them at the top of their condition. 
 Their city was an independent and sovereign being among 
 the sovereignties of the earth. The communion of that 
 responsibihty wrought its effect on the component mem- 
 bers. It fashioned them unto good incUnations; made 
 the brain aUve; exercised them to a noble stature of in- 
 tellect, and a rugged moral conformation. 
 
 They had small need of paper novels. Only when life 
 itself is dismal, do people crave fiction. Civic shabbiness 
 drives a man to the land of make-believe, where his soul 
 may find artificial sustentation. Citizenship in a munic- 
 ipal republic made the fife of men a daily riding forth 
 upon adventure. It kindled a lustre in the eye, begat 
 spiritual hveliness, verve, a will to freedom. They be- 
 
WHEN COMMONWEALTH IS KING 185 
 
 held their city unfolding into piquancy and splendor. In 
 such an atmosphere, how could they have an ear for 
 stories spun by make-believers? Here was a dream woven 
 out of the stuff of each common day. One cannot read 
 the history of city commonwealths without a feeling that 
 the winds which blew over them were aromatic with a 
 pungency from the spice fields of paradise. Civic in- 
 dependence is a dangerous endeavor. The fruitful agi- 
 tation made the nerves of their mind sprightly; stirred 
 them to an unconventionahty of thought and deed, in 
 comparison with which the written novel is tame. City 
 states have produced few parchment romances. But 
 they performed deeds that whip the sluggish blood- 
 stream of the reader, and which have graced the chroni- 
 cles of mankind. 
 
 Municipahty not alone makes for color, tang, high 
 flavor, a life possessing fillip and edge. Also it makes for 
 power. Community states are strong states. When the 
 municipality is king, it governs, and with a vigor un- 
 known to other forms of the social union. Nationalism 
 is fat, rich, easy-going anarchy. Government is hke 
 gravitation: its force diminishes with the square of the 
 distance over which it has to travel. Nations are a 
 loosely articulated agglomerate of individualisms; and 
 the larger the nation, the more relaxed is the tie. Only 
 on the occasions of war, does a national fabric gather 
 strength. In such a moment, a flash of color bursts out, 
 the red glare of a million men regimented for battle. 
 Nationalism is monotony relieved by conflagrations. 
 These conflagrations that open like red blossoms in the 
 night, are exhaustive to the soil they feed upon. After 
 one blooming — whose name is war — the plant has to 
 await a long refertiHzation before it can bloom again. 
 These intervals during which is being built the com- 
 
186 THE FREE CITY 
 
 missariat of a new war, are periods largely of govern- 
 mental abdication. 
 
 America illustrates it. Here is the largest of national 
 aggregates. And we Americans are the most individual- 
 istic of peoples. This Manchester school of thought 
 known as Laissez faire — "Let the people alone" — was 
 founded by Adam Smith in 1776. It was adopted by the 
 United States Constitution in 1787. America, in thus 
 giving to all of her people a "fair field and no favor," 
 professes therein to be their friend. Jesus, that Keeper 
 of the sheep, would say that a "Let them alone" govern- 
 ment is abdication by the shepherd of his duty towards 
 the flock. Actually Laissez faire means, "Let 'em 
 fight." But the wolves are better fighters than the sheep. 
 Therefore the wolves prefer nationaMsm to municipalism; 
 the more removed the shepherd is from his flock, the 
 better they like it. When the shepherd has but a small 
 flock, the wolves keep away. When the shepherd has a 
 flock so large that he no longer can see them all, the wolf 
 has a fat dinner daily. It is not a betrayal of secrets to 
 say that in America, Big Business overrides the people at 
 its pleasure. Nor is there any power to prevent that 
 overriding. Congress? Congress is a device for per- 
 mitting the goose to squawk, whilst the feathers are being 
 plucked. A big state means the crumbling of society 
 into a free-for-all; the survival of the brutallest; egoisms 
 rushing an ever more headlong and turbulent pace. It 
 is the competitive idea; unruliness and scoundreUsms 
 that are hke to transform us into swine. The reason 
 why that civil war broke out in Bisbee, Arizona, between 
 the mine owners and the operatives, was because each 
 side felt that Washington was powerless to protect it. 
 So the workers took their protection into their own hands; 
 which meant sabotage and violence. The mine owners 
 
WHEN COMMONWEALTH IS KING 187 
 
 likewise took the law into their own hands, deporting 
 hundreds of men from their homes and families, to starve 
 in the desert. A far-off ruler is a weak ruler; a grandpa 
 thing, blustering good-naturedly. As the arm of govern- 
 ment lengthens, the energy of government weakens. 
 
 In contrast with that picture of pseudo-government, 
 municipaUty means the onmipotence of the state. And 
 not by outward force, so much as by inward magnetism. 
 Socrates, in that closing hour of his life, furnishes an ex- 
 ample of what I mean. The attachment of the Athenians 
 to the hymns and ceremonies inherited from the fathers 
 was so affectionate that they could not bear this skeptic, 
 Socrates, who came poking his nose into mysteries so 
 chockfull of memories of the departed. And yet the 
 intellect also has its rights. Of which, Socrates was the 
 votary. He inaugurated the spirit of research and in- 
 quiry, no matter how sacred be the field of investigation. 
 So he incurred the displeasure of the reverential school; 
 was tried on a charge of impiety; was convicted; and 
 sentenced to death. Crito came to him in prison, and 
 offered to use his wealth to corrupt the jailer and effect 
 his escape. Socrates refused the offer. Let us overhear 
 him: 
 
 "Consider the matter in this way. Imagine that I 
 am about to play truant, and the laws and the govern- 
 ment interrogate me : * Socrates, are you going to overturn 
 us, the laws and the whole state, as far as in you Ues? 
 Do you imagine that a state can subsist, in which the de- 
 cisions of law have no power but are set aside and over- 
 thrown by individuals?' Yes, but the state has given 
 an unjust sentence. 'And was that our agreement with 
 you,' the law would say; 'or were you to abide by the 
 sentence of the state? Did we not bring you into exist- 
 ence? Your father married your mother by our aid, 
 
188 THE FREE CITY 
 
 and begat you. Were not the laws right in commanding 
 your father to train you? Well then, since you were 
 brought into the world and nurtured and educated by us, 
 can you deny that you are our child, as your fathers were 
 before you? And if this is true, you are not on equal 
 terms with us; nor can you think that you have a right 
 to do to us what we are doing to you. Would you have 
 any right to strike or revile or do any other evil to a 
 father or to a master if you had one, when you have been 
 struck or reviled by him, or received some other evil at 
 his hands? And because we think right to destroy you, 
 do you think that you have a right to destroy us in re- 
 turn? Has a philosopher Hke you failed to discover that 
 our country is more to be valued and higher and hoHer 
 far than mother or father or any ancestor? When we 
 are punished by her, whether with imprisonment or 
 stripes, the punishment is to be endured in silence; and 
 if she leads us to wounds or death in battle, thither we 
 follow as is right; neither may anyone yield or retreat 
 or leave his ranks; but whether in battle or in a court 
 of law or in any other place, he must do what his city 
 and his country order him. After having brought you 
 into the world and nurtured and educated you and given 
 you and every other citizen a share in every good that 
 we had to give, we further proclaim and give the right 
 to every Athenian that if he does not like us when he has 
 come of age and has seen the ways of the city and made 
 our acquaintance, he may go where he pleases and take 
 his goods with him, and none of our laws will forbid him 
 or interfere with him. Any of you who does not like us 
 and the city, and who wants to go to a colony or to any 
 other city may go. But he who has experience of the 
 manner in which we order justice and administer the 
 state, and still remains, has entered into an implied con- 
 
WHEN COMMONWEALTH IS KING 189 
 
 tract that he will do as we command him. Of all Athe- 
 nians you have been the most constant resident in the 
 city; which, as you never leave, you may be supposed to 
 love. You never went out of the city, either to see the 
 games (except once, when you went to the Isthmus) or 
 to any other place, unless you were on military service; 
 nor did you travel as other men do. Your affections did 
 not go beyond us. We were your special favorites. You 
 acquiesced in our government of you. And now you 
 have forgotten these fine sentiments and pay no respect 
 to us, the laws, of which you are the destroyer; and are 
 doing what only a miserable slave would do, running away 
 and turning your back upon the agreements which you 
 made as a citizen.' " 
 
 In all great art, the master note is serenity; a sense 
 that the life has found its center of rotation; so that the 
 man works with all energy of belief, tranquU and victori- 
 ous. The community is that center. Let the teeter- 
 board fulcrum at that point, the two arms then are on an 
 equality; and on both of them mighty masses can be 
 carried. Municipality is equipoise; a Janus head that 
 faces at once the ego and the world. Because our modern 
 world has departed from that center, we behold pell- 
 mell confusion; five contending courts of appeal brawl- 
 ing one against the other; a riot of judgments and 
 decisions. A great wheel must have an immovable axis; 
 a center that shifts is no center. Only singlemindedness 
 is tranquillity. 
 
 Doubt is mental disunion; a split in the family of the 
 mind. It is the cry of the outcast members of that 
 family, wandering lost on the mountain side; and the 
 anguish of those in the home, because of the vacant 
 places around the hearthstone. As doubt is a quarrel- 
 some condition of the mind, Faith is mental integrity. 
 
190 THE FREE CITY 
 
 The compression of all the facts of life within the com- 
 pass of a city state engenders not only a unification of 
 the people but also a unification of the mind. It pro- 
 duces Belief — that serenity which comes when the par- 
 liament of the mind votes imanimously. 
 
 When municipality is king, God is king. Able strate- 
 gist, he plays the middle against both ends. Centrality 
 is divinity. A Free City is Lord God's masterpiece; a 
 society rich-colored, kingly, and affectionate. To the 
 conmiunity belongs the sovereignty; all of the other in- 
 stitutes of life must be marginaUa. Nationahsm is lop- 
 sidedness, and because of it the foundations of the world 
 are out of course. It has caused the dollar to be imduly 
 preponderant, with spirituahty lapsing in slow decay. 
 City worship arises to redress the balance. From that 
 sorrow of history, a churchly church and a worldly world, 
 municipahty comes to dehver us. 
 
CHAPTER XIV 
 
 NOW IN THE WORLD'S REMAKING 
 
 OUR planet for the first time is full up with people. 
 That is the new fact in the world's history. Until 
 a few years ago, there were vacant territories 
 caUing for settlers. Accordingly there was not a social 
 problem such as we are facing. A discontented section 
 of the population, due to maladjustment of the social 
 organism, could go off into the virgin territory. Govern- 
 ments lightened the load of discontent by systematic 
 emigration. 
 
 That avenue of reUef is no longer open. There are 
 still some vacant areas on the map. But these lie for 
 the most part out of the temperate zone; migrants 
 thither must venture into unaccustomed climates, so that 
 only a few — comparatively — attempt it. The bulk of 
 the malcontented are now staying home. And will have 
 to be dealt with. Society hitherto was able to lead an 
 irregular life, without grave consequences. Let the 
 body pohtic be overtaken with indigestion, due to an 
 imassimilated mass of the population, it could belch 
 forth the troublesome stuff in the form of a colony. After 
 which easy relief, it could resume its irregulated manner 
 of life. But that vent is no longer available. 
 
 That is at bottom the meaning of the World War. 
 
 In the decades immediately preceding our own, there had 
 
 been a frenzied search by the nations for new lands to 
 
 191 
 
192 THE FREE CITY 
 
 be colonized; and for world markets, to keep their dis- 
 contented ones busy in shops and factories, and so to 
 pianissimo the gnmiblings. Competition for these out- 
 lets intensified. The growlings of the Have-nots in the 
 homeland goaded the ruKng classes to more frantic search 
 for dumping grounds outside. The governments com- 
 peted one against the other. Finally the tension, strain- 
 ing from more to more, reached the breaking point. 
 
 In these doings, America imconsciously was a cardinal 
 factor. For over a hundred years these United States 
 had been the chief channel for Europe's populational re- 
 Uef. Here were tracts awaiting settlers. Here also 
 was a huge market for European factory products. Here 
 thirdly was a field for the investment of their surplus 
 capital. This condition of affairs continued until about 
 1888. By that date, America's absorption power was 
 coming to an end. Instead of taking in the overplus 
 from other nations, we were showing signs of an overplus 
 of our own. With this outlet closed to them, or closing, 
 the nations of Europe turned upon each other in rivalry 
 for the vacant lands and markets to be found elsewhere. 
 Until August 4, 1914. 
 
 We humans have got to learn the art of Hving together. 
 Class hatreds can no longer be mehorated by putting 
 spatial distance between them. We must institute a 
 poUtical estabUshment based on fellowship. National- 
 ity is consohdated wealth. Municipality is common- 
 wealth. The principle of community announces that on 
 a crowded planet the only way we can get elbow room 
 is by locking arms. 
 
 An impression prevails that America tried the poHty 
 of small republics, and found it wanting. The Articles 
 of Confederation, under which the Thirteen States Uved 
 for four years following the American Revolution, brought 
 
NOW IN THE WORLD'S REMAKING 193 
 
 things to a deplorable pass — say these voices — and a 
 national regime had to be established. Under the Con- 
 federation, the central Congress was falling more and more 
 into disrepute. It could not enforce the requisitions it 
 made on the States. So indifferent were the delegates 
 in their attendance on this decrepit body, it often had to 
 wait for a quorum. There was no central power to pro- 
 vide for the general defence and secure the general wel- 
 fare. A situation verging on anarchy; until Alexander 
 Hamilton and his confreres came to the rescue, cast the 
 Articles of Confederation on the scrap heap, and gave to 
 mankind the American Nation. Since which providential 
 date, the Kingdom of God has been slowly but surely 
 building itself here on this western soil; until now the 
 highlands of Heaven are beginning to be visible above the 
 horizon. 
 
 There is emerging, however, an obstinate school of 
 questioners, highly skeptical of the godUkeness of Alex- 
 ander Hamilton and his coterie. If this nowaday America 
 of sabotage, race riots, strikes, bomb-throwings, law- 
 lessness, lobbyists and boodlers, defiant corruptionists, ap- 
 palUng break-up of famiUes, cynical poHticians, a society 
 cleaving in twain between the immoderately rich and the 
 immoderately poor, universal mediocrity, a dull gray 
 dinginess relieved only by gigantic preparations for 
 slaughter, a dearth of art, neurasthenics, a dying church, 
 stationary education, the commerciaUzed theatre, and a 
 general advance of the cohorts of mammon — if this be 
 the Kingdom of God upon earth, or the outposts and' 
 commencement of the same, one can only say that Heaven 
 is different from what the imagination figured it was 
 going to be. 
 
 Furthermore, in making Hamilton and his partners into 
 demigods who could do no wrong, and who gave us a 
 
194 THE FREE CITY 
 
 Constitution which it is impious to scrutinize, our school 
 histories are going beyond even the men who wrote that 
 instrument. Those men had doubts as to the omnis- 
 cience of the course they were pursuing and the ever- 
 lastingness of the document they were writing. They 
 ostentatiously omitted that formula "The union shall be 
 perpetual," found in the Articles of Confederation. And 
 instead, they inserted in the Constitution machinery to 
 make a new constitution, whenever the present one should 
 have become intolerable. That proviso for calling a 
 constituent assembly has remained a dead letter, because 
 during these one hundred and thirty years America never 
 before was in a convulsion of the state. To suggest 
 that the time is ripening to put that never-used machinery 
 to work, is not to be sacrilegious towards those Consti- 
 tution-framers; but is doing quite what they thought 
 would probably be done at some time or other, and what 
 they themselves would have no hesitation in doing if 
 they were living now and felt that the fabric was funda- 
 mentally out of joint. Pronounced Chief Justice Mar- 
 shall: "The people made the Constitution, and the 
 people can unmake it." 
 
 Under that Constitution has arisen the richest, most 
 colossal plutocracy since time began. The magnates of 
 Roman Empire days were poor in the comparison. Which 
 growth of a greatly monied class has taken place, not in 
 spite of the Constitution but because of it. I am not 
 saying that the writers of that instrument foresaw the 
 Midas development in the magnitude that now has come 
 to pass. Washington was the wealthiest man of that 
 time. His fortune was about half a miUion dollars. 
 Among his contemporaries he was their conception of 
 superlative wealth. Had they been told that under the 
 materialistic civihzation they were inaugurating, men 
 
NOW IN THE WORLD'S REMAKING 195 
 
 would arise with incomes of a million dollars a week, 
 their imaginations would have been staggered. They 
 would have paused before letting loose so torrential a tide 
 of greed, and so prodigious a private power. 
 
 With this caution, the fact remains that oiu* Consti- 
 tution was built by the rich and for the rich. In the 
 Convention that framed it, were 55 men. And not one 
 of them was from the ranks of the laboring class. They 
 were wealthy lawyers, plantation owners, wealthy mer- 
 chants, wealthy land speculators. And practically every 
 one of them was personally the gainer by the new form of 
 society they inaugurated. Said Fisher Ames, a member 
 of the ratifying convention in Massachusetts, "I conceive, 
 sir, that the present Constitution was dictated by com- 
 mercial necessity more than any other cause." A nation 
 of shop-keepers, as Matthew Arnold termed the Ameri- 
 cans, has not come to pass by accident, but by a Con- 
 stitution designed to that end. Charles Lamb said that 
 the Atlantic seaboard presented itself to his imagination 
 as a long counter spread with wares. If Americans are 
 content to read the meaning of the universe in terms of 
 material comfort, obesity, and a bank balance, then our 
 Constitution is the godliest thing. 
 
 The same men who framed the Constitution took the 
 reins of government. From that omnipotent vantage 
 point they have swayed our schools and colleges and pul- 
 pits; seeing to it that children and grown-ups from that 
 day to this should be taught "the chaos of the govern- 
 ment under the Articles of Confederation." However, 
 the new school of historians, led by fearless men of the 
 type of Charles Beard, are bringing many facts to light. 
 Truth, though crushed to earth by one hundred and thirty 
 years of concerted indoctrination, wiU rise again. 
 
 I have not been able to find evidence of the failure of 
 
196 THE FREE CITY 
 
 those Articles of Confederation. Bankruptcy? But 
 listen to this, from Governor Clinton's message to the 
 New York legislature in 1786, one year before the Con- 
 federation was given up to make way for nationalism: 
 "It affords me the most sensible pleasure to observe that 
 nothing hath happened since the close of last session to 
 disturb the public tranquillity; that good order, obedi- 
 ence to the laws, and the due observance of justice, have 
 generally prevailed; that the different districts of the 
 State by the industry of the citizens are rapidly recover- 
 ing from the waste and desolation of the war; and that 
 the toils of the husbandmen have been amply rewarded 
 by a fruitful season and a plentiful harvest." If it be 
 objected that this is too narrow a body of testimony, be- 
 cause it narrates conditions in but one of the Thirteen 
 States, read this letter written by Benjamin FrankUn to 
 David Hartly of England the year previous: "Your 
 newspapers are filled with accounts of distresses and 
 miseries that these States are plunged into since their 
 separation from Britain. You may believe me when I 
 tell you that there is no truth in those accounts. I find 
 all property in lands and houses vastly augmented in 
 value; that of houses in towns at least fourfold. The 
 crops have been plentiful; and yet the produce sells high, 
 to the great profit of the farmer. At the same time all 
 imported goods sell at low rates, some cheaper than the 
 first cost. Working people have plenty of employ, and 
 high pay for their labor." 
 
 The "Stars and Stripes," flag that Betsy Ross designed 
 and that is full of associations for the American heart, 
 was a product of this Confederation era. It was con- 
 ceived to emblem a federal state, not a national state. 
 Under the Confederation, Ohio, Kentucky, and Tennessee 
 were peopled. Colleges were estabUshed at Annapolis, 
 
NOW IN THE WORLD'S REMAKING 197 
 
 Abington, and Georgetown, Philadelphia, Lancaster, the 
 University of Georgia, and in the city of New York. 
 Population increased. Encouragement was given to 
 science, agriculture, and the arts. Do these facts present 
 a picture of "chaos"; of "a condition verging on 
 anarchy? " 
 
 The argument that the Continental Congress was 
 falUng into a decrepit body so httle heeded by the States 
 that ofttimes it could not get a quorum, is excellent and 
 vahd if representative government be the divinely or- 
 dained form of administering human affairs; but is 
 ludicrous to those who hold that community self-govern- 
 ment is Heaven's first commandment. The States were 
 allowing that central Congress to die, because they had 
 no more need of it. Each State was managing its own 
 business. The Continental Congress had been needful 
 when the States were at war with England; consoUdated 
 action was a military requisite; and the States had given 
 over many of their powers into its hands. With the 
 cessation of hostihties, the exceptional situation under 
 which the people had relinquished temporarily the right 
 to govern themselves, ended. And the States proceeded 
 to take back the power into their own hands. The 
 public debt? There was no intent of repudiation. They 
 were setting apart the proceeds from the sale of the 
 western lands, to be security for that debt; a security 
 that was ample, a thousand and a milUon times over. 
 
 "But the people were unable to govern themselves," 
 insist the historians, anxious to defend Hamilton; "there- 
 fore the government had to be taken out of the hands of 
 the populace and vested in a central body who would do 
 the governing with expertness." If that be true, the 
 Americans who won our hberties from George Third, 
 and from whom we trace our blood, were inferior to the 
 
198 THE FREE CITY 
 
 Romans and the Athenians and the cathedral-building 
 Gothics. By what composition of a superior clay were 
 the folk of the Hanseatic League able to rule themselves 
 through four hundred years of splendid existence; whereas 
 cm- American fathers, after an endeavor lasting through 
 four years, had to be put under tutors and guardians? 
 If it be not true, then it is a hbel on our forefathers, and 
 should be erased from the history books without delay. 
 
 "No, you misunderstand us," quickly interject the 
 history writers. "We don't mean that our grandsires 
 were incompetent to govern their home affairs. We 
 merely mean that they were showing themselves incom- 
 petent of administering their inter-state relations. And 
 nationalism had to be instituted, to do this for them." 
 But this also, if true, were a most grievous inferiority. 
 Those Hanseatics were capable of making and keeping 
 diplomatic treaties. The Swiss cantons could do it. 
 The United Provinces of the Netherlands did it. Also, 
 the commonwealths of the Lombard and Tuscan Leagues; 
 and the Confederation of Rhodes. By what decree of 
 malevolent fate were our grandfathers of a shrunken 
 mental stature over those men of other times and climes? 
 
 It is a reUef to find that the school book histories, in 
 seeking to belittle our forebears, have departed from the 
 facts. Indeed, that last charge is particularly ludicrous. 
 The suggestion that led to the Convention of 1787 and 
 cm" Constitution, originated precisely in a meeting be- 
 tween two of the States, to adjust by diplomatic pro- 
 cedure a question of boundary. Both Maryland and 
 Virginia had occasion to navigate the Potomac river. 
 Therefore each appointed a commission to draft a treaty 
 for the joint use of that stream. The diplomats as- 
 sembled, in wise and amicable session. The transaction 
 was an entire success. So much so, in fact, that those 
 
NOW IN THE WORLD'S REMAKING 199 
 
 commissioners suggested the calling of a convention to 
 devise a board of high commissioners to include all of 
 the States; sort of a permanent board of arbitration 
 to consider inter-state difiiculties. Hamilton and his 
 fellows, who had been hungering after a consolidated 
 nationalistic form of union, seized upon this innocent sug- 
 gestion and transformed it into the coup d'etat known as 
 the Convention of 1787; and our present Constitution. 
 ("Coup d'6tat" is not too strong a word to describe their 
 deed. They recognized the startling nature of the thing 
 they were doing; and threw over the transactions of 
 that Convention an impervious veil of secrecy. Which 
 veil was not lifted until something Uke forty years later; 
 and even then, it was found that the minutes of the Con- 
 vention had not been permitted to take a complete record 
 of what was said on the floor of the assembly.) Nor was 
 the diplomatic success achieved by Maryland and Vir- 
 ginia unique. One year later, New York and Massa- 
 cliusetts adjusted a boundary dispute in the same 
 fashion. 
 
 "But the Thirteen States were naked to their foes, and 
 therefore had to surrender their freedom into the hands of 
 a strong nationahst government." Naked to what foes? 
 The most formidable military power in the world was 
 Great Britain. And the Thirteen States, under a fed- 
 erated form of union, had just fought her triumphantly. 
 If the Confederation could write a Yorktown on its ban- 
 ners once, could they not, flushed now by prestige and 
 the habit of victory, have repeated the achievement? 
 But Em-ope was making no further threats. England 
 and France were at that precise moment lining up against 
 each other for the wrestle between Pitt and Napoleon; 
 a wrestle that was to engross all Europe for the next 
 twenty-five years. 
 
200 THE FREE CITY 
 
 If none of the above-mentioned was truly the movmg 
 cause for supplanting here in America the principle of 
 municipality with the principle of nationality, what then 
 was the motive? It has already been hinted. When 
 the Revolution had wrought its work of political freedom, 
 it was found that a ferment had been planted in the 
 people towards social freedom. The Have-nots began to 
 seek an equaUty with the Haves. They said that the 
 War had been fought by all of the population. There- 
 fore all ought to share in the new dispensation that was 
 here being inaugurated. The human family in America 
 should make a fresh start. This was an unexpected 
 sequel to that Liberty Bell business of 1776. The own- 
 ing class had meant a Declaration of Independence by 
 and for the well-propertied. They made now the wryest 
 kind of a face at this idea that the workers also should 
 drink of the heady wine of freedom. 
 
 The Articles of Confederation had constituted in 
 America what were practically thirteen municipal re- 
 pubUcs: "The said states thereby severally enter into a 
 firm league and friendship with each other, for their 
 common defence, the security of their hberties, and their 
 mutual and general welfare; binding themselves to assist 
 each other, against all force offered to or attacks made 
 upon them or any of them." But it was expressly laid 
 down: "Each state retains its sovereignty, freedom and 
 independence." 
 
 Being thus little repubhcs, the seat of government in 
 each of them was close to the people. The ratio be- 
 tween the government and the number of people partici- 
 pating in it was not so large as to swallow up the individual 
 in a sense of helplessness. It was a collectivity, but of 
 moderate size; so that each man still felt himself to be an 
 entity. These people proceeded to get hold of the gov- 
 
NOW IN THE WORLD'S REMAKING 201 
 
 eminent in their respective states, in order to remove the 
 economic disadvantages under which they were laboring. 
 They wished that the new order of things here in America 
 should be set going, purged of the class cleavages that 
 had disfigured the societies of Europe. The rich had 
 financed the war. But the workingclass had given an 
 equal devotion, in their blood poured out. Solon, at 
 Athens, had recognized this necessity of economic soli- 
 darity, if the body poUtic was to be permanent and 
 glorious. Taking the helm of state when a class chasm 
 was threatening, he had cancelled the existing debts, 
 gave the social organism a new and fresh start. In the 
 Bible there was statutory provision for doing this once 
 every fifty years. Accordingly, could not these American 
 States, now in this exceptional moment of a new era 
 commencing, in a virgin continent, do something along 
 the same line? Why not — so they argued — estabUsh 
 a liberal and democratic communion, man with man in 
 natural fellowship? Let caste and class be relegated to 
 the old fabric of Europe, which they were happily casting 
 off; declare a severance from that Old World, not only 
 as to pohtical sovereignty, but also from that bad in- 
 stitution of hers, the stratification of society into rich 
 and poor. Here on new soil, start a new epoch for the 
 human race. 
 
 The common people, in something like seven out of 
 the thirteen States, proceeded to capture control of their 
 legislatures, and to carry out these aspirations. Their 
 proposals, however, were nothing like so drastic as Solon's 
 decree, or the Bible's Year of Jubilee. The popular 
 program took largely the form of agrarian laws, such as 
 the Gracchi, those tribunes for the people, had sought to 
 estabUsh at Rome. The farmers and the wage-earning 
 class here obtained for their cause a majority in the legis- 
 
202 THE FREE CITY 
 
 latures — sovereign legislatures, with no appeal to a 
 far-away supreme court in Washington and whose 
 repressions could be enforced by a national guard. They 
 passed laws making money more plentiful. Thereby the 
 debtor class would have been enabled to pay off their 
 debts more quickly; and so get the new regime of human 
 brotherhood in operation. 
 
 It was nothing more than that, this move by the popular 
 mass. Yet, in the school histories, it has called down 
 upon itself such epithets as wildness, insurgency, rebel- 
 lion, confiscatory anarchism. "Shays' RebeUion" is cited 
 by them as proof that our forefathers, intoxicated by the 
 new wine of liberty, were incapable of self-government. 
 The documentary testimony of General Lincoln, who 
 commanded the Massachusetts militia sent against Shay^, 
 certainly is authentic. He says that Shays' "desperate 
 debtors" had this for their motive: to "bring into the 
 legislature creatures of their own, by which they would 
 make a government at pleasure, and make it subservient 
 to all their purposes." Has there ever been a more exact 
 definition of democracy? and struck off, too, by its avowed 
 enemy: "To make the legislature subservient to all their 
 purposes." In Rhode Island and New Hampshire there 
 were also fermentations among the workingclass; but 
 to an even less degree than the mild Shays affair in Mas- 
 sachusetts. All of these commotions were so innocent 
 of any attempt at violence that, for blood letting and 
 turbulence, they do not compare with a strike in a mod- 
 ern industrial center. I cannot find that bloodshed any- 
 where, to the extent of a single life, took place. And yet 
 "Shays' Rebellion," with the popular commotions in the 
 adjoining states, was the cause why self-government was 
 taken from the American people, and invisible govern- 
 ment in a far-distant capital was substituted in its place. 
 
NOW IN THE WORLD'S REMAKING 203 
 
 Read this letter, written by General Knox, one of the 
 creditor class, to Washington: 
 
 "The insurgents," designating the Shaysites, "feel 
 their own poverty, compared with the opulent; and their 
 own force. And they are determined to make use of the 
 latter, in order to remedy the former. Their creed is, 
 That the property of the United States has been protected 
 from the confiscation of Britain by the joint exertions of 
 all; and therefore ought to be the common property of 
 all. And he that attempts opposition to this creed is an 
 enemy to equity and justice, and ought to be swept from 
 off the face of the earth. In a word they are determined 
 to annihilate all debts, and have agrarian laws. To them 
 may be collected people of similar sentiments from Rhode 
 Island, Connecticut, and New Hampshire, so as to con- 
 stitute a body of desperate and unprincipled men. They 
 are chiefly of the young and active part of the community; 
 more easily collected than perhaps kept together after- 
 wards. But once embodied, they will be compelled to 
 submit to discipUne. Having proceeded to this length, 
 for which they are now ripe, we shall have a formidable 
 rebeUion. This dreadful situation has alarmed every 
 man of principle and property in New England. Our 
 government must be braced, changed, or altered to secure 
 our lives and property. The men of reflection and prin- 
 ciple are determined to establish a government which 
 shall have the power to protect them, and which will be 
 efl&cient in all cases of internal commotions. They wish 
 for a general government of unity, as they see the local 
 legislatures must naturally and necessarily tend to frus- 
 trate all general government." This was in 1786. 
 
 In a letter the next year, Madison wrote: "The late 
 turbulent scenes in Massachusetts and Rhode Island 
 have done inexpressible injury to the repubUcan character 
 
204 THE FREE CITY 
 
 in that part of the United States. And a propensity 
 towards Monarchy is said to have been produced by it 
 in some leading minds." A few days after, John Arm- 
 strong, in a letter to Washington, more than hinted it: 
 " Shall I tell you ia confidence, I have now twice heard — 
 nor from low authority — some principal men begin 
 to talk of wishing one general Head to the Union, in the 
 room of Congress." Hamilton, the special pleader of 
 the rich, was not long in reverberating the news, and 
 pointing the lesson to be drawn from it: "The tempestu- 
 ous situation from which Massachusetts has scarcely 
 emerged, evinces that dangers of this kind are not merely 
 speculative." Accordingly, said he, there must be set 
 up a strong central arm of government, " a guarantee by 
 the national authority." 
 
 Patrick Henry and Samuel Adams led the opposition to 
 the new Constitution, pointing out the "elective des- 
 potism" it was seeking to establish. Henry exclaimed 
 against the monstrous idea: "One power to reign with a 
 strong hand over so extensive a country as this!" (Amer- 
 ica then consisted only of the Atlantic seaboard.) Taylor, 
 one of the pamphleteers against the nationalist scheme, 
 wanted to know how this new aristocracy of wealth would 
 differ from the aristocracy of name which they had just 
 fought England to get free from: "Which is more to be 
 dreaded, titles without wealth, or wealth without titles? 
 Exorbitant wealth constitutes the substance of aristoc- 
 racy. Money is power. If we execrate the shadow, 
 what epithet is too hard for an administration which is 
 laboring to introduce the substance?" 
 
 But the "Anglo-monarchic aristocratic faction" — as 
 these nationahsts were termed — triumphed. In the 
 ratifying fight on the Constitution, the opulent of Boston 
 warned Samuel Adams: "Any vote of a delegate from 
 
NOW IN THE WORLD'S REMAKING 205 
 
 Boston against adopting it would be contrary to the in- 
 terests, feelings and wishes of the tradesmen of the town." 
 Similar tactics were adopted in other states. The new 
 Constitution got itself enacted. "Could there have been 
 a counting of heads the country through," says Woodiow 
 Wilson in his history, "a majority would have been foimd 
 opposed to the Constitution; but the men who were its 
 active and efl&cient advocates lived at the centers of popu- 
 lation, had the best concert of action, filled the mails and 
 the pubUc prints with their writings, were very formidable 
 in debate, and full of tactical resources." 
 
 Thus was set up in America a governing class; profes- 
 sional poUticians governing us from a central seat of 
 power, in the obscurantism of vast impenetrable dis- 
 tance. This governing class is authorized by consti- 
 tutional provision to ride over the heads of the local 
 authorities in every essential of sovereignty. By means 
 of its own Supreme Court, located also in that far-away 
 capital, it was made the sole judge of its powers and 
 jurisdiction. And there was provided a standing army 
 to enforce whatsoever this far-distant government de- 
 creed. So was estabUshed the dogma of governmental 
 invisibihty, as America's contribution to the Kingdom 
 of God upon earth. 
 
 By means of it, local traditions in America have been 
 destroyed. Our civic firesides are cold. The graves of 
 our sires awake no thrill, fuse om* hearts into no soli- 
 darity. We feel naught of attachment to the soil. Bedou- 
 ins and rovers are we. Roving in vestibuled trains, to 
 be sure; but rovers, none the less. The American city? a 
 horde of profit-seekers transiently assembhng themselves, 
 and now on their way to become kilkenny cats. Large 
 are we in material importance; slender, in artistic achieve- 
 ment. Freebooters appear — as always, in dark ages. 
 
206 THE FREE CITY 
 
 The gospel of greed is openly indoctrinated. We have all 
 eaten of the insane root. We hear the grindings of an im- 
 perialist machine that will crush the individual into pulp. 
 
 God would not take one star from the American flag; 
 to the contrary He would add a thousand more — kindred 
 communities, co-equal in sovereignty, a universal and 
 democratic dominion with filaments of friendship over- 
 spanning the globe. MunicipaUty is a stupendous pro- 
 gram. But we are Hving in a stupendous moment. The 
 evil days are drawing nigh; temporizing expedients are 
 severely disallowed. Nationalism is the nightmare of 
 history — the attempt of a bureaucracy to administer the 
 workers, instead of permitting the workers to administer 
 themselves. It has remained for Christendom to present 
 the spectacle of destruction scientifically engineered, 
 murder's consmnmate pattern and masterpiece. Nations 
 are a homicidal mania; a subordination of ideal ends to 
 commercial poUcy, which policy can only end in warfare. 
 Nationalism has prevailed ever since modem society 
 went erring after the false gods of Venice and Tyre. Let 
 the decline continue, Earth will become a mortuary car, 
 and the round world a mausoleum. Peace? So long as 
 the workshops are unfree, a treaty of peace contrives a 
 peace that is no peace; and the ravens are hoarse that 
 croak its coming. 
 
 It is not too late to retrieve our civiUzation. Munic- 
 ipaUty can reintegrate men into the social bond; has 
 power to reknit the ravelled fabric; that the morrow of 
 mankind may be glorious. The classic world inculcated 
 it, all the noble ages have re-echoed it, this day of thunder 
 and eclipse must heed it: the Free City, sovereign above 
 all crowns and kingdoms, a lacework of industrial so- 
 cieties in confederation scopeful as the arms of the god- 
 head, to embrace the habitable territories of mankind. 
 
CHAPTER XV 
 
 CARA P ATRIA, CARIOR LI BERT AS 
 
 WAR is caused by inattention to government. 
 Famine, pestilence, graft, and immorality are 
 caused by inattention to government. The 
 Luminous Ages have been signallized by a pubhc-minded- 
 ness in the people; a folk who paid attention to their 
 collective transactions. The Dull Ages have always been 
 marked by a private mind in the people. Animals are 
 private-minded. The human eras in history, as dis- 
 tinguished from the animal eras, have witnessed in man a 
 social description of heart and mind. 
 
 In order to arouse in the people of America a pub- 
 lic consciousness, and so transform the human animal 
 into a human being, "Citizenship Campaigns" are being 
 inaugurated. We see them taking the form of city clubs, 
 independence leagues, neighborhood associations, civic 
 alliances; committees and societies of many names but 
 with a common purpose; to awaken the people from their 
 egoistic absorption into a concern for government. Prob- 
 ably the finest idealism of our day is here engaged. To 
 supplant private-heartedness by public-heartedness is to 
 broaden the mind, curb the appetites, refine the conver- 
 sation, tighten the cords of the will, ennoble and heighten 
 and strengthen all of man's life. Therefore one can only 
 lament the ill success which these evangeUsts of good 
 government are meeting. Selfishness in America is on 
 
 207 
 
208 THE FREE CITY 
 
 the increase. The percentage of grammar school, high 
 school, and college graduates who are dedicating them- 
 selves to careers of altruistic service is steadily declining. 
 "Percentage," I say. The absolute number may be in- 
 creasing. But in proportion to the growth of population, 
 it is decreasing. The tides of self-aggrandizement are 
 sweeping more and more torrentially. Each year, less 
 of American youth prefer the work that is purely service- 
 able to work that is lucrative. 
 
 The poUtical fabric in America is not designed to 
 produce public-spirited men and women. Amateur social 
 workers and altruistic committees proceed on the notion 
 that preaching to and pleading with the people, wUl 
 produce an alert populace. Our Constitution does not 
 encourage in the people an active and constant thought 
 toward the government. To the contrary. Under the 
 confederation, the Thirteen States were proceeding 
 prosperously, except in that one respect: the common 
 people were participating overmuch in the affairs of state. 
 In order to call a halt on that propensity and close the 
 minds of the people within their private affairs, Hamilton 
 and his men wrested away the seat of sovereignty from 
 the neighborhoods where the people hved, and fixed it in 
 a distant spot; whereby government has become an 
 esoteric thing, operating upon the multitude from afar, 
 invisible as choke damp, invulnerable as a mist. 
 
 That Constitution has shaped American life into its 
 image. Could not help but do so. Let me fashion the 
 governmental fabric, I care not who fashions the residue 
 of man's life. The pohtical form determines everything 
 else. Associate people in this maimer or in that, their 
 thoughts and sentiments and wills, their doings by day 
 and their dreamings in the night, will be shaped in con- 
 formity therewith. Theology, ethics, psychology, the 
 
CARA PATRIA, CARIOR LIBERTAS 209 
 
 physical sciences, art, industry — all of these are branches 
 of pohtical science. The state is the totaHty, of which 
 everything else in heaven and earth is a part. Even the 
 stars in their courses will be related to a people according 
 to the manner in which those people are related to each 
 other. 
 
 That Americans have become the most private-minded 
 folk in Christendom, is not surprising. Our Constitution 
 establishes the most highly centrahzed fabric of govern- 
 ment on the face of the earth. In the celebrated case of 
 Cohens v. Virginia, John Marshall said of the States: 
 "They are members of one great empire." The rulership 
 has been lifted out of our hands, given over into the keep- 
 ing of a professional class. Debarred thus from growing 
 a governmental consciousness, the people have remained 
 down on the ego plane. This shunting of the life power 
 into self-centeredness has accumulated in Americans a 
 high-voltage privateering, more tigerish and ravening 
 than was ever seen in any other time or place. So long 
 as these voracities could flow off into free land beyond the 
 Mississippi, not much of friction or colhdings were felt. 
 Now, with the damming back upon itself of this privateer- 
 ing mania, the Donnybrook Fair and universal scrimmage 
 is commencing. We look forth on a day of dissolution, a 
 decomposing of society into fractional things called egos. 
 As one gazes upon the spectacle, one gets the impression 
 of a planet shivering into asteroids. 
 
 IndividuaUsm is the opposite of civiUzation. It is the 
 code of the jungle, as contrasted with the neighborly and 
 benignant institutes of civil society. If civiHzation is to 
 continue in America, a social mind will have to replace 
 the ego mind. Sentimental endeavor will not effect that 
 change. Exhortations to good citizenship are as the 
 lighting of a torch to turn night into day. Though we 
 
210 THE FREE CITY 
 
 kindle many a bonfire, the shadows will gather deep and 
 deeper. The night can be dispelled only by wheeling the 
 earth back into the sun. A large state means an ego- 
 centric society. A small state means a commmio-centric 
 society. Night will endure, until nationahty gives way 
 to municipality. 
 
 Our Constitution makes for political quietism. Munic- 
 ipaUty makes people diligent. Nationahty makes them 
 docile. Democracy means self-ownership: a community 
 cherishing inviolable frontiers, hving a unique life, work- 
 ing out an undictated destiny. America has prohibited a 
 democratic form of society; has constitutionalized a 
 bureaucratic form of society. Which is not to blaspheme 
 the bureaucrats. They are fettered in the same chain 
 wherewith they fetter us. God help us all, we have every- 
 one been caught in the evil web, we are all tarred with 
 the same culpability. There is one thing more dis- 
 reputable than to be ruled by poUticians; and that is, 
 to be one of those politicians. Washington is an arti- 
 ficial city, the capital of an artificial civiUzation. But 
 even an artificial civiHzation is better than no civilization. 
 Until a different poUtical structure is instituted, our 
 bureaucrats will have to continue their graceless iUiberal 
 task. 
 
 Nationalism is not grounded in self-government; it is 
 grounded in representative government, that is to say, 
 in poUticianism. An imperator, elected to serve four 
 years, is during those four years an imperator. And if, 
 at that expiration, another be elected, is it not an impera- 
 torship perpetual? The fact that we sign away our 
 freedom voluntarily, does not condone the perfidy of the 
 deed but blackens it. To be under a king is better than 
 to be under a capitaUst; for at least the people did not 
 vote the chains upon their wrists and leg bones. Op- 
 
CARA PATRIA, CARIOR LIBERTAS 211 
 
 pression by the consent of the oppressed — is it not the 
 most entirely damned condition a people can get into? 
 
 It is difficult to treat of these things, in a book addressed 
 to moderns. The people have departed so widely and 
 through so long time now from the principle of civic 
 freedom that they have lost the very concept of it. Those 
 grooves of thought, worn by the heroism of high-spirited 
 forefathers, have become filled up. With the average 
 American, representative government has been inoculated 
 into his system by subtle indoctrination through one 
 hundred and thirty years. Modern man has lost not 
 only the remembrance but even the reUsh of hberty; as a 
 drunkard's palate, inured to artificial Uquids, gets after a 
 time to find spring water a tasteless and unnatural drink, 
 
 PoUticians are corrupt — and ought to be. A people 
 so immersed in private affairs that they have no time for 
 pubUc business, do not deserve to have that pubUc busi- 
 ness attended to. Representative government means 
 that the mass of the people are busy with private gainings. 
 Then why may not the pohticians also go in for private 
 gainings? When the people are out for their own pockets 
 all the time, why may not the hired representatives of 
 that people likewise be out for their own pockets all the 
 time? Politicianism is God's punishment upon a people 
 engrossed in selfishness. The politician who steals is not 
 hated of the Upper Powers. If pohticians were honest 
 it would be a ciu^e to the human race. Because then the 
 people would forget their responsibihty for the state, 
 would lapse comfortably into egoistic sloth; and self- 
 government would perish everlastingly. The pohtical 
 corruption that is scourging America is of God's doing. 
 The boss and the boodler are a cat-o'-nine-tails in the 
 hands of a merciful Father in heaven, to chastise His 
 disobedient but well-beloved America. 
 
212 THE FREE CITY 
 
 Politicians have a charter from heaven to steal with 
 both hands. When the people are private-minded, the 
 ofl&ce-holders are going to be private-minded also. Cer- 
 tainly, stealing is inmioral. But seK-aggrandizement is 
 immoral too. The same Book that forbids the one, issues 
 an equally thunderous veto against the other. The com- 
 merciahst profit-hunter is of one stripe with gangsters 
 that nest in Congress lobbies — profiteers, both of them. 
 Mercantile extortioners and pohtical boodlers are under 
 one and the same condemnation. Why should we ask 
 a pohtician to die poor, when the people who elected him 
 to office are heaping barrels of money? A people so 
 sunk in privateering that they entrust their pubUc af- 
 fairs to an officialdom, must not be offended when those 
 officials do some privateering on their own account. 
 How, how mistaken, the notion that office-holders will be 
 altruistic, when the people are avaricious! 
 
 Representative government is invisible government. 
 And the invisibility increases with the size of the state. 
 In Massachusetts under the Articles of Confederation, we 
 saw that, though government by a direct assembUng of 
 the people was impossible, nevertheless the seat of that 
 government was so close to the homes of the people that, 
 through Shays and his men, they could get their will 
 accomplished. Per contra, a sovereignty that embraces 
 three thousand miles of territory — thrice the area of the 
 Roman Empire — is the perfection of invisibihty. At so 
 great a remove from those who elected them, office-holders 
 will act on the same principle as those who sent them to 
 that far away spot; for their own profit, first, last and all 
 the time. Otherwise they would not truly "represent" 
 their people. Since the beginning of the world, repre- 
 sentative government never represented anything except 
 the money power. Invisible government is always 
 
CARA PATRIA, CARIOR LIBERTAS 213 
 
 malevolent to liberty. We have got to stop blaming the 
 poUtician, and apportion the guilt where it belongs. 
 Self-seeking by merchants and plumbers and manu- 
 facturers, is quite as heinous in the eyes of heaven as self- 
 seeking by a pohtical boss. Representative government 
 means ruthlessness for material success. In which game 
 the place-holders, bitten by the same mania, will prove 
 quite as adept as the materialists who elected them. 
 
 Some have the idea that "invisible government" is an 
 inexact phrase; because the people do the electing, and 
 can choose whom they wish. But they do the electing 
 — if the geographical area be large — through pohtical 
 parties, the management of which is also invisible. Con- 
 trive a thousand devices. Direct Primary, what you will, 
 representative government is machine government. Elec- 
 tion Day is but a reshuffling of the same crooked deck. 
 "Initiative, Referendum and Recall!" "Recall" gives 
 to the people the privilege of calling back one pohtician, 
 and sending another pohtician in his place. "Referen- 
 diim and Initiative" mean, government by post card. 
 They who think that three thousand miles of people can 
 concert a daily administration of their affairs by means 
 of postal cards, think sentimentally. To annihilate miU- 
 tarism, the people must control not only the war power 
 but also the diplomatizings that lead up to war. And 
 that means a quick and constant deciding of decisions. 
 Can three thousand miles of people decide decisions 
 quickly and constantly? For civil hberty, a castle of 
 post cards builds quite too pregnable a fortress. 
 
 Bad visibihty is the cause of our pubhc apathy. As the 
 distance of the capital city from the homes of the people 
 increases, the visibility becomes worse. Distance is of 
 all obscurations the most effectual. No wall so imper- 
 vious, no curtains of secrecy so complete, as miles of in- 
 
214 THE FREE CITY 
 
 tervening space. To nationalize means, to remove the 
 seat of power far from the people. To mmiicipalize 
 means, to bring the seat of power back towards the people. 
 The smaller the state — down to the point of self -subsist- 
 ence — the more democracy. The larger the state, the 
 more plutocracy. Only in big states can be found the 
 greatly rich. The size of the state, and the size of 
 the millionairic fortunes within that state, always keep 
 step with each other. 
 
 As the state enlarges, democracy diminishes. Bureau- 
 cracy is the confiscation of hberty. Home rule is heaven; 
 delegated rule is hell, a hell seven times heated, and 
 growing hotter. Under nationahty, the government 
 owns the people. Under municipaHty, the people own 
 the government. Than America, there is no other spot 
 in Christendom where government is more subterranean, 
 and where the masses Hve so dispiritedly. Moses tmned 
 the waters of Egypt into blood; Alexander Hamilton 
 turned the blood of Americans into water. The fate of a 
 hundred miUion people emanates from a government 
 oflfice. So there has arisen in the multitudes a quality of 
 fatalism. Government is private to seven or eight. Why 
 should a comjnon man concern himself with matters too 
 high for him? 
 
 Representative government is impeached of the high 
 crime and misdemeanor of poisoning the wellsprings of 
 civilization. It is the most subtle form into which 
 empire can be thrown. It permits big-business, safe- 
 guarded behind a screen of inscrutability, to exact the 
 maximum of tribute with the minimum of accountability. 
 It has fostered in the people a dereliction of pubUc duty, 
 so that they have to be dragged to the polls, or coaxed 
 by chowder parties. It has gelded the people of their 
 manhood; has blasted them into torpor of soul, the 
 
CARA PATRIA, CARIOR LIBERTAS 215 
 
 lethargy that creeps through the moral system when 
 people accept a fate not of their own making. MoraUty 
 is mastery over impulse; a capacity in the people of judg- 
 ing and acting for themselves. Self-government engen- 
 dered that capacity in our forefathers. Representative 
 government is destroying it in their children. In sup- 
 planting democracy with bureaucracy, it has infected all 
 the processes of life. So that the idea of the State has 
 wellnigh dropped out of modern consciousness. The 
 sense of a social bond is disappearing. Our cities are not 
 cities, but a piggery of people attracted thither by the 
 rattle of the feed-trough, and rushing down to Gadarene 
 disaster. Commercial imperialism has Uberated in the 
 American heart a rapacity for gain; instead of celestial 
 co-operation, we have the hyena creed of competition. 
 A madhouse bedlam. One hundred millions of people 
 with but one thought: to bite and devour each other. 
 
 Nationalism means great-monied men stronger than 
 the laws. And we saw that it was done wantonly by 
 Hamilton and his coterie, to swell the hallelujah chorus 
 of the rich. In a national state, the governors and the 
 governed are not the same people. In a municipal state, 
 the governors and the governed are the same people. 
 Therefore municipal government is free government. 
 The municipahty is the natural guardian of the people. 
 It is there that the problems of life have their intimate 
 and familiar seat. Redemption works never at long dis- 
 tance or by absent treatment. The community is our 
 Generatrice, and our Protectress. In the days of her 
 sovereignty, she has always been of fierce and overmaster- 
 ing affection for her own. No creature so ferocious as a 
 mother if, when her babes are milking her, danger draws 
 near to threaten them. But now the municipahty is 
 helpless. Her power has been taken from her; has been 
 
216 THE FREE CITY 
 
 lodged in a government hundreds of miles away from us; 
 whose efforts to save the people are as if a surgeon should 
 treat a grievously wounded man, by long distance tele- 
 phone. The towns are La subordination to continental 
 grandees; and the American city sits, disarmed, fettered, 
 manacled. In this her pitiable estate, she is of no more 
 protection to her children than an ant hill when the ant- 
 eater darts in his all-searching sinewy tongue. 
 
 Not brick nor steel nor street lamps nor sewers, but 
 sovereignty is the first requisite to the building of a city. 
 Let her confide to a power outside of her the spindle and 
 shears of destiny, she no longer has prestige to mesmerize 
 her people into obedience, or charm them into eager 
 fidelity. Her councils then are but a debating society. 
 Adult men will not interest themselves ia a debating 
 society. "Succor and esteem the civil authority!" But 
 under nationaUsm that civil authority becomes a junta 
 of pohticians, far-distant and suspected. So that the 
 social compact is being undennined. Men are casting to 
 the winds obedience, honor, respect, and loyalties. Mer- 
 cenary madness is epidemic. Cupidity calls the tune, to 
 which both the opulent and the lowly are dancing. More 
 and more the people are inattentive to their kingly and 
 dear-bought prerogatives of hberty. A sheer deviltry of 
 self-enrichment. Instead of cities we see a meshwork of 
 maggots, each of them positively believing that it is more 
 blessed to receive than to give. 
 
 Social enthusiasts marvel that people are so apathetic 
 to their neighborhood duties. But without war power, 
 coinage, and foreign relations, a community is not a com- 
 mimity. The amount of self-government accorded to the 
 cities under our Constitution is of a piece with that 
 generous reply of the parent to his child wishing to go 
 swimming: 
 
CARA PATRIA, CARIOR LIBERTAS 217 
 
 Yes my darling daughter; 
 
 Hang your clothes on a hickory limb, 
 But don't go near the waJter. 
 
 Our communities have " self-government," in that they 
 are permitted to decide for themselves whether they shall 
 pave their streets with asphalt or cobble stones. And 
 then we wonder why strong men no longer interest them- 
 selves in civic affairs. Deprived of sovereignty, it is not 
 very important to a community whether its highways 
 be paved with asphalt or with cobble stones, or with 
 neither. A servitude decked out with asphalt or cobble 
 stones — is it not a servitude still? 
 
 Municipahty wins the people to an interest in the State, 
 by turning over to them the proprietorship of the State. 
 It makes them shareholders in a poUtical partnership. 
 In a small republic the citizens are personally members 
 of the board of directorate. SeK-activity is aroused: 
 an enthusiasm for, and conversancy with public affairs. 
 Aristocracies, when they have deserved that high title, 
 have been a set of people who stood up for the public. 
 In a very real way a municipal commonwealth makes the 
 citizens aristocrats; exalts the lowhest of them to be 
 bondholders and directors in the State. George EUot's 
 "Romola, " making a Florentine barber in his citizen's 
 cap an eager participant in the pubUc questions of the day, 
 showed fideUty to historical fact. The people of Florence 
 were a Committee of Public Safety in perpetual session. 
 The commimity owning itself — there is the formula of 
 freedom and joy and nobihty and fellowship. 
 
 With socialists, "internationalism" is a word to con- 
 jure strong applause. As an expression of world brother- 
 hood, the term is beautiful. But it belongs in the realm 
 of social science, that mirage country of emotion and 
 
218 THE FREE CITY 
 
 preachment and dreamings. When one leaves that 
 misty reakn for the hard clear region of political science, 
 one no longer says "internationalism" but "interurban- 
 ism"; a world confederacy of small republics. Poli- 
 ticianism is the devil that is destroying us. Would a 
 workingclass poUticianism be of a different breed? Na- 
 tionaUsm is government of the many by the few. In- 
 temationaUsm would be government of the very many by 
 a very few. There is one thing that Wall Street likes 
 better than nationalism; and that is internationahsm. 
 A World State; one imperialistic capital ruling all the 
 tracts and areas of the globe! Mankind handed over into 
 the power of a World Committee, with wide wastes of 
 ocean separating the people from that Conmiittee — 
 would it not enthrone a tyranny grinding and abusive 
 beyond describing? Self-government is freedom. Repre- 
 sentative government is the suicide of freedom. Inter- 
 mimicipalism is the only true internationahsm. World 
 consciousness is the superstructure, of which community 
 consciousness must be the foundation. Until a man 
 grows big-spirited enough to mow the weeds and clean 
 the crosswalk in front of his house, he is not big enough 
 to participate in a world directorate. The map of the 
 world is a mosaic of conmiunities. Unify the com- 
 munities, the unification of the world will take care of 
 itself. 
 
 An enthusiastic body of the proletariat has broken 
 away from the Sociahst parties as a protest against poU- 
 ticianism, or "parUamentarism," as it is termed in Europe. 
 These are known as Syndicahsts. They demand — and 
 justly — a change in the system of society, instead of a 
 mere change in the politicians that shall administer the 
 present society. "Direct Actionists," they term them- 
 selves; and their feud with the "Political Actionists" 
 
CARA PATRIA, CARIOR LIBERTAS 219 
 
 threatens to tear the labor movement asimder. Munic- 
 ipality would imite these warring factions. A municipal 
 republic proceeds by the method of poUtical direct action. 
 It proclaims the principle of poUtical government, which 
 means, orderly rule by majority vote; and yet it tolerates 
 no pohticians as the treacherous channel through which 
 alone the will of the voters now can function. 
 
 MunicipaUty supplants the poUtician state with a 
 democratic state, small enough so that the citizen says 
 "L'^tat, c'est moi." When the individual says. The 
 State and I are one, and She is the one, in that moment 
 the animal is transformed into a human being. In Athens 
 a man could be put on trial and punished for incivism, 
 want of affection to the State. She announced that a 
 man must not develop interests of his own, apart from his 
 interests as a member of the commonwealth. The 
 Narcissus parable — a man hypnotized with self -contem- 
 plation — was her rebuke of the lookingglass code of con- 
 duct; little man inflated with self-importancy. The 
 Free City breeds active citizenship, a life lived with 
 pubhc meaning and social purpose. *i 
 
 To the extent that municipaUsm flomishes, poUti- 
 cianism perishes. Even under city commonwealths, 
 participation by all of the people in all of the doings of 
 the state is not to be expected. Athens, the most entire 
 democracy yet attained, was not perfect. Nor will 
 perfection ever be. A community, complete in fellow- 
 ship and freedom, with all of the people a himdred per 
 cent pubUc-minded, is the goal of the universe. It will 
 require eternity for its consummation. All that we can 
 expect to do is to travel in that direction; well assured 
 that each horizon attained will disclose a further sky-line, 
 a higher perfection on beyond. At present the world is 
 travelling in the opposite direction, toward more and more 
 
220 THE FREE CITY 
 
 politicianism — larger and larger political aggregates. 
 That is another way of saying, we are in an era of deca- 
 dence. To turn, and set our faces toward municipaUty, 
 will start humankind on the Upward Trail. The city 
 repubUc is the criterion of progress. As the seat of 
 government recedes from the community, Dollars amal- 
 gamate their empire with coronation and great might. 
 As the seat of government comes back toward the com- 
 munity, the people regain the dominion, the power, and 
 the glory. The clash between those two tendencies, is 
 the drama of the ages. As with all fences, the hedge of 
 civic hberty will continually need repairs. Like to a 
 diUgent Husbandman, the Spirit of Municipality seeks 
 daily to make the fence horse-high, bull-strong, hog-tight. 
 
 Nor is that Husbandman altogether without success, 
 in the task of democracy to which He has committed 
 Himself. Reports the Lord Mayor of Manchester: 
 "The growth of municipal responsibilities illustrates the 
 irresistible drift of pubKc affairs. The democratic ideal 
 is being worked out through municipaUties. Com- 
 munism and sociaHsm, words of terror a few short years 
 ago, are finding a peaceful solution in various phases of 
 municipal work. For what are free hbraries, art galleries, 
 baths, parks, technical schools, tramways, but commu- 
 nistic efforts. We need some stimulus to quicken our sense 
 of the value of mutual helpfulness. Some day men will 
 awake to the immense possibiUties of corporate action; 
 and the community will find salvation, not in the patron- 
 age and gifts of the wealthy, but in the combined and 
 intelligent efforts of the people themselves." 
 
 Also in the reUgious unrest of our time, signs of con- 
 solation arise. Palestine was wonderful. But America 
 likewise can be glorified into wonderfulness. The Bible 
 is the grammar of poUtics. Naught but City-worship 
 
CARA PATRIA, CARIOR LIBERTAS 221 
 
 will bring a revival of piety and religious emotion. "I 
 say no man has ever been half devout enough," insisted 
 Walt Whitman; "none has ever yet adored or worshipped 
 half enough. I say that the real and permanent grandeur 
 of these States must be their reUgion; otherwise there is 
 no real and permanent grandeur." Wheresoever a Free 
 City emerges, is thenceforth the world's center of gravity. 
 It matters not how far into the backwoods, or how 
 inclement her natm-al setting. Autonomy is of so wizard 
 a virtue, it can transform bleakness into beauty, garnish 
 a desert into song and roses. Self-government is the out- 
 ward sign, of which fellowship is the inward reaUty. And 
 fellowship is the core of the cosmos. Let a sovereign 
 city arise, it is advertisement that the hub of the universe 
 is there protruding. It will build a Florence in the sands 
 of Arizona, a Nuremburg in the mule-lands of Missouri. 
 Nq stream less fitted for a dramatic role in history, than 
 reed-choked diminutive Jordan. Yet the waters of it are 
 bottled for shipment to the ends of the earth, so potent 
 is municipaUty unto a landscape's glorification. 
 
 Christianity is a persuasion of civil freedom, or it is 
 nothing. In self-government all moraUties and all spirit- 
 uaUties lie germinant. The Comraimc is mandatory upon 
 us by dispensation of The Eternal. Not easily will the 
 boon be acquired. If the cat would eat fish it must wet 
 its feet. Between the big commercial state and the small 
 artistic state, is an immortal conflict. Empire versus 
 Self-determination! Plutocracy against democracy! the 
 church must take sides. Scripture tells us of a time once 
 when the saint was not a sap-head. Religion must no 
 longer try to slink through the world. "Government by 
 the consent of the governed," is the modernistic creed; 
 and because of it we behold money's immoderate do- 
 minion. Government by the governed, is Heaven's 
 
222 THE FREE CITY 
 
 categorical commandment; obedience to which has illu- 
 minated the pages of history with the epochs we brag 
 of most. 
 
 Not alone in Palestine is the Father Almighty at home. 
 MunicipaUty unfolds a liberal and expanded view of the 
 steppings of God through history. In Rome He had a 
 dwellingplace. Attica and the Gothic communes knew 
 Him. Under various names He was known; but it was 
 He, the Spirit of Freedom; very God of very God. The 
 Free City is God's attempt to build for Himself a habita- 
 tion. More than once the winds have stormed in upon 
 the structure and tumbled it. But with inexhaustible 
 patience He girds Himself anew to the task. The Bible 
 is the textbook of municipahty; in whose cause Lord 
 Christ was wounded unto death. I wish I had the skull 
 of Jesus. I'd make of it a beaker jfilled with the wine of 
 life. And I'd put its rim to the lips of youth upon their 
 21st birthday; to consecrate them in that bowl to an 
 emulation of the most entire Patriot of which history 
 preserves the record. I'd bid each of them drain the 
 goblet, and pledge therein his city's honor, a fame of 
 majesty for her, hberal sovereignty, and grandeur long- 
 lasting as the sun. 
 
 The municipal republic is the one article of faith which 
 no skepticism has invaUdated. The only praise and worth 
 is citizenship, in whose focus all the moraUties stand com- 
 prehended. To him who is a good citizen, every other 
 fault will be remitted. But he who is neghgent toward 
 his city, though he be sainted with lesser virtues without 
 number, is damned beyond the reach of mercy. Jerusalem 
 was a municipal republic. In order to reproduce the 
 spirituality of the Bible, we must reproduce the politi- 
 cal form under which those Bible folk wrote and 
 wrought. 
 
CARA PATRIA, CARIOR LIBERTAS 223 
 
 Religion cannot forevermore be an antiquarianism, 
 something exhumed from out a dusty and mildewed past. 
 Its one purpose — if the Bible be authentic — is to give 
 a spiritual interpretation of the city, of every city; in- 
 spiring her with a consciousness of her statehood. Self- 
 government is Lord God functioning; a community 
 resolved to listen to Him, in the Within, rather than to 
 turn its ear to dictates from outside, vox populi, vox 
 DEI. Democracy is Deity. The voice of a free people is 
 the voice of the Almighty; concentrating within the com- 
 mune all power, authority, and dignities; permitting none 
 to have jurisdiction over them save the Prince of fellow- 
 ship, to walk in His marvellous light forever. So will be 
 liberated once more a climate salubrious to the soul and 
 her mansions, as mammonism's fog and filthy air is not. 
 Except the city of men be a City of God, the builders 
 build not a city but a cock-pit. 
 
CHAPTER XVI 
 
 THE MYSTICISM OF MUNICIPALITY 
 
 ART is territoriality sublimated into a temperament. 
 It is a segment of Natm-e, soaking up into and 
 finding expression through a people domiciled in 
 that geographical spot. 
 
 Wherefore, art and mimicipality are fellows. The 
 municipal state is one whose boundaries were laid out by 
 Nature. National boundaries, knowing chiefly a lust of 
 commercial winnings, stretch themselves irrespective of 
 natural demarcation. Within that huge area are spoken 
 a diversity of languages, by peoples of diverse bloods, 
 dwelling in a diversity of climates. The hodge-podge 
 may be as motley as the American nation. No matter. 
 Inconsiderately, the nation expands the boundary to in- 
 clude the conglomerate mass; for it is based on but one 
 principle of unification: a universal belief that man's life 
 consisteth in the abundance of things man possesseth. 
 So long as that creed is held, the nation continues. One 
 faction of the money-getters may overthrow another 
 faction. It is but a change of administration. So long 
 as money-getting is the dominant goal, the principle of 
 nationality has nothing to fear. It is when there emerges 
 an ideal higher than self-enrichment, nationalism begins 
 to totter. 
 
 Patriotism is the adoration of locality. That is why 
 it is truly met with only under a mimicipal ordering of 
 
 life. The patriot is one who adores Nature. A man can 
 
 224 
 
THE MYSTICISM OF MUNICIPALITY 225 
 
 adore only one particular wedge of Nature. Adore, I 
 say. He can admire other spots, can like those other 
 spots, can wish well to those other spots. But he can 
 adore only one. And that is the spot where he lives, 
 where his fathers Uved before him, and where he confides 
 that his children shall live after him. Patriotism is 
 geography raised to the boiling point; so that it effer- 
 vesces into poetry and art and heroism. There is not 
 fire enough in a man's heart to raise a multitude of land- 
 scapes to that boiling point. To achieve so high a tem- 
 perature the heat must be concentrated. In comparison 
 with that which we see in communes like Israel or Attica, 
 huge modern states present but a pseudo-patriotism. 
 
 Citizenship is city-worship. And by "worship" I 
 mean the word in its rapturous and kindling sense. A 
 commercial folk can get along in the realm of the prosaic. 
 An artistic civiHzation can nourish itself only in the 
 kingdoms of the subconscious — those magical empower- 
 ments surging up without call or bell. Nature heated to 
 incandescence is patriotism; patriotism, when it has 
 achieved coherency of expression, is genius. Small 
 states have produced the great men. Take from the 
 roster of fame the names written there by municipal 
 republics (and those who drew their inspiration from 
 municipal repubhcs) you will have taken away all of the 
 brilliances, leaving but a dinginess of mediocrity to 
 mark man's path across the years. A fact as big as that 
 happens by cause. Some deep law must be at work. And 
 that law we are here formulating. Nature is the uncon- 
 scious. When taken up into our tissues and medulla, she 
 becomes the subconscious. And that subconscious is the 
 intoxicating realm whose afflatus is known as genius. 
 Patriotism is this intimacy between man and nature. 
 To achieve it, man must settle down. An oak tree can 
 
226 THE FREE CITY 
 
 be transplanted, and still live; but every transplanting 
 sets it back. Men are trees walking. Quite as truly as 
 the oak, our roots reach into the good brown soil. Fre- 
 quent pulling up of roots is as deleterious to human 
 growth as to tree growth. In the communal ages, when 
 man remained rooted, the powerful strength of the earth 
 seeped up into the nerves of his mind; made the brain 
 more highly vitahzed; buoyed him up on an immense 
 ethereal flood. The man felt himself to be concentric 
 with the polar axis, the influences of Pleiades, the bands 
 of Orion. Occult secrecies were opened unto him; the 
 balancings of the clouds and the mysteries of the Zodiac. 
 The thunder of that power came upon him hke a wide 
 breaking in of waters. And genius is the name we give 
 to it. Said Aristotle: "No great genius was ever with- 
 out some admixture of madness; nor can anything grand 
 or superior be spoken except by the agitated soul." 
 
 The fact is incontestable: life in community states 
 sends down deeper roots and pushes into loftier branch- 
 ings, than life in large commercial states. That is why 
 it develops a civihan rather than a military fabric: "The 
 Lord will give strength unto his people; the Lord will 
 bless his people with peace." Nationalism is a force 
 making inevitably for war, because it is a force expanding 
 in the sideways direction. The surface of the earth is 
 limited. But commercial greed is unlimited. So these 
 lateral-thrustings known as nationalisms spread and 
 spread until they coUide. Which colUsions, now that the 
 globe is full peopled, must become more frequent and more 
 sanguinary. NationaUty sprawls; municipaUty delves. 
 It is the difference between a commercial civilization and 
 an artistic civihzation. Of that City of God in the Apoc- 
 alypse we read: "The length and the breadth and the 
 height of it are equal." Commerce is the worship of 
 
THE MYSTICISM OF MUNICIPALITY 227 
 
 superfluity; a measuring of success by bigness; Quan- 
 tum is its godhead. Art digs into the deeps and chmbs 
 unto the heights; works intensively, not extensively; 
 measures all things by the standard of quality. To 
 sprawl is not meritorious — the jelly fish can do that. 
 For business in the vertical direction, vertebrates 
 appeared. 
 
 Some will ask why Nature-worship is necessarily tied 
 to a communal form of life; why may it not be cultivated 
 by each individual for himself? Thoreau at Walden 
 Lake, for example; Nature devotee, and yet Uving in a 
 hermit's cabin. The answer is. Nature always presents 
 herself to us in mass formation, and can be counter- 
 poised only by human beings in mass formation. Fierce 
 and fractious in the wild abundance of her strength, she 
 must first be mastered. Individual man cannot master 
 her. Even savages are compelled to practise a primitive 
 form of association, in order to exist; animals too know 
 the herding instinct. 
 
 Take any geographical nook. Make a catalogue of 
 the Nature-forces there massed: the river, the springs 
 that feed it, the pastures alongside, prowlers and creep- 
 ing things and insects, weeds and tangling vines pushing 
 with ceaseless urge, winds and hail and electric storms — 
 a plexus of vitalities and powers and movements beating 
 in upon that spot; and mountain-like in their ensemble. 
 A Robinson Crusoe was shipwrecked solitary amid such 
 a mass. And the reader will recall how helpless he lay. 
 It is not good for man to be alone. Nature tramples 
 him as a bullock tramples a pismire. "Tribeless, lawless, 
 heartless ones," Homer wrote of such. And Aristotle 
 says of this lonely type: "He may be compared to an 
 unprotected piece in the game of checkers." 
 
 Crusoe, as the story narrates, preserved a something 
 
228 THE FREE CITY 
 
 of human ascendency, because the ship that had brought 
 him, furnished methods and implements and suppUes 
 which had been perfected by the communion of mankind 
 through long-civiUzed centuries. Thoreau in like man- 
 ner took to Walden Lake a civiUzation ready-made: 
 the pen he wrote with, the paper he wrote upon, the fire- 
 kindling match, the kettle, the axe he borrowed, the 
 pattern for the building of his house. With even this 
 start the contest proved unequal. The hardships wore 
 down his endurance. Disease took him untimely away. 
 
 As anything smaller than the community is too feeble 
 to maintain itself, so in the other direction a poUtical 
 grouping larger than the community is a misfit and a 
 misery. Nature presents herself in blocks or segments 
 known as locaUties. Each locality is a unit. One is a 
 sea coast, another is a river valley, another is a plateau. 
 Our planet is covered with many locahties. These differ 
 as to the slant of the sun, slope of the prevailing winds, 
 quahty and temperature of the air, sequence of seasons, 
 geological antecedents, relationship v/ith neighboring 
 locaUties, the constellations overarching and the earth 
 crust undergirding. And these natural diversities ought 
 to be permitted to express themselves in the peoples 
 there inhabiting; making them also diverse one from the 
 other. Peoples thus differently situated can be crushed 
 into pohtical uniformity only by divorcing them from 
 their natural settings. 
 
 Nationalists, forasmuch as they live thus in an arti- 
 ficial fabric of state, are not children of Nature. They 
 seek to escape from Nature, by getting rich. To be rich 
 is to be enabled to Uve an existence divorced from Nature. 
 Money permits its possessor to eat without putting his 
 hands to the soil, travel without putting his feet to the 
 ground; to wear clothing, and never see the sheep's 
 
THE MYSTICISM OF MUNICIPALITY 229 
 
 wooly back, the cotton tufting itself in the boll, and the 
 flax upthnisting in a sea of yellow or golden brown. A 
 desire to be rich, serves notice upon Nature that we no 
 longer desire her company. Under a nationaUst form of 
 society, labor is always in disrepute; the entire trend is 
 to escape from toil and live by the toil of others — toil, 
 which is our method of intimacy with the Great Mother. 
 Under nationalism, parents pray day and night that 
 heaven will avert from their children a career of manual 
 labor. Of all occupations, that of the farmer comes into 
 closest contact with Nature in all her forms. And the 
 temper of society in nationalist America is so averse to 
 agricultural work that the farms are being depopulated. 
 We see a mad drive toward the urban centers; as in that 
 other commercial empire, Rome-of-the-decadence. A 
 farmer walking up Broadway with wide brimmed straw, 
 top boots, suspenders, pitchfork or hay rake over his 
 shoulder, would obstruct traffic, would probably call out 
 the poUce reserves. And yet not one of the boys and 
 men in that hilarious crowd could exist seven days with- 
 out the foodstuffs provided by that farmer and his com- 
 rades of the soil. Nationalism may be defined as a 
 scheme of society whereby a class of non-producers 
 may hve without looking Nature in the face. 
 
 The overciviHzed modern would have been shocked 
 could he have looked in on the burgher folk of Gothic 
 communes; their leather garments handed down from 
 father to son; going their journeys on foot and sleeping 
 where night overtook them. Often the turnip cellar was 
 their sole means of subsistence for weeks at a time. The 
 great hall was strewn with rushes; or in Italy, with laurel 
 leaves, and with twigs of the juniper, in Norway. From 
 imder the bed in the corner could often be heard the 
 quacking of a duck or the honk of a goose. In the thir- 
 
230 THE FREE CITY 
 
 teenth century water was brought into London by con- 
 duit; a poor thing consisting of lead pipe. But they 
 greeted it with 6clat: abundance of water, "for the poor 
 to drink and the rich to dress their meat." Nuremburg 
 had to prohibit pigs and stock from running loose in the 
 streets; and we get glimpses of her poet, Hans Sachs, 
 sitting on the bench in front of the tavern, quaffing huge 
 steins. In Ulm, the baker's guild had to decree that its 
 members should confine cows to their stalls at night. 
 We get glimpses of wooden shoes, oiled linen in heu of 
 glass, garments of homespun butternut. Yet life with 
 them was deUcious; and the work of their hands wrought 
 lovely shapes beyond our poor power even to imitate. 
 One of the last services of Rodin was to plead with his 
 countrymen not to repair a Gothic cathedral; because, 
 said he, there was a magic in man's handiwork in that 
 time which moderns cannot achieve; the touch df a 
 nowaday bungler is instantly apparent, spoils the unity 
 of the structure. 
 
 Nature craves intimacy with man. He is her appa- 
 ratus whereby she climbs up out of unconsciousness, 
 through subconsciousness, into self consciousness. "The 
 Sun is my father and the Earth is my Mother; on her 
 bosom I will rest," said Tecumseh. A blind Mother is 
 she. So she has given birth to man in order that his 
 eyes may guide her sightlessness. Her joy is to be in 
 the company of her children, these humans she has 
 brought into being at so great a cost of birth pangs: 
 
 DEUCTAE MEAE ESSE CUM FILIIS HOMINUM. From prO- 
 
 toplasm to Plato, self-expression on the part of Nature 
 is the lu-ge that drives the imiversal scheme. It is at her 
 instigation, man puts on the garland and the singing robe. 
 Art is territoriaUty expressing itself. A municipal com- 
 monwealth is a community that has the courage to be 
 
THE MYSTICISM OF MUNICIPALITY 231 
 
 itself; delivering its own message to the world and not 
 the message of another. That pride of locaUty is the 
 courage that makes for originality of product. People 
 in communes hve inimitably; and so build earth into a 
 never-cloying paradise. 
 
 MunicipaHty is a distributer of metropoHtan grandeur 
 and dignities. The Bible is one long speech proclaiming 
 that the city which is not a free city is a disgraced city. 
 Whenever a municipal commonwealth emerges, straight- 
 way the angels start constructing a stairway to that spot. 
 In glorifjdng herself, the Free City is glorifying that 
 geographical portion and segment of Nature. No fact 
 is more obvious, than that the healthful spirit of locahsm 
 has written the resplendencies and the picturesqueness 
 into the record of man. Modernisms' disgusting uni- 
 formity is obUterating the Swiss chalet, the Irish brogue, 
 the Highland kilt. Everything to travel with, but no 
 spot worth travelling to. Steam cars, motor cars, aero 
 cars — and nowhere to go! We have swift means of 
 communication; but very little to communicate. Tele- 
 phone, telegraph, aero-post, wireless — and nothing to say 
 
 The United States Constitution concentrates the 
 sovereignty of the American continent in one spot; to 
 which all other spots are provincial and tributary. That 
 favored spot is Manhattan Island. Ninety two per cent 
 of the money in America, and therefore ninety two per 
 cent of the government of America, is in New York City; 
 a disproportion, furthermore, that is hourly growing; so 
 terrific is the centralization of power that is taking place. 
 New York is the capital of America; Washington is a deco- 
 rative adjunct where the clerks and stenographers are kept. 
 
 From which fact there is taking place a cheapening of 
 all other places. It is as if New York Bay, with its horse- 
 shoe prongs of the East and North Rivers, formed a 
 
232 THE FREE CITY 
 
 colossal magnet attracting everybody in America; start- 
 ing money to journey in this direction, prompting sons 
 and daughters on every farm to get ready to move in this 
 direction. Boards of investigation are scratching per- 
 plexed skulls to solve the country-life problem, discover 
 some method of turning back to the rural districts the 
 magnetism that is setting so mightily towards the urban 
 centers. Their recommendations have left the principle 
 of nationalism untouched. Therefore they have ad- 
 vanced no appreciable inch towards a remedy. Indeed, 
 students are beginning to feel that the blood-sucking drain 
 of vitahty from the farmsides must continue; leaving 
 the rural regions finally to be populated by rustics, a 
 peasant class of the left-behinds — countryfolk who were 
 too de-vitaUzed to feel the tug citywards, or too shiftless 
 to pull up stakes and move. "Very few farms anywhere 
 in Ohio have any men under middle age, and much of 
 the work is done by old men." The growth of farm- 
 tenantry is the dominating social fact in half the Missis- 
 sippi Valley. Away from the farm into the village, away 
 from the village into the smaller cities, away from the 
 smaller cities into the bigger cities, away from the bigger 
 cities into New York — that is America's national anthem. 
 Nationalism is a device for depopulating the farm. It 
 worked that way under the Roman Empire; has worked 
 that way in modem nationalist Europe; is working that 
 way in America. Peasants are agriculturalists in whom 
 the fire of sovereignty has died out. New York is to 
 Kansas City what Babylon was to Jerusalem. The 
 worshippers of the Golden Calf were content that Pales- 
 tine should.be administered from Babylon as its capital 
 and center. They who stood for the ark-of-the-covenant 
 — that civic palladium — insisted on a Jerusalem- 
 centered state. Many an agricultural folk to-day, 
 
THE MYSTICISM OF MUNICIPALITY 233 
 
 subserviently accepting a pallid and diminutive destiny, 
 is worshipping a golden image which Palestinian citizens 
 in their day burnt with fire and ground into pieces and 
 strewed on the water, so flame-hot was the fire of local 
 patriotism that burned within them. 
 
 Furthermore, this concentration of the riches and power 
 of a continent in New York City, is not a gain even to her. 
 It is swelling this town into a mammonism whose fevered 
 existence is far from spiritual-mindedness. A dropsical 
 bloat: Luxury Enlightening The World. Manhattan 
 cannot take time to five; she is forever uptorn to trans- 
 port and house the hordes that pour in upon her. The 
 bloat is proceeding at so rapid a pace, she is continuously 
 ripping up seams in her garment and letting out tucks. 
 New York never is, she is always going to be. Every 
 here and there you can find a stretch of street where a 
 house is not being torn down or built. Those blocks 
 would be desirable for residence, were it not that the pave- 
 ment there is torn up to enlarge the subway. Behold 
 the quiet beauty of old City Hall, contrasting with her 
 "Municipal Building," just finished — a lithe and grace- 
 ful David, glowered down upon by a hulk of a Goliath. 
 
 Where the sovereignty is, people will congregate. 
 ConsoHdate the sovereignty of a continent in one spot, 
 all the Country Life Commissions in the world cannot 
 prevent the population from tearing up its roots and 
 migrating thitherward. The principle of municipaUty, 
 on the other hand, scatters world-capitals throughout the 
 length and breadth of the continent. Thereby it effects 
 a healthy dispersal of the population; saves one favored 
 center from going apoplectic with congestion. Sovereignty 
 is like manure; if heaped in one place it enriches that spot 
 unduly, so that it grows rank with weeds and worms; with 
 an impoverishment of all the residue of the field. 
 
234 THE FREE CITY 
 
 In America one community monopolizes the sov- 
 ereignty, to the humiliation of a hundred other com- 
 munities. These outlying provinces thereupon lose their 
 local tang, begin to imitate the capital city. It makes 
 for universal monotony. Free Cities, on the other hand, 
 parcel out the sovereignty with a hberal hand. It pushes 
 up an archipelago of islands to sprinkle the ocean of 
 sameness; diversifying the flat waste of waters with 
 islands that federate but never coalesce. America is not 
 a country but a continent. Unification of the people 
 over so large an area could take place only by each com- 
 munity consenting to give up that which individuaUzes 
 it; the least common denominator of them all, is sheer 
 animal existence; the one thing we have in common, all 
 of the higher characteristics having been discarded from 
 the calculation. That is why we Americans are medi- 
 ocre. Mankind is called to hve variously. The white 
 beam of sunshine is inartistic, until it has become broken 
 apart into its component colors; then each tint is bril- 
 liant by contrast with its neighbors — multicolor versus 
 the monotone. MunicipaUty is the prism that takes the 
 himian species and separates it into a varicolored spec- 
 trum, a prismatic band encircling the globe and by whose 
 pigmentation, life would be wondrously briUiant. 
 
 Free Cities make for a wide and rich variorum. That 
 gives cross fertilization; earth a flower bed of ten thousand 
 distinct plants, seminating into the poUtical atmosphere 
 an invigorating exchange of pollen. Naught could stale 
 so infinite a variety. And Earth, though of the smallest 
 of planets, would never have another epidemic of world- 
 weariness. Nature is a nursing-mother with many 
 breasts. Each several landscape is one of her teats. The 
 community state is based on the principle that they who 
 are suckled by milk from the same nipple, are fused into 
 
THE MYSTICISM OF MUNICIPALITY 235 
 
 a litter, a mystic communion; and that to disregard this 
 natural mold and formula of statehood, is an irreverence 
 toward the maternal milk. The more truly a people 
 form a communal group at suck on her nourishing breast, 
 the more pacific they are toward other clan-groups at 
 suck on neighboring teats. For usurpation of another's 
 territory they have no thought. The milk from the teat 
 they are fastened to, seems to them sweeter than any 
 other. Listen to Bentivoglio: "The Alps are created 
 for the Swiss, and the Swiss for the Alps." 
 
 Henry George was right: communal ownership of the 
 soil is requisite for true civilization. The landless man is 
 a helpless man, a castaway; riff-raff; as trees plucked up 
 by the roots, raging waves of the sea whose waters cast 
 up mire and dirt. The Free City socializes the ownership 
 of a landscape, making all of the citizens co-proprietors. 
 George sensed the affinity between his teaching and the 
 principle of municipaUty. The final act of his life was to 
 consecrate the municipal idea as mayoralty candidate in 
 New York. Territorial freedom is of Henry Georgeism 
 the quintessence. He preached the sanctity of the soil. 
 The territorial crust we five upon comes from Godhead. 
 It is an inheritance entailed upon the community, and 
 not to be alienated. Any instrument conveying eminent 
 domain of that tract of earth into the sovereignty of a 
 power outside, is null and void. 
 
 Many hearts are sighing for the Age of Faith, that 
 olden time when man believed, and life was full of pres- 
 ences and powers. Let imagination begiu once more to 
 function, to-day's blankness and secularism will yield, 
 will give way again to an Age of Faith. Psychologists 
 with their false ego-philosophy — their introverted gaze 
 — have been unable to account for imagination or explain 
 its thaumaturgic doings. Imagination is the union of 
 
236 THE FREE CITY 
 
 Nature and human nature; a bursting of the below-the- 
 threshold up into the dome of consciousness; fact and 
 fancy shaking hands. That union is wrought only by 
 the principle of municipality. Free Cities have woven 
 the beautiful things into the time-tapestry, because they 
 brought to pass imaginative epochs. A community state 
 is the amphibious thing comprehending both psychology 
 and geography, human nature and physical nature; 
 middle form that joins thought and matter; form and 
 substance kissing each other. That is imagination. By 
 its working the wall of partition is broken down and the 
 light of consciousness penetrates the cellar of the mind, 
 that subbasement whose other name is Nature. It is 
 the rainbow intermingling with the muck heap, and the 
 pot of gold is their offspring. Imagination is a richer 
 thing than either actuality or fantasy, because it is their 
 synthesis, harmonizer that mediates between those con- 
 tending opposites. 
 
 Read Greek hterature, or the Bible, or the chronicles 
 of the Gothic era, you will perceive imagination at work. 
 The mind of that day was a world of half-Hghts. Then 
 people dwelt in Nature, and Nature dwelt in them. 
 Consciousness and Unconsciousness fraternized in a 
 twilight zone called Subconsciousness; a magic infiltra- 
 tion of hghts and shadows that painted the universe in a 
 mystic chiaroscuro. That clear-obscure was not the 
 garish hght of a desert, neither was it pitch-black night; 
 but a vault of starhght clothed with dusk and dimness, 
 realm of half-tones wherein weird strange forms started 
 out of their enchanted sleep. People in those Ages of 
 Belief Hved in a waking dream. They saw the world 
 through a veil of love and faith and shrouding mystery; 
 wherein the objects of sense were neither absent nor im- 
 portunately present. Municipality's union of men and 
 
THE MYSTICISM OF MUNICIPALITY 237 
 
 the landscape they inhabit, rends the curtain that sep- 
 arates the Conscious and the Unconscious. Thereby the 
 spirit becomes naturahzed in a phantasmagoric world; 
 a hundred-floored phalanstery ranging from seraph beings 
 above, to gnomes in the grottos and profundities of the 
 nether kingdom. In that posture of the mind, Delphic 
 oracles. Sibylline leaves. Mounts of Transfiguration, 
 runes of the Vikings, Dantesque infernos and paradisos, 
 not only become credible; but make the flatness of an 
 age of secularism seem incredible. 
 
 Freud paints the neurasthenic wretchedness that af- 
 flicts us when the Unconscious is imprisoned. Life in a 
 Free City is never neurasthenic. When men congregate 
 in this natural polity of state, the spiritual and the animal 
 kingdoms are melodiously interfused; each moderating 
 the other so that intemperances are discouraged. Munic- 
 ipality tolerates no wall of separation between mentaUty 
 and emotion. It blends the intellectual and the vital; 
 shows us poets who were men of action, and men of action 
 who were poets. Up to the Ninth Heaven, and through 
 all the diablerie of hell, Dante was a pamphleteer fighting 
 the fight of Florentine politics. This interplay of un- 
 conscious Nature and conscious human nature is the 
 image-forming faculty; externality and internaUty ce- 
 menting an indivisible union. When the under world of 
 the imconscious, and the upper world of the conscious 
 are so myopic that they cannot see each other, each is 
 the loser. The intellect then goes off into madcap romp- 
 ings, irresponsible phantasy; and the repressed emotions 
 riot stormfully in their dungeon, with neurasthenic con- 
 sequences. 
 
 When the pohtical fabric permits men to get on friendly 
 terms with Nature, the smart circles that we call intellect, 
 and the roughscuff of the physical realm become ac- 
 
238 THE FREE CITY 
 
 quainted. It is as though a trap door had been opened m 
 the floor of the mind, affording to the mob of prisoners 
 in the dungeon underneath, a passage and ventilation 
 upwards. Cahban, by this hght, awakes to conscious- 
 ness; goes thenceforth with Ariel, arm in arm. Then 
 imagery commences, for the fiat lux has been uttered in 
 the catacombs of the Unconscious. Nature becomes 
 vivified; like dew at sunrise, steaming up into cloudfields 
 that go pictorial with all shapes and pigmented with all 
 colorings. The physical world by itself, unleavened and 
 unillumined, makes for animaUsm. The thought world 
 by itself, segregated in secluded aloofness, makes for 
 pietism. Mysticism is the condition between, moderat- 
 ing them both into a third entity that is different from 
 either, as air is different from the oxygen and nitrogen 
 that compose it; a glacier, we might say, flowing over 
 into Gehenna and cooling its fever thirst. 
 
 Three chapters back we saw that the community is the 
 mid-point in the realm of the humanities, with the ego at 
 the extreme Left, and the world at the extreme Right. 
 Here we see that the community is the mid-point also be- 
 tween Nature and human nature; a ladder extending 
 from creatures of the dynosauric slime, up to highest 
 inhabiters of the empyrean. Thus, the community is 
 the crossing point of two teeter-boards; with perspectives 
 leftward and right ward and downward and upward. 
 Life at that center takes on an absolute existence; a 
 fourth-dimensional tract of being. It explains why 
 people in municipal epochs are supernormally endowed. 
 CentraUty of centrahties, it is the meeting place of the 
 lines that are horizontal and the hnes that are vertical; 
 the point where the web and the woof concur. The 
 tapestry that is woven of them is civiUzation. 
 
CHAPTER XVII 
 
 THE SOCIAL STATE 
 
 BEAUTY is that which takes us back home. And 
 where is our home? Nature. It is she that has 
 made us and not we ourselves. Does not the life 
 of each one of us recapitulate the evolutionary ascent? 
 The imiverse begins again with every child. Through 
 the nine gestation months, the life-plasm proceeds through 
 stages of crystal, vegetable, animal. Nor does birth 
 cause a break in the ascending series. The child climbs 
 the culture-ladder through the anthropoid forms, savage, 
 barbarian, and the periods of civil history. Time, un- 
 coiling thus her infinite spiral in the career of each of us, 
 leaves in the marrow of our nerves the imprint of all the 
 stages passed through. Beauty is anything that reminds 
 us of those prehistoric Yesterdays in our existence: the 
 grace of the lily, Utheness of the tiger, pomp of color that 
 charms the bee to the buttercup's blossom, melody that 
 is reminiscent within us of ancient arboreal life when we 
 listened to our bird-mate at nesting time and were glad; 
 or perhaps the music of the waters, that carry us back to 
 aquatic ancestors. Line and color and sound are beauti- 
 ful to us, when they are voices that thrill across from the 
 home-kingdom to remind us of the life we used to live, 
 in the old ancestral haunts. 
 
 Art is our communion with those old voices shouting 
 
 in our blood; hence, the mesmeric pull of it on our ganglia, 
 
 239 
 
240 THE FREE CITY 
 
 those convolutions of our cosmic past. There is a hom- 
 ing pigeon in every one of us. The esthetic sense is the 
 name of that pigeon. Our craving for beauty is our 
 nostalgia for the old homestead. Not in utter emptiness 
 come we into life, but trailing clouds of association from 
 our infinite past. That homeland Hes about us in our 
 infancy. That is why children beHeve in fairies. The 
 prosaic world of sordidness and gain have not yet closed 
 about the growing boy. Elves and brownies and dwarfs, 
 lorelei and kelpie — he sees them in his joy. If he re- 
 mains close to Nature he wiU continue to see them in 
 his adulthood. Then he will write as Homer wrote, as 
 David, as Virgil and as Dante. Meadow, grove and 
 stream, and every common object, will seem the glory 
 and the freshness of a dream. 
 
 Wordsworth thought that Nature, the homely Nurse, 
 does all she can to make her foster child, man, forget the 
 glories he has known. Natm-e does quite the opposite. 
 By a thousand sweet endearments she seeks to keep alive 
 in us a remembrance of the homestead. Artists are the 
 messengers she sends to us for this purpose; their produce, 
 a reminder that we once were blood-brothers of bird and 
 flower and the strong growth of beeches on the hilltop. 
 Art's vocation is endless imitation of the forms and tints 
 and circumstances of our historic and prehistoric past. 
 Our deUght in a work of art is the dehght of a homesick 
 boy who comes back to father's house and feels the arms 
 of mother tightening around him. 
 
 Municipahty is the social state, wherein man and Nature 
 cohabit on terms of friendliest conununion. And beauty 
 — naturalness — is the result. In such a political es- 
 tabUshment, heels are not high, hats are not fantastic, 
 speed laws are unknown. In city commonwealths people 
 drink from the fountain more often than from the faucet. 
 
THE SOCIAL STATE 241 
 
 Frequently they eat with unwashed hands, and sleep in 
 garments yet moist with the toils of the day. Three- 
 quarters of the "cleanliness" that is found in our modern 
 form of society is not cleanness but a badge of class dis- 
 tinction. The rich use the bodies of the poor as stepping 
 stones whereby their daintily sandalled feet touch not 
 the mire of hfe; and then draw aside from companion- 
 ship with those poor, on the plea that such folk are be- 
 mired. 
 
 In the Gothic municipalities the guildsmen, when mak- 
 ing hohday, exchanged not their work-day clothes for 
 leisure-class garments. In their festal procession they 
 displayed the emblems and signs of their toil, with the 
 pride yet seen when Masonic lodges don their apron. 
 They formed liaison with Nature, a Haison extending to 
 the mud of the field and the grime of the smithy. Mud! 
 Why should human beings have a horror of mud? Mud 
 is our nourishment, pulp of our existence, pap from the 
 succulent teats of the faithful all-nursing Mother. From 
 mud comes our food, the coat on our back, the roses that 
 deck our table. Is it seemly to reUsh the product and 
 scorn the producer? "Back to Nature" means back to 
 mud. And they who hate mother mud hate Mother 
 Nature. Modernism, with its vacuum cleaner, is not 
 more cleanly than those old municipal eras, ankle deep 
 in the brown and wholesome earth. We Uve not any 
 longer or more healthily than they; and we can not pro- 
 duce as they produced. 
 
 Nationalism is a mania of uniformity. It seeks to 
 make three thousand miles of America dance to the same 
 tune; insists that Los Angeles with her palms and Bangor 
 with her pines shall be huddled into one. It can see no 
 difference between Jacksonville, amid her magnoUas, and 
 Seattle with her snow-clad Mount Tacomah. Is the 
 
242 THE FREE CITY 
 
 Spanish moss at New Orleans one with the ebn trees of 
 
 Saratoga? FederaUsm fraternizes the landscapes. Na- 
 tionalism fuses the landscapes. Herbert Spencer has 
 shown that progress is an evolution from uniformity 
 towards multiformity; the homogeneity transforming 
 into heterogeneity. The small state, forasmuch as it 
 encourages variety in the peoples scattered throughout a 
 continent, is evolution's handmaid. Around each several 
 locality it draws a firewall of sovereignty; with categori- 
 cal imperative, commands all the residue of the universe 
 to keep its meddUng hands from that spot. Because 
 within that firewall a holy work is consununating itself: 
 a territorial segment of Nature is there climbing up into 
 human nature, finding expression in homes and temples 
 and statues and laws and dress and manners, in paintings 
 and carvings and metal work and song and bibles. The 
 Free City is an artistic necessity. 
 
 NationaUsm is proud of the fact that it is abolishing 
 space and time. Why in heaven's name abolish space 
 and time? Space and time are all we've got. Abohsh 
 space and time, you have aboUshed the universe. Earth 
 is at best a third-rate planet — the runt of the flock, the 
 stunted member of the family. Instead of destroying 
 what space and time we possess, were it not wiser to make 
 the most of the scanty measure that has been meted out 
 to us? On so small a planet, do the best we can, we shall 
 not be able to develop a greatly variegated fife; we have 
 not a wide gamut of soils and climates and sceneries, such 
 as an ordinary sized planet possesses. Instead of blurring 
 our landscapes into one blot of indistinction — a dreary 
 monotone of sameness from sea to sea — municipality 
 would encourage each locality to bring forth after its 
 kind; express its own essence and idiosyncrasy. An 
 orchestra in which all the instruments are the same, is 
 
THE SOCIAL STATE 243 
 
 nationalism's ideal. An orchestration wherein each 
 several instrument remains severely itself, and plays the 
 tune according to its unique timbre, is municipality's 
 ideal. 
 
 The question of the future is not going to be, How to 
 shorten the time of travel; but, How to make it worth 
 while to travel at aU. You can go a thousand miles in 
 America, and find one endless similarity; tank towns 
 needing to be numbered so as to distinguish them from 
 each other. You are hearing the modernistic boast, 
 "Twenty hours from New York to Chicago." Under 
 municipaUty it will take twenty weeks to go from New 
 York to Chicago. Because then, Buffalo and Cleveland 
 and Toledo will be something more than whistling sta- 
 tions. Every mile of the journey will present a soul- 
 awakening piquant surprise. Is there not a nobler form 
 of existence than to rush and whiz? Take down the 
 cross from the steeple-top; GasoUne is god; the 
 speedometer is become the oracle and emblem of all 
 blessedness. The death-dance is assuming the pro- 
 portions of a St. Vitus plague. To the deranging of all 
 the orbits of our life. 
 
 In America many feel compelled to voyage abroad for 
 "artistic miheu" and "atmosphere." The true artist 
 is he who is more consunmiately patriotic than others; 
 stays at home; takes the commonplace and coins it into 
 legend and song and color. There came a time when the 
 Greeks no longer saw Divinity in the uncommon produce 
 of each common day. Their phantasy roamed afar, 
 looked to find the Fortunatus Fields and Hesperides with 
 its golden fruit, in the Atlantic Main. Then her art de- 
 clined. Kaaterskill-on-the-Hudson is quite as present- 
 able a creature to sit for her portrait, as Jungfrau or the 
 Ranges of Andalusia. Or perhaps the mountain here is 
 
244 THE FREE CITY 
 
 not as yet dressed and ready to be put on canvas. In 
 which case the true artist will do as did the patriot in 
 Memphis-on-the-Nile. He will take the rock inass, with 
 affectionate chisel will carve it into a Sphinx head that 
 will intrigue all after-ages. And then he will paint her 
 portrait. We look east and west for inspiration, when 
 there is a Pantheon in the clay bank under our feet, a 
 Rembrandt in the group at the grocery, an oratorio in 
 the tramp of ten thousand shoes on the pavement. Mod- 
 ernity is overdoing locomotion. True architecture asks 
 but Uttle of life's transportation department. Rome was 
 built out of the brickyards back of the Vatican. The 
 PenteUc hills, not a score of miles removed from her, 
 built Athens. The landscape rejects an edifice built of 
 alien materials. To such a building the skies are hostile, 
 the birds forsake it, the sun looks upon it disgruntled. 
 
 Nationahsm is a polity of state for making millionaires. 
 MunicipaUsm is a poHty of state for making master- 
 workmen. An exact thermometer of the artistry or non- 
 artistry of a period, is to be foimd in the status of the 
 workingclass. When the laborer is in high repute, it is 
 an age of art. To-day, not the workman's blouse but 
 white collars and lily hands are the style; and mediocrity 
 marks the output. In Wagner's " Meistersinger of 
 Nuremburg," the cobbler wins the musical prize; be- 
 cause his themes had been chosen from the folk-songs 
 of the people. We read in the Arthiu" stories of one who 
 rode to King Arthur's castle and knocked for admission. 
 "I will not open," said the porter; "there is revelry in 
 Arthur's hall, and none may enter but the son of a king 
 of a privileged country, or a craftsman bringing his craft." 
 Is handtoil nowadays the passport to social distinction? 
 
 "In every Indian village," reports Birdwood of that 
 wonder-continent south of Thibet, "handicrafts are still 
 
THE SOCIAL STATE 245 
 
 to be found at work; the hereditary potter, two or three 
 looms, the brass and coppersmiths hammering away at 
 their pots and pans; the jeweller, taking his designs from 
 the fruit and flowers around him. Later the men drive 
 in the kine from the plain, the looms are folded up, the 
 coppersmiths are silent, the elders gather in the gate; 
 feasting and music are heard on every side; and late into 
 the night the songs are sung from the Ramayana or 
 Mahabharata." PaUas Athena was not only the goddess 
 of thought; but also — because to the Athenians, thought 
 was not thought until it had achieved for itself outward 
 expression — she was the goddess of labor. On the 
 AcropoHs was a precinct dedicated to "Athena the 
 Worker," Athene ergane. Says the Odyssey: "Those 
 that are the craftsmen of the people are welcome over all 
 the wide earth." Jesus, a carpenter, seemed not to the 
 common people irreverent when he announced himself to 
 be the son of very God. "All these trust to their hands," 
 sings Ecclesiasticus; "and everyone is wise in his work." 
 
 In India and Japan the Commimity Soul was supposed 
 to instigate the worker; as the Spirit of the Hive moves 
 the bees to team work in storing the comb with flower 
 juices. Lafcadio Hearn reports of Japan : " It is tolerably 
 safe to assume that most if not aU of the guilds were at 
 one time rehgiously organized; and that apprentices were 
 adopted not only in a craft but in a cult The carpenter 
 still dons a priestly costume at a certain stage of his work. 
 The swordsmith worked in priestly garb, practised Shinto 
 rites of purification, and ate only the food cooked with 
 holy fire." 
 
 In communaUstic India, Visvakarma was beheved to 
 be the group Soul of the craftsmen of all past time. A 
 master bricklayer, long pausing to decide in what form to 
 build a certain monument, affirmed, "at that instant 
 
246 THE FREE CITY 
 
 Visvakarma inspii-ed him." An Eastern craftsman of the 
 old school speaks with scorn of those who "draw after 
 their own vain imagining," Visvakarma, "lord of the 
 arts, the carpenter of the gods, on whose craft men sub- 
 sist — a great and immortal god — they continually 
 worship." Is not the following good orthodoxy: "One 
 who knows amiss his craft, bringing misfortunes on the 
 owner of the house, that builder will fall into hell and 
 suffer — these sayings are in Mayamataya. What 
 remedy can there be then, O builders? Builders who 
 know their business well will become rajahs, lacking 
 naught. Therefore let builders study Mayamataya." 
 
 But commerciaUsm is entering India, breaking up the 
 communaUstic form of industry and transforming the 
 toilers into "hands" in a factory. Says Birdwood: "Of 
 late these handicraftsmen, for the sake of whose work 
 the whole world has been ceaselessly pouring its bulUon 
 for three thousand years into India; and who, for all the 
 marvellous tissue and embroidery they have wrought, 
 have polluted no rivers, deformed no pleasing prospects, 
 nor poisoned any air; whose skill and individuaUty the 
 training of countless generations has developed to the 
 highest perfection — these hereditary craftsmen are being 
 everywhere gathered from their democratic village com- 
 munities in hundreds and thousands, into colossal mills; 
 at manufacturing piece goods, in the production of which 
 they are no more intellectually and morally concerned 
 than the grinder of a barrel organ in the tunes turned out 
 from it." In England an Appeal, bearing such names as 
 Morris, Burne-Jones, Millais, and Edwin Arnold, peti- 
 tioned in behaK of India's communal form of productivity, 
 and against the conmaercializing of that people: "At a 
 time when these productions are getting to be daily more 
 valued in Europe, these sources are being dried up in 
 
THE SOCIAL STATE 247 
 
 Asia; and goods which ought to be common in the market, 
 are now becoming rare treasm-es for museums and the 
 cabinets of rich men." 
 
 The fight between the national state and the munic- 
 ipal state is the fight between plutocracy and democracy. 
 Characterizing the nationahst as material-minded, I re- 
 fer to the type. Being under a national regime, we at 
 present support that government; it is the only form of 
 the social union we possess, and must therefore get the 
 allegiance of civil-minded folk. In the War of 1861, 
 Lincoln was right and Jefferson Davis was wrong. "Pre- 
 serving the Union" was not the fundamental issue. The 
 Constitution, made by an assembling of the people, can 
 by an assembling of the people be unmade. A notary's 
 parchment, it can be supplanted by a new and different 
 parchment. Peaceable procedures are indicated. Davis, 
 in resorting to arms, was abolishing civil society, and in- 
 troducing violent society. We give adhesion to the 
 national state, until we can get another. 
 
 Municipality, in pleading for industrial democracy, is 
 pleading truly for a return to Nature. Lily-fingered folk 
 hate Nature, and in turn are hated by her. The de- 
 generators at Versailles, when their life had become in- 
 sufferably artificial, sought to escape the boredom by a 
 playhouse rusticity. They built a Little Trianon in a 
 comer of the park, donned a dairy maid's cap — ex- 
 pensively millinered — and milked a cow that valets had 
 groomed; whilst the court painter took sketches of the 
 event. The Marie Antoinettes in every age need to be 
 told that Nature will not receive extortioners. For one 
 person to live without working, means that another per- 
 son has worked without living. 
 
 Democracy must have a lap big enough to take in tree 
 toads, turtles, and creeping things in coral caves of the 
 
248 THE FREE CITY 
 
 sea. These are the cryptic springs within us that feed 
 the pool of fancy, pool whose o'erbrimmings have flowed 
 an irrigating stream into the thirsty ways of the world. 
 In the artist, all fishes, grasses, and all quadrupeds have 
 obtained an inheritance. An age of art is the test and 
 ensign of an age of democracy; it signifies that man is not 
 only fraternizing his fellow men, but is on neighborly 
 terms with rock and sky and running brooks, cattle of the 
 pasture, four-foots of the forest. St. Francis wrote a 
 hynm to the sun and his "little brothers, the birds." 
 Isaiah forcasted a time when man would be on friendly 
 footing with beasts of the wild wood. The dog, once a 
 wolf, testifies that Nature is tameable. The common 
 man, forasmuch as he is a laborer, has to dwell with 
 horses, cows, dirt of the fields. He takes on a something 
 of odor from the subhuman world he works in. Nostrils 
 that are offended by a team of horses, will be offended 
 also by the teamster who drives that team. No fact of 
 history is more demonstrated: A cleavage of the human 
 family from the subhuman, is accompanied by a cleavage 
 within the human family itself. When men get away 
 from Nature, they seek also to get away from each other. 
 Naturalism asks that the modem thinness of skin shall 
 toughen its sensibilities. Under municipahty the function 
 of the flesh, all the just dehghts of the body, walk in sim- 
 hght unabashed. In order to morahze Nature, we must 
 naturahze our moraHty. Queasiness toward the physical 
 part of us makes not for true refinement. A Rabelaisian 
 embrace, with all the cosmos standing by in wholesome 
 participation, is not dangerous. But in perfimied al- 
 coves, with boudoir languishings and a Madame Pom- 
 padour luxuriousness, the elementary fire we have so 
 massively inherited is blown into a conflagrating flame. 
 The French Revolution was caused by the libertinism 
 
THE SOCIAL STATE 249 
 
 of the ruling class, product of the artificiality into which 
 Versailles had fallen. The followers of Rousseau were 
 seeking a return to Nature. They called each other 
 "citizen" — citoyen — and they made an attempt to 
 estabUsh Paris into a commune. That program for 
 correcting the libertine trend was sound. Labor sweetens 
 everything. Roses, the wine jug, and red-lipped kisses 
 are not a peril to society; provided that the woman with 
 her own hands grew the roses, and the man was himself 
 the vineyard's cultivator. 
 
 Moderns think to "get away from the physical." 
 Preacher and teacher portray mankind as a creature 
 half-emerged from the mire, and strugghng to get free 
 his hinder parts. It is a false theology. Progress con- 
 sists not in getting away from Nature but in taking 
 Nature along with us. We have been advancing on too 
 narrow a front. Nature is unintelligent will. But that 
 does not support Schopenhauer's conclusion: "Annihi- 
 late the Will." Nature is bUnd stress, aimless impulse, 
 dumb striving. For that reason she needs our hand to 
 guide her, our intellect to illumine her darkness. Great 
 is her joy when her sightless eyes are impregnated with a 
 germ and principle of hght. MunicipaUty is the cult of 
 mutuahty between the two. Then Nature sings 
 thorough-base to the thin squeakings of the intellect; 
 and life intones a symphonic splendor. In people, this 
 blend of intellect and emotion forms the attribute known 
 as charm. Charm is neither the sharp thing known as 
 wit, nor the clownish thing known as fun; but a union 
 of the two into a tertium quid known as humor, trait 
 of ripeness, and largitas. 
 
 Every spot of Nature groans and travails together, 
 waiting for a home-cherishing folk who shall settle there 
 and dream that inert mass into melody and loveUness. 
 
250 THE FREE CITY 
 
 Attica found such a folk; the Lebanon range in Sj^a 
 found such a folk; Latium found such a folk; the Valley 
 of the Arno, where Florence uprears in shapeUness, found 
 such a folk. So the rock became supple to their touch. 
 Stones upbuilt themselves into carved work. Those 
 Free Cities were naught less than a compact between the 
 people and their landscape, a partnership in toil and 
 song and glory. Their art was quarried out of their own 
 chunk of space. Their melodies sang the songs resound- 
 ing in the woods and waters around them; or set to music 
 the sough of the wind through those treetops. "Not 
 built but born," said Vasari of a lovely edifice. Nature 
 is the master-craftsman. Great thoughts do not come 
 by thinking. Release the Subconscious; then genii will 
 do the task better than we. 
 
 National patriotism is a diffused warmth, like wood 
 heated to a tepid temperature. Civic patriotism is that 
 same heat concentrated on a small spot of the wood, 
 raising it now to the combustion point so that it bursts 
 into flame. In the city commonwealths of history, the 
 mind of man exhibits fire, not mere tepidity. City- 
 worship penetrated a leaven under the landscape, lifting 
 it airily into towers and porticoes and colonnades. The 
 terrain was quickened to a vital glow. Every peak be- 
 came topped with a temple. The granite hill effervesced 
 into dome-bubbles of aerial lightness. 
 
 In those Free Cities, the craftsman was seized by an 
 unexpected unempowerment. The community was a 
 navel cord connecting him with Nature; whereby a 
 circulation of her blood was set up in his veins, Uke the 
 umbilicus to a prenatal baby. The rich and the poor 
 lived together. The whole city was hke a warm room. 
 I know that more people have gone to hell by reason of 
 loneUness, than through any other cause. In those com- 
 
THE SOCIAL STATE 251 
 
 monwealths a good-neighborliness prevailed. Democ- 
 racy melted them into a communion. Men like Leonardo 
 wrought in the workshop. Pottery, stone-cutting, smith- 
 work, joinery led up into the finest branches in those 
 arts. We behold Benvenuto, furnace bar in hand; 
 bossing the metal, with his enamellers, and painting on 
 the flux. The highest and the lowest had a bowing 
 acquaintance. There was no factory district separated 
 from the residential sections. The arts and the crafts 
 were identical. The principle of community, taking the 
 form of a sovereign political establishment, does mightily 
 arouse the social affections. The municipal common- 
 wealth is a spiritual chemistry for transforming limestone, 
 mud-turtles, and the meditations of the heart, into a 
 garden of God full of glory. 
 
CHAPTER XVin 
 
 PERSONALITY 
 
 AN individual is the fractional part of a human 
 being. Ego-government is not Self-government. 
 The Self is the community; the Swarm and the 
 bees. In harping on the goodness of God, the modem 
 world has lost sight of the greatness of God. The Most 
 High does not think in terms of Tom, Dick, or Harry; 
 but rather, in terms of Philadelphias, Galvestons, Pitts- 
 burghs, Rochesters, and Sacramentos. An ego has some 
 power of locomotion. So also have corpuscles in the blood 
 stream. But the ego cannot exist when cut asunder 
 from the community; as a corpuscle cannot exist when 
 fished from the serum of which it is a part. 
 
 Personality is life at its highest. K the ego were the 
 seat of personality, individual man would be the supreme 
 unit, the crown and apex of the cosmos. A flattering 
 philosophy to the egomania that is in all of us, heritage 
 from old jungle days. Nationalism, true to its pohcy of 
 Laissez faire, encourages that creed. So we see the schools 
 teaching a code of private advancement. The pulpits 
 preach individual salvation. Proverbs and maxims of 
 the street declare a cult of individual well-being: "Look 
 out for Number One"; "Every man for himself"; 
 "Self-preservation is nature's first law." "Do others, 
 or they will do you." Our periodicals that cater to the 
 
 self-satisfied classes carry photogravures of the egos that 
 
 252 
 
PERSONALITY 253 
 
 have achieved mdividualistic success. Thus the sweet 
 cohesion of society is hacked asunder. Solidarity is 
 nuUified. No longer is the ratio between the State and 
 the ego that of supreme and subordinate. But instead, 
 a disjointed confusion. The people are a wandering 
 sheep; unshepherded; like to be lost. 
 
 Personality is not an attribute of individuals but of 
 municipalities. The community is the primate, behind 
 which the ego must retire in lowly submissiveness. So 
 clearly did Aristotle perceive this, that he limited the 
 title of statehood to the community. Criticising a cer- 
 tain suggestion of another, looking to political regrouping, 
 he says, "Such an arrangement would constitute a nation 
 and not a state." "State" means. That which stands. 
 It is status, as opposed to the chaos that results when 
 other units are sovereign. It finds an echo in the German 
 STADT, meaning City; and the Holland staat. In the 
 science of society the Athenians were the masters of us 
 all; and Aristotle here was the master Athenian. There- 
 fore when he identifies municipahty and statehood, there 
 is a reason. The community is the universal center. 
 That center must stand. So we call it the "state," 
 "that which is fixed"; the shaft of the great wheel, 
 steadfast and swinging not, in order that all the other 
 parts may swing freely. 
 
 The only enemy we have is selfishness. How to veto 
 the private spirit in every child of Adam and make him 
 pubHc spirited, is the problem of problems. When that 
 is solved, every other problem is easily untangled. When 
 that is unsolved, the solution of every other problem still 
 leaves life a bellowing hell. To greaten the individual 
 with knowledge and power, unless there be a center out- 
 side of himself, fixed and solid, to hold him to an orbit, is 
 to work harm rather than good. Except the shaft of the 
 
254 THE FREE CITY 
 
 wheel be in a firm-set axle box, increase in the speed of the 
 circumference of that wheel is a danger to the entire ap- 
 paratus. As America is discovering — she who has 
 Uberated a demon of individualism, which now rides 
 rough over laws and precedents and equity. The politi- 
 cal establishment that can hold supremacy over the ego, 
 is the rightful center of the scheme of things; is entitled 
 to the crown of personaHty. 
 
 NationaHsm's incapacity to repress egoism is tragically 
 attested. It summons the individual to give up his 
 private life and identify himself in spiritual miion with 
 a hundred millions of people, stretched over a continent 
 and far islands of the sea. In every choice he makes, he 
 is not to think first of himself but he is to think first of 
 this immeasurable mass; must not consult first his own 
 good but their good. He is to lose himself in the well- 
 being of people, most of whom he never saw and never 
 will see, many of them living on the opposite side of the 
 globe from himself, speaking other languages than his 
 own, surrounded by a different climate; peoples aUen 
 to him in the thousand things that constitute intimacy. 
 
 And what is the answer of the individual to this sum- 
 mons? A polite refusal. Any other answer would be a 
 psychological impossibiUty. Jesus himself, the most 
 pubUc-minded man that ever walked our planet, en- 
 larged himself to the dimensions of a state that was 
 seventy-five miles long and twenty-five miles wide; and 
 he repeatedly vetoed proposals to stretch himself beyond. 
 Psychology supports him ia that veto. Had he consented 
 to diffuse his thought and efforts over a thousand miles 
 of geography, his life-strength would have spread itself 
 so thinly as to lose aU tang and flavor. He knew that 
 soul is measured, not alone by the area of dispersal, but 
 also by the intensity of its energizings. An ounce of 
 
PERSONALITY 255 
 
 butter that tries to dress a wagon load of bread, ceases to 
 be butter, so far as any effect on our organs of taste. 
 
 Nationality demands of the people an impossible sacri- 
 fice, and therefore wins them to no sacrifice. As if a 
 voice on top of a precipice were to call to strugglers in the 
 sea below, that they should step up that fifty-foot 
 precipice. Those strugglers in the surf know that they 
 cannot make a fifty-foot leap, and so make no effort 
 whatsoever. Nationahsm, in its actual working, is uni- 
 versal selfishness, tempered here and there by vague 
 altruisms; even when the nation is in danger, the people 
 have to be coerced to her defence, by conscription. 
 
 Municipality makes not so exorbitant a demand on the 
 individual. It asks him to lose himself in something 
 larger, but not in something too large: the community, 
 his own neighborhood; a group that is breathing the same 
 air he breathes, drinking from the same fountain, heated 
 by the same sunrise, chilled by the same frost, subject to 
 the same pestilences, speaking the same dialect, exposed 
 to the same dangers, rejoicing in the same achievements. 
 Said Aristotle: "The size of the state must be no larger 
 than can be taken in at a single glance." Public spirit 
 is not a matter for the great crises of life. It is a daily 
 and habitual preference of the common weal over private 
 inclination. And that is morality. Also, when heated 
 to the glowing point, it is religion. Self-identification 
 with a national mass is impossible; because that mass is 
 out of sight, and therefore out of mind. Self -identifica- 
 tion with one's community is possible, because the com- 
 munal mass is present to the five senses, which feed the 
 fires of imagination and of action. 
 
 "Self is so small, make me a part of something larger," 
 is the cry of every normal heart. But that "something 
 larger" must not be colossal. "With an instinctive knowl- 
 
256 THE FREE CITY 
 
 edge, man knows that too much of self-abnegation were 
 as bad as too little. The sentimental gusher that asks 
 a man to love the hundred million people with the same 
 love wherewith one loves one's family and oneself, is 
 listened to with good-natured tolerance, because those in 
 the pew know that the preacher doesn't mean it. That 
 pulpiteer, if his congregation should propose to put the 
 program concretely into action, would recant his code 
 of so extreme self-renunciation. "Charity begins at 
 home," would be his quick modification of the message; 
 and, "if any man provide not for his own, and especially 
 for those of his own house, he hath denied the faith and 
 is worse than an infidel." 
 
 The municipahty is the larger Self. In asking of the 
 ego a renunciation to that extent, it asks not that the man 
 renounce self-interest. Self-interest is never renounced, 
 never can be renounced. The sentimentalists who 
 preach otherwise preach a delusion. Self-interest is the 
 motor of life; ever has been, is now and ever will be. 
 You cannot fight self-interest. Your arguments in fight- 
 ing it will be appeals to self-interest. Man will give up a 
 small gain for the prospect of a larger gain. But the gain 
 has got to be there, really and palpably there. Senti- 
 mentalism doesn't move the world; self-interest moves 
 the world. The pietists in their world-forgetting "resig- 
 nation" are not practising resignation. They are giving 
 up the gold of this world, for harps and crowns in heaven 
 made of that metal. The disinterested man is to that 
 extent a defunct man. Annihilation is the only form of 
 resignation. One can postpone gratification. One can 
 choose a loftier gratification for a lower one. But no — 
 hving — creature ever yet renounced gratification. 
 
 Municipahty is based on that law of human nature. 
 It does not oppose the self-regarding instinct. It uses 
 
PERSONALITY 257 
 
 that instinct. Recognizing that greed is always and 
 everywhere the wheel-grease, it rebaptizes greed into 
 pubUc spirit. It shows the man that community welfare 
 is his own welfare; that community enrichment is self- 
 enrichment. Enlarged to a community's diameter, it is 
 no longer covetousness but altruism. Citizenship is the 
 higher selfishness. But when selfishness is thus sub- 
 limated, it ceases to be selfishness; as water at the boiling 
 point takes on a totally new mode of functioning. In the 
 interest of self-advantage, it asks the man to work for 
 the commune's advantage; that he close up the private 
 pump, and help dig the public water works. Gets him 
 to seek his Hvelihood and his pleasures in co-operation with 
 his fellow men, rather than in egoistic isolation. It de- 
 clares that a self-surrender of this sort is the prelude to 
 self-discovery. An appeal of this nature is responded to. 
 That is why the community state is practicable, and is 
 the only form of society that is practicable. It recog- 
 nizes that man is a seK-interested animal, and ought to 
 be. So it takes that self-interest, enlarges it to a com- 
 munity's diameter, and thereby transforms the devil 
 thing into a heavenly thing. Municipahty is the magician 
 that puts perfect selfishness into the hat and pulls out 
 perfect altruism. 
 
 When a man has become enlarged to community size, 
 he is altered from a biped wearing clothes into a human 
 being. Thereupon the enlargement of his mind goes 
 further, and eventuates in world consciousness. This 
 explains why people in small states have the broadest 
 vision. Attica, smallest of countries, produced philoso- 
 phers and statesmen the reach of whose mentaHty was 
 only bounded by the edge of the universe. Egoism is the 
 boiling surf at the bottom of the fifty-foot precipice. The 
 city republic is a shelf let into that precipice, low enough 
 
258 THE FREE CITY 
 
 to be reached by the strugglers in the water. Once they 
 get onto that support, their feet being now on soHd rock, 
 they can chmb unUmitedly. 
 
 A nation is large, but is made up of small people. A 
 Free City is small, and is made up of great people. In 
 contrast to the animaHsm that prevails under other 
 political forms, municipaUty breeds humanism. It is the 
 supreme state, at the mid-distance where private ad- 
 vantage and public advantage shake hands. Nor can 
 one read in the seeds of time any future form of state that 
 will supplant it. Every child coming into the world is 
 an animal — "total depravity" was the veracious term 
 our forefathers employed. To take this raw material 
 that will be thrust upon us through all generations and 
 transform it into world consciousness, will require that 
 an intermediate stage be present. And that intermediate 
 stage is the community. That upflow of crude animahsm 
 from the depths of Nature will never cease. Therefore 
 the municipal form of state will never be out of fashion; 
 neither on Planet Earth, nor any other planet. Munici- 
 pahty is the absolute pohtical establishment. No mat- 
 ter how we multiply our universities, the primary school 
 will always be needed; because babes will ever be with 
 us, and will have to hsp the alphabet in order to go finally 
 to Shakespeare and Bacon. 
 
 They who climb high see far. The ego, once it has 
 risen to the level of a conununity miad, surveys from 
 that summit all the globe, becomes in very truth a world 
 citizen. Civic patriotism is the loyalty within whose 
 powerful flanks all other loyalties are germinated. 
 Clearly stands it registered in the human story: In httle 
 repubUcs man takes on a heightened world sense. There 
 he is sheltered, but not cloistered. Since Father Adam 
 until now, city commonwealths have eschewed militarism. 
 
PERSONALITY 259 
 
 So much so that it has become a proverb; and to be "in 
 citizen's clothes" is to be contradistinguished from one 
 in mihtary dress. It makes for a civilian state; a foreign 
 poUcy dictated by minds that have been wrought to a 
 liberal hospitaUty. 
 
 The transforming of an ego into a citizen, is his reli- 
 gious conversion. It redeems him from the lost and 
 damned estate of original sin — perfect selfishness — into 
 a world-serviceable human being. The municipal re- 
 pubUc is a rehgious revival in perpetual session. That 
 is why the Most High is wholly addicted to this polity 
 of state. Municipahty means, The Giving of Gifts. It 
 comes from the Latin word munis, "service" (seen also 
 in the word "munificent"); and from capio, "to take." 
 Municipal means, "Taking up your service," "doing 
 your duty." And that was the historical sense of the 
 word. The organization thus of social mindedness into 
 a governmental fabric, with all the powers of the State 
 to urge and reinforce it — do you account that merely a 
 secular thing? The municipal republic is a temple, and 
 her civic transactions are a holy worship. The town hall 
 is the altar in that temple; workshops intone the thunder- 
 ous anthem; each home is a stained glass window in that 
 temple; all of the people are the congregation; the bible 
 they study is the book called Daily Events; and the Spirit 
 of Fellowship is the preacher. Children in that churchly 
 state are formally inducted into citizenship; it is their 
 confirmation, their new birth, and a work of grace. 
 City-worship is the religion that will make skepticism 
 ridiculous. 
 
 This fusing of ego-beings into a community Being, 
 creates no new energy, but it creates a new type of energy. 
 The rays of the sun, beating on a sheet of paper, merely 
 warm it. Put a focussing lens betwixt the sun and that 
 
260 THE FREE CITY 
 
 paper, the rays of the sun now are not different chemically 
 from what they were before; but see, they lift the tem- 
 perature to the burning point, and the paper bursts into 
 flame. When human beings concentrate into a free and 
 sovereign community, a force has entered the world that 
 was not there before; and whose presence spells the dif- 
 ference between savagery and civilization. We are 
 meant to be petals of a flower. Tear the petals severally 
 from the communal organism, the bulk is still the same. 
 Count them, the number is the same. Weigh the botani- 
 cal debris, the heft is the same. But those petals, dis- 
 membered and Uttering the ground — are they the same 
 as when incorporated into an organic whole and rooted 
 in the earth? When formed into a flower, petals give 
 off a perfume to sweeten the air on every side. But, 
 torn from each other and rotting, they send forth a stench. 
 
 "PersonaUty" derives from per, meaning "through," 
 and "soNARE," "to sound or speak"; as in "sonorous," 
 and "resonance." In the Roman theatricals the actor 
 often wore a wooden mask that gave his voice carrying 
 power. This mask was known as persona, "the 
 thing he sounded through," "his medium of communica- 
 tion with the world." 
 
 Individuals fuse to form a municipality; municipali- 
 ties federate to form a world. That is the etei;nal and 
 God-given jurisprudence. In it, the individual does not 
 operate directly upon the outside world, but through the 
 medium of the state, by the Department of Foreign Re- 
 lations. The ego is a water spring and world altruism is 
 the ocean. To ask that spring to reach the ocean by a 
 channel of its own, is to ask impossibility; any such at- 
 tempt by the multitude of springs, results in a swamp. 
 MunicipaUty, on the other hand, gathers the tiny stream- 
 lets into a river; and now, confluent, they reach the ocean. 
 
PERSONALITY 261 
 
 The difference between the swamp and the river, is the 
 difference between egoism and municipaUsm, 
 
 The Free City is personaUty; it is "the thing we sound 
 through," if we sound at all. In these times, with the 
 disappearance of city commonwealths and their sparkling 
 vivacities, personaUty is vanishing. What strength of 
 personality still appears is a left-over; and, like second 
 or third steepings of tea, gets weaker. Municipality is 
 the sounding board. It collects many ego voices into a 
 giant Voice, whose accent carries to the ends of the earth. 
 That united Voice thereupon is heard by each individual 
 whose whisperings contributed to form it. So that he 
 also learns to speak forth orotundly; is able, if need be, 
 to utter his speech even in contradiction of that giant 
 Voice. Thus great speakers and writers have always 
 been formed. Said Aristotle: "The state is by nature 
 clearly prior to the family and to the individual, since the 
 whole is of necessity prior to the part." 
 
 It is a chimera held by many, that a municipaUty is the 
 sum of the individuals that compose it. Such a con- 
 glomerate would not be a commune but a caterwauling. 
 Personality is Soul. Soul is a social thing. Tell the 
 average man that he is not a soul, but is a fragment of a 
 Communal Soul in this or previous ages, he will laugh you 
 to scorn. Egotistocrat that he is, he will assure you that 
 he is an entity complete in himself; a unit; and that, by 
 combination of these units, society is formed. So long 
 as modernity is given over to that strong delusion, it will 
 be the dislocated spectacle it now presents, a disarray 
 of jangHng egos; disjecta membra. The Cubists and 
 "Queerists," pictoriahzing the human figure in the 
 hkeness of a scrapheap of mechanical debris, are sub- 
 consciously picturing the actual nowaday fact. The in- 
 falUbihty of the collective man, was the aforetime and 
 
262 THE FREE CITY 
 
 municipal idea. The infallibility of each and every man, 
 is modernity's amendment. It is producing the disor- 
 ganization and indiscipline we behold. The collective 
 Will is will-power. But, when the ego does the willing, 
 it is wiKukiess. 
 
 Soul, or personality, is a collective entity. A solitary 
 individual could not have a soul; could not have even a 
 being. Thoreau and Robinson Crusoe, we saw, owed 
 their existence to the principle of association. The first 
 man who emerged from the ape family was not so far 
 removed but that he could still associate with those four- 
 footed folk, and did; he intermarried with those an- 
 thropoid kinsmen. 
 
 We have got to stop thinking in terms of individuals 
 and begin to think in terms of communities. Modern 
 life has gone off into paltriness because we are everlast- 
 ingly thinking of our private selves — "my" troubles, 
 "my" pleasures, "my" plans, "my" enemies, "my" 
 beautifulness, "my" salvation. By that lopsidedness, 
 life has become warped away from symmetry and grace. 
 These meums and tuums must give way to an overarch- 
 ing suuM. We must come forth out of that ego swamp, 
 onto the terra firma of community consciousness. We 
 must talk of the municipahty: "her" troubles, "her" 
 pleasures, "her" plans, "her" enemies, "her" beautiful- 
 ness, "her" salvation. In the city commonwealth, 
 people sell their lookingglass and subscribe for the 
 Municipal Record. 
 
 Except in the conmaunity, man has no existence, unus 
 HOMO, NULLUS HOMO. Isolation is another word for 
 lunacy; a relapse to the fear-mindedness and fight- 
 mindedness of jungle days; forth from which, fellowship 
 delivered us. It is possible for a man to disengage him- 
 self from the social network; and he is taken to the crazy 
 
PERSONALITY 263 
 
 house the next morning. Sanity and sociability are 
 convertible terms. Visit a Imiatic asylum, you will see 
 one keeper presiding over fifty inmates. "But is it not 
 dangerous?" exclaims the visitor; "those fifty might form 
 a common cause and overpower the keeper." Insane 
 people cannot form a common cause. When they have 
 recovered that capacity, they are cured, are no longer in 
 need of a keeper. In the contrary direction, prisoners 
 doomed to soUtary confinement lose their reason. Exiles 
 in Siberia, a woodsman cut off ia his cabin by the snows, 
 a traveller lost and soUtary, have much ado to keep from 
 going mad. 
 
 The true Self is the community. All consciousness is 
 social consciousness. Because psychologists are still for 
 the most part back in the ego philosophy, they have been 
 unable to explain consciousness. Coming into the world 
 as a biped on the vegetable plane, we do not in our few 
 years of life develop so wonderful a thing as consciousness. 
 We establish contact with the body of consciousness al- 
 ready developed. Consciousness is the highest form of 
 energy. It is a blending, through slow consecutive gene- 
 rations, of many Uttle knowings into a united and mighty 
 knowing, which now knows that it knows. This becomes 
 a permanent Spiritual Mass. Each individual born 
 thereafter who opens himself thereunto, is made free to 
 the whole of it; as an estuary of the ocean partakes of 
 the freshening inflow of the tides; so that, for all its 
 diminutive size, its waters are of the same quaHty as the 
 water of the ocean. This was the truth towards which 
 Calvin was driving. But that other, the Arminian theol- 
 ogy, emphasizing the individual, grew up later when 
 society was granulating into particles. Take a child, 
 cut him off from all contact with the Jehovah idea be- 
 queathed to us by the Commonwealth of Israel; cut him 
 
264 THE FREE CITY 
 
 off from all contact with the law heritage bequeathed to 
 us by Rome; cut him off from all contact with the artistic 
 and intellectual traditions bequeathed to us by Athens; 
 and cut him off from all contact with the civil formations 
 engendered in om* own day by these massive inheritances 
 — how much of a mental life would that child develop 
 in threescore years and ten? Calvin was right: The 
 individual is helpless. All that is of worth in us is the 
 doing of Another than we. 
 
 Fellowship is the creator of the heavens and the earth. 
 PoUtical science is able to explain the origin of the uni- 
 verse, which quest the philosophers have abandoned as 
 hopeless. How to get something out of an original noth- 
 ing, has been their difficulty; so that they frankly ac- 
 knowledge themselves non-plussed. That difficulty has 
 arisen from a false conception of what constitutes "noth- 
 ingness." The popular mind regards space as an empti- 
 ness amidst which our universe floats, a universe of a 
 given quantity that cannot be added to or subtracted 
 from. 
 
 There is no such condition anywhere as "nothingness." 
 That which seems to be an area of "nothingness" is a 
 posture of two equal forces in head-on colhsion. So long 
 as they remain in that posture they cancel each other. 
 Two locomotives, of the same horsepower and pushing 
 against each other, would present to an onlooker the ap- 
 pearance of perfect rest; from the movementless scene 
 he would infer that the locomotives were dead. On the 
 contrary, they are interiorly throbbing with power; but, 
 neutraUzing each other, the force hberated is zero. Now 
 let the locomotives be worked in cooperation instead of 
 in mutual thwarting, straightway the zero is changed into 
 a mighty force. That zero horsepower gave way to 
 a thousand horsepower, not by creating something out 
 
PERSONALITY 265 
 
 of nothing, but by changing a status of opposition into 
 one of cooperation. It is the calculus, higher than 
 arithmetic, whereby cyphers can be added and form 
 integers. 
 
 Fellowship is the creator of the universe, not by gen- 
 erating matter but by releasing it. A negative is com- 
 posed of two positives that are fighting each other to a 
 standstill. Let a peacemaker arrive and get them into 
 teamwork, the nought now is a figure 2. There is no 
 such thing as absolute nothingness or noughtness. What 
 seems so is a locking of horns by two equal and self-can- 
 celhng forces. When amity replaces the horn-pushings, 
 energy is released; but no new energy was created. That 
 which seems creation is an unlocking. 
 
 Thus the cosmic process ia at bottom an affair of ethics. 
 Perfect hatred is perfect nullity — two powers in hostile 
 strife and reducing their efficiency to zero. Creation is 
 a business of changing opposition into cooperation. 
 Fellowship is the alpha and the omega. An atomic 
 monad of fellowship was the First Cause; a commence- 
 ment so infinitesimal that micro-chemists shall never 
 plumb to that depth and isolate that phosphoric atom 
 of Ught; as the space-field of micro-chemistry contracts, 
 the time-unit expands; so that an eternity would be re- 
 quired to travel back to that original scintilla. As in- 
 finitesimal fellowship was the originator of this eternity 
 we inhabit, so at the opposite terminus, universal fel- 
 lowship is the goal ahead of us. Nothing save a moral 
 explanation of the universe will satisfy the facts. Love 
 is the author of life. God is the beginning and the end, 
 Prime Mover at the core of being. 
 
 The space surrounding our imiverse is not an expanse 
 of emptiness. It is a sea of frozen energy; an infinite 
 bed of forces locked in mutual strife; an intertangled 
 
266 THE FREE CITY 
 
 snarl of contentions, whereby their being is reduced to 
 zero — an Arctic waste of motionless quiet. Our uni- 
 verse is an ice-breaker plowing through that frozen sea; 
 Uberatuig fields of billowing waters; forever annexing 
 provinces; forever adding a new circumference to the 
 cosmos. Scientists have elaborated a doctrine known as 
 the conservation of energy. It affirms that the sum 
 total of energy now in existence can never be annihilated; 
 and so far, it is true. But that doctrine cannot be 
 stretched to forbid additions to the present stock of en- 
 ergy. The universe is growing; and will continue to 
 grow, out of the frozen reaches of dormancy roimd about 
 — a vastitude without end, expanding forever and for- 
 ever the frontiers of being. The only thing that could 
 stop the universe from getting larger and annihilate the 
 present universe, would be an increase of the principle of 
 hate over the principle of fellowship. But that is im- 
 possible. Hatred diminishes being, and therefore makes 
 for weakness. Fellowship unlocks the frozen power, 
 and so makes for strength. Love will always bear away 
 the victory. Defeat and its weepings may endure for a 
 night, but triumph cometh in the morning. With God 
 it is always: Heads, I win; tails, I don't lose. 
 
 The Municipal Movement, setting in hke a tidal heave 
 wherever community consciousness is arising, is a re- 
 suscitation of the principle of love to make stand against 
 the uncivilizing principle of hate and greed and bloodi- 
 ness. It is Personality — whose other name is God — 
 breaking forth Uke dawn upon a sick and bitter night. 
 God is fellowship; they that dwell in fellowship dwell in 
 God and God dwelleth in them. He annoimces: "Where 
 two or three are gathered together, there am I in the 
 midst." Egoism is atheism. Lovers are not atheists. 
 How skeptical soever he may have been, let a man fall 
 
PERSONALITY 267 
 
 in love, his unbelievings drop from him like a cast-off 
 garment. Municipality is the Absolute; it is fellowship 
 at its highest power. It is Love taking on a form and 
 texture of palpabihty. God is weary of being disem- 
 bodied. The Free City is God becoming a person. A 
 self-governing community is not merely an upholstery to 
 the reUgious life. It is the soul and body of the reli- 
 gious life. City-worship gave religion to the world; and 
 it alone can preserve religion in the world. An energetic 
 beHef in the personahty of God has always been a singu- 
 larity of city states. 
 
 Personality is a sense of identity. It is the announce- 
 ment, "I am I. " Self-affirmation is a colossal enterprise, 
 and can be compassed only by a colossal entity, the 
 State; which alone is of sufficient bulk to dominate the 
 Space-field, and of unruptured continuity so as to sail 
 the Time-flow unquailed by that turbulent stream. 
 To say "I am I," requires something of massiveness, 
 which is collectivity; and it requires something that 
 shall have persistence, which is continuity. Collectiv- 
 ity and continuity, we saw, are attributes only of 
 small states. 
 
 Biologically, the ego philosophies are unsound. The 
 water pipe through the street is as much a part and parcel 
 of a man as his food pipe. Water that has entered the 
 stomach is no more truly inside of the man than when 
 it was in the city main. Our bodies are a folding together 
 of a flat disc, leaving a tubular space — the alimentary 
 canal — through the middle of us. Every board of 
 health is proof that we cannot tell where the jurisdiction 
 of the plumber leaves off and that of the doctor begins. 
 In sajdng which, I am not trying to lower the physician 
 to the status of a plumber. I am Ufting the plumber to 
 the professional dignity we accord the physician. 
 
268 THE FREE CITY 
 
 The city is a personality. To keep her water main 
 sound and clean, is quite as worthy a profession as to 
 keep the alimentary canal sound and clean. 
 
 The Free City is a corporate being, a moral person, a 
 thinking and feeling entity. Sovereignty is the core and 
 cause of personality. A city cannot truly say "I am I," 
 except there has first been a declaration of municipal in- 
 dependence. Without self-ownership there can be no 
 sense of identity. From municipal seK-assertion, mighty 
 are the sequences that flow. War power, coinage, and 
 foreign relations are the excitors, awakening the inhabiters 
 of a city to consciousness. A Free City is a popular uni- 
 versity; a school of statesmanship into which everybody, 
 even to hod carriers and the roustabout, are matriculated. 
 So the cold materials of the mind are raised to the melt- 
 ing point, are fused into a unison Will. Heart beats so 
 close to heart that they get into rhythmic tempo, form 
 as it were a gigantic Heart whose pulsations ebb and flow 
 with the tides that throb in the arteries of The Eternal. 
 
 Sovereignty gives to the city a healthy segregation, 
 that she may collect her energies and grow into a coherent 
 organism. It is the girdle that dresses her into a trim 
 and athletic entity. Bereft of self-ownership, a city is like 
 a corpulent abdomen with no belt to hold up the coUops 
 of fat. Frontiers are as the barrel to a cannon; a whole- 
 some constriction that compacts the power, which other- 
 wise would have diffused itself in thin air. Personality 
 requires to be circumscribed. A certain stringency and 
 sequestration are essential. Such a commonwealth re- 
 joices in the sp)ectacle of other personahties sharing with 
 it the map of the globe. Treaties between high contract- 
 ing powers form the intercourse of personahty with per- 
 sonaUty, whereby each is reinforced in self-respect by the 
 respect it pays to the other. 
 
PERSONALITY 269 
 
 Municipality is holiness — wholeness, a sense of totality. 
 It is an esprit de corps operating on the subconscious- 
 ness of the people so that teamwork becomes ingrained; 
 men thereby get the tincture of it before they are born, 
 and restrain themselves within their appointed orbits. 
 Nationalism can never nose-ring the egoisms that rage 
 bull-headedly through all thoroughfares. Behold the 
 unbridled voracities it is letting loose; a scene going ever 
 more disorderly, ever more intractable. 
 
 In a civic commonwealth, men give a devoted service. 
 A Free City controls her people, not by dragoons, but 
 by appointing the people to control themselves. It is 
 the reUgious — rule-from-within — method, as opposed to 
 the machine guns and bayonets of national guards. 
 Holiness is the rapture of totahty, the ecstasy of incor- 
 poration into the great and true Self; separatisms swal- 
 lowed up in a common affection, egos concurring in a 
 single-hearted aim. Like a town after dark, ten thousand 
 lights in one blended halo. Holiness puts a hook in the 
 inward parts, grapples men by the heartstrings. 
 
 Beyond calculation are the spiritualities implicit in 
 self-government. By self-government the ages are il- 
 lumined. And the stars in their courses write it on the 
 blackboard of the night. That is why genius spurts up 
 in municipal eras. The Free City is an alembic whose 
 contents are not mixed physically but chemically; a 
 melting heat of good-comradeship, in whose hberal and 
 intense communion, life is vivified to an astounding sen- 
 sitivity. In its best estate, in those historic instances 
 where it has more nearly come to its perfect work, munic- 
 ipality is holiness; a spiritual and unfelt conscription. A 
 concert without a baton. So it enlarges the scrawny 
 biped into cosmic consciousness. History says so: the 
 commune is a human mass magnetically swayed to one 
 
270 THE FREE CITY 
 
 pole. It is not an overstatement to afl&rm that munic- 
 ipality is the universal formula, extending temporally to 
 the dawn of civil dominion, and spatially to the outposts 
 of being. It is the deification of the State. For it is the 
 principle by which atom draws to atom, star to star, and 
 man to his fellow man. 
 
CHAPTER XIX 
 
 THE LAND OF EVERLASTING LIFE 
 
 NO ego shall inherit eternal life. Municipality is 
 the Soul, of which we are parts; there, there is 
 the seat of everlastingness. The Christian 
 Church is an organization for relating present-day in- 
 dividuals to the Soul of the Jerusalem Commonwealth; 
 assuring them that as they abide in that Soul as branches 
 in the vine, they will live forever. This survival from 
 that Palestinian fund of nobleness has played an incalcu- 
 lable part in perpetuating civil arts and a social mind. But 
 the human species cannot Uve constantly on past per- 
 formances. What measures of civiUzation we enjoy are 
 tides from the Ocean of public consciousness, Ocean that 
 has been filled full by the municipal commonwealths of 
 history. But the d6bris of centuries little bit by bit clogs 
 the inlet that connects modem minds with that Universal 
 Mind; so that the freshening sweep of its waters into us 
 is progressively diminishing. We have got to develop 
 civic wellsprinas of our own, whose powerful current shall 
 scour out th*" silted-up channel. Only by pouring an 
 original flow ^"to that Ocean can we keep ourselves con- 
 fluent with that invisible Main of waters. That Sea 
 connects us with the high and holy One who inhabits 
 eternity. 
 
 Many Christians are troubled because the Old Testa- 
 ment makes so Uttle of "personal immortality"; by which 
 
 271 
 
272 THE FREE CITY 
 
 they mean, Individual immortality. The Israelites felt 
 the passion of eternity. They beUeved in the persistence 
 of life after death; but it was the persistence of the social 
 life. Ego-immortality would have seemed to them a 
 shrunken and truncated thing. Modernistic communi- 
 cations with the spirit world impart no thrill to the heart 
 of us, quicken no impulse to energetic deeds; their talk 
 is so paltry. Those ego-ghosts must apparently Uve a 
 mediocre existence — wandering wraiths, clothed in bore- 
 dom. If immortahty be thus anemic, it is a question 
 whether the game is worth the candle. 
 
 The Israelites made immortahty credible by making it 
 desirable. The individual was swallowed up in the 
 municipal spirit, and in that civic immortahty he found 
 the continuance of his own life. Ego-salvation, so far from 
 being a mark of advanced culture, is the sign of decadence. 
 Self-idolatry is a pathologic symptom, tells of social 
 breakdown. The Bible folk had the instinct of collectiv- 
 ity. That is why they were great. Exalting the com- 
 munity, they sought by every possible device to beat 
 down the ego and keep him in his proper place of sub- 
 serviency. "When I consider the heavens, the work of 
 thy fingers, the moon and the stars which thou hast or- 
 dained, what is man?" The individual! He is the 
 flower of a sunmier's fortnight, which to-day is, and to- 
 morrow is cast into the oven. He is a vapor; a brief 
 visibihty; then reabsorbed in the mass from which he 
 issued. Man is a grass. In the morning he flourisheth 
 and groweth up; in the evening he is cut down and 
 withereth. The Psahns are never tired, as Aristotle is 
 never tired, of declaring that Municipahty is the sov- 
 ereign: the great and august Jehovah Presence, "the 
 root and ofiFspring of David." "We all do fade as a 
 leaf; and our iniquities like the wind have taken us away. 
 
THE LAND OF EVERLASTING LIFE 273 
 
 We are the clay, and thou our potter; and we aU are the 
 work of thy hands." Immortality was a by-product; the 
 puny pond opening itself onto the Ocean in order to make 
 the Ocean larger; and finding to its surprise that in doing 
 so it had become possessed of the Ocean's amphtude. 
 
 Nor was the teaching of Jesus different from that of 
 his Old Testament ancestry. He promised to his fol- 
 lowers everlastingness in the Kingdom of God. But 
 that was a municipal kingdom: the Jerusalem state 
 transfigm-ed into a paradise terrestrial. Apocaljrpse, the 
 truest pictorial presentation of New Testament immor- 
 taUty, is Jerusalem new-modeled; "the camp of the 
 saints, the beloved city." "These are they which have 
 right to the tree of life, and may enter in through the gates 
 into the city." To be cut off from the civic fellowship 
 was eternal death: "God shall take away his part out 
 of the book of life, and out of the holy city." "Ye are 
 come unto Mount Zion, and imto the city of the hving 
 God, the heavenly Jerusalem." 
 
 Palestine had a Psychical Research Society. EUjah, 
 Amos, Isaiah and Jeremiah were successively presidents 
 of it. The prophets did exactly in their day what the 
 psychical searchers seek to do for modernity: to bring 
 home to the people a realization of the departed past, 
 as a continuing factor in the life of the present: "Saith 
 the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob." Jehovah was 
 their philosophy of history. The difference between the 
 Hterary style of the prophets and the Uterary style of 
 modern communications from the spirit realm, affords a 
 criterion for comparing the worth of municipalism and 
 individuahsm. The Isaiah reveahngs are Uterature. 
 They are touched with grandeur, because they uttered 
 "the voice of a great multitude, and as the voice of many 
 waters, and as the voice of mighty thunderings." 
 
274 THE FREE CITY 
 
 Perhaps some may demur at this literary test of truth 
 and falsity. I answer, the literary form and the thought- 
 content have a blood kinship. Truth and beauty are 
 one. Triviality of expression betrays falsity of theme. 
 Expression power is in exact ratio to brain power. Al- 
 ways, beauty of language accompanies truthfulness of 
 vision. A shallow tongue means shallow thinking. 
 Form and substance are twins; to the extent that a pic- 
 ture is worth while, it will get unto itself a splendid frame. 
 As the words of Isaiah and Jeremiah and Jesus attest, 
 the social Soul voices itself in language that goes ringing 
 down the ages, vehicle of wisdom and of power and of 
 beauty. The individual soul, speaking from out the past, 
 voices itself in back-door gossip. Clear is the pragmatic 
 test. The worth of immortaUty is not what it does for 
 us after death, but what it does for us in the here and 
 now. If civic immortaUty adds wisdom and power and 
 beauty to the hterature of the world, and if ego immortal- 
 ity adds nothing but small talk, then the former is true 
 and the latter is untrue. 
 
 In municipal eras, man seeks immortality through 
 artistic production. Said Keats: A thing of beauty is 
 a joy forever. It is a joy forever, precisely because a 
 thing of beauty is built to last forever. Any work of 
 man's hand, wrought with a view to unending duration, 
 is beautiful. Art is always sub specie .eternitatis. The 
 artist is never an ego. He has consciousness of himself 
 only as a part of Something larger. That Something is 
 the communal Self; which transcends the generation that 
 now is; for it had a being in old Yesterday and will be 
 when To-day 1ms dissolved into far off Tomorrow. He 
 who creates in the atmosphere and aureole of this Im- 
 mortal Being, etemaUzes himself and his output. In 
 contrast with the ego-worker who is content if, by hook 
 
THE LAND OF EVERLASTING LIFE 275 
 
 or by crook, he can make his product hold together his 
 lifetime, the artist creates to an eternal standard. Foul 
 work is that which is wrought to last temporarily. Beau- 
 tiful work is that which is wrought to last through long 
 durations. The social Soul creates art, because it pro- 
 duces a timeless commodity, something fashioned unto 
 everlasting ideals. The private soul produces artifice, 
 because it works on the stop-gap principle. Himself a 
 drop of dew, the distillation of a transient hour, this 
 momentary fellow produces naught but a temporahty; 
 something provisional and makeshift. 
 
 Architecture is that which is built for eternity. It is 
 an aspiration towards immortahty of habitat. This 
 principle of everlastingness — an abode stretching be- 
 yond one's httle lifetime — is what gives to architecture 
 its distinction. A building that is expected to come down 
 within the generation of the man who built it, is not archi- 
 tecture, nor can be; conceal and cover up as he may, a 
 something of flimsiness will appear in the structure and 
 will cry aloud to the passers-by. Nationalists build 
 cheaply; because day after tomorrow we probably will 
 move. When most truly itself, it puts upon the work 
 of man's hand the damnatory imprint of haste, flippancy, 
 impermanence; no edifice designed to gather atmosphere 
 through generations of generations, beautiful and haunt- 
 ing in its veil of reminiscence. The metalUc towers of 
 Manhattan, that so painstakingly pretend to be eternal 
 stone, dart forth a suggestion of transitoriness. And that 
 suggestion is the truth. Already, with the paint scarce 
 set, they are beginning to come down; to make way for 
 new and higher ones that shall outpoint each its neighbor 
 — a forest of individuahsms. New York is a platoon of 
 bayonets; stiletto architecture, daggers that stab the 
 sky 
 
276 THE FREE CITY 
 
 An ego age cannot produce architecture. Therefore 
 it cannot produce art of any kind. Architecture is the 
 commune of the arts, synthesis of the crafts. In com- 
 parison with the structures reared by an age Uke the 
 Gothic, a city under modern materiaUsm is a lath-and- 
 plaster thing; not a city but the sketch of a city. As 
 though builders, setting out to construct a cathedral, 
 had erected an elaborate scaffolding, and then had for- 
 gotten to build the cathedral. Nationalists are migra- 
 tory; they cannot abide frontiers that shall hem them in 
 and that shall discipline the nomadism in their blood. 
 And our manner of building shows it. The city common- 
 wealth is patterned on another principle. It is a ded- 
 icated company of people owning a spot of earth in 
 common, and there uprearing their everlasting habita- 
 tion. A Free City gives the impression of being a fixture. 
 The attribute of all architecture is durabihty; a struc- 
 ture based on everlasting foundations, and built to sur- 
 vive the ravage of the years. 
 
 Moderns scratch their heads over the "mystery of 
 style." Style is spaciousness of treatment, an eleva- 
 tion of manner bestowed by occult connections with the 
 past and the future. Style is the trade mark of Im- 
 mortals. It stamps that which is worked to an ever- 
 lastingness of purpose. A Free City forms a part of the 
 landscape. From old Nature its patterns are drawn, 
 and the pulse of the workmen beat to a vision beyond 
 their children's children. The workmanship of a soul 
 thus ennobled has style. His daily product is his anti- 
 dote against oblivion. So his spirit takes on an astro- 
 nomic duration. His hands build an imperishability. 
 To do without eternity means instanter a loss of tone. 
 
 For grandem*, the heart in us forever and ever is yearn- 
 ing. Grandeur is the spirit of municipahty, as con- 
 
THE LAND OF EVERLASTING LIFE 277 
 
 trasted with the flightiness and paltriness of an ego epoch. 
 The days of our Hfe are threescore years and ten. But 
 thou, Soul of the civic fellowship, abideth forever. A 
 thousand years in thy sight are but as yesterday when it 
 is past. Before the mountains were brought forth, or 
 ever thou hadst formed the earth and the world, even 
 from everlasting to everlasting, thou art God. They 
 who are caught up into that Self exhibit the grand man- 
 ner. Their voices become the organ of that greater 
 Voice, so that their intonations acquire a timbre and res- 
 onance of majesty. No longer ephemera upflashing 
 fitfully into life, to be as fitfully destroyed, city-worship- 
 ers are touched imto a temper of timelessness. In the 
 Ancient of Days their roots are sunk, and unto ages of 
 ages their line goes forth. This feeUng of transcendency 
 over the fugitive To-day, gets into the marrow of the 
 man. Such a one irradiates serenity, alongside of which 
 the fret and pantings of temporal folk suggest the incon- 
 sequential busyness of a cage of monkeys. 
 
 The Romans were characterized by "the grand manner." 
 The fact has been accepted without inquiry; as though 
 the climate of Rome, or minerals in their drinking water, 
 wrought the inhabitants necessarily unto a certain large- 
 ness of demeanor to which other folk could not be 
 expected to aspire. Roman grandeur was due to 
 their civic mysticism. Patria — the Fathers — that was 
 Rome's secret of greatness. In the continuity of life 
 across the centuries, the mind of the Roman bathed it- 
 self as in a mystic flood. The ego atomies, losing them- 
 selves in this greater Mass, felt within them the power 
 of an endless life. It got into their manner of speech, 
 into the glance of the eye, the bearing of the torso, the 
 steppings of their feet. We have a word that derives 
 from this ennoblement imparted by the civic rehgion: 
 
278 THE FREE CITY 
 
 "stateliness." Her men were stately; a consciousness of 
 the State informed all of their thinkings and doings. 
 
 Rome as a city repubUc was permitted to strain all the 
 nerves of all her people. Roman soldiers campaigned 
 cheerfully and died unrepiningly: dulce et decorum 
 EST, PRO PATRiA MORI. Cicero promised heaven to all true 
 patriots. The corona civica was naught but a garland 
 of oak leaves. But a Roman coveted it beyond thou- 
 sands of gold and silver. For was it not the pass-key 
 unto everlasting life? Offspring of a great city, they felt 
 themselves born to greatness. Even when their message 
 to the world had degenerated into naked power, Roman 
 magistrates dehvered the message with grandiloquence. 
 It contributed no little to the Empire's longevity. The 
 statehness of praetors and proconsuls at least gilded the 
 chains wherewith the peoples were fettered. 
 
 Rome did not let her dead die. "Pious ^neas" was 
 Virgil's favorite term for that reputed patriarch of their 
 city; "pious" meaning, one who is reverential towards 
 his father. In her porous tufa rock, Rome quarried 
 catacombs; crypts and tortuous galleries, mile upon mile. 
 That the presence of the necropohs might be the more in- 
 sistent, she located the catacombs along the consular 
 roads radiating from Rome; with tombs, hke those on the 
 Appian Way. In the Virgin Temple the sacred fire tended 
 by the Vestals symbolized this continuity of the genera- 
 tions; as fire communicates from one fagot to another its 
 living flame, roma diva was the Fire-Soul enkindUng 
 the generations. They felt that in some mysterious way 
 the destiny of their city hung upon the preservation of 
 this flame inherited from the past. That fire must never 
 be permitted to go out — continuity with the past, was 
 with them a reUgious mandate. ReUgion is re-ligeo, 
 "that which binds back." Veneration of the Fathers was 
 
THE LAND OF EVERLASTING LIFE 279 
 
 the firmament of Rome's statecraft and worship. For 
 with the ancients is wisdom, and in length of days is 
 understanding. 
 
 Which dogma had a repercussion in the realm of eu- 
 genics. The child who reveres his father will seek in 
 turn to be revered by his children. City-worship has 
 three ingredients: Nature-worship, ancestor worship, and 
 eugenics. Combine the triad in a civic ritual intoned by 
 the multitude, — a thousand voiced exultation in the 
 hour of triumph, in depression a litany of a m5a-iad wail- 
 ings — and you have that which is the writer of bibles, 
 law-giver, spring of beauty, strengthener of all our mortal 
 doings. In a land where graves go unremembered, 
 cradles are untended. MunicipaUty is the communion 
 of Yesterday with Tomorrow, through the medium of a 
 joyful and magnificent To-day. 
 
 "Rome was not built in a day." A truer phrasing 
 would be, Rome was not built for a day. They felt that 
 the past, the present and the yet unborn constitute a 
 unity. The grandeur of that vision organized itself into 
 the work of their hands. They built as Nature built. 
 They implicated themselves with the cosmos. In Rome 
 there is an arched sewer still in use, that was constructed 
 in King Tarquin's day, nearly three thousand years ago. 
 The Romans built religiously. Therefore they built 
 architecturally. Religion has always been the patron 
 of architecture. "Whatsoever . is built irreligiously is 
 built shabbily, faddishly, flimsily. 
 
 Almost to an equal extent with the Romans, the Greeks 
 had this feeling for and intimacy with the past. Their 
 custom was to place the family tomb not far from the 
 door of the house; "in order," as Euripides explained, 
 "that the sons in entering and leaving their dwelling 
 might always meet their fathers and might address them 
 
280 THE FREE CITY 
 
 an invocation." "Sacred Fatherland" was the Athenian' 
 phrase for their country. Their term for the act of honor- 
 ing the dead was "to patriotize." The Fathers had left 
 behind them, hymns and festivals and laws and Nature- 
 lore. The living regarded this mass of civic tradition as 
 their patrimony. "These stories are life-giving mys- 
 teries," said iEschylus. Athens had her pyreteneura, 
 where the sacred fire always burned. It was their civic 
 altar. Around that municipal hearthstone their souls 
 gathered, and were comforted. 
 
 There is a phrase common in the Bible: "The Lord 
 of hosts." Scriptural scholars are puzzled to interpret 
 it. If we wiU remember that the Bible is the textbook 
 of civic religion, the words become clear. "The hosts" 
 were the invisible multitude that the Athenians saw in 
 that mystic processional to Eleusis: the entire company 
 of the departed; rallying around their Lord as a troop 
 around their chieftain. "Buried with his fathers" — that 
 is the civic immortahty. Israel "called his son Joseph 
 and said unto him: 'Bury me not in Egypt; but I will 
 He with my fathers. Carry me, and bury me in their 
 burying place.' " In that devotion to patria, is the lineal 
 continuity that cUmbs unto civihzation's immortal flower- 
 ing. It transforms the commune into a granary where 
 the treasures of yesterday are garnered; a nest, where 
 young tomorrow is nourished. Like buried cities, tier 
 upon tier uprising, their life was steeped in an immemo- 
 rial tradition. By the civic communion, their days were 
 overhung with a cloud of witnesses; the quick and the 
 dead in statesmanly consultation. A sense of history is 
 the surest mark of culture. City-worshipers are swayed 
 into reverence and discipleship. They behold the solemn 
 dynasties, link upon hnk conjoining; are themselves a 
 link therein. It begets in the ganglia an instinct of his- 
 
THE LAND OF EVERLASTING LIFE 281 
 
 toricity. That is why those Bible worthies were so as- 
 sured and spacious in their behavior. Partnership with 
 the past and the future made them more than hfe size. 
 In their high blood's majesty they spoke and wrote and 
 acted with nobihty of expression. 
 
 The citizenly soul shall abide forever. Jesus abolished 
 death and brought life and immortality to light, because he 
 was the civic Christ, municipality's evangel and messiah. 
 He taught: To live and to die for The Commonwealth is 
 everlasting life. The commune alone is invested with 
 immortal duration; to the extent that our httle self is 
 coextensive with that larger Self, we partake of that 
 durabiUty. A Free City is built into the constitution of 
 the imiverse. It has an absolute existence; is con- 
 tinuous with the unique immense Being at the core of 
 the cosmos; of Whom a commune is the incarnation, and 
 Whose indefatigable urge is the fire that makes for free- 
 dom. The perishing of self-love in civic dedication is 
 the death that destroys death. For in that moment one 
 shares the immensity and duration of The Eternal. He 
 becomes naturahzed in the City of God, to pass down 
 immortal corridors; central to all fields of time and space; 
 no longer an alien from the Commonwealth but a citizen, 
 through roUing ages without end. "Their soul bound in 
 the bundle of life," describes a folk immune to coffins 
 and graveyards and all the grim corruptibiUties. civitas 
 DEI I MunicipaUty is fellowship. And the years of fel- 
 lowship are throughout all generations; a faith sure and 
 steadfast. Acolytes of that religion shall never taste of 
 death. Inhabiters are they of a city which hath founda- 
 tions, whose buUder and maker is God. 
 
CHAPTER XX 
 
 A COSMIC COURTSHIP 
 
 COMMON speech personifies a city as a "She." 
 There is a valid reason. The Free City is the 
 natural form of state — Natural in the Hteral 
 sense of the word. Nature is a woman. We call her 
 The Great Mother, on whose hberal bosom we are borne, 
 and without whose nourishing milk our Uves were not 
 worth a fortnight's purchase. The primal and all-condi- 
 tioning attribute of a city commonwealth, we have seen, 
 is kinship with the terrain of Nature it rests upon. 
 
 Not only is Nature a woman. Also, woman is Nature. 
 Woman is closer to that source and groundtackle of all 
 being, than is man. Man has cUmbed to an intellectual- 
 ity beyond what woman has attained to. But that gain 
 has been at the expense of his holdfast in the aboriginal 
 roots of life, the cosmic deeps where all our being is re- 
 plenished. Man thinks, but woman knows. Her in- 
 stincts are ofttimes surer than his labored logic. Man 
 thinks; woman feels. In him, thought takes the place 
 of heart-power. In her, the heart has grown rich at the 
 expense of the head. I am not saying that either is 
 superior. Man and woman are different; always have 
 been, always will be. Man is man, woman is woman; 
 never the twain shall meet. Aye, the diversity will be- 
 come greater. Because evolution is a progress from 
 
 sameness into an ever more rich and abundant diversity. 
 
 282 
 
A COSMIC COURTSHIP 283 
 
 Woman is closer to Nature than is man, because of her 
 maternal function. Each individual, as we have seen, 
 sums up in his career the biography of the universe. A 
 child at the moment of birth is a vegetable; a lovely sun- 
 flower waving his arms and legs Uke petals of a blossom, 
 at the end of the stem that fastens him to his earth. Cut 
 loose from that stem, delivered from a merely passive 
 botanical existence, he becomes successively a frog, a 
 monkey, a cave man; and at about the age of three he 
 graduates into the savage and barbarian stages in the 
 world's history. A child of five is an excellent specimen, 
 in point of emotional development, of a pagan — that 
 world peopled with fauns and sprites, imps and naiads 
 and dryads, sylvans and satyrs; which, could he retain 
 and add thereto the disciplined mind of maturity, would 
 make him a genius, of the school of iEschylus and 
 Sophocles. 
 
 The mother stays with the lad through all that child- 
 hood cHmb. In her arms, almost, she takes him up to 
 the age of eight or ten. By which time of his graduation 
 from her care, another child has usually appeared. 
 Whereupon she goes back and repeats the process. Be- 
 cause of this, her soul has remained in those primitive 
 bournes, while man's soul has gone on into intellectualism. 
 Man has advanced further, but on a narrow front. 
 Woman has not advanced so far, but she has taken all 
 Nature up with her as far as she has gone. Man is the 
 scout of the army, pushing ahead with a small force to 
 reconnoiter. Woman has come behind leading the main 
 army, whose mightier mass has necessitated a slower 
 pace. She brings with her not only the children of the 
 human species. She comes, leading also in her many- 
 sided soul the flowers, birds in spring, laughter of water- 
 falls, protean cloud-shapes, pomp of sunsets, and thunder- 
 
284 THE FREE CITY 
 
 storms driving down the valley. Woman is Natm-e in 
 human form. The tides of her being are cognate to the 
 rhythm of the moon. Man is mental. Woman is ele- 
 mental. Her spirit is attuned to notes of music where 
 man's ear is not at home. 
 
 Watch a mother when she has an idle moment and is 
 playing with her infant child. The lad beheves in fames; 
 so does the mother. And they walk in a wonder-world 
 together. Every true woman is at heart a pagan; that 
 is to say, her attitude toward Nature is the child attitude. 
 She puts faith in signs and tokens; consults the fortune 
 teller, as Saul of old time consulted the gypsy at Endor. 
 She is closer than man to the fairylands of hfe. Superficial 
 moderns hold in derision this "superstitiousness" of 
 womankind. But without that heart of natural behef, 
 she could not be a companion to her child. Who then 
 would keep company with these newcomers and guide 
 them sympathetically up through childhood's cosmic 
 climb to adult estate? Woman is the Unk between men 
 and children. Man cannot understand an infant. The 
 infant cannot understand a man. Woman understands 
 them both; and interprets them each to the other. To 
 demand of woman the cold rationality of man, would be 
 asking her to give up her vocation in the scheme of things. 
 Man for mentahty, woman for sensibihty — there is the 
 team that pulls the wide world forward. 
 
 As woman is the connecting link between childhood 
 and adulthood, municipality is the hnk between Nature 
 and human nature. A city has an earthly base, and 
 climbs — if it be a Free City — into loftiest altitudes; 
 the Tree Igdrasil, earth-grounded, but whose top is close 
 against the sky. What form of statehood was it trans- 
 formed a mud stream into the River Jordan, theme of 
 song wheresoever civihzation has spread its fire? What 
 
A COSMIC COURTSHIP 285 
 
 form of statehood took some hillocks, bleak and bare m" 
 the Italian campagna, and transfigured them into seven- 
 hilled Rome, clothed in majesty? What form of state- 
 hood took Attica's thin and dusty soil, and transformed 
 it into purple-crowned Athens? Or the valley of that 
 back-country stream, the Arno, and glorified it into a 
 Florence? Or the dull Baltic coast, and turned it into 
 Hanseatic towns? Enumerate the spots where the un- 
 conscious landscape has been educated into towers of 
 strength and temples of renown, you have enumerated 
 the municipal republics of history. It is not a dreamer's 
 dream but sound and authentic truth: The Free City 
 is the link of connection, by means of which insensate 
 Nature climbs up into and becomes vivacious human 
 nature. 
 
 To speak therefore of a municipality as possessing fem- 
 inine gender, is to speak the truth. All of the qualities 
 that characterize womanhood, characterize municipal 
 commonwealths. Athens was named from her goddess 
 Athena. Florence, in her florid valley, gives her name to 
 an innumerable company of girls. When the Romans 
 personified their city, it was always in the feminine 
 gender, roma. There are controversialists who ask. If 
 woman is man's equal, why are all of the great artists 
 men? The answer is, Man produces art, but woman 
 produces the artist. Her modeling is not in clay or 
 wood or marble; but in living flesh, the body of the child 
 she is conducting up to manhood. In like manner, the 
 municipality does not produce art; but she produces 
 artists who, in gratitude to their alma mater, bring the 
 dear-wrought produce of their hands to garnish her. 
 Within the seclusion of her sovereignty she sits, a wife 
 incommunicado, a mother cherishing her children. She 
 is home-etajdng; but her silent ministrations are the 
 
286 THE FREE CITY 
 
 replenishment of her children, whose names resound afar. 
 She looketh well to the ways of her household, and eateth 
 not the bread of idleness. Her children arise up and call 
 her blessed. 
 
 The Free City, girt with dignities and civil dominion, 
 is the only form of society under which woman has found 
 contentment. In non-municipal eras, man can struggle 
 along, can keep a measure of health; but woman in such 
 an era goes to pieces. Our times afford illustration. 
 This denatured civihzation is hard on man; but it is prov- 
 ing fatal to woman. The pestilence of artificiaUty j&nds 
 in man a something of resisting power. But the plague 
 sweeps womanhood with frightful fatality. Woman is 
 made for Nature, and can find no rest until she rests in 
 Nature. Whelm her away from that soil, she is a rose 
 torn up by the roots. Woman is the political barometer. 
 When her spirit is in a posture of contentment, it is sign 
 that the State is nearly of the Natural type. But when 
 neurasthenias begin to visit her, and portents of spiritual 
 collapse, it signifies that the poUtical establishment is 
 imsound. 
 
 The grandeur of Rome, as to the men she produced, 
 had its counterpart in the queenliness of her women. 
 Cornelia sending her sons to die for the State in a struggle 
 for popular rights, was only a more conspicuous instance 
 of the average Roman matron; like the Spartan mother, 
 cheering her boy to a career of courage and admonishing 
 that he keep his shield unsurrendered: "Come back with 
 it, or on it." Pilate, presiding over the trial of Jesus, 
 accounted the prisoner as but one more in the daily ad- 
 ministrative grind. Nevertheless he put into that court 
 scene a dignity and elevation that matched, on the side 
 of the magistracy, the loftiness contributed by the bear- 
 ing of the prisoner. Imagine the judge in a modern 
 
A COSMIC COURTSHIP 287 
 
 court departing from the routine to ask an ill-kempt 
 prisoner at the bar, "What is truth." And the hand- 
 washing! Is there to-day one judge in ten thousand with 
 the originality to conceive a deed like that, or the poetic 
 daring to interrupt court procedure for so dramatic a 
 symboHsm? The harsh necessities of empire compelled 
 Pilate, in condemning Jesus, to do a dastardly piece of 
 work. But he did it with style. Jesus was unjustly 
 dealt with. But he was not sordidly dealt with. Pilate's 
 demeanor dignified the event up out of the level of brutal- 
 ity onto the level of tragedy. And we glimpse the hidden 
 spring that was moving him. In the background — 
 Pilate's wife. We behold her, interesting herself per- 
 sonally in affairs of state; with a sagacity that kings 
 and counsellors could envy. And she was an ordinary 
 Roman wife. 
 
 More exclusively than perhaps any other spot upon 
 earth, the AcropoHs was devoted to the adoration of 
 womanhood. Almost excessive was the Athenian defer- 
 ence to women. Aristotle questions the wisdom of 
 "Feminine ascendency," and the "over-indulgence of 
 women." Plato voices the same fear. Decidedly there 
 was no Woman Movement in the Attic Commune. A 
 movement for Man's Rights would have been more logi- 
 cal. And yet Athens was not effeminized. Her sons 
 were trained for citizenship rather than for miUtarism. 
 But in withstanding an invader, the men of Athens were 
 famed for pig-headed fighting. "By thee I have run 
 through a troop, and by my God I have leaped over a 
 wall," exclaimed a citizen in the neighboring commime of 
 Israel. Attic manhood ground to powder the myrmidons 
 of Xerxes; and then, to their goddess queen Athena, 
 built the most beautiful structure in the world. 
 
 We moderns, to whom a city is naught but a place to 
 
288 THE FREE CITY 
 
 make money in, can scarce imagine the affection felt by 
 citizens toward their Conmiune. Patriotism is too feeble 
 a term for it. It was a love attachment; so adorable 
 was the tie betwixt the Mistress-Mother and her offspring. 
 They were creatures of a day; but she endured in ever- 
 lasting succession; had borne their fathers in the foretime, 
 and would bear their children when they themselves had 
 been gathered to the kingdoms of the dead. In the hazy 
 light of morning they saw her as a Lady enthroned, a 
 fostering protective Mother. 
 
 Take the instincts throbbing in a chUd of Nature; to 
 that add the venerations that thrill in us when we re- 
 member our dead; add further the fellowship of a com- 
 mon hazard and a sense of stewardship for our children's 
 children — this was the massive emotion their city re- 
 pubUc evoked. It was naught less than a love rapture. 
 To her their hves were amorously engaged. In her be- 
 half, self-immolation was joyful. No ego was permitted 
 to be self-important. They laid themselves at her feet 
 as a lover brings love gifts to the lode-star of his affections. 
 To make an oblation to her was gratification beyond all 
 other delights. It ennobled their handiwork. Her 
 people aspired with all their organs to produce something 
 preciously wrought; worthy to be a brooch for her neck 
 or a jewel to be set in her diadem. 
 
 "O Mother dear, Jerusalem!" — there we see the emo- 
 tion that immortalized Palestine. The Bible is quite the 
 most voluptuous romance in hterature. It is the love 
 story of God's amour with Jerusalem. God is the Fel- 
 lowship that created the heavens and the earth; and who, 
 in his Palestinian self-manifestation, took the name 
 Jehovah. This God fell in love with Jerusalem. "Fear 
 not; for thou shalt not be put to shame. For thy Maker 
 is thine husband; the Lord of Hosts is his name." It was 
 
A COSMIC COURTSHIP 289 
 
 a romantic love; the match was forbidden by jealous and 
 mighty empires round about, who claimed this Jerusalem 
 virgin as their concubine. The determination of the high 
 and holy One to have her exclusively for Himself — His 
 yearnings after her, and her yearnings after Him — is the 
 golden thread that runs through the Old Testament 
 and the New. Ezekiel describes the betrothal: "Word 
 of the Lord : When I passed by thee and looked upon thee, 
 behold thy time was the time of love. And I spread my 
 skirt over thee, and entered into a covenant with thee; 
 and thou becamest mine. I anointed thee with oil. I 
 clothed thee also with broidered work, and I gilded thee 
 with fine linen. I decked thee also with ornaments. 
 Thou wast exceeding beautiful." The fundamental 
 teaching of the Bible — more constantly insisted upon 
 than any other to be found within its pages — is that a 
 Free City stands breast-high to God, lovely in her win- 
 someness; and He is so warm-blooded He can never re- 
 sist the attraction. 
 
 When a jilted suitor like Chaldea comes and kidnaps 
 this lovely maiden out of the arms of her celestial Lover, 
 it is regarded as an enforced widowhood. At such a 
 time the prophets rose up to assure the people that the 
 conjugal tie would be renewed. "Thou shalt not re- 
 member the reproach of thy widowhood any more." 
 The "Song of Songs" has puzzled commentators; there is 
 in its language a fleshliness and naturaUsm that seem to 
 many to be out of place in a sacred volume hke the Bible 
 Those Canticles are a series of love-letters written by 
 the amorous couple, to console the time of their separa- 
 tion. The imperiaUstic kidnapper is Ukened to King 
 Solomon with his many wives, and who seeks now to buy 
 the love of the Maiden with palaces and horses and chari- 
 ots. But she, "the Shulamite Maid," will not be bribed. 
 
290 THE FREE CITY 
 
 She writes passion-flaming letters to her heavenly Bride- 
 groom; says that she prefers poverty, in the arms of her 
 Well-beloved, to the blandishments of an imperialistic 
 sensualist who seeks but to add her to the number of 
 his kept women. Her Bridegroom writes equally ardent 
 letters to her in return; sighs for the moment that shall 
 reunite them in the connubial bond. Beneath the sen- 
 suous imagery is enforced the soundest lesson in politi- 
 cal science: ImperiaUsm, tying many landscapes to one 
 capital, is Ukened to an emperor surrounded by a multi- 
 tude of concubines; whereas municipal independence is 
 the monogamic union of one man and one woman. 
 
 God as the husband, Jerusalem as the wife, and the 
 IsraeUtes as their offspring — that is the psychology that 
 permeates the Bible through and through. As in all true 
 marriages, the blend was perfect; a union of soul, so 
 that the children knew not which of the pair to love the 
 more. Sometimes their worship went out to the Father, 
 and sometimes to the Mother. Forasmuch as by the 
 necessities of the case a married couple is represented in 
 their relations with the outside world by the husband, 
 whilst the wife occupies a more retired place, thus God- 
 head made up of male and female was usually referred 
 to by them as "He." But underneath that official 
 "He," the feminine was always included. "Rejoice ye 
 with Jerusalem, and be glad with her, all ye that love 
 her. That ye may suck and be satisfied with the breasts 
 of her consolations; that ye may milk out and be dehghted 
 with the abundance of her glory. Ye shall be borne 
 upon her sides and be dandled upon her knees; as one 
 whom his mother comforteth." 
 
 No small part of the teaching of Jesus was to get the 
 people ready for the "Marriage Supper," when the 
 heavenly Father and the Jerusalem Mother would be 
 
A COSMIC COURTSHIP 291 
 
 reunited in wedlock joy. A poet in his mastery over the 
 resources of language, he drew lavishly upon those re- 
 sources to picture the gladness and the glories of that 
 wedding feast. The unfaithful IsraeUte will be excluded 
 from that event. The faithful will be bidden, and it will 
 be their everlasting reward; for they will thereafter live 
 imder the tender care of a Father and a Mother. So 
 importantly did this nuptial event occupy the imagina- 
 tion of Jesus, it got into the Patmos vision. The climax 
 of that revelation announces: "I John saw the holy city, 
 new Jerusalem, coming down from God out of heaven, 
 prepared as a bride adorned for her husband." St. 
 Augustine, who as a young man had been a loose Uver, 
 was attracted by this picture of spiritualized love. He 
 gave up his hbertinisms; became ardently attached to 
 this picture of a heavenly Bride; and wrote "The City 
 of God," his masterpiece. 
 
 Not strange that a State thus highestly feminized — 
 "daughter of Zion" — should have produced an array 
 of great women. Rebecca and Sarah, Ruth and Naomi 
 and Deborah and Hannah and Elizabeth — how the Ust 
 awakens hearthstone memories! and Mary the Mother, 
 ornament of the world, pearl among women; for whom 
 no canvas is white enough, no pigment sufficiently rich, 
 to image forth her charm and graces. 
 
 Municipalism is feminism. All other political estab- 
 Ushments are an indecent society for women to live in . The 
 Dark Ages that preceded the Gothic, presented a black- 
 ened gulf of egoisms in fierce contention. In such a 
 time, powerful sinews, a sword arm trained and ready, 
 were the requisites. That gave to man the preeminence; 
 relegated woman, by reason of her inferiority in fighting 
 strength, to a subordinate position. But in that black 
 marauder epoch, woman was the preserver of life. In 
 
292 THE FREE CITY 
 
 all eras man has been inclined to play the runagate; fish- 
 ing and hunting and warring and roaming. Woman is 
 the home builder. Her spirit is eminently of a construc- 
 tive cast. For bearing and rearing children a nest is 
 needed. A nest requires permanency of abode. Legend 
 says that, when the .^Eneas band, meandering about the 
 Mediterranean after their expulsion from burning Troy, 
 landed finally on the shores of Italy, the women of 
 the party went down to the water by stealth and set 
 fire to the ships, in order that the nomadism might come 
 at last to a perpetual end. Thus restrained from further 
 rovings, the band of wanderers settled down in Italy; 
 and Rome was eventually the result. 
 
 The Gothic period saw woman restored to honor and 
 reverence; because in the settled mode of life known as 
 Free Cities, her qualities began once more to be ap- 
 preciated. The five hundred Dark Years had inured man 
 to warfarings, made him adept in the arts that destroy; 
 had incapacitated him for the business of construction. 
 Bulf not so, woman. Whilst the husband had been swag- 
 gering through the countryside in the train of some feudal 
 chieftain, the wife had stayed at home, tending the farm, 
 nourishing the household, weaving the cloth, sewing the 
 garments — was butcher and baker and candlestick 
 maker. In the lowUer classes she was the plow driver, 
 the goose girl, dairy maid, shepherd, and herder. In the 
 castle enclosure, high bom dames worked the spinning 
 wheel and loom; were the practitioners in medicine, and 
 even in surgery. So when the communes finally arose, 
 with their demand for a productive type of life, woman 
 came into her own. 
 
 In that signal burst of beauty, we find Joan of Are, 
 Marguerite of Navarre, St. Catherine, St. Theresa, Isa- 
 bella of Castile, Mary of Scotland. The universities of 
 
A COSMIC COURTSfflP 293 
 
 Salerno and Bologna had women professors. It is to 
 this period we owe the Arthur Legends, wherein knights 
 errant went forth in the name of womanhood to do courtly 
 deeds. Now were the Troubadours. Sings one of them: 
 "I know of no more subtle passion under heaven than is 
 the maiden passion for a maid; not only to keep down the 
 base in man, but to teach high thoughts and amiable 
 words and courtliness and the desire of fame and zest 
 of truth, and all that makes a man." Affirms Vogelweide 
 the Minnesinger: "He who has a good woman's love is 
 ashamed of every evil deed." 
 
 Wellnigh a third of the pictures of that era are Madon- 
 nas. The cathedrals were built mostly to "Our Lady." 
 In any city of France, ask the way to "The Cathedral of 
 Notre Dame," and you will usually have hit upon the 
 name of the Gothic structure in that town. Florentines 
 dedicated their duomo to "Mary of the Flower." She 
 was the inspiration of the art work of the period. This 
 reverence paid to womanhood overpowered man's native 
 roughness, subdued his handiwork to delicacy of touch 
 and to an instinctive taste; a rapture of devotion that 
 blazoned forth in glasswork of rich colors, carpentry, 
 stone carvings, metal work, tapestry, paintings. 
 
 The instances of Abelard and Heloise, Dante and 
 Beatrice, Petrarch and Laura, are eloquent of the power of 
 woman in that era to cast a spell over minds of the first 
 magnitude. In the "Mystery of Adam," a twelfth 
 century play, the dialogue explains why Satan, in the 
 apple-eating affair, chose Eve instead of Adam as the 
 object of his personal attentions: "(Devil): Adam I've 
 seen; but he's a dull thing. (Eve): He is a little obsti- 
 nate. (Devil): But he'll be soft enough soon. At 
 present he's rougher than hell. (Eve) : He is very naive. 
 (Devil): Say, very low. He isn't worth helping. To 
 
294 THE FREE CITY 
 
 help you shall be my care. For you are tender. The 
 rose is not so fresh as you. A sorry mixture God hath 
 brewed: you, too tender, and he too boorish. You have 
 much the greater sense. Therefore I turn to you." 
 
 There is a puzzle among scholars as to the identity of 
 Dante's "Beatrice." Some, doubting that she was a 
 flesh-and-blood creature, beheve her to have been the 
 poet's symbol for Abstract Reason, or the Light of Piety. 
 More probably she was in his mind the figure that per- 
 sonified his native city. Beatrice means, "Conducing to 
 Blessedness." The man of long exile, wearied by eating 
 another's salt and going up and down another's stairs, 
 would regard his homeland as the lost feUcity. He refers 
 to this Beatrice as "That lady of all gentle manners." 
 Anyone who has seen Florence-by-the-Arno, with im- 
 agination of what it must have been in that Gothic age, 
 can easily think of her in terms used by Dante of Beatrice: 
 "Behold a deity stronger than I, who coming shall rule 
 over me." Ghibbeline and Guelf — Empire and the 
 Papacy — had begun to divide the conmaune of Florence. 
 But Dante, though the victim of this factional strife, 
 cannot tear the adoration of her out of his heart: "I 
 have borne punishment of exile and poverty, since it was 
 the pleasure of that fairest and most renowned Florence 
 to cast me out of her sweet bosom in which I had my 
 birth and nourishment even to the ripeness of my age; 
 and in which, with her good will, I desire with all my heart 
 to rest this weary spirit of mine, and to terminate the time 
 allotted to me on earth." 
 
 In the Renaissance, the artist of them all that most 
 retained the spirit of the preceding Gothic age, was per- 
 haps Leonardo da Vinci. And his masterwork was the 
 portrait of a woman — Mona Lisa. So much was fem- 
 inine grace the tone and level of his thinking, Leonardo 
 
A COSMIC COURTSHIP 295 
 
 could not imagine even implements of slaughter except 
 under a configuration of delicacy and tasteful design. 
 His term for war was "the superlative of brutish frenzy" 
 — PAZzio BESTiALissiMA. And yct, in offering his ser- 
 vices to the Duke of Ludovico, in the inventory of his 
 accomplishments he said: "I can construct bombards, 
 cannon, mortars; all new, and very beautiful," 
 
 Only in an artistic era does woman feel at home. Mu- 
 nicipality is the artistic mode of civilization, as contrasted 
 with the material aims, the competitive cut-throatings 
 and the miUtaristic orgies under a national regime. Free 
 Cities — civiTAS regnans — gave to the map of the world 
 in that Gothic day endless variety in the unity of the same 
 spirit; facets of the central splendor, each sparkling with 
 an angle of its own; and so transmuting our duU Earth 
 into a diamond for the coronet of The Eternal. And this 
 attribute of artistry came from the civic amour that 
 mingled Uke a mystical infusion in the blood of the men 
 of that time. Civitas Dei was the rehgion and the 
 poUtics of the day. Their genius was an emanation from 
 her luxuriance. Those men were embowered in a holy 
 and sumptuous passion. If you think of Florence, una 
 DONNA KARA starts to the hps; and of the other com- 
 monwealths: BELLissiMA CREATURA. Their city was 
 their inamorata. To her they addressed an idolatry of 
 adoration. In all their affictions, she was afflicted. 
 Motherlike, she put the full breast of her tenderness to 
 the last and least of her children. So affectionately em- 
 bosomed, the citizens responded to the mesmerism. 
 Workingmen felt no restiveness in their appointed sta- 
 tions. They drudged in lowly paths of imderservice, that 
 she might swell in prosperity and fame. Wages? wages 
 were but an honorarium. SeK-effacement is easy for 
 the dear-loved mistress of one's heart. 
 
296 THE FREE CITY 
 
 When the city sits a queen enthroned, woman finds 
 herself and is at rest. When society disintegrates into 
 a jumble of tiger-hearts contending for gain by commercial 
 strife or armed encounter, woman with her finer com- 
 position and delicacy of organization is the first to suffer. 
 The stark materiaUsm known as modernity is disen- 
 throning womankind. In a time of mihtarism and 
 barbaric luxury, she feels herself cheapened, depreciated. 
 The standards that material and corrupted men measure 
 success by, are not her standards. In that arena she is 
 a disquahfied competitor. Under nationalism, with its 
 liberation of brute force, woman is touched and grieved 
 in every particle of her being, CommerciaHsm blows 
 through her Uke a bitter east wind. She knows that 
 something is wrong. She is reaching out for poHtical 
 power, in order to bring the world back into a polity 
 where fellowship shall replace the pandemonium. 
 
 Not in nationalisms and poUticianisms shall these her 
 new-found energies function. When woman comes into 
 pohtical power, she is going to bring the seat of govern- 
 ment back to the community. Municipality is the ex- 
 tension of the household. Industry is no longer a home 
 affair, as once, but a community affair; the baking of the 
 bread, weaving of the cloth, making of garments, co- 
 operatively. Woman's desire to be emancipated from 
 the home and partake of a larger life, is not an abdica- 
 tion of her housewifery. Doilies are not enough to 
 employ her forces. The so-called "new woman" has an 
 instinct that the world's work has moved from the home 
 out into the social organization; and she wishes to be 
 where the creative tasks of life are transacted. Women's 
 clubs, municipal leagues — the Woman's Movement 
 generally — will make for Free Cities. Woman is bred to 
 home-loyalty as to a second nature. 
 
A COSMIC COURTSHIP 297 
 
 In reintroducing the community state, majestic in 
 sovereignty, woman will bring back to the world an age 
 of art. Not perhaps a worship of Maiden Mary, to the 
 ring of hammers on cathedral stones. But a city-wor- 
 ship none the less; and all the grander because woven 
 out of our own day and doings. The tasks that feed and 
 clothe the world are now communal instead of domestic. 
 In enlarging the scope of her motherliness -to the dimen- 
 sions of the municipality, woman is going to rediscover 
 her vocation; and the world will rediscover her loveliness. 
 
CHAPTER XXI 
 
 THE REPUBLIC OF COMMON SENSE 
 
 MUNICIPALITY is the thunderstorm of history. 
 Marathon, Salamis, Thermopylae, Armageddon, 
 Legnano, Ghent, Calais, Unterwalden, Saragossa 
 — these have written the powerful pages in the volume 
 of the years of man. The city repubhc is a social ap- 
 paratus for organizing goodwill into the affairs of our 
 planet. To institute lovingkindness on the earth, is its 
 vocation. For that reason it has declared an implacable 
 vendetta against egoism and feudalism and nationalism 
 and imperialism. Between it and these, the conflict is 
 irrepressible. Golgothas line the path that leads to 
 freedom. Fellowship is an island amid the rage of mighty 
 waters. That island will never subsist except it rim it- 
 self with a shore line of rock and steel, vetoing the teeth 
 of a gnashing sea. To be itself, fellowship must refuse 
 to fellowship the foes of fellowship. They only are citi- 
 zens, who will to take up their residence in the storm 
 country. 
 
 The municipal state is a commune of workers surround- 
 ing themselves with a hedge, to break the gusts of ad- 
 versity and ward off pillagers. That hedge, whose 
 other name is sovereignty, is an affront to the predatory 
 ones seeking to annex that commune. The citizen 
 commonwealth is a company of toilers who refuse to be 
 annexed. They will entrust to no one the guardianship 
 
 of their liberties. Let it be suggested that they receive 
 
 298 
 
THE REPUBLIC OF COMMON SENSE 299 
 
 a fate not of their own making, straightway they sharpen 
 the horns of rebellion. The Free City! fair is she, but 
 never soft. PanopUed with sovereignty as with a gar- 
 ment, she lifts herself in a form and posture of regaUty. 
 For that reason her people love her. It was Attica's 
 acceptance of a gambUng chance against the Empire of the 
 E^st, that evoked in her children an ecstasy of adoration. 
 
 Said Aristotle: "PoUtical society exists for the sake of 
 noble actions, and not of mere companionship." I know 
 of no utterance that comprises within few words a niightier 
 wealth of meaning. "The greatest happiness of the 
 greatest number," is modernity's idea of the State. To 
 this inglorious and craven creed, city repubHcs would 
 make reply: To be heroic is more important than to be 
 happy; the end of statecraft is not the greatest happiness 
 of the greatest nimiber, but the greatest nobleness of the 
 greatest number. Nationalism talks in terms of full 
 dinner pails, soft clothing, comfort, balmy days and 
 Sybaritic nights. The Free City talks in terms of Ub- 
 erty, courage, hardihood, independence, self-respect, 
 municipal romance, spiritual adventure. In late times 
 the labor movement has shown a proneness for the flesh- 
 pots of Egypt, rather than for the wilderness trek to 
 Canaan and freedom and civic statehood. The perfect 
 fruit thereof would be mediocrity and disinheritance; a 
 slough of sour despond. For the industrial mass to slump 
 into a loaves-and-fishes philosophy were a strangulation 
 of the nobilities that make for immortal handiwork. 
 
 Since inmiemorial time, the Free City has constituted 
 the parapets of the people. Big states make for money 
 power. Small states make for popular power. National 
 government is the weapon of the rich; municipal govern- 
 ment is the weapon of the poor. Municipality alone has 
 been the custodian of industrial democracy. Within her 
 
300 THE FREE CITY 
 
 inviolable arms the toiling multitude have found asylum. 
 Cooperation "is the marrow and the meaning of the cen- 
 turies. The Commune is cooperation that takes itself 
 seriously. Unless it own the wedge of earth it Uves upon, 
 supreme in poUtical prerogatives and eminent domain, a 
 cooperative colony is an infantiUsm; a folk unable to 
 peer forth upon the world except with supplication in 
 their eyes. With mere suppUcators, Heaven will hold 
 no converse. Only the communes that were invested 
 with sovereignty have added chapters to the big bible 
 known as CiviUzation. When statehood is surrendered, 
 the muse of history folds her notebook and departs. 
 
 A Free City is the marriage of economics and religion. 
 It exalts workingmen into the seats of the mighty; but 
 it sees to it that they are patriotic workingmen, cherish- 
 ing the State as their supreme loyalty. In so doing it 
 sows in their hearts the seeds of aspiration, inculcates 
 just and faithful dealing. By reason of city pride, in- 
 dustry is shot through with a sense of obligation. A 
 municipal socialism would be a reUgious socialism. With- 
 out contradiction, the sum of Scripture is that the Free 
 City is a spiritual institute. A citizenly proletariat is 
 the consummation of the universe. The Bible deifies 
 democracy; it preaches the kingliness of the Conunune; 
 which is not only a stern rampart of Uberty, but also is 
 a sober and responsible society, A municipally-minded 
 workingclass domesticates Deity here in our low earth. 
 The community state declares that the toilers are celes- 
 tially ordained to dignities and the rulership. 
 
 The labor movement is divine, because it has for its 
 purpose to glorify the world with elegance and majesty. 
 Never is beauty the product of a fat and compliant soul. 
 MunicipaUty comes to put iron into our exhausted blood. 
 Free Cities have been the sunbursts along the Time- 
 
THE REPUBLIC OF COMMON SENSE 301 
 
 stream, irradiating what otherwise had been a stupid 
 story. They were beautiful because they were free. 
 Liberty alone communicates dignity and power to the 
 workingclass, whereby their toil takes on a heightened 
 tone, so that the centuries elbow each other to gaze thereon. 
 In sa3dng that genius is an affair of poUtical adjustment, 
 I say what is attested by abundant and irrefutable cita- 
 tions. The one thing most learnable from history — 
 that kind and sagacious schoolmaster — is that in city 
 republics workmen build beautifully; in other poUties of 
 state they build unbeautifully. 
 
 If labor in the twentieth century decides for comfort 
 instead of hberty, it is all up with art. To work as Uttle 
 as possible! is a pig-stye the goal that is ahead of us? 
 "a millenium of tin cornices and caUco!" The grand 
 epochs have been those in which the workers were patient 
 of suffering, but most impatient of servitude. Prison 
 is wherever man toils without imagination. And a 
 prison product is never beautiful. Only in freedom's 
 hot and teeming soil do works of beauty germinate. A 
 commodity made by millhands, sullen with the joylessness 
 that hung over its creation, cannot be lovely; even 
 though it be the product of a six-hour workday. To 
 have beauty once more upon the earth, we must have 
 freemen; each producer a peer of the realm, toilers re- 
 splendent with magistracy and lordship, enfranchised 
 citizens in the commonwealth of God. Pericles would 
 not permit a slave to work on the civic edifices he was 
 building. Art is the capacity of a piece of work to re- 
 produce in the beholder the tingle that presided over its 
 conception and nativity. Between art and servitude 
 there is an incompatibihty of, temper. To build a para- 
 dise, other ingredients are requisite than asphalt and pig 
 iron. Beauty will not revisit the earth save on the arm 
 
302 THE FREE CITY 
 
 of Freedom, her lordly spouse; self-government, which 
 the noble spirits in every age have concurred in pro- 
 nouncing the only thing worth striving for. Free Cities 
 are the beads on the rosary of time, great beads inter- 
 spersed with lesser ones; that we may piously tell them 
 over, with thanksgiving and strong devotion. 
 
 Municipahty is the passion of collectivity. "If one 
 misdo," read the Gothic guild regulations, "let all bear 
 it; let all share the same lot." Ever the communion of 
 mankind has functioned in small units, and always will. 
 The city commonwealth is the democracy of common 
 sense. Positioned at the heart of life, it is a universal 
 counterbalancing. We hear a good deal nowadays about 
 "natural rights," "workmen's rights," " property rights," 
 "women's rights." Municipal Rights comprehends them 
 all. The citizen commune is life's nodal point, where 
 contradictories turn to concord and belligerencies find 
 a redeemer. It holds the teeter-board of law and 
 license on an even beam. To be a citizen is to be 
 spiritually-minded, but also to keep a foothold on the 
 sound and solid earth. The citizen looks not so exclu- 
 sively at the stars that he falls into a well, nor does he 
 watch out for the wells in his path, to a forgetting of 
 the constellations by which alone he can set and keep 
 his course. He is attached to the land, but never as a 
 rustic or a peasant; the city near at hand is a world 
 capital; so that, although his feet plod the furrow, he 
 leads a big life. Rome could draw her consuls from 
 the plow. 
 
 No individual man is large enough to be a complete 
 man. Seeing the picture of a faultless woman, beholders 
 express the wish that they could be as perfect as she who 
 sat as the model. But that artist employed several 
 models; took the face of one, the breast of another, the 
 
THE REPUBLIC OF COMMON SENSE 303 
 
 neck and shoulders of another. Now that the picture is 
 completed, individual woman, gazing upon it and spiritu- 
 ally absorbing it, is changed into the same full-orbed de- 
 velopment. Municipality is human perfection, because it 
 is the human total. Under any other form of polity, Man 
 is a shattered mirror; the parts of the image are there, 
 but disunited; "brain-cracked," is the word we use. 
 The commimity state is the mirror unfractured; gather- 
 ing the fragmentary egos into a unified picture; and we 
 call it beauty. 
 
 The Free City is another term for equilibrium; Ufe in 
 its entireness; the dreamer's dream and the doer's deed, 
 in clasp with shriekings of dehght. To-day our existence 
 is departmental. Labor is tapering off into an ever more 
 narrow and inhuman speciaUsm. Consider Giotto, 
 master-workman in Florence. He could build, paint, 
 mold, work in mosaic; and during most of his life, he was 
 in the active apostleship of St. Francis. Michael Angelo 
 attained distinction in all four of the major arts, paint- 
 ing, sculpture, poetry, and architecture. Raphael, great- 
 est of painters, was also an architect and an archaeologist. 
 Leonardo insisted that he was not great as a painter, 
 but rather as an architect, scientist, and engineer. Lack- 
 ing but the gasoline engine, he solved the art of flying. 
 A spit for roasting pigs was one of his contrivances. 
 While painting "The Last Supper," he left the head of 
 one of the apostles a long time unfinished; because he 
 became interested in devising a sausage machine, and had 
 trouble in getting one of the blades to work properly. 
 
 Municipal sense is common sense. The city state puts 
 all things into ratio. Owners cry that property rights 
 should receive exclusive thought; it isn't common sense. 
 The anarchist cries that individual rights are alone im- 
 portant; it isn't conamon sense. Brute materialists 
 
304 THE FREE CITY 
 
 swing off in one direction, wild dreamers swing off in the 
 opposite direction; municipality takes them both by 
 the scruff of the neck and pulls them back into unison; 
 neither low-vaulted utilitarianism nor cloud-soaring 
 idealism, but a broad and liberal humanism. When 
 classes are exasperated against each other, city-worship 
 strikes the note that conciliates them. 
 
 In thus declaring that life is bifocal — property rights 
 and personal rights on a parity — and that the Haves 
 and Have-nots must formulate an amicable program, 
 laborists may deem me overcomplaisant to the monied 
 set. He who is writing this occupies a prison cell, and 
 there are stanchions of iron thick barring the window 
 yonder — (in a day of the Dollar's mad obsession, they 
 alone are free who are in jail for the cause of freedom). 
 We of the industrial reHgion have a great ideology; we 
 must interfuse it with matter-of-fact actuaUty. The 
 material element in civiUzation is of as much importance 
 as the personal element; that the balances may hang 
 equal. Our Pegasus should go in plow-harness. Towards 
 either fact or theory, citizenship permits not a hairs- 
 breadth of bias. The middle path is the sound path. 
 IN MEDIO TUTissiMUS IBIS. Commercialism at the one 
 extreme, fanaticism at the opposite extreme; munici- 
 pality blends them into communalism, component of 
 the two. Each is necessary for the correction of the 
 other; life's alkali and life's acid combining to form life's 
 base. 
 
 The Free City draws her lines perpendicular to the 
 social strata. She destroys class enmity. Vertical lines 
 of division, when they conform to physical geography, 
 are natural. Horizontal lines, disregarding landscapes 
 and inflaming class against class, are unnatural. Civic 
 consciousness goes prosperously. Class consciousness is 
 
THE REPUBLIC OF COMMON SENSE 305 
 
 forbidden by cosmic decree. The municipal state is the 
 natm-al state, because it is a microcosm. Athens was a 
 cross section of the universe; extending from Nature in 
 her lowest and primeval orders, up to humans in the 
 shape of an Aristides. That "Uttle cosmos," seK-fed 
 and self-possessed, was a true state. Truth is fideUty of 
 interchange between materiahty and ideaUty, the outer 
 world and the inner, Nature and human nature. 
 
 Life's rightful center — five and twenty centuries with 
 thundering speech proclaim it — is the community; 
 whence the rays of government can diverge to and fructify 
 both the extreme Left and the extreme Right, from 
 minutest affairs of the individual, to business of world- 
 wide ranges. It is the mediatrix, in whose just arbit- 
 rament the warring estates of life coincide; labor and 
 capital marching abreast in Uberal reciprocity. The 
 municipal repubhc is a pantheon of all the grandeurs; 
 life in its congregation and totaUty; an omnium gathe- 
 rum; man completing himself on all sides. It alone can 
 break down the barriers between wrangling creeds and 
 classes. The city repubUcs reveal a scene where all the 
 interests of hfe meet in one full center of radiance. 
 
 Every great epoch has been characterized by a great 
 synthesis. Municipality is the synthesizer. Make the 
 ego supreme, you have mob-rule. Make the world-unit 
 supreme, you have money-rule. Make the conununity 
 supreme, you sociaUze the mob and you humanize the 
 money power. Under nationalism, hfe's material part 
 is gaining on life's personal part; plutocracy is rising in 
 the ascendant. Which is bad even for the propertied 
 class. It breeds war, and war has now for four years 
 been destrojdng property at the rate of a bilhon dollars 
 weekly. Mammon-Moloch is not only swallowing us up, 
 it is eating itself up. Pepsin is good. But when the 
 
306 THE FREE CITY 
 
 stomach begins to digest itself, has not the pepsin o'er- 
 leaped itself and become pathology? We behold a tm-bu- 
 lence more and more bloodshot; the law lagging ever 
 more slowly, the bullet speeding ever more swiftly. 
 Sweeter than peace in fever comes to us the evangel of 
 citizenship. Unto a haggard and distraught era, harried 
 by contending winds and conflicting currents, it is the 
 pacificator. Frost and fire immemorially at quarrel; 
 Heaven mixes them in municipahty's golden brew. 
 
 To modernity has befallen an evil heart of unbelief. 
 It is because of our ego-lunacy. Lord God is not an ego. 
 He has only a social being, and must be socially discerned. 
 Rehgion is a big-scale enterprise. It is a community 
 affair, not an individual affair. John Smith thinks he 
 can talk face to face with the Lord of the universe — a 
 fiire-fly trying to be chummy with a volcano. God does 
 not transact business with the John Smiths, but with 
 Boston or Duluth or Milwaukee, of which John Smith is 
 a part. The conmiunity is the subject of redemption. 
 Skepticism is always a stumble-stone in the path of an 
 ego age; stone placed there Providentially in order that 
 individualism may stub its toe, break its neck. There is 
 nothing that will so infallibly certify the existence of The 
 Eternal, as a sovereign and tender-hearted city, ein 
 PESTE BURG IS UNSER GOTT, saug Luthcr. And Luther 
 was right: God is a strong-walled city; and strong-walled 
 cities are God. It is a seated and visible spirituality; 
 God palpably embodied; base on which to build an eternal 
 trust. The heart of man to-day is sagging with doubt, 
 because we have gotten away from the Bible; portraying 
 the Divine to be anthropomorphic, when He is poUtico- 
 morphic. 
 
 God is not shaped like a man, He is shaped Uke a city. 
 The Divine anatomy is municipal in its form and features. 
 
THE REPUBLIC OF COMMON SENSE 307 
 
 A Free City is vital in every part, so that the rib-work of 
 its streets becomes the bony framework of the Most 
 High, into which all the parts articulate. Factories are 
 the hands of EQm. City hall is the heart of Him. Farm- 
 lands romid about are the food of Him. Courts and 
 hbraries are the brain of Him. Trafl&c is the moving 
 blood in the veins of Him. Homes are cells in the lungs 
 of Him. PoHce are the pahns and fists of Him. Poverty 
 is tuberculosis in the bones of Him. Slums are a blotch 
 on the skin of Him. Fifth Avenue is a dropsy in the 
 flesh of Him. Strikes are a gripe in the entrails of Him. 
 Jails are a sore in the limbs of Him. Festivals are the 
 laughter of Him. Beauty is a smile on the face of Him. 
 Civic sovereignty is the backbone of Him, keeping the 
 body upright. 
 
 An objection obtrudes, I doubt not: "The city repubHc 
 was suitable for ancient times; and perhaps it is to be 
 regretted that the world is no longer in that pristine 
 simpUcity. But civihzation now is a complicated thing. 
 So that the jurisprudence of Jesus and Aristotle is anti- 
 quated. It is all very well to say that we must stop 
 hiring our government done for us. But we are com- 
 pelled to. Political administration is become a highly 
 speciahzed affair. Government by hired men is a neces- 
 sity. To ask the people as a whole to manage so expert 
 and involved a plexus as the modern political system, is 
 to ask an impossibility." 
 
 I think so too. Not only is it an impossibility for the 
 people as a whole. For the brainiest few, it is equally 
 impossible. The muddle into which Christendom has 
 blundered, declares that the present scheme has got be- 
 yond control. No brain was ever produced, equal to 
 the government of so vast a scheme as these huge modern 
 entities we call nations. We are drifting. Mankind is 
 
906 THE FREE CITY 
 
 not using the matters and facts of life, but is being used 
 by them. To administer so colossal an aggregate as a 
 nation, embracing a bewilderment of climates and races 
 and topographies jummixed into one, is a task (I speak it 
 reverently) beyond the capacity of Lord God Himself. 
 That is why He commands that we separate the tangled 
 mass into its segmental parts, and put each part into the 
 hands of the people who Uve there. Said Lord Bryce in 
 his recent address as president of the British Academy, 
 "Sometimes one feels as if modern states were growing 
 too huge for the men to whom their fortunes are com- 
 mitted." Nationalism seeks to support the temple of 
 civihzation by a few big columns, sparsely scattered over 
 the globe. MunicipaUty would support that ponderous 
 weight by a multitude of small piers and pilings, dis- 
 tributed evenly and universally, so as to underprop the 
 mass at every point. 
 
 Aristotle called attention to the law that is operative 
 everywhere in life: For each thing there is a natural size; 
 as for tools and animals. So, said he, there is a natural 
 size also for the state; and that is, the municipal size. 
 Beyond that, abnormality begins. Ocean steamers of 
 fifty thousand tons work well. Therefore one might 
 reason that a steamer twenty times that size would work 
 twenty times as well. And think of "the economy of 
 large production." One captain could preside over the 
 entire vessel, releasing nineteen other captains. The 
 decks would be large enough for golf or baseball; and such 
 like. But marine experts will tell you that a ship of a 
 milUon tons would be so large and draw so much water, 
 there is no harbor in the world could receive the mon- 
 strosity. And in a driving seaway, she would break 
 apart. Therefore, instead of one million-ton ship, we 
 have a score of fifty-thousand tonners; working har- 
 
THE REPUBLIC OF COMMON SENSE 309 
 
 moniously by the confederation whereby they concert a 
 code of sea lanes and signal lights. 
 
 Quite fifty per cent of the material fabric of our time is 
 senseless. Not only could we get along without it; we 
 shall not be able to get along with it. To overload the 
 stomach is a waste of good food; but also, and more 
 seriously, it is detrimental to the health. Other ages 
 also have been overflooded by tides of misery. But, 
 so far as I know, it has remained for modernity to present 
 to The Immortals the spectacle of a people toiling and 
 moiling to saddle upon their backs a jackass load of 
 superfluity. A return to the city commonwealth will 
 mean the extinction of a good deal of improper and fool- 
 ish work. Amid industrial self-government, the toilers 
 will refuse to villify themselves with degrading employ- 
 ment. To-day hundreds of wage-earners drudge in 
 tanneries and factories, mixing their sweat and their 
 blood into leather, in order that heels may be so high as 
 to deform the person and hobble the gait. The tragedy 
 of the labor world is not unemployment but misemploy- 
 ment. We are probably in the vainest Vanity Fair that 
 ever rattled its baubles to distract attention from the 
 tedium and vacuity of a civilization constituted of ivory, 
 apes, and peaGocks. When all the world shall at last be 
 electric-lighted, rubber-tired and plastered with macadam, 
 then will be felicity supernal? then we shall drink deep 
 bumpers of bliss? 
 
 Observe a thrush on the fence rail, singing in the spring- 
 time. With what a verve and insouciance pours the un- 
 premeditated melody! He believes in the natural good- 
 ness of things, and with a faith that shames the small 
 science of the schools. He never learned voice produc- 
 tion. Yet how his improvisation exceeds our pains- 
 takingness! What joy of being alive! what nonchalance, 
 
310 THE FREE CITY 
 
 so careless and so lofty! Brother, there is something 
 wrong if we, heir of all the ages, high uplifted on the 
 pinnacles of time, have to yield the laureateship to a 
 thrush on the fence rail. If that bird is joyful-hearted 
 and we are not, our "progress" has been the most un- 
 progressive thing imaginable. In order to lead a great 
 life, we need not the vainglories of an excessively material 
 society. Nature is of exhaustless bounty. Would we 
 but heed Christ's exhortation against worldly carefulness, 
 and entrust ourselves to the spirit of Fellowship, we would 
 be cared for. Will you listen to the recipe for a banquet 
 of ambrosia? — good hunger, and a pot frothing at the 
 fire. In the communion of spirited and liberal minds, a 
 luxurious menu is impedimenta. How scurvily we have 
 been dealt with by destiny! modern materialism has 
 travailed in a mountainous birth; and now, delivered of 
 the enormity, it is fovmd to be not a mountain but a 
 rubbish heap. 
 
 Municipal states are small; they are based on the 
 qualitative standard. National states are huge — care 
 for naught but the quantitative standard. The larger 
 the state, the more warlike. Whenever a small state 
 shows a bent toward war, peer closely and behind the 
 scenes you will discover some imperial nation pulling 
 the wires. 
 
 Joy is the best germicide; gladness is better than doc- 
 tors. Our soul is built for beauty, and is homesick until 
 it rests in beauty. Medicaments will not dull the ache 
 of that unappeasable hunger. A day of toys, day of 
 fops, day of surfeits; a very Nessus-shirt, shooting in on 
 our distracted day all descriptions of misery. We boast 
 much of sanitation. The Bethlehem Stable would be 
 condemned out of hand by a modern board of health. 
 But I have not heard of a maternity hospital nowadays 
 
THE REPUBLIC OF COMMON SENSE 311 
 
 that is turning out a better product. The community- 
 state simphfies life, so that democracy becomes practi- 
 cable. Government is not an occult or recondite province 
 of knowledge; something to be administered by hireling 
 professionals. Government is a group of people manag- 
 ing their affairs in common. Now that we have machines 
 to do the gross work, to even the lowhest can be appor- 
 tioned leisure for hberal arts and a daily pubhc-minded- 
 ness. Labor, whose Atlantean shoulders support the 
 world, is competent to govern the world. 
 
 MunicipaHty is the religion of common sense. To-day, 
 common sense is quite the most uncommon thing in the 
 market. Common sense is the principle of community. 
 It is the highroad, formed by throwing up the ground from 
 both sides; the ditch of materiality yielding up its quota 
 from the Right, the ditch of ideaUty yielding up its quota 
 from the Left; and the road between is Reality. It is 
 Fellowship, wooing the colHsions of life into teamwork. 
 The community state is sohdarity between the deed and 
 the dream; the stabilizer, by whose laws and institutes 
 the balance of the world is kept. Since the Gothic day 
 of power, what a jaunt we have gone; digressing from 
 the highway, to the right hand and to the left! Man is 
 an inquisitive animal; will be adventuring into every 
 side-alley. But the experience now has been acquired. 
 The pitiful swamp we are in, apprises us that we 
 must leave off saunterings and get back onto the 
 roadway. Across the belly and abyss of chaos, munic- 
 ipality gives the only assured footing. Nowhere else 
 shall man's heart be tranquilly established. Free 
 Cities are the high units of mankind, centers of fixed- 
 ness amid the universal flux. Self-government is the 
 one foundation on which can be erected an enduring 
 political edifice. 
 
312 THE FREE CITY 
 
 People are not good or bad; they are in a society that 
 is organized or unorganized. The ego is helpless. Pri- 
 vate man is a microscopic infinitesimal splinter; a mos- 
 quito in the wind. In the fields of Time and Space, he 
 is of no more size than a wriggler in a rain barrel. Munic- 
 ipaUty takes the human pismire and makes a man out 
 of him. It is the collectivity that counts. The tree, 
 not the fruit, is the object of God's attention. CiviUza- 
 tion is the principle of mutuality; atomistic frag- 
 mentary egos, clubbing together their dwarfish powers to 
 form a full-sized Human Being. The Free City not only 
 is of God but is God. 
 
 A city commonwealth is automatic morality. And all 
 the more moral because of the easy and unconscious grace 
 of it. People are bells arranged to be rung in chime. At 
 present this peal gives out anything but a musical sound. 
 Thereupon preachers and teachers, moralists and legal- 
 ists, accuse each bell individually of being unmelodious; 
 and they try to tune it. The bells are all right, provided 
 they are swung in harmony. The same set of bells can 
 chime with sweetness, or jangle deviUshly out of tune. 
 When individuals coalesce to form municipal democra- 
 cies, truth and uprightness and creative power emerge 
 without special effort. It is irresistible grace. 
 
 The city state as a personal and sentient being, is the 
 next step in evolution. People imagine that the leap 
 from the animal into the human has already taken place. 
 The War that has defaced Christendom is proof to the 
 contrary. An egoist is an animal, whether he walk on 
 two legs, or four, or six. A private-minded man is a brute 
 beyond all cattle of the pasture or furry-coated prowlers 
 of the wildwood. A beast of prey is no less a beast of 
 prey because he has a brain sharper than that of a fox, 
 and walks on hind legs taller than a gorilla. The human 
 
THE REPUBLIC OF COMMON SENSE 313 
 
 biped, except he grow a social consciousness, is a super- 
 animal; king of the carnivora. 
 
 The evolutionary step is from animality into munic- 
 ipality. All of the singularities that distinguish us from 
 our four-footed relatives came to us as a heritage from 
 Free Cities, those isolated spots in history where animal- 
 ity took the leap and for a time became municipaUty. 
 That civic organism took the mob mind and fused it into 
 civil consciousness. MunicipaUty is a cooperative Brain; 
 they through whom that Brain functions, speak and act 
 with common sense. Animals on the other hand are all 
 they who speak and act with ego sense. The difference 
 between pubHc-mindedness and private-mindedness is 
 the difference between Florence-on-the-Arno and the 
 AustraHan Bush. It is high time we Americans stopped 
 talking in terms of population and began to talk in terms 
 of civiUzation. Ego bipeds are not an asset, they are a 
 UabiUty. We don't appraise a landscape by the number 
 of wolves, bobcats, and buffaloes, but by the number of 
 dogs, kittens, and cows — the tamed species. "Yonkers, 
 Ninety Thousand!" But if they are unconverted egos, 
 the more the worse. 
 
 A municipal repubUc — minds aiming at one butt, 
 hearts cooperating to the selfsame purpose — is a crater 
 of the central lake of fellowship, that Fire so fearfully 
 and so wonderfully burning at the heart of the cosmos. 
 The crowning book of the Bible is the one written on 
 Patmos. Therein is delineated a portrait of Him who 
 is higher than the highest. And we find the portrait 
 taking the guise of a garden city; ruling itself; owning 
 no earthly superior. The Elders were there, graybeards 
 clothed with reverence and authority. The inhabiters 
 dwelt in concord, observing degree, priority, and rank. 
 A Carpenter was the prince and chief in that Free City. 
 
314 THE FREE CITY 
 
 Lovely was the river; lovely were the trees by the side 
 of the river. With a frontier the city was girt about. 
 Nor did this wall of sovereignty blemish the landscape; 
 it was preciously built, course upon course in prismatic 
 colorings — a hoop of rainbow splendor hemming them 
 in. Reports the narrator: "I saw no temple therein"; 
 in a city commonwealth, every part is instinct with divin- 
 ity; work is worship; the chi m neys of industry are 
 steeples pointing heavenwards. And this picture of 
 heaven as a Free City, is not confined to the book of Reve- 
 lations; it is reinforced by the drift of all the Scriptures. 
 Municipahty's magnanimous passion has Heaven for its 
 immutable and everlasting guarantee. 
 
 Some will say I have overwrought the theme. I have 
 not overwrought. My stuttering pen has pushed toward 
 profundities deep beyond fathom. The Free City is 
 God's epic adventure down the tides of time. I have not 
 invented; I have recorded. The book of history and the 
 inner voice declare it: If there be any virtue and if there 
 be any praise, self-government created it. An inter- 
 locking of little repubhcs, is the formula for extending 
 self-government over wide areas. A poUtical pluraHsm, 
 in the unity of a confederative whole. It will restore to 
 us the arts of Attica, the grandeur of Rome, the goodness 
 of GaUlee, the charm of the wonder-building Gothics. 
 And earth will see her wholesome days again. 
 
 Ad majorem 
 Dei gloriam 
 
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