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Title: The Forerunners

Author: Romain Rolland

Translator: Cedar Paul

Eden Paul

Release date: February 17, 2010 [eBook #31313]
Most recently updated: January 6, 2021

Language: English

Credits: Produced by D Alexander, Chuck Greif and the Online
Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE FORERUNNERS *** 





THE FORERUNNERS


BY


ROMAIN ROLLAND


TRANSLATED BY


EDEN AND CEDAR PAUL



XX


A GREAT EUROPEAN: G. F. NICOLAI[48]


I


ART and science have bent the knee to war. Art has become war's
sycophant; science, war's hand-maiden. Few have had the strength or
inclination to resist. In art, rare works, sombre French works, have
blossomed on the blood-drenched soil. In science, the greatest product
during these three criminal years has been the one we owe to G. F.
Nicolai, a German whose spirit is free and whose thought has an enormous
range.


The book is, as it were, a symbol of that unconquerable Freedom whom all
the tyrannies of this age of force have vainly endeavoured to gag. It
was written behind prison walls, but these walls were not thick enough
to stifle the voice which judges the oppressors and will survive them.


Dr. Nicolai, professor of physiology at Berlin University and physician
to the imperial household, found himself, when the war broke out, in the
very focus of the madness which seized the flower of his nation. Not
merely did he refuse to share that madness. Yet more daring, he openly
resisted it. In reply to the manifesto of the 93 intellectuals,
published in the beginning of October, 1914, he wrote a
counter-manifesto, An Appeal to Europeans, which was endorsed by two
other distinguished professors at the university of Berlin, Albert
Einstein, the celebrated physicist, and Wilhelm Foerster,
president of the international bureau of weights and measures, the
father of Professor F. W. Foerster. This manifesto was not published,
for Nicolai was unable to collect a sufficient number of signatures. In
the summer term of 1915 he incorporated it in the opening of a series of
lectures he planned to deliver upon the war. Thus, for the fulfilment of
what he deemed his duty as an honest thinker, he deliberately risked his
social position, his academic career, his distinctions, his comfort, and
his friendships. He was arrested, and was interned in Graudenz fortress.
There, unaided, and almost without books, he penned his admirable
Biology of War, and managed to have the manuscript sent to
Switzerland, where the first German edition has just been published. The
circumstances in which the book was written have an atmosphere of
mystery and heroism recalling that of the days when the Holy Inquisition
was endeavouring to stifle the thought of Galileo. In the modern world,
the Inquisition of the United States of Europe and America is no less
crushing than was the Holy Inquisition of old. But Nicolai, firmer of
spirit than Galileo, has refused to recant. Last month (September,
1917), the journals of German Switzerland announced that he had been
once more brought to trial, and had been sentenced to five months'
imprisonment by the Danzig court-martial. Thus again does force manifest
its ludicrous weakness, for its unjust decrees merely help to raise a
statue to the man whom force would fain strike down.


*
* *


The leading characteristic of book and writer is their universality. The
publisher, in a note prefixed to the first edition, tells us that
Nicolai "has a world-wide reputation as a physician, more especially in
the field of cardiac disease"; that "he is a thinker the universality of
whose culture seems almost fabulous in these days of specialisation,
for, while distinguished for his knowledge of neokantian philosophy, he
is equally at home in literature and in dealing with social
problems"; that "he is an explorer who has wandered afoot in China,
Malaysia, and even the solitudes of Lapland." Nothing human is foreign
to him. In his book, the chapters on universal history, religious
history, and philosophical criticism, are closely linked with the
chapters on ethnology and biology. What a contrast between this
encyclopædic thought, with its reminiscences of our eighteenth century
France, and the German savant of caricature, specialist to absurdity—a
type which is often enough encountered in real life!


His vast learning is vivified by a captivating and brilliant
personality, overflowing with feeling and humour. He makes no attempt to
conceal himself behind the mask of a false objectivity. In the
Introduction he hastens to tear off this mask, with which the insincere
thought of our epoch is covered. He treats with contempt what he calls
"the eternal straining for all-round treatment
(Einerseits-Andererseits), the perpetual compromise which, under the
hypocritical pretext of "justice," weds incompatibles, the carp and the
hare, "war and humanity, beauty and fashion, internationalism and
nationalism." Method alone should be objective. The conclusions
inevitably retain a subjective element, and it is well that this should
be so. "As long as we refuse to renounce the right of individuality and
the right of striving towards goals of our own choosing, so long must we
judge human deeds from the outlook of our own individuality. War is one
of the deeds of man, and as such we have to pass judgment on it
categorically. Any compromise on this point would obscure the issues;
nay, it would be almost immoral.... War, like everything else, should
have light thrown upon it from every side before we pass judgment on it;
but only to persons of second-rate intelligence can it seem that we
should actually pass our judgment on war from all sides at once, or even
from two sides only."


Such is the objectivity which we have to expect from this book. Not the
soft, flabby, indifferent, contradictory objectivity of the scientific
dilettante, of the arch-eunuch: but a mettlesome objectivity which is
appropriate in this fighting age, the objectivity of one who
honestly attempts to see everything and to know everything; but who,
having done so, endeavours to organise his data in accordance with a
hypothesis, an intuition tinged with passion.


Such a system is worth precisely what the intuition is worth, precisely
what the man who has the intuition is worth. For, in a great thinker,
the hypothesis is the man. His hypothesis is the concentrated essence of
his energy, his observation, his thought, his imaginative powers, and
even of his passions. Nicolai's hypothesis is vigorous, and it takes
risks. The central idea of his book may be summed up as follows: "There
exists a genus humanum, and there is only one such genus. The human
race, humanity as a whole, is but a single organism, and has a common
consciousness."


Whoever speaks of a living organism, speaks of transformation and of
unceasing movement. This perpetuum mobile gives its peculiar colour to
Nicolai's reflections. In general, we who are advocates or opponents of
the war tend to pass judgment on it almost exclusively in abstracto. We
conceive it as static and absolute. It may almost be said that as soon
as a thinker concentrates upon a subject in order to study it, his first
step is to kill it. To a great biologist all is movement, and movement
is the material of his study. The social or moral question that concerns
us is not whether war is good or bad in the sphere of the eternal; but
whether war is good or bad for us in our own moment of time. Now, for
Nicolai, war is a stage in human evolution which man has long outgrown.
His book depicts for us this evolutionary flux of instincts and ideas,
an irresistible current in which there is never a backwash.


*
* *


The work is divided into two main parts, of unequal length. The first,
occupying three-fourths of the book, is an attack upon the masters of
the hour, war, fatherland, and race; an attack upon the reigning
sophisms. It is entitled "The Evolution of War." The criticism
of the present, in part one, is followed, in part two, by constructive
ideas for the future. This second part is entitled "How War may be
abolished." It outlines the coming society; sketches its morality and
its faith. So abundant, in this book, are data and ideas, that selection
is a difficult matter. Apart from the extraordinary richness of its
elements, the work may be considered from two outlooks, specifically
German, and universally human, respectively. Straightforwardly, at the
outset, Nicolai tells his readers that although, in his opinion, all the
nations must share responsibility for the war, he proposes to concern
himself with the responsibility of Germany alone. He leaves it to the
thinkers of other lands, each in his own country, to settle their
country's accounts. "It is not my business," he says, "to know whether
others have sinned extra muros, but to prevent people from sinning intra
muros." If he chooses his instances from Germany above all, this is not
because instances are lacking elsewhere, but because he writes, above
all, for Germans. A large proportion of his historical and philosophical
criticism deals with Germany ancient and modern. The point is well
worthy of special analysis. No one, henceforward, will have any right to
speak of the German spirit, unless he has read the profound chapters in
which Nicolai, endeavouring to define national individuality, analyses
the characteristics of German Kultur, analyses its virtues and its
vices, its excessive faculty for adaptation, the struggle which the old
Teutonic idealism has waged in its conflict with militarism, and
elucidates the manner in which idealism was vanquished by militarism.
The unfortunate influence of Kant (for whom, none the less, Nicolai has
a great admiration) is stressed by him on account of the part it has
played in this crisis of a nation's soul. Or rather, we may say, Nicolai
stresses the influence of Kant's dualism of the reasons. This dualism of
the pure reason and the practical reason (which Kant, despite the best
efforts of his later years, was never able to associate in a
satisfactory manner) is a brilliant symbol of the contradictory dualism
to which modern Germany has accommodated herself all too
easily. For Germany, preserving full liberty in the world of thought,
has trampled under foot liberty in the world of action, or at least has
surrendered this liberty without ever a regret (Chapter Ten, passim).


These analyses of the German soul are of great interest to the
psychologist, the historian, and the statesmen. But, since I am
compelled to select, I shall choose for description those parts of the
book which are addressed to everyone, which touch us all, which are
truly universal. I shall speak of the general problem of war and peace
in human evolution. I shall have to resign myself to yet further
sacrifices. Ignoring the chapters which discuss this topic from a
historical and from a literary point of view,[49] I shall confine myself
to the biological studies, for it is in these that the author's
individuality finds its most original self-expression.


*
* *


At grips with the hydra of war, Nicolai attacks the evil at the root. He
opens with a vigorous analysis of instinct in general, for he is careful
to avoid denying the innate character of war.


War, he says, is an instinct which springs from the deeps of mankind, an
instinct which influences even those who condemn it. It is an
intoxication which is carefully fostered in time of peace; when it
breaks forth, it takes possession of all alike. But because it is an
instinct, it does not follow that this instinct is sacred. Rousseau has
popularised the idea that instinct is always good and trustworthy.
Nothing of the kind. Instinct may be mistaken. When it is mistaken, the
race dies out, and we can therefore easily understand that, in races
which do not die out, instinct has a valid reason for existence.
Nevertheless, an animal endowed with sound instincts, may be
deceived by these instincts when it leaves its primitive environment. We
see an example of this in the moth which burns itself in the flame. The
instinct was sound in the days when the sun was the only luminary, but
no evolution has taken place to adapt this instinct to the existence of
lamps. We may admit that every instinct had its use at the time when it
first came into existence. This may be true of the fighting instinct,
but it does not follow that the combative instinct is useful to man
to-day. Instinct is extremely conservative, and survives the
circumstances that produced it. For instance, the wolf, wishing to cover
up its tracks, buries its excrement; the dog, a town dweller, stupidly
scrapes the pavement. In the latter case instinct has become senseless,
purposeless.


Man has retained many rudimentary and functionless instincts. He is able
to modify them, but in his case the task is peculiarly complex. Man is
distinguished from other animals by his incomparably greater power of
modifying the natural environment to suit his own purposes. But this
being so, man should transform his instincts to adapt them to the
changed circumstances. Now these instincts are tenacious, and the
struggle is hard. All the more, therefore, is it necessary. Whole
species of lower animals became extinct because they were unable to
modify their instincts as the environment changed. "Is man also to die
out from want of the will to change his instincts? He can change them,
or he could if he would. Man alone has the power of choice, and
consequently can err. But this curse of the liability to error is the
necessary consequence of freedom, and it gives birth to the blessed
power man possesses to learn and to transform himself." Yet man makes
very little use of this power. He is still encumbered with archaic
instincts. He accepts them complacently. He has an excessive esteem for
what is old precisely because he is swayed by hereditary instincts which
he has unconsciously come to revere.


In the kingdom of the one-eyed, we ought not to make the blind man king.
Because we all have combative instincts, it does not follow that we
should give these instincts free rein. To-day, when we are
realising the advantages of world-wide organisation, it is assuredly
time that such instincts should be put under restraint. Nicolai, seeing
his contemporaries giving themselves up to their enthusiasm for war, is
reminded of dogs which persist in scraping the pavement after relieving
nature.


What, precisely, are the combative instincts? Are they essential
attributes of the human species? In Nicolai's opinion, they are nothing
of the sort. He inclines, rather, to regard them as aberrations, for man
was originally a pacific and social animal. His anatomical structure
proves it. Man is one of the most defenceless of animals, having neither
claws, nor horns, nor hoofs, nor carapace. His ape-like ancestors had no
other resource but to seek safety among the branches. When man came down
to the ground and took to walking, his hand was freed for other uses.
This five-fingered hand, which in most animals has become a weapon
(clawed or hoofed), has in the apes alone remained a prehensile organ.
Essentially pacific, ill-constructed for striking or tearing, its
natural function was to seize and to take.[50] "The hand ... was
superfluous as an aid to locomotion on the ground, and thus became free
and able to lay hold of something besides trees. Consequently it grasped
tools, thus becoming the means and the symbol of man's future
greatness." But the hand would not have sufficed for man's defence. Had
he been a solitary animal, he would have been destroyed by foes stronger
and better equipped than himself. His strength lay in his being
gregarious. The social state existed for mankind long before family life
began. Men did not voluntarily unite to form a community (the family
first, for instance, then the tribe, then a class, then a commune,
etc.); it was the existence of the primitive community which rendered
possible the advance from the prehuman to the human stage.[51] By
nature, as Aristotle said, man is a sociable animal. The
drawing together of men is older and more primitive than war.


Look, again, at the lower animals. War is rare between members of the
same species. The animals that wage war (stags, ants, bees, and certain
birds), have always reached a stage of development in which proprietary
rights exist, it may be over booty or it may be over a female. Ownership
and war go hand in hand. War is merely one of the innumerable
consequences of ownership at a certain stage of evolution. Whatever the
declared aim of war, its real purpose always is to despoil man of his
labour or of the fruit of his labour. Unless a war be utterly futile,
its necessary result will be the enslavement of a part of humanity.
Shamefacedly we may change the name, but let us avoid being duped by the
new name! A war indemnity is nothing else than part of the labour of the
vanquished enemy. Modern war hypocritically pretends to protect private
property; but in its effect on the conquered nation as a whole, it
indirectly attacks the rights of every individual. Let us be frank. Let
us, when we defend war, dare to admit and to proclaim that we are
defending slavery.


There is no question of denying that both war and slavery may have been
useful, and indeed indispensable, during a certain phase of human
evolution. Primitive man, like the lower animals, had all his energies
monopolised by the attaining of nutriment. When spiritual needs began to
demand their rights, it was necessary that the masses should work to
excess in order that a small minority might pass lives of learned
leisure. The marvellous civilisations of antiquity could not have
existed without slavery. But the time has now arrived when a new
organisation has rendered slavery superfluous. In a modern national
society a community voluntarily renounces part of its earnings (and will
have to renounce an increasingly large part of its earnings)
for social purposes. Machines produce about ten times as much as unaided
human labour. Were they intelligently used, the social problem would be
greatly simplified. A sophism of the political economists assures us
that national wellbeing increases proportionally with the increase in
the consumption of commodities. The principle is unsound. Its outcome is
that it inoculates people with artificial needs. But it is this
artificially excited greed which, in the last resort, continues to
bolster up slavery in the shape of exploitation and war. Property
created war, and property maintains war. For the weak only, is property
a source of virtue, since the weak will not make efforts without the
stimulus afforded by the desire for possession. Throughout history, war
has been for property. Nicolai does not believe that there has ever been
a war for a purely ideal object, and without any thought of material
domination. People may perhaps fight for the pure ideal of country, in
the endeavour to express to the full the genius of their own nation. But
the guns will not really help the ideal forward. Such material arguments
as guns and bayonets will seem valuable only when the abstract idea has
become intertwined with the lusts for power and property. Thus, war,
property, and slavery, are close associates. Goethe wrote:



Krieg, Handel und Piraterie

Dreieinig sind sie, nicht zu trennen.[52]




*
* *


Nicolai then proceeds to criticise the pseudo-scientific notions from
which our modern intellectuals deduce justifications for war. Above all
he disposes of fallacious Darwinism and of the misuse of the idea of the
struggle for existence. These notions, imperfectly understood and
speciously interpreted, are by many regarded as furnishing a
sanction for war. Or, it is held, war is a method of selection, and is
therefore a natural right. To such conceptions Nicolai opposes genuine
science, the fundamental law of the increase in living beings,[53] and
the law that there is a natural limit to growth.[54] It is obvious that
the existence of these limitations imposes struggle upon individual
beings and upon species, seeing that the world contains only a
restricted quantity of energy, that is to say of nutriment. But Nicolai
shows that war is the most paltry, the stupidest, one may even say the
most ruinous, among all forms of struggle. Modern science, which enables
us to estimate the amount of solar energy reaching our planet, shows us
that the entire animal world does not as yet make use of more than one
twenty thousandth part of the available supply. It is obvious that in
these conditions war, that is to say the murder of another accompanied
by the theft of that other's share of energy, is an inexcusable crime.
It is, says Nicolai, as if loaves were lying about by the thousand, and
we were nevertheless to kill a beggar in order to steal his crust.
Mankind has an almost boundless field to exploit, and man's proper
struggle is the struggle with nature. All other forms of struggle bring
impoverishment and ruin, by distracting our attention from our main
purposes. The creative method is based upon the harnessing of new and
ever new sources of energy. The starting point was the prehistoric
discovery of fire, when man for the first time was able to effect the
explosive liberation of the solar energy stored up by plants. The
discovery marked a new turn in human affairs, and was the dawn of man's
supremacy over nature. During the last hundred years this new principle
has been developed to such an enormous extent that human evolution has
been entirely transformed. Nearly all the chief problems may be said to
have been solved, and what remains requisite is the practical
application. Thermo-electricity renders possible the direct and
purposive utilisation of solar energy. Modern chemical researches point
to the possibility of artificially manufacturing foodstuffs, and so on.
Were man to apply all his combative energy to the utilisation of the
forces of nature, not merely could he live at ease, but there would be
room in the world for milliards of additional human beings. When
compared with this splendid struggle, how puny seems the great war! What
has that war to do with the real struggle for existence? It is a product
of degeneration. War is justifiable. Not war between human beings. But
creative war for man's mastery over natural forces, the young war of
which hardly a millionth part has yet been waged. In this war we can
foresee victories such as no human being has ever yet won.


Nicolai, contrasting this creative struggle with the destructive
struggle, symbolises them in the persons of two German men of science.
One of these is Professor Haber, who has turned his knowledge to account
for the manufacture of asphyxiating bombs, and who will doubtless not be
forgotten. The other is Emil Fischer, the brilliant chemist who has
achieved the synthetic production of sugar, and who will perhaps achieve
the synthesis of albumen. Fischer is the founder, or at any rate the
forerunner, of the new era of humanity. Future generations will
gratefully refer to him as one of the supreme conquerors in the
victorious struggle for the sources of life. He is in very truth a
practitioner of the "divine art" of which Archimedes spoke.


*
* *


Nicolai's arguments, showing that war is antagonistic to human progress,
are confronted with an indisputable fact, a fact which has to be
explained—the actual existence of war, and its monstrous expansion.
Never has war been more powerful, more brutal, more widespread. Never
has war been more glorified. In an interesting chapter (Chapter
Fourteen), which introduces a number of debatable points,
Nicolai shows that in earlier days apologists for war were exceptional.
Even among the epic poets of war, those whose song was of heroism, the
direct references to war convey fear and disapproval. Delight in war
(Kriegslust), love of war for its own sake, is peculiar to modern
literature. We have to come down to the writings of Moltke, Steinmetz,
Lasson, Bernhardi, and Roosevelt, to find apotheoses of war, pæans of
war whose jubilation is quasi-religious. Nor was it until the outbreak
of the present struggle that such huge armies as those of to-day were
witnessed. The Greek armies in classical antiquity did not exceed
20,000. Those of imperial Rome, ranged from 100,000 to 200,000. In the
eighteenth century, armies of 150,000 were known; while Napoleon had an
army of 750,000. In 1870, there were armies of two and a half millions.
But in the present war there are ten million fighting men in each camp
(Chapter Five and Chapter Six). The increase is colossal, and quite
recent. Even if we take into account the possibility of a struggle in
the near future between Europeans and Mongols, a proportional increase
could not continue beyond a generation or two, for the whole population
of the globe would not suffice to furnish such armies.


But Nicolai is not appalled by the titanic dimensions of the monster he
is fighting. Indeed, this very fact gives him confidence in the ultimate
victory of his cause. For biology has revealed to him the mysterious law
of giganthanasia. One of the most important principles of paleontology
teaches that all animals (with the exception of insects, which, for this
very reason, are, with the brachiopods, the oldest families on the
globe), all species, tend throughout the centuries to grow larger and
larger until, of a sudden, when they seem greatest and strongest, their
forms disappear from the geological record. In nature it is always the
large forms that die. That which is large must die for the reason that,
in conformity with the imperious law of growth, the day comes when it
exceeds the limits of its primordial possibilities. Thus is it, writes
Nicolai, with war. Along the boundless field-grey battle lines,
thrills the warning of the coming Twilight of the Gods. Everything
beautiful and characteristic in the war of ancient days has vanished.
Gone is the gay camp life, gone are the motley uniforms, gone is single
combat—gone, in a word, are the show features. The battlefield, now,
has become little more than an accessory. In former days the scene of
battle used to be selected with care, for then the rival armies
manœuvred for position. To-day the soldiers settle down haphazard and
dig themselves in. The essential work is carried on elsewhere, by the
provision of finance, munitions, food supply, railways, etc. In place of
the one man of genius as general, we have now the impersonal machinery
of the general staff. The old lively, joyous war is dead.—It may be
that even yet war has not attained its zenith. In the present war there
are still neutrals, and perhaps Freiligrath was right in holding that
there must first be some battle in which the whole world will share. But
if so, that will be the very last. The final war will be the greatest
and the most terrible of all, just as the last of the great saurians was
the most gigantic. Our technique has swelled war to its extremest
limits, and will then slay war.[55]


*
* *


At bottom, behind its fearsome exterior, the war monster lacks
confidence, and feels that its life is threatened. Never before have
warmongers appealed, as they appeal to-day, to such a compost of
arguments, mystico-scientifico-politico-murderous, to justify the
existence of war. No one would dream of such arguments were it not that
the days of war are numbered, were it not that the most enthusiastic
disciples of war are shaken in their faith. But Nicolai is ruthless in
attack, and part of his book is a pitiless satire upon all the sophisms
wherewith in our folly we attempt to justify war—the executioner's axe
poised over our heads. These sophisms are: the sophism that war is a
biological means for ensuring the survival of the fittest; the
sophism of defensive war; the sophism of the humanisation of war; the
sophism of the alleged solidarity created by war, the so-called party
truce; the sophism of the fatherland—for the fatherland, in practical
application, becomes the narrowly conceived and artificially constructed
political state; the sophism of race; and so on.


I should have been glad to quote numerous extracts from these ironical
and severely critical passages. Of exceptional interest are the
paragraphs in which he castigates the most impudent and the most
flourishing of current sophisms, the sophism of race, for whose sake
thousands of poor simpletons of all nations are slaughtering one
another. He writes as follows:


"The race problem is one of the most melancholy chapters in the history
of human thought. Nowhere else has knowledge, supposedly impartial,
consciously or unconsciously placed itself so unscrupulously at the
service of ambitious and self-seeking politicians. Indeed, it might
almost be said that the various theories of race have never been put
forward save with the object of advancing some claim or other. The
writings of Houston Stewart Chamberlain, an Anglo-German, afford perhaps
the most repulsive example. As we all know, this author has endeavoured
to claim as German everyone of outstanding importance in the history of
the world, Christ and Dante not excepted. It would be strange if this
demagogic example found so [many] imitators.... Recently Paul Souday has
attempted to show that all the notable men of Germany belong to the
Keltic race ('Le Temps,' August 7, 1915)."


Nicolai replies to these extravagances with the following definite
assertions:


1. Proof is lacking that a pure race is better than a mixed race.
(Examples are adduced from animal species and from human history.)


2. It is impossible to define the term race as applied to the
subdivisions of mankind, for valid criteria are lacking. Such
classifications as have been attempted, now upon a historical, now upon
a linguistic, and now upon an anthropological basis, are
extremely inconsistent one with another, and have been almost complete
failures.


3. There are no pure races in Europe. Less than any other nation have
the Germans a right to claim racial purity.[56] Anyone who seeks a true
Teuton to-day had better go to Sweden, the Netherlands, or England.


4. If to the term race we attach a definite biological meaning, we can
hardly say that there is any such thing as a European race.


Patriotism based on race is impossible, and in most cases it is utterly
absurd. There is no such thing as ethnic homogeneity in any extant
nation. The cohesion of contemporary nations does not come down to them
as a heritage of which they can dispose at will. From day to day this
cohesion must be rewon. Unremittingly the members of each nation must
fortify their community of thought, feeling, and will. This is meet and
right. As Renan said, "The existence of a nation should be a daily
plebiscite." In a word, what unites people to form a nation is not the
force of history; it is the desire to be together, and the mutual need
felt by the members of the nation. Our thoughts and our feelings are not
guided by the vows that others have made for us, but by our own free
will.


Is it so to-day? What place does free will hold among the nations of
to-day? Patriotism has assumed an extraordinarily oppressive form.
During no other age in history has it been so tyrannical and so
exclusive. It devours everything. Our country, to-day, claims to rank
above religion, above art, science, thought, above civilisation. This
monstrous hypertrophy cannot be explained as an efflux from the natural
sources of patriotic instincts, as an efflux of love of the native soil,
of tribal sentiment, of the social need for forming vast communities.
Its colossal effects are the outcome of a pathological phenomenon; they
are the outcome of mass suggestion. Nicolai tersely analyses this
conception. It is remarkable, he says, that whenever several animals or
several human beings do anything together, the mere fact of
cooperation causes each individual's action to be modified. We have
scientific proof that two men can carry far more than twice as much as
one. In like manner, a number of human beings react in a very different
way from these same beings in isolation. Every cavalryman knows that his
horse will do more in the troop than it will do alone, will cover more
ground and will suffer less fatigue. Forel has pointed out that an ant
which, surrounded by companions, will readily face death, shows fear and
runs away from a much weaker ant when she is alone and some way from the
ant-hill. Among men, in like manner, the feeling of the crowd greatly
intensifies the reactions of each individual. "This is most evident at a
public meeting. In many cases the speaker has hardly opened his mouth
before he communicates some of his own emotion to every one of his
hearers. Suppose it to be only the hundredth part on the average, and
suppose that the audience numbers one thousand, then the speaker's
emotion has already been multiplied tenfold, as will speedily appear
from the reactions of the audience." This in turn reacts on the speaker,
who is carried away by the emotions of his hearers. And so it goes on.


Now in our day the audience is of enormous size, and the world war has
made it gigantic. Thanks to powerful and rapid means of communication,
thanks to the telegraph and the press, the huge groups of allied states
have become, as it were, single publics numbered by millions. Imagine,
in this vibrant and sonorous mass, the effect of the least cry, of the
slightest tremor. They assume the aspect of cosmic convulsions. The
entire mass of humanity is shaken as by an earthquake. Under these
conditions what happens to such a sentiment as the love of country,
originally natural and healthy? In normal times, says Nicolai, a good
man loves his country just as he should love his wife, while well aware
that there may be other women more beautiful, more intelligent, or
better, than she. But one's country to-day is like a hysterically
jealous woman who is in a fury when anyone recognises another woman's
merits. In normal times the true patriot is (or should be) the
man who loves what is good in his country and resists what is evil. But
nowadays anyone who acts thus is deemed an enemy of his country. A
patriot, in the contemporary sense of the word, loves both what is good
and what is bad in his country; he is ready to do evil for the sake of
his country; carried away by the stream of mass suggestion, he is
positively eager to do evil for his country's sake. The weaker a man's
character, the more inflammatory his patriotism. He has no power to
resist collective suggestion; and is indeed passionately attracted by
it, for every weak man looks for others' support, and believes himself
stronger if he does what others are doing. Now, these persons of weak
character have no common bond of profound culture. What they need to
unite them is an external bond, and what can suit them better than
national feeling! "Every blockhead," writes Nicolai, "feels several
inches taller if he and a few dozen millions of his kind can only unite
to form a majority.... The fewer independent personalities a nation
possesses, the fiercer is that nation's patriotism."


This mass attraction, which works like a magnet, is the positive side of
jingoism. The negative side is hatred of foreign countries. War is the
biological culture-medium. War hurls upon the world sufferings mountain
high; it crushes the world by material and spiritual privations. If
people are to endure it, there must be a supreme exaltation of mass
sentiment, to support the weak by herding them more closely together.
This is artificially effected by the newspaper press. The result is
appalling. Patriotism concentrates all the energies of the human mind
upon love for one's own country and upon hatred for the enemy. Hatred
becomes a religion. Hatred without reason, without common sense, and
absolutely without foundation. No room is left for any other faculty.
Intelligence and morality have abdicated. Nicolai quotes a number of
almost incredible examples from the Germany of 1914 and 1915, and
equally striking instances could be given in the case of every
belligerent nation. There was no resistance to these
suggestions. In the collective aberration, all differences of class,
education, intellectual or moral value, are reduced to one level; all
are equalised. The entire human race, from base to summit, is delivered
over to the Furies. If the least sparkle of free will shows itself, it
is trampled under foot, and the isolated independent is torn to pieces
as Pentheus was torn to pieces by the Bacchantes.


But this frenzy does not disturb the calm vision of the thinker. To
Nicolai, the paroxysm he contemplates seems the last flicker of the
torch. Just as, he declares, horse-racing and yachting are undergoing
their fullest development in our own day, when horses and sails are
ceasing to have any practical use, so likewise patriotism has become a
fanatical cult at the very moment when it has ceased to be a factor in
civilisation. It is the fate of the Epigoni. In remote ages it was good,
it was needful, that individual egoism should be broken by the grouping
of human beings in tribes and clans. The patriotism of the towns was
justified when it victoriously resisted the egoism of the robber barons.
The patriotism of the state was justified when it concentrated all the
energies of a nation. The national conflicts of the nineteenth century
had useful work to do. But to-day the work of the national states is
done. New tasks call us. Patriotism is no longer a suitable aim for
humanity; its influence is retrograde. But the retrogressive efforts of
patriotism are fruitless. No one can arrest the progress of evolution,
and people are merely committing suicide by throwing themselves beneath
the iron wheels of the chariot. The sage is unperturbed by the frenzied
resistance of the forces of the past, for he knows them to be the forces
of despair. He leaves the dead to bury their dead; and, looking forward,
he already contemplates the living unity of mankind that is to be. Among
the trials and disasters of the present, he realises within himself the
serene harmony of the "great body" whereof all men are members, as in
the profound saying of Seneca: Membra sumus corporis magni.


In a subsequent article we shall learn how Nicolai describes this corpus
magnum and the mens magna which animates it, the
Weltorganismus, the organism of universal humanity, whose coming is
already heralded to-day.


October 1, 1917.


"demain," Geneva, October, 1917.


II


We have seen with how much energy G. F. Nicolai condemns the absurdity
of war and the sophisms which serve for its support. Nevertheless the
sinister madness triumphs for the time. In 1914, reason went bankrupt.
Spreading from nation to nation, this bankruptcy, this madness,
subsequently involved all the peoples of the world. There was no lack of
established ethical systems and established religions which, had they
done their duty, would have opposed a barrier to this contagion of
murder and folly. But all the ethical systems, all the religions, now in
existence, proved hopelessly inadequate. We have seen it for ourselves
in the case of Christianity; and Nicolai shows, following Tolstoi, that
Buddhism is in no better case.


As far as Christianity is concerned, its abdication is of old date.
After the great compromise under Constantine, in the fourth century of
our era, when the emperor made the church of Christ a state church, the
essential thought of Jesus was betrayed by the official representatives
of the creed, and was delivered over to Cæsar. Only among certain free
religious individualities, most of whom were charged with heresy, was
this essential thought preserved (to a degree) until our own time. But
its last defenders have lately denied it. The Christian sects which up
to now have invariably refused military service, for example the
Mennonites in Germany, the Dukhobors in Russia, the Paulicians, the
Nazarenes, etc., are participating in the war to-day.[57] "Simon Menno,
the founder of the Mennonites, who died in 1561, condemned war and vengeance.... As late as 1813, the strength of moral conviction in
the members of this sect was still so great that, despite the patriotic
excitement of that year, so ruthless a soldier as York actually exempted
them from Landwehr service, by a decree dated February 18th. But in
1915, H. G. Mannhardt, Mennonite preacher in Danzig, delivered an
address glorifying feats of arms and martial heroes."


"There was a time," writes Nicolai, "when it was believed that Islam was
inferior to Christianity. At that date the Turkish armies were
threatening the heart of Europe. To-day the Turk has almost been driven
out of Europe, but morally he has conquered Europe. Unseen, the green
flag of the Prophet floats over every house in which there is talk of
the 'holy war.'"


German religious poems depict the fight in the trenches as "a test of
piety instituted by God." No one is now astonished at the absurd
contradiction in terms involved in speaking of "Christian warfare." Few
theologians or churchmen have dared to swim against the stream. In his
admirable book La Guerre infernale,[58] Gustave Dupin has pilloried
gruesome specimens of militarist Christianity. Nicolai gives other
samples, which it would be a pity to leave unrecorded. In 1915,
Professor Baumgarten, a Kiel theologian, placidly pointed out that there
is opposition between the morality of bellicose nationalism and the
morality of the Sermon on the Mount, but "at present," he went on to
say, "we ought to pay more attention to Old Testament texts"; thus
deliberately, and with a smile, throwing Christianity overboard. Arthur
Brausewetter, another theologian, made a remarkable discovery. War
revealed to him the Holy Spirit. "Never, till this year of war, 1914,
did we really know the nature of the Holy Ghost...."


While Christianity was thus publicly denied by its priests and its
pastors, the religions of Asia were no less ready to jettison the
inconvenient thoughts of their founders. Tolstoi had already pointed
this out. "The Buddhists of to-day do not merely tolerate
murder; they positively justify it. During the war between Japan and
Russia, Soyen Shaku, one of the leading Buddhist dignitaries in Japan,
wrote a defence of war.[59] Buddha had uttered this beautiful word of
afflicted love: 'All things are my children, all are images of myself,
all flow from a single source, and all are parts of my own body. That is
why I cannot rest as long as the least particle of what is has failed to
reach its destination.' In this sigh of mystical love, which aspires
towards the fusion of all beings, the Buddhist of to-day has safely
discovered an appeal to a war of extermination. For, he declares,
inasmuch as the world has failed to reach its destination, has failed
owing to the perversity of many men, we must make war on these men and
must annihilate them. 'Thus shall we extirpate the roots of
evil.'"—This bloodthirsty Buddhist recalls to my mind the
guillotine-idealism of our Jacobins in '93. Their monstrous faith is
summed up in the words of Saint-Just which close my tragedy Danton:



"The nations slay one another that God may live."[60]




When religions are so weak, it is not surprising that mere ethical
systems should prove unavailing. Nicolai shows us what a travesty Kant's
disciples have made of their master's teaching. Willy-nilly, the author
of the Critique of Pure Reason has been compelled to put on the
field-grey uniform. Have not his German commentators insisted that the
Prussian army is the most perfect realisation of Kant's thought? For,
they tell us, in the Prussian army the sentiment of Kantian duty has
become a living reality.


Let us waste no more time over these inanities, which differ only in
shade from those made use of in every land by the national guard of the
intelligentsia, to exalt their cause and to glorify war. Enough to
recognise, with Nicolai, that European idealism crashed to ruin in 1914.
The German writer's conclusion (which I am content to record
without comment), is that "we have proof that ordinary idealistic
morality, whether Kantian or Christian, is absolutely useless, for it is
unable to lead any of those who profess it to act morally." In view of
the manifest impossibility of founding moral action upon a purely
idealistic basis, Nicolai considers that our first duty is to seek some
other basis. He wishes that Germany, schooled by her ignominious fall,
by her "moral Jena," should work at this task whose fulfilment is so
indispensable to mankind—should work at it for herself even more than
for any other nation, seeing that her need is the greatest. "Let us
see," he says, "if it be not possible to find in nature, scientifically
studied, the conditions of an objective ethic, of an ethic that shall be
independent of our personal sentiments, good or bad, always
vacillating."


*
* *


In the first part of the volume we have learned that war is a
transitional phenomenon in human evolution. What, then, is the true and
eternal principle of humanity? Is there such a principle? Is there a
higher imperative, valid for all men alike?


Yes, answers Nicolai. This higher imperative is the very law of life,
which governs the entire organism of humanity. Natural law has only two
bases, only two which can never be shaken: the individual, separately
considered; and the human universality. All intermediaries, like the
family and the state, are organised groupings,[61] subject to change,
and they do actually change with changing customs; they are not natural
organisms. Egoism and altruism, the two powerful sentiments which give
life to our moral world, acting therein like the contrasted forces of
positive and negative electricity, are the respective expressions of the
individual and of the collectivity. Egoism is the natural outflow of our
individuality. Altruism owes its existence to the obscure
recognition that we are parts of a united organism, humanity.


In the second half of his book Nicolai undertakes to throw light upon
this obscure realisation, and to establish it upon a scientific
foundation. He undertakes to show that humanity is no mere abstraction,
but a living reality, an organism that can be subjected to scientific
observation.


In this study, the poetical intuition of the ancient philosophers is
interestingly linked with the experimental spirit and the analytical
method of modern science. The latest biological and embryological
theories are invoked to help in the comment on the hylozoism of the
seven sages and the mysticism of the early Christians. Janicki and de
Vries shake hands with Heraclitus and Saint Paul. The upshot is a
strange vision of materialistic and dynamistic pantheism—a vision of
humanity considered as a body and a soul in unceasing motion.


Nicolai begins by reminding us that this idea has existed in all ages.
He summarises the history of the doctrine. We have the "fire" of
Heraclitus, which for the sage of Ephesus was also the universal
intelligence of the world. We have the same thing in the "pneuma" of the
stoics and in the "pneuma agion" of the primitive Christians, the sacred
energy, the vivifying force, which is the concentrated essence of all
the souls. It is what Origen speaks of as "universum mundum velut animal
quoddam immensum." We encounter the idea once more in the fertile
fancies of Cardanus, Giordano Bruno, Paracelsus, and Campanella.
Animistic ideas are mingled with the science of Newton, and permeate his
hypothesis of universal gravitation. Indeed, Musschenbroek, his
immediate disciple, describes the gravitative principle as "amicitia";
while Lichtenberg tells us that it is the "longing of the heavenly
bodies for one another!" In a word, through the whole development of
human thought runs the belief that our world is a single organism with a
consciousness of its own. Nicolai tells us how it would interest him to
write the history of this idea; and he outlines that history in his
fascinating fourteenth chapter, "The Evolution of the Idea of
the World as Organism."[62]


He then passes to scientific demonstration. Is there, he asks, a
material bond, a bodily, living, and enduring tie, between human beings
of all lands and all ages?[63] He finds a proof that there is such a
bond in the researches of Weismann and in that writer's theory of the
germ plasm, which has now become classic.[64] In each individual, the
cells of the germ plasm continue the life of the parents, of which, in
the fullest sense of the word, they are living portions. They are
undying. They pass, changeless, to our children and to our children's
children. Thus there really persists throughout the whole genealogical
tree a part of the same living substance. A portion of this organic
unity lives in each individual and thereby we are physically connected
with the universal community. Nicolai points out, in passing, the
remarkable relationships between these scientific hypotheses of the last
thirty years and certain mystical intuitions of the Greeks and the early
Christians—"the spirit (pneuma) that quickeneth" (Saint John, vi, 63),
the generative spirit, which is not only distinguished from the flesh,
as Saint John declares, but is likewise distinguished from the
soul, as appears from a passage in Saint Paul's first epistle to the
Corinthians (xv, 44), where the "spiritual body" (soma pneumatikon) is
contrasted with the "natural body" (soma psuchikon). The spiritual body
is declared to be more essential than the natural body (the psychical or
intellectual body); and the former really and materially penetrates the
bodies of all men.


Nor is this all. The studies made by contemporary biologists, and
notably by the Russian biologist Janicki, on sexual reproduction[65]
have explained how this method of reproduction safeguards the
homogeneity of the germ plasm in an animal species, and how it
unceasingly renews the mutual contacts among the individual members of a
race. Janicki writes: "The world, if I may say so, has not been broken
up into a mass of independent fragments, which then, for ever isolated
one from another, ... must strike out for themselves on straight
courses, with only side branches. On the contrary, owing to bi-sexual
reproduction (amphimixis), the image of the macrocosm is ... reflected
as a microcosm in each part; and the macrocosm resolves itself into a
thousand microcosms.... Thus the individuals, while remaining
independent, are materially and continuously interconnected, like
strawberry plants whose runners are joined together.... Each separate
individual develops, as it were, through an invisible system of rhizomes
(subterranean roots) which unite the germ substances of countless
individualities."—Thus it has been calculated that in the twenty-first
generation, in five hundred years let us say, and supposing an average
of three children to each couple, the posterity of a single couple will
be equal in number to the entire human race. It may, therefore, be said
that each one of us has within him a small portion of the living
substance belonging to every one of the human beings that were living
five hundred years ago. Consequently it is absurd that anyone should
wish to restrict an individual, be he whom he may, within the category
of a separate nation or race.


Let us add that thought, too, propagates itself throughout mankind, in
like manner with the germ plasm.


Every thought, once expressed, leads in the human community a life
independent of its creator; undergoes development in other minds; and
has, like the germ plasm, an immortal life. So that, in humanity, there
is neither true birth nor true death, whether material or spiritual.
Empedocles, of old, realised this, for he said:


"Yet another truth will I tell unto thee. Not a mortal thing is truly
born, and death the destroyer is not the end. There is nought but
intermixture and exchange of what is intermixed. But among men it is
customary to term this 'birth.'"


Humanity, therefore, materially and spiritually, is a single organism;
all its parts are intimately connected and share in a common
development.


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


*
* *


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


*
* *


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


October 15, 1917.


"demain," Geneva, November, 1917.


XXI


REFLECTIONS ON READING AUGUSTE FOREL


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


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


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


*
* *


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


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


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


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


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


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


*
* *


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


*
* *


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


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


June 1, 1918.


"Revue Mensuelle," Geneva, August, 1918.


XXII


ON BEHALF OF THE INTERNATIONAL OF THE MIND


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


*
* *


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


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


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


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


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


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


*
* *


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


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


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


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


*
* *


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


I would further insist that both in primary and secondary education
there should be given a sketch of the history of universal thought,
universal literature, universal art. I consider it utterly erroneous
that the syllabus of instruction should concern itself only with these
subjects as manifested within the limits of a single nation, and that
within those limits there should be a further restriction to a period of
two or three centuries. Despite all that has been done to modernise
education, its spirit still remains essentially archaic. It perpetuates
among us the atmosphere of extinct epochs. Let not this criticism be
misunderstood. All my own education was classical. I passed through
every stage of university instruction. In my student days we were still
taught to write Latin speeches and Latin verses. I am impregnated with
the ideas of classical art and classical thought. Far from desiring to
sweep these things away, I should wish such treasures, like those of our
Louvre, to be made accessible to the great mass of mankind. But
I must point out that we should remain free in relation to that which we
admire, and that we are not free in relation to classical thought. The
Greco-Roman mental formulas, which our education has made as it were
second nature, are nowise suited for application to modern problems.
Those into whose minds such formulas have been instilled in childhood
have acquired overwhelming prejudices which they are rarely, if ever,
able to shake off, prejudices which weigh heavily upon contemporary
society. I am inclined to believe that one of the moral errors from
which Europe is chiefly suffering to-day, the Europe whose members are
tearing one another to pieces, is that we have preserved the heroic and
rhetorical idol of the Greco-Roman fatherland, which corresponds no
better to the natural sentiment of the fatherland to-day than the
deities of Homer correspond to the true religious needs of our time.


Humanity grows older, but does not ripen. It is still enmeshed in the
teachings of childhood. Its greatest fault is its slothful unwillingness
to seek renewal. But humanity must seek renewal and growth. For
centuries it has condemned itself to use no more than a modicum of its
spiritual resources. It is like a half-paralysed colossus. It allows
some of its organs to atrophy. Are we not weary of these infirm nations,
of these scattered members of a great body, which might dominate our
planet!


Membra sumus corporis magni.


Let these members unite; let Humanity, the New Adam, arise!


Villeneuve, March 15, 1918.


"Revue Politique Internationale," Lausanne, March and April, 1918.


XXIII


A CALL TO EUROPEANS


IN the downfall of imperial Germany, there stand out the great names of
a few free spirits of Germany, the names of those who during the last
four years have strenuously defended the rights of conscience and reason
against the abuses of force. The name of G. F. Nicolai is one of the
most illustrious among these. I devoted two articles[86] to the study of
his excellent work, The Biology of War, and have recorded the
conditions under which it was written. This distinguished professor of
physiology at the university of Berlin, a celebrated physician,
appointed at the outbreak of the war as chief of one of the army medical
departments, was cashiered because he had expressed his disapproval of
the misdeeds committed by the statesmen and the high military commanders
of Germany. Suffering humiliation after humiliation, degraded to the
rank of private, sentenced to five months' imprisonment by the Danzig
court-martial, he at length fled from Germany in order to escape yet
severer punishment. A few months ago we learned from the newspapers of
his daring escape in an aeroplane. He has secured asylum in Denmark, and
in that country he has just published the first number of a review, to
whose historical and human interest I now wish to call attention.


*
* *


This periodical is entitled "Das werdende Europa,—Blätter für
zukunftsfrohe Menschen,—neutral gegenüber den kriegführenden
Ländern,—leidenschaftlich Partei ergreifend für das Recht gegen die
Macht." (The Coming Europe,—a review for men who look joyously towards
the future,—neutral as regards the belligerent lands,—but taking sides
passionately on behalf of right against might.)[87]


Looking joyously towards the future! This is one of Nicolai's most
salient characteristics, and I have alluded to it at the close of my
critique of his Biology of War. How many in his place would have been
disheartened by all that he has seen, heard, and endured in the way of
human malice; of cowardice, which is worse; and of folly, which is yet
more intolerable—the folly that rules the world! But Nicolai is a man
of extraordinary elasticity. "Nicht weinen!" as his little girl of two
says to him when he is about to leave her and everything he loves. "Not
cry!" Looking joyously towards the future. To uphold him in this joyance
he has his wonderful vitality, the inviolable strength of his
convictions, his triumphant assurance (meine triumphierende Sicherheit).
He displays an apostolic zeal which we should hardly have expected in a
scientific observer; but Nicolai, of a sudden, becomes from time to time
a seer, an idealist, a prophet, like the religious heroes of old. With
all his equipment of modern science, he is a strange instance of
reincarnation. The Old Germany of Goethe, Herder, and Kant, speaks to us
through his voice. To use his own words, he claims his rights as against
the right of Ludendorff and other usurpers to adopt the political
methods of the Tatars.


The aim of "Coming Europe" is, he tells us, to "awaken love for our new,
our greater fatherland, Europe.... We wish that all the peoples of
Europe shall become useful and happy members of this new organism."—Now
the future of Europe mainly depends upon the condition of Germany, a
country which, by its brutal disregard of European principles, supports
the old policy of armed isolation. The primary aim, therefore, must be
the liberation of Germany.


The first issue of the magazine contains an inaugural article by
Professor Kristoffer Nyrop, member of the Royal Academy of Denmark. It
further includes interesting pages written by Dr. Alfred H. Fried, and
by Carl Lindhagen, burgomaster of Stockholm. But the main contribution,
filling three-fourths of the number, is a long article by Nicolai,
entitled "Warum ich aus Deutschland ging. Offener Brief an denjenigen
Unbekannten, der die Macht hat in Deutschland."[88] These words are the
confession of a great spirit, of one whom the oppressors have wished to
enslave, but who has broken his chains.


Nicolai opens by explaining what has led him to an act which has cost
him dear, the abandonment of his country in the hour of danger. In
touching terms he expresses his love for the motherland (which he
contrasts with Europe, his fatherland), his love for Germany and for all
that he owes it. He tore himself away only because there was no other
means of working for the liberation of his country. While he remained in
Germany, he could do nothing; for years of tribulation had been the
proof. Right was shackled. Germany was no longer a Rechtsstaat.
Oppression was universal; and, still worse, it was anonymous. The power
of the sword, irresponsible, was supreme. Parliament no longer existed.
The press no longer existed. The chancellor, the emperor himself, were
subject to the mysterious "Unknown who rules Germany." Nicolai tells us
that he had long waited for others better qualified than himself to
speak. He had waited in vain. Fear, corruption, lack of determination,
stifled all attempts at revolt. The soul of Germany was dumb.—Even he,
Nicolai, would perhaps have held his peace to the end, constrained to
silence by the sentiment of chivalrous loyalty which influences everyone
in time of war, had he not been driven to extremities, had he not been
brought to bay, by the unknown power. After everything had been taken
from him, after he had been despoiled of his honours, of his official
position, of the comforts and even the necessaries of life,
those in authority wished to wrest from him the one thing that still
remained, his right to obey, his convictions. This was too much, and he
fled. "I was compelled to leave the German empire; I left, because I
believe myself to be a good German."


To enable us to understand his decision, he describes for us the four
years of daily struggle which had been his lot in Germany before he made
up his mind to leave.—Notwithstanding his views on the war, when it
actually broke out he put himself at the disposal of the military
authorities, but only as a civilian medical man (vertraglich
verpflichteter Zivilarzt). He was appointed principal medical officer in
the new Tempelhof hospital, a post which permitted him to continue his
public lectures at the university of Berlin. But in October, 1914, in
conjunction with Professor W. Foerster, Professor A. Einstein, and Dr.
Buek, he issued a protest, couched in very strong terms, against the
notorious manifesto of the 93. Punishment did not tarry. He was at once
relieved of his post, and was appointed medical assistant at the
isolation hospital in the little fortress of Graudenz. Being under no
illusions as to the reasons for this arbitrary and absurd measure, he
devoted his spare time to the preparation of his book, The Biology of
War. Now came the sinking of the Lusitania, which was a terrible shock
to Nicolai, affecting him as if he had been struck with a whip. At
dinner with a few of his comrades, he declared that the violation of
Belgian neutrality, the use of poison gas, and the torpedoing of
merchantmen, were not merely immoral actions, but were acts of
incredible stupidity, which would sooner or later ruin the German
empire. One of those present, his colleague Dr. Knoll, could find
nothing better to do than to inform against him. Anew dismissed from his
post, Nicolai was sent in disgrace to one of the most out-of-the-way
corners of Germany. He protested in the name of justice. He appealed to
the emperor. The latter, he was given to understand, wrote on the margin
of the report of his case: "Der Mann ist ein Idealist, man soll
ihn gewähren lassen!" (The man is an idealist. Let him alone!)


He was sent back to Berlin in the winter of 1915-16, with instructions
to be on his good behaviour. Ignoring these instructions, immediately
after his return to the university he began a course of lectures upon
"War as an evolutionary Factor in human History." The lectures were
promptly prohibited, and Nicolai was sent to Danzig, where he was
strictly forbidden to speak or write on political topics. Nicolai took
exception to this order, on the ground that he was a civilian. Thereupon
an attempt was made to administer to him the oath of loyalty and
obedience. He refused. Summoned before a court-martial, and warned of
the consequences of refusal, he persisted. He was thereupon reduced to
the ranks, and for two and a half years was engaged in futile clerical
work as a private in the army medical corps. Nevertheless, he finished
his book, and it went to press in Germany. The first two hundred pages
had been set up when an information against it was lodged by the chief
clerk of a great submarine dockyard, who said indignantly, "We earn our
money arduously in the war, and this fellow is writing in favour of
peace!" Nicolai was arrested and his manuscript was seized. After a
lengthy trial, he was sentenced to five months' imprisonment. The
newspapers were forbidden to mention his name. The "Danziger Zeitung"
was suspended for having published an account of the trial. His troubles
began afresh immediately he came out of prison. The commandant of
Eilenburg wished to force Nicolai to accept combatant service. Nicolai
refused, and was given twenty-four hours to think the matter over. He
thought of Socrates, and of the Greek philosopher's obedience to his
country's laws, bad though they were. But he thought also of Luther, who
fled to the Wartburg to finish his work. And Nicolai left that night.
Not even yet, however, did he quit Germany, for he wished to make a last
appeal to the justice of his country. He wrote to the minister for war,
relating the infractions of law to which he had been exposed, and asking
for protection against the arbitrary proceedings of the
military authorities. While awaiting an answer, he took refuge with
friends, first in Munich, then in Grunewald near Berlin. But no answer
was received. He had, therefore, to expatriate himself. We know how he
crossed the frontier, "in an aeroplane, two miles above the earth amid
clouds formed by bursting shrapnel."[89] At dawn after Saint John's
night, he saw the distant gleam of the sea of freedom. He reached
Copenhagen. For the last time he addressed himself to the German
government, offering to return upon guarantees that his rights should be
respected, and that he should be reinstated. After eight weeks, he was
declared to be a deserter. A raid was made upon his house in Berlin, and
upon the houses of some of his friends. His goods were sequestrated. A
demand was made for his extradition, upon the charge of stealing an
aeroplane.—Then it was that, resuming freedom of speech, Nicolai wrote
his "Open Letter" to the "Unknown" despot.


*
* *


What particularly strikes me in this narrative is, in the first place,
the man's invincible tenacity, the way in which he stands upon his right
as upon a fortress—"eine feste Burg." ...But I am also greatly
impressed by the secret aid which was furnished him by so many of his
compatriots.


People are astonished to-day at the sudden collapse of the German
colossus. A hundred different reasons are given. We are told that the
army is ravaged by epidemic disease; that the morale of the Germans has
been undermined by bolshevist propaganda; and so on. These influences
have played their part. But another cause has been forgotten. It is that
the entire edifice, despite its imposing front, has been mined.
Behind the façade of passive obedience, widespread disillusionment
prevails. Nothing is more striking in Nicolai's story (notwithstanding
all his precautions lest anything he may say should betray his friends
to the vengeance of the authorities) than the way in which he has again
and again been supported and encouraged by the devotion or by the tacit
complicity of those with whom he came into contact. "Men of science,
working men, rankers, and officers," he writes, "begged me to say what
they did not dare to utter themselves." When he was arrested and when
his book was seized, the manuscript was rescued and was smuggled into
Switzerland. By whom? By an official German courier!—When, having fled
from his post, he wished to leave Germany, and when, in the first
instance, he thought of getting out of the country on foot, he was
arrested a hundred yards short of the frontier and was taken before an
elderly captain. "When he asked me my name, and I said, 'I am Professor
Nicolai,' he looked at me long and quizzically. I am doubtful whether he
knew that I was being hunted, but I have the impression that he did
know.... He advised me, in friendly fashion, not again to attempt
crossing the frontier by night, for the frontier patrols were
accompanied by bloodhounds—then he let me go."—Seeing no other way of
escape than by the air route, Nicolai turned—to whom? To an officer in
the flying corps, asking the loan of an aeroplane, for a journey to
Holland or Switzerland. The officer, without turning a hair, replied
that the thing could be done, and that if Nicolai should decide to make
his way to Denmark (which would be much easier) they could start with a
whole air-squadron. In the end, as we know, there was no squadron; but
two aeroplanes and a number of officers participated in the flight from
Neurippin to Copenhagen.—Many similar incidents, though perhaps less
striking than those quoted, serve to show the dissolution of the bonds
between the citizens and the state. The publication of Nicolai's book in
Switzerland, and the subsequent clandestine circulation in Germany of
one hundred copies, brought him into relationships with persons
belonging to all parties in Germany, and enabled him to realise how deep
and passionate was the feeling of hatred diffused throughout all strata
of the population. He adds: "I am convinced that Germany and the world
would be liberated to-morrow, if only all the Germans were to say to-day
without reserve that which, at the bottom of their hearts, they wish and
ardently desire."


Herein lies the force of his protest. It is not the protest of one
individual, but that of an entire nation. Nicolai is merely the
spokesman.


Thus, having told his tale, he turns to the people, he turns to those
who inspired him to speak. By a sudden transformation, the "Unknown" to
whom he addresses his "Open Letter"—derjenige Unbekannte, der die Macht
hat—is no longer the military authority. Sovereign power seems already
to have passed into the hands of the real master, the German people. He
invites the German people to enter into a union with the other peoples.
In the tone of an inspired evangelist, he reminds the German people of
its true destiny, its spiritual mission, a thousandfold more important
than any empty victory. To all the peoples of Europe, he points out the
duty of the hour, the pressing task: to achieve the unity of Europe and
the organisation of the world.


"Come, then, kindred spirits!... I am a free man, freed from everything
in the world, free from the state [staatenlos], ein deutscher Weltbürger
[a German citizen of the world].... I have peace! [Ich habe Frieden]....
Come! Cry aloud what you already know and feel!... We do not wish to
make peace; we simply wish to realise that we have peace...."


Reiterating his cry of October, 1914, the Call to Europeans[90] which
he, in conjunction with his friends Albert Einstein, Wilhelm Foerster,
and Otto Buek, issued as a counterblast to the insane utterances of the
93, he reaffirms his act of faith in the spirit of Europe, one
and brotherly; and he launches his appeal to all the free spirits, to
those whom Goethe long ago termed: "Good Europeans."


October 20, 1918.


"Wissen und Leben," Zurich, November, 1918.


XXIV


OPEN LETTER TO PRESIDENT WILSON


Monsieur le Président,


THE peoples are breaking their chains. The hour foreseen by you and
desired by you is at hand. May it not come in vain! From one end of
Europe to the other, there is rising among the peoples the will to
resume control of their destinies, and to unite, that they may form a
regenerated Europe. Across the frontiers, they are holding out their
hands to one another for a friendly clasp. But between them there still
remain abysses of mistrust and misunderstanding. These abysses must be
bridged. We must break the fetters of ancient destiny which shackle
these peoples to nationalist wars; which have compelled them, century
after century, to rush blindly upon one another for their mutual
destruction. Unaided, they cannot break their chains. They are calling
for help. But whither can they turn for help?


You alone, Monsieur le Président, among all those whose dread duty it
now is to guide the policy of the nations, you alone enjoy a world-wide
moral authority. You inspire universal confidence. Answer the appeal of
these passionate hopes! Take the hands which are stretched forth, help
them to clasp one another. Help these peoples, groping in the dark, to
find their way, to establish the new charter of freedom and union whose
principles they are seeking earnestly but confusedly.


Reflect: Europe is in danger of falling back into the circles of hell
through which she has been toiling for more than four years, drenching
the soil with her blood. In all lands, the peoples have lost
confidence in the ruling classes. At this hour, you are the only one who
can speak to all alike—to the common people and to the bourgeoisies of
the nations. You alone can be sure of an attentive hearing. None but you
can act as mediator to-day (and will even you still be able to act as
mediator to-morrow?). Should this mediator fail to appear, the human
masses, disarrayed and unbalanced, will almost inevitably break forth
into excesses. The common people will welter in bloody chaos, while the
parties of traditional order will fly to bloody reaction. Class wars,
racial wars, wars between the nations of yesterday, wars between the
nations which have just been formed, blind social convulsions, with no
further aim than the gratification of the hatreds, the envies, the crazy
dreams of an hour of life looking forward to no morrow....


Heir of George Washington and Abraham Lincoln, take up the cause, not of
a party, not of a single people, but of all! Summon the representatives
of the peoples to the Congress of Mankind! Preside over it with the full
authority which you hold in virtue of your lofty moral consciousness and
in virtue of the great future of America! Speak, speak to all! The world
hungers for a voice which will overleap the frontiers of nations and of
classes. Be the arbiter of the free peoples! Thus may the future hail
you by the name of Reconciler!



Romain Rolland.


Villeneuve, November 9, 1918.


"Le Populaire," Paris, November 18, 1918.


*
* *


A few days later (December 4, 1918), "Le Populaire" published a
letter from Romain Rolland to Jean Longuet, wherein Romain Rolland
laid bare his most intimate thought and gave the reasons for his
attitude towards Wilson. The letter was reprinted by "L'Humanité"
in the issue of December 14, 1918, a special "Wilson Number."


I am no Wilsonian. I see all too plainly that the president's message,
as clever as it is generous, aims (in good faith) at realising
throughout the world the ideal of the bourgeois republic of the
Franco-American type.


This is a conservative ideal and it no longer satisfies me.


Nevertheless, despite our personal predilections and our reserves for
the future, I believe that the best thing we can do for the moment is to
support the action of President Wilson. He alone will be able to curb
the greedy appetites, the ambitions, and the fierce instincts, which
will seat themselves at the peace banquet. Through his action alone is
there any chance of bringing about a modus vivendi in Europe, one which
provisionally at least shall be fairly just. This great bourgeois
embodies what is purest, most disinterested, most humane, in the
mentality of his class.[91] No one is better fitted than he to act as
Arbiter.


R. R.


June, 1919.


XXV


AGAINST VICTORIOUS BISMARCKISM


"Le Populaire" asked Romain Rolland to write an article on the
occasion of President Wilson's arrival in France. Romain Rolland,
who was ill at the time, wrote from Villeneuve as follows.


Thursday, December 12, 1918.


Dear Longuet,


YOUR letter of the 6th inst. did not reach me until to-day, of course
after being opened by the military censorship. It finds me in bed, where
I have been for a fortnight, suffering from an obstinate attack of
influenza. It is therefore impossible for me to write the article you
want.


All that I will say is that, during the last fortnight, the news from
France has often made me more uneasy than my fever. The Allies believe
themselves victorious. In my view (if they fail to pull themselves
together) they are vanquished, beaten, infected, by Bismarckism.


Unless there is an extensive turn in events, I foresee a century of
hatreds, of new wars of revenge, and the destruction of European
civilisation. Let me add that the destruction of European civilisation
is hardly to be regretted if the victorious nations prove thus incapable
of guiding their destinies.


It is my hope that, amid the intoxicating but deceptive triumphs of the
present, they may regain the consciousness of their crushing
responsibilities towards the future! It is my hope that they will
remember that every one of their mistakes or their sins of
omission will have to be paid for by their children and their children's
children!


Excuse these lines, scribbled by a convalescent, and believe me, my dear
Longuet,


Yours as always,

Romain Rolland.


"Le Populaire," Paris, December 21, 1918.


XXVI


DECLARATION OF THE INDEPENDENCE OF THE MIND


BRAIN workers, comrades, scattered throughout the world, kept apart for
five years by the armies, the censorship and the mutual hatred of the
warring nations, now that barriers are falling and frontiers are being
reopened, we issue to you a call to reconstitute our brotherly union,
but to make of it a new union more firmly founded and more strongly
built than that which previously existed.


The war has disordered our ranks. Most of the intellectuals placed their
science, their art, their reason, at the service of the governments. We
do not wish to formulate any accusations, to launch any reproaches. We
know the weakness of the individual mind and the elemental strength of
great collective currents. The latter, in a moment, swept the former
away, for nothing had been prepared to help in the work of resistance.
Let this experience, at least, be a lesson to us for the future!


First of all, let us point out the disasters that have resulted from the
almost complete abdication of intelligence throughout the world, and
from its voluntary enslavement to the unchained forces. Thinkers,
artists, have added an incalculable quantity of envenomed hate to the
plague which devours the flesh and the spirit of Europe. In the arsenal
of their knowledge, their memory, their imagination, they have sought
reasons for hatred, reasons old and new, reasons historical, scientific,
logical, and poetical. They have worked to destroy mutual understanding
and mutual love among men. So doing, they have disfigured, defiled, debased, degraded Thought, of which they were the representatives.
They have made it an instrument of the passions; and (unwittingly,
perchance) they have made it a tool of the selfish interests of a
political or social clique, of a state, a country, or a class. Now,
when, from the fierce conflict in which the nations have been at grips,
the victors and the vanquished emerge equally stricken, impoverished,
and at the bottom of their hearts (though they will not admit it)
utterly ashamed of their access of mania—now, Thought, which has been
entangled in their struggles, emerges, like them, fallen from her high
estate.


Arise! Let us free the mind from these compromises, from these unworthy
alliances, from these veiled slaveries! Mind is no one's servitor. It is
we who are the servitors of mind. We have no other master. We exist to
bear its light, to defend its light, to rally round it all the strayed
sheep of mankind. Our role, our duty, is to be a centre of stability, to
point out the pole star, amid the whirlwind of passions in the night.
Among these passions of pride and mutual destruction, we make no choice;
we reject them all. Truth only do we honour; truth that is free,
frontierless, limitless; truth that knows nought of the prejudices of
race or caste. Not that we lack interest in humanity. For humanity we
work, but for humanity as a whole. We know nothing of peoples. We know
the People, unique and universal; the People which suffers, which
struggles, which falls and rises to its feet once more, and which
continues to advance along the rough road drenched with its sweat and
its blood; the People, all men, all alike our brothers. In order that
they may, like ourselves, realise this brotherhood, we raise above their
blind struggles the Ark of the Covenant—Mind which is free, one and
manifold, eternal.


R. R.


Villeneuve, Spring, 1919.


[This manifesto was published in "L'Humanité," June 26, 1919.]


By the end of 1919, the following signatures had been received to the
above declaration.



Emilio H. del Villar, editor of "Archive Geografico de la Peninsula
Iberica," of Madrid, has sent me a manifesto Por la causa de la
civilizacion, published in the Madrid newspapers in June, 1919, and
inspired with sentiments analogous to those of the above declaration.
This manifesto is signed by about one hundred Spanish writers and men of
science, university professors, etc. Emilio H. del Villar sends his own
adhesion, together with that of all the signatories of the
Spanish manifesto, to the Declaration of the Independence of the Mind.


It is a matter for regret that we have not been able to add to the list
the signatures of our Russian friends from whom we are still cut off by
the governmental blockade. We keep their places open. Russian thought is
in the vanguard of the thought of the world.


R. R.


August, 1919.


SUPPLEMENTARY NOTE TO CHAPTER XX


A GREAT EUROPEAN: G. F. NICOLAI


COMMENT is requisite upon the reproaches addressed by G. F. Nicolai to
certain Christian sects. In the various countries of Europe, opposition
to the war, on the part of those he names, was far more vigorous than
has been commonly supposed. Inasmuch as the authorities ruthlessly but
silently suppressed all opposition, it is only since the close of the
war that we have been able to glean information concerning these
conscientious revolts and sacrifices. Without dwelling upon the story of
the thousands of conscientious objectors in the United States and in
England (where Bertrand Russell has been their defender and
interpreter), I wish to mention that Paul Birinkov has drawn my
attention to the attitude of the Nazarenes in Hungary and Serbia, where
large numbers of them were shot. He has also given me information
concerning the doings of the Tolstoyans, the Dukhobors, the Adventists,
the Young Baptists, etc., in Russia. As for the Mennonites, according to
the reports of Dr. Pierre Kennel, in the United States most of them
refused to subscribe to the war loans. They were not compelled to
undertake combatant duties, but they accepted service in the battalions
for the reconstruction of the devastated regions in northern France. In
tsarist Russia, and in a number of the German states, they were granted
exemption from combatant service, and did duty in the medical corps or
other auxiliary drafts. In France, by a decree of the Convention
(respected by Napoleon) they were likewise assigned to non-combatant
service. But the Third Republic disregarded this decree.



R. R.


Printed in Great Britain by
UNWIN BROTHERS, LIMITED, THE GRESHAM
PRESS, WOKING AND LONDON


FOOTNOTES:


[1] Published in pamphlet form by La Maison Française, Paris,
1918.


[2] Except the last two stanzas, which were composed in the
autumn of the same year.


[3] Conversation with L. Mabilleau, "Opinion," June 20, 1908.


[4] In a recent issue of the "Revue des Deux Mondes."


[5] Institut für Kulturforschung (Institute for the Study of
Civilisation), founded at Vienna in February, 1915, by Dr. Erwin
Hanslick. So rapid was its success that in February, 1916, it gave birth
to the Institute for the Study of the East and the Orient.


[6] "Nature," writes Voltaire in L'Homme aux quarante écus,
"is like those great princes who think nothing of the loss of 400,000
men, provided they can fulfil their own august designs."


The princes of to-day, great and small alike, are more spendthrift!


[7] Cf. Victor Bérard's brief account of the Manchurian
campaign in La révolte de l'Asie. Cf. also Les derniers jours de
Pékin, where Pierre Loti describes the destruction of Tung-Chow, "the
City of Celestial Purity."


[8] Numerous issues of "Cahiers de la Quinzaine" have been
devoted to castigating the crimes of civilisation. I may mention:





[9] Arnold Porret, Les causes profondes de la guerre,
Lausanne, 1916.


[10] From a lecture entitled Nationalism in Japan, since
republished in the volume Nationalism, Macmillan, London, 1917 (pp. 59
and 60). This address marks a turning-point in the history of the
world.


[11] Consult a number of shrewd articles published during the
last decade by Francis Delaisi. One in particular may be mentioned, that
which appeared in "Pages libres" on January 1, 1907, dealing with
foreign affairs in 1906 (the Algeciras year). He gives striking examples
of what he terms "industrialised diplomacy." As a complement to Delaisi,
read the financial articles of the "Revue" (issues for November and
December, 1906) signed Lysis, and the commentary on these articles by P.
G. La Chesnais in "Pages libres" (January 19, 1907). In these writings
we find a plain demonstration of the power of the financial oligarchies
over the governments of the European states, alike republics and
monarchies—a power that is "collective, mysterious in its workings, and
independent of control."


[12] Let me quote a few lines from Maurras, so lucid a writer
when not under the spell of his fixed idea. "The Money State governs,
gilds, and decorates Intelligence: but muzzles it and puts it to sleep.
The Money State, at will, can prevent Intelligence from becoming aware
of a political truth; and if Intelligence utters a political truth, the
Money State can prevent that truth from being heard and understood. How
can a country realise its own needs if those who know them can be
condemned to silence, to falsehood, or to isolation?" (L'Avenir de
l'Intelligence.)—A true picture of the present day.


[13] Introduction to Marcelle Capy's book Une voix de femme
dans la mêlée, Ollendorff, Paris, 1916. The italicised passages were
suppressed by the censor in the original publication.


[14] On page 26 of Marcelle Capy's book we learn how touching a
response these utterances of stalwart sympathy have called forth from
the generous hearts of our soldiers.


[15] Published at Geneva by J. H. Jeheber, 1917; English
translation The Journal of Leo Tolstoi (1895-1899), Knopf, New York,
1917.


[16] December 7, 1895.


[17] An exception must be made as regards certain voices from
Germany, among which that of Professor Foerster speaks in the clearest
tones. But we should err were we to allow ourselves to be persuaded that
such unbiassed persons are a German monopoly, should we fail to realise
that similar voices are raised in the other camp.


[18] This is shown by the recent establishment and the success
of Swiss periodicals which embody a reaction against the tendencies
described in the text. Moreover, regrets similar to those voiced above
have been repeatedly expressed by Swiss writers of independent mind. I
may mention H. Hodler ("La Voix de L'Humanité"); E. Platzhoff-Lejeune
("Coenobium" and the "Revue mensuelle"); Adolphe Ferrière ("Coenobium"
for March and April, 1917, in an article entitled The Effect of the
Press and of the Censorship in Promoting Mutual Hatred among the
Nations).


[19] "The Masses, a free magazine," 34 Union Square East, New
York.—All the items in the text are quoted from the issues of June and
July, 1917.


[20] Advertising Democracy, June, 1917, p. 5.


[21] Who wanted War, June, 1917, p. 23.


[22] Socialists and War, June, 1917, p. 25.


[23] The Religion of Patriotism, July, 1917.


[24] On Not Going to the War, July, 1917.


[25] Patriotism in the Middle West, June, 1917.


[26] This is said to have happened in the case of "Pearson's
Magazine." (Consult the article on Free Speech, "The Masses," July,
1917.)—It is hardly necessary to refer to the masterly manner in which
all independent persons who displease the authorities are implicated in
imaginary plots.


[27] Issue of July, 1917.


[28] Since the article above quoted was published, the American
Senate has imposed heavy taxation on war profits.


[29] E. D. Morel, having served his sentence, has given a
number of lectures in various parts of Britain, arousing the sympathetic
indignation of his audiences by his account of the illegalities in his
trial and of the undercurrents in the whole business. He was able to
show that there were influences at work emanating from certain persons
whose interests had been injuriously affected prior to the war by
Morel's press campaign against the Congo atrocities.—Cf. The
Persecution of E. D. Morel, Reformer's Series, Glasgow, 1919.


[30] The allusion is to Victor Hugo's Les Burgraves. Burgrave
Job is eighty years of age; Burgrave Magnus, his son, is
sixty.—Translators' Note.


[31] The section of Bellinzona, or of Ticino, was founded quite
recently, in November, 1916. At the inaugural ceremony, the president,
Julius Schmidhauser, delivered a speech in which he sounded an excellent
European note. He contrasted the union of the three races of Switzerland
with the spectacle of contemporary Europe still living in the
prehistoric age, a Europe "wherein the Frenchman can see in the German
nothing but an enemy, wherein the German can see in the Frenchman
nothing but an enemy, and wherein neither can regard the other as a
human being. For our part, we have a way in Switzerland of discovering
the human element in all mankind."—"Centralblatt des Zofingervereins,"
December, 1916.


[32] The text was written in the summer of 1917. Shortly
afterwards, fresh dissensions arose in the Zofingia. These discords have
been accentuated by the Russian revolution.


[33] The program of the new committee (Der Centralausschuss an
die Sektionen), published in the "Centralblatt" for October, 1916, was
reproduced, in part, in the "Journal de Genève" for October 19th, under
the caption Le programme de la Jeunesse. This program affirms the
"supernationalist" and anti-imperialist faith on the lines expounded in
the discussion of which a summary will shortly be given in the text. I
quote from the program: "We do not live upon the worship of our warlike
past.... Placed as we are in the centre of a system of great imperialist
powers which aim at domination through force, at material greatness, and
at glory, it is our task to fight openly, boldly, trusting in the
future, against imperialism and on behalf of the ideal of humanity."


A keen interest in social questions, solidarity with the common people,
with the disinherited of the earth, are likewise plainly manifested.


[34] None the less I am impressed by the bold and perspicuous
idealism displayed by some of these young Latin Swiss in the discussions
summarised in the sequel.


[35] Serment du Jeu de Paume, Versailles, June 20,
1789.—Translators' Note.


[36] Le Feu, Journal d'une Escouade, par Henri Barbusse,
Flammarion, Paris, 1916. English translation, Under Fire, The Story of a
Squad, Dent, London, 1917.


[37] Words of Farewell (issue of May, 1917).


[38] Among these I may mention my article, To the Murdered
Nations (Chapter III, above) from which the censorship deleted one
hundred lines. The gaps were filled by Wullens with Belot's fine
engravings (issue of May, 1917).


[39] Notwithstanding the sentence passed upon Guilbeaux since
the passage in the text was written, my confidence in him is unshaken. I
differ from him in many respects, but I admire his courage. To those who
have known Guilbeaux intimately, his good faith is above suspicion.—R.
R., August, 1919.


[40] G. Thuriot-Franchi, Les Marches de France.


[41] Andreas Latzko, Menschen im Krieg, Rascher, Zurich,
1917; English translation, Men in Battle, Cassell, London, 1918.


[42] Andreas Latzko is a Hungarian officer. He was wounded on
the Italian front during the fighting of 1915-16.


[43] Stefan Zweig, Jeremias, eine dramatische Dichtung in neun
Bildern, Insel-Verlag, Leipzig, 1917.


[44] Les Temps maudits, "demain," Geneva.


[45] Vous êtes des hommes, "Nouvelle Revue Française," Paris;
and Poème contre le grand crime, "demain," Geneva; above all the
admirable Danse des Morts, "Les Tablettes," Geneva, republished by
"L'Action Sociale," La-Chaux-de-Fonds.


[46] Mr. Britling sees it Through, Cassell, London, 1916.


[47] The Fortune, a Romance of Friendship, Maunsel, Dublin
and London, 1917.


[48] G. F. Nicolai, M.D., sometime professor of physiology at
Berlin University, Die Biologie des Krieges, Betrachtungen eines
Naturforschers den Deutschen zur Besinnung, Orell Füssli, Zurich, 1917;
English translation, The Biology of War, Dent, London, 1919.


[49] Cf. especially Chapter Six, an interesting account of the
development of armies from ancient times down to to-day, when we have
the armed nation. Also Chapter Fourteen, which deals with war and peace
as reflected in the writings of ancient and modern poets and
philosophers.


[50] Erfassen. Nicolai points out that the figurative meaning
of the word "erfassen" like that of "apprehend" and "comprehend" [or of
the native "grasp"] is a metaphysical extension of the primitive
"prehension" by the hand.


[51] I ignore, in the text, the abundant proofs Nicolai draws
from ethnology and from the history of the lower animals. He shows, for
example, that the most primitive peoples, the Bushmen, the Fuegians, the
Eskimos, etc., live in hordes even when they display no tendency towards
family life. All savages are gregarious in the extreme; solitude is
disastrous to them alike physically and mentally. Even civilised man
finds solitude hard to bear.


[52] Faust, Part II, 5. Mephistopheles' words, when he hands
over to Faust the proceeds of a voyage. [War, trade, and piracy are
trinity in unity—inseparable.]


[53] "Everything which exists, above all everything which
lives, tends towards immeasurable increase."


[54] For unicellular organisms, osmosis imposes a limit; for
multicellular organisms there is a mechanical limit to size; for the
groupings of individuals to form collectivities, social communities,
there is a limit fixed by the amount of available energy.


[55] Pp. 160 to 163 [English edition].


[56] On p. 255 [of the English edition] will be found an
ethnographical chart of Germany. It is distinctly humorous.


[57] This statement requires qualification. The reader is
referred to a note at the end of the volume.


[58] Jeheber, Geneva, 1915.


[59] Buddhist Views of War, "The Open Court," May, 1904.


[60] The actual words in my play are: "The nations die that God
may live."


[61] Nicolai terms them "chance products" (sind nur zufällige
Produkte).


[62] It is surprising that there is but one mention of Auguste
Comte in Nicolai's book; for Comte's Great Human Being is certainly akin
to the German biologist's Humanity.


[63] We shall do well to note that Nicolai practically
considers himself exempt from the need for these material
demonstrations. As far as he is concerned, it would suffice him, as it
sufficed Aristotle, to observe the play of forces among men. This simple
observation would convince him that humanity must be regarded as an
organism. "But moderns, although they will generally deny it, are for
the most part infected with the belief that all solid fact must be
material.... Even though it be not absolutely necessary to demonstrate
that there exists between human beings a bridge of real substance (eine
Brücke realer Substanz), even though the dynamic ties suffice us, it is
desirable to satisfy the materialistic demands of our day, and to show
that there does actually exist between the men of all ages and all lands
an effective interconnection, which is uniform, persistent, nay eternal"
[pp. 392-393, English edition].


[64] According to this theory, which was initiated by Gustav
Jaeger in 1878, there occurs an eternal transmission of an inheritable
germ plasm, this being temporarily housed within the perishable soma of
the individual living being. The hypothesis of the undying plasma has
given rise to lively discussions which are still in progress.


[65] Ueber Ursprung und Bedeutung der Amphimixis, "Biolog.
Zentralblatt," xxvi, No. 22, 1906.


[66] This seems to me the weak point in the theory. How can we
reconcile the mutation and the variability of the germ plasm, with its
immortality and its eternal transmission?


[67] Species and Varieties: their Origin by Mutation, Kegan
Paul, London, 1905.


[68] Closing sections of Chapter Thirteen.


[69] I should like to give an account here of Nicolai's
solution of the problem of liberty. He discusses the matter in one of
the most important sections of his book.—How can a biologist, filled
with a feeling of universal necessity, find place, amid that necessity
and without prejudice to it, for human freedom? One of the most notable
characteristics of this great mind, is Nicolai's power of associating
within himself two rival and complementary forces. He makes a suggestive
study, at once philosophic and physiological, of the anatomy of the
brain and of the almost infinite possibilities the brain holds for the
future (all unknown to us to-day), of the thousands of roads which are
marked out in the brain many centuries before humanity dreams of using
them.—But to follow up this study would lead us beyond the scope of the
present article. I must refer the reader to pp. 58-68 of The Biology of
War [English edition]. These pages are a model of scientific
intuition.


[70] Chapter Ten, p. 309 [English edition].


[71] Chapter Fourteen.


[72] Chapter Ten, pp. 270-271 [English edition].


[73] Introduction, p. 11 [English edition].


[74] "Um dem guten und gerechten Menschen meine triumphierende
Sicherheit zu geben." Introduction [p. 10, English edition].


[75] The most important of these studies have been collected in
the great work Les Fourmis de la Suisse (Nouveaux mémoires de la
Société helvétique des Sciences naturelles, vol. xxvi, Zurich, 1874),
and in the admirable series Expériences et remarques pratiques sur les
sensations des insectes, published in five parts in the "Rivista di
Scienze biologiche," Como, 1900-1901. [Two only of Forel's writings on
insects are available in the English language: The Senses of Insects,
Methuen, London, 1908; and Ants and some other Insects, Kegan Paul,
London, 1904.] But these works form no more than a fraction of the
author's studies written on this subject. Dr. Forel recently told me
that since the publication in 1874 of the work which has become a
classic, he has penned no less than 226 essays upon ants.


[76] Some of these soldier ants function also as butchers,
cutting up the prey into small fragments.


[77] Insect Life, Macmillan, London, 1901.


[78] Mutual Aid, Heinemann, London, 1915.


[79] Auguste Forel, Les Fourmis de la Suisse, pp. 261-263.


[80] Op. cit. p. 249.


[81] Polyergus rufescens.


[82] Op. cit. pp. 266-273.


[83] A great cause of error, among those who study insects, is
to apply uncritically to an entire genus, observations made upon one or
upon a few species. The species of insects are very numerous. Among ants
alone, so Forel informs me, there are more than 7,500 species. These
species exhibit all shades, all degrees, of instinct.


[84] I am well aware that the concluding statement in the text
is in total contradiction with the thought of Auguste Forel, who denies
free will. I do not propose here to reopen the agelong dispute between
free will and determinism, which seems to me largely verbal. I shall
consider the question elsewhere.


[85] For instance, the Institut für Kulturforschung (Institute
for the Study of Civilisation) of Vienna (see above p. 19). This
Institute has just founded a Society for the Study of World
Civilisation, which issues a periodical entitled "Erde, a journal for
the intellectual life of the whole of mankind." The first number, which
comes to hand while I am correcting the proof of these pages, is
throughout an ardent confession of "panhumanist" faith.


[86] A Great European, G. F. Nicolai ("demain," October and
November 1917).—See Chapter XX above.


[87] Steen Hasselbach, Copenhagen. First issue, October 1,
1918.


[88] Why I left Germany. An open letter to the Unknown who
rules Germany.—The German article has been republished in pamphlet form
by A. G. Benteli, Bümpliz-Bern, Switzerland, 1918.


[89] In telling this part of the story, Nicolai conceals most
of the details of his flight. Too many are implicated, and they would
suffer if he were explicit. Already, he tells us, an innocent person,
the betrothed of one of his companions, has been imprisoned.—Some day
he will write a memoir of his military experiences.


[90] This Aufruf an die Europäer is reprinted, in the first
issue of "Das werdende Europa" immediately after the article I have just
been analysing, and Nicolai appeals to all readers who sympathise with
it to send him their signatures.


[91] Subsequent events have shown that this did not amount to
much, after all. The moral abdication of President Wilson, abandoning
his own principles without having the honesty to admit the fact,
signalises the ruin of that lofty bourgeois idealism which, for a
century and a half, gave to the ruling class, notwithstanding many
mistakes, both strength and prestige. The consequences of such an act
are incalculable.